672 



HERBERT 



HERCULANEUM 



has done others, to a perfect sympathy with the 

 uncultured and the ignorant. He was an accom- 

 plished musician, who recognised in music not a 

 science only, but a divine voice ; and his poetry is 

 the natural result of his training and of his life. 

 It exhibits a singular combination of the attributes 

 of a courtier, a gentleman, and a saint. It mani- 

 fests a knowledge of life, and of the world, and a 

 certain strength and force of thought and of expres- 

 sion which has made his verses the favourite read- 

 ing of men who are not generally attracted to sacred 

 and devotional poetry ; and this quality will prob- 

 ably ensure for his poems a lasting, though perhaps 

 limited, number of students and admirers. 



See his Works in Prose and Verse, with Life by "Walton, 

 .and notes by Coleridge ( 1846) ; editions by Nichol ( 1863) 

 and Grosart ( 1876 ) ; the present writer's preface to The 

 Temple (1882); and a new Life (S.P.C.K., 1893). 



Herbert, SIDNEY, LORD HERBERT OF LEA, 

 minister and statesman, was the 

 son of the eleventh Earl of Pem- 

 broke by his second wife, the 

 daughter of Count Woronzow, and 

 was born at Richmond, 16th Sep- 

 tember 1810. Educated at Har- 

 row and at Oriel College, Oxford, 

 he devoted himself to public life, 

 and entered the House of Com- 

 mons in 1832 as member for South 

 Wilts, which he represented until 

 his elevation to the peerage in 

 1861. He began his political 

 career as a Conservative, and was 

 Secretary to the Admiralty in Sir 

 It. Peel's administration from 1841 

 to 1845, when he became Secre- 

 tary-at-war. It fell to him to 

 oppose Mr Cobden's motion for a 

 select committee to inquire into 

 the effect of the corn laws. He 

 went out of office with his party 

 in 1846. In 1852 he was again 

 Secretary-at-war, under the Aber- 

 deen ministry, and, in consequence, 

 the ' horrible and heart-rending 

 Bufferings' of the army before 

 Sebastopol were laid in a great 

 degree at his door. He was for a 

 few weeks Colonial Secretary in the 

 h'rst administration of Lord Palmerston in 1855, 

 and Secretary-at-war in his second administration 

 in 1859. Great improvements in the sanitary con- 

 dition and education of the army, the amalgama- 

 tion of the Indian with the royal army, and the 

 organisation of the volunteer force signalised his 

 army administration. He largely reformed the 

 War Office, and was devoting himself with equal 

 zeal and intelligence to his ministerial duties 

 when, owing to failing health, he resigned his 

 seat in the House of Commons, and in 1861 was 

 called to the Upper House, under the title of Baron 

 Herbert of Lea. He died August 2, 1861. He was 

 heir-presumptive to the earldom of Pembroke, and 

 his son (1850-95, author of South Sea Bubbles) 

 became in 1862 thirteenth earl. 



Herb Gerard. See BISHOPWEED. 



Herbiy'ora ('plant-eaters'), in some of the 

 classifications of the Mammalia, has been regarded 

 as an order (co-ordinate with Carnivora), and by 

 some been divided into Artiodactyla and Perisso- 

 dactyla. See MAMMALIA, UNGULATA. 



Herb Paris. See PARIS. 



Herb Robert. See GERANIUM. 



Herbs, or HERBACEOUS PLANTS, are those which 

 <Jo not form a persistent woody stem above ground. 

 'They are annual, biennial, or perennial. An annual 

 springs from seed, blossoms and dies in one season. 



A biennial vegetates only during the first growing 

 season, and stores up nourishment in its root-stock 

 which persists through the winter ; during the 

 second growing season the root-stock sends up 

 flowering shoots, and after fructification the whole 

 plant dies. When the root-stock perennates, and 

 only the aerial shoots die at the end of each grow- 

 ing season, the plant is perennial. See POT-HERBS. 

 Herculaiieilin, an ancient city of Italy, so 

 called from the local worship of Hercules, was 

 situated at the north-western base of Mount 

 Vesuvius, about 5 miles E. of Naples. Consider- 

 able obscurity envelops its early history ; it is sup- 

 posed, however, to have been of Phoenician origin, 

 and to have been occupied afterwards by Pelasgians 

 and Oscans. It subsequently was conquered, with 

 all the rest of Campania, by the Sanmites, and 

 later it fell into the hands of the Romans. In 

 63 A.D. the city was seriously injured by a violent 



General view of the Excavations at Herculaneum. 



earthquake ; and in 79 it was buried, along with 

 Pompeii and Stabise, by the memorable eruption 

 of Vesuvius (q.v.) which took place in that year. 

 It now lies at a depth of from 40 to 100 feet below 

 the surface, and is filled up and covered with vol- 

 canic tufa, composed of sand and ashes, and con- 

 solidated to some extent by water, which is often 

 thrown up in great quantities during volcanic 

 eruptions. Above it, on the modern surface, are 

 Portici and Resina, two villages now absorbed in 

 the suburbs of Naples. In 1706, on the occasion of 

 deepening a well, fragments of mosaics were first 

 brought up ; but little was done for systematic 

 excavation till 1738, when explorations were com- 

 menced under royal authority. It was then dis- 

 covered that the building near the bottom of the 

 well, from which the first relics were obtained, was 

 the theatre. This building was forthwith explored 

 and cleared, and several statues, both in bronze and 

 marble, were extracted from it. Excavations were 

 carried on but to a limited extent, not only in con- 

 sequence of the hardness of the tufa, but from the 

 fear of undermining the dwellings on the surface. 

 Hence but a portion of this entombed city is 

 yet visible, the chief edifice shown being still the 

 theatre, which had been built a short time before 

 the fatal eruption. It has eighteen rows of stone 

 seats, and could accommodate 8000 persons. Part 

 of the Forum with its colonnades, a colonnade 



