Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/368

356 356 H U M HUM eve of Lord Lake s Mahratta war in 1803 his chemical knowledge enabled him to render a signal service to the administration by making available a large quantity of gunpowder which damp had spoiled. In 1808, on the restoration of peace, he resigned all his civil appointments, and returned home in the prime of life, and in the posses sion of a well-earned fortune. His first care on arriving in England was to study thoroughly the country and its resources, for which purpose he made various journeys, to see the actual state of the people and the practical opera tion of the laws. In 1812 he took his seat for the borough of Weymouth and Melcombe-Regis; but he was soon obliged to resign it, when it was discovered by his Tory patron that he had had the audacity to talk of reform. Six years elapsed before he again entered the House, and during that interval he had made the acquaintance and imbibed the doctrines of James Mill and the philosophical reformers of the school of Bentham. He had joined his efforts to those of Mr Place, of Westminister, and other philanthropists, to relieve and improve the condition of the working classes, labouring especially to establish schools for them on the Lancasterian system, and promoting the formation of savings banks. In 1818, soon after his marriage with Miss Burnley, the daughter of an East India director, he was returned to parliament as member for the Aberdeen burghs. He was afterwards successively elected for Middlesex (1830), Kilkenny (1837), and for the Montrose burghs (1842), in the service of which constituency he died. From the date of his re-entering the House Hume began, unaided and alone, that course of reform in which he persevered to his death. He became the self-elected guardian of the public purse, withstanding every abuse of the public money, by challenging and bringing to a direct vote every single item of public expenditure. The difficulties Hume encountered in the course of his efforts to reduce the enormous burden of taxation under which the country groaned were aggravated by the confused state of the public accounts. But no obstacle daunted or discouraged him in his enlightened efforts as the pioneer of commercial, financial, and parliamentary reform. Other labours with which his name is connected deserve to be recorded. He unravelled the Orange Lodge conspiracy, the ramifications of which spread over England, Scotland, and the colonies, and the object of which was to make the duke of Cumberland king in place of William IV. He carried on a successful warfare against the old combination laws that hampered workmen and favoured masters ; he brought about the repeal of the laws prohibiting the export of machinery and of the Act preventing workmen from going abroad. He constantly protested against flogging in the army, the impressment of sailors, and imprison ment for debt. He took up the question of lighthouses and harbours ; in the former he secured greater efficiency, in the latter he prevented useless expenditure. At first despised and ridiculed, afterwards dreaded for his tenacity of purpose, he ended by gaining the respect of friends and of foes, and the confidence of the whole nation. The breadth of his action, his singleness of aim, his perfect independence of all party or personal considerations, and an almost heroic earnestness and self-denial in carrying out his views, were the secrets of his influence. Himself as incorruptible as Aristides, he made it a special duty to hunt out and expose political corruption under whatever guise it lurked, and the whole army of place-hunters and jobbers found in him their most indefatigable and inexor able foe. There were many abler, but there was no more useful member in the House during the greater portion of his parliamentary career. He died February 20, 1855. HUMERUS, LARS JOHANSSON (c. 1642-1674), Swedish poet, more commonly known as Lucidor the Unfortunate, was born in Stockholm about the year 1642. His father, Captain Johan Erichsson, and his mother died in his infancy; in 1656 he was entered as a student of the uni versity of Upsala, at the expense of his patron, Admiral Wrangel, whose sons he afterwards conducted through Germany, Italy, France, England, and Holland, and back to Sweden in the autumn of 1668. He returned to Upsala, received a professorship, and took the pseudonym of Lucidor, which he employed until his death. He stayed but one year at Upsala, and in the winter of 1669 settled again in Stockholm. There one of his poems gave offence to the Government, and he was banished from the city for a year and a day. After his return he lived by his pen, writing odes and epithalamia for the rich burghers. He boasted that he would &quot; live like a poet,&quot; that is to say, with but slight regard for the conventions of society. He was murdered on the night of August 13, 1674, in a cellar at Stockholm, by a drunken soldier, Lieutenant Arvid Storm, with whom he was quarrelling. The body of the poet was carried out into the street ; but he only said, &quot; I am stabbed,&quot; and died. Storm was condemned to death for the murder, but was helped by his mother to escape. The stories, so long repeated, of Lucidor s romantic intrigue with a lady of high rank, and his assassination in her arms, must be relegated to the domain of fable. Lucidor s poems were not collected until after his death, when they were published in a volume called Floicers of Helicon. He wrote verses, not merely in Swedish, but also in Latin, French, Ger man, English, Italian, and Dutch. His style is deeply tinged with the prevalent fashion for conceit and tasteless ingenuity, but he possesses force and passion ; and he is certainly the most important Swedish writer between Stjernhjelm and Dahlstjerna. The best edition of his works is that published in 1876 by J. Linck, who has dedicated a great deal of time and care to the investigation of the lite of Humerus. HUMILIATI, a religious order founded at Milan early in the 12th century by certain noblemen of Lombardy, who, having been carried captive into Germany, had regained their freedom by their &quot; humility,&quot; did not, according to Helyot in his Ordres Monastiques, take the monastic vows till 1134, when they were induced to do so by St Bernard. In 1164 their ranks were recruited by other Milanese noble men who had been similarly carried into Germany by Frederick Barbarossa. About 1151 the order was brought under the rule of St Benedict, and in 1200 it was approved by Innocent III. Confirmed and privileged by succeeding popes, the Humiliati began to be corrupted by their popu larity and prosperity, until, after a futile attempt to reform the order, Pius V. finally suppressed it in 157L At that date they had ninety-four houses under their juris diction. The wives of the original founders instituted a female order of Numiliatce, also called, from a prominent early member, the Nuns of Blassoni, which, exempted from Pius s bull of suppression, still has representatives in Italy. HUMMEL, JOHANN NEPOMUK (1778-1837), a celebrated composer and pianist, was born November 14, 1778, at Pressburg, in Hungary, and received his first artistic train ing from his father, himself a musician in a humble way. In 1785 the latter received an appointment as conductor of the orchestra at the theatre of Schikaneder, the friend of Mozart and the librettist of the Magic Flute. It was in this way that young Hummel became acquainted with the great composer, who took a great fancy to him, and even invited him to his house for a considerable period. During two years Hummel received the invaluable instruc tions of Mozart, after which he set out with his father on an artistic tour through Germany, England, and other countries, his clever playing winning for the boy the admiration of amateurs. After his return to Vienna lie completed his studies under Albrechtsberger, the celebrated contrapuntist, and Haydn, and for a number of years devoted himself exclusively to composition. For eight