HIT 



Macaulay made it definitely his 

 business to write history in such a 

 manner that its interest might ap- 

 peal with no less attraction than 

 pure, unqualified fiction to ordin- 

 ary men and women. He did so by 

 making it a picture of a live world 

 full of live people, generally either 

 very good or very wicked. Inci- 

 dentally, he made his presentation 

 of history a medium for teaching 

 his own political doctrines, not 

 without much collecting and sift- 

 ing of evidence, but with a firm 

 conviction that such evidence as 

 told against his preconceptions 

 came from tainted sources, while 

 anything that told in favour of 

 them required no further guaran- 

 tee for its veracity. Very much the 

 same might be said of Froude. Of 

 a different school were Hallam and 

 James Mill, who rejected the atti- 

 tude of palpable advocacy which 

 Froude and Macaulay made no 

 attempt to conceal, and assumed 

 an air of rigid philosophic impar- 

 tiality which veiled an equally 

 firm determination to impose their 

 own predilections upon their read- 

 ers. An artist of a different type 

 was J. R. Green, who was con- 

 cerned with the atmosphere rather 

 than the drama of history, with 

 the landscape, the setting, more 

 than with the portraits. 



Carlyle's Hero Theory 



On the other hand, the theory of 

 history which treats it as pivoting 

 upon great personalities, the old 

 principle of portraiture, found the 

 mightiest of all its exponents in 

 Thomas Carlyle. The doctrine 

 which he practised with tremen- 

 dous effect, not only in his History 

 of Frederick the Great and The 

 Letters and Speeches of Oliver 

 Cromwell, but also in The French 

 Revolution, is most explicitly set 

 forth in Hero-worship. In effect, 

 its essential premise is that what 

 is of significance in the history of 

 the world is the history of its great 

 men, its heroes ; coupled with the 

 second premise that no man ever 

 did or could achieve the heroic 

 distinction and become one of the 

 moulders of the destinies of man- 

 kind without the endowment of an 

 essential sincerity which placed 

 him in the somewhat awkward 

 predicament of being compelled to 

 prove to himself the essential sin- 

 cerity of Frederick the Great. But 

 the hero-theory, intensely inspiring 

 so long as it insists upon righteous- 

 ness, sincerity, justice, as essential 

 qualities of the hero, who, lacking 

 them, is at best a Titan, becomes 

 a mere impulse to Titanism if the 

 need of those qualities be not re- 

 cognized, and when the one de- 

 manded is intellectual forcefulness, 

 the blunder into which German 



4009 



exponents of the theory, Momm- 

 sen, Treitschke, and others, were 

 betrayed with disastrous results. 



Bibliography. The Meaning of 

 History, F. Harrison, 1894 ; Lec- 

 ture on the Study of History, 

 Lord Acton, 1895 ; Introduction aux 

 Etudes Historiques, C. V. Langlois 

 and C. Seignobos, 1898, Eng. trans. 

 1898 ; Lectures on the Study of 

 Medieval and Modern History, W. 

 Stubbs, 3rd ed. 1900. 



Hit. Town of Mesopotamia. It 

 stands on the Euphrates, 140 m. 

 N.W. of Hilla and 33 m. N. of 

 Ramadie. Anciently known as Is, 

 and identified by some authorities 

 with Ahava (Ezra viii, 15), it is 

 about 85 m. N.W. of Bagdad and 

 70 m. W. of Tekrit, with which it is 

 connected by a desert road. It is 

 famous for its gardens of mul- 

 berries and peaches, and is also 

 noted for its wells of bitumen, 

 which the Arabs call the mouths 

 of hell. During the Great War Hit 

 was occupied in March, 1918, by 

 the British in the course of the 

 operations in Mesopotamia against 

 the Turks. Pop. 10,000. See 

 Mesopotamia, Conquest of. 



Hit chin. Urban district and 

 market town of Hertfordshire, 

 England. It is 32 m. N. of London 

 on the G.N.R., just off the Icknield 

 Way (q.v.). The fine old parish 

 church of S. Mary (formerly S. 

 Andrew's) contains a groined roof, 

 an ancient font, mosaics, effigies, 

 brasses, and other features of an 

 antiquarian interest. Near by are 

 Golden Square, 'where Eugene 

 Aram lived, and the wide thorough- 

 fare called Bancroft. On the site 

 of the Baptist chapel in Tilehouse 

 Street once stood a building in 

 which Bunyan preached. Chap- 

 man was a resident. Girton College 

 (q.v.), established here in 1869, 

 was removed to Cambridge in 

 1872. There are a corn exchange 

 and a town hall, and the council 

 owns the waterworks and main- 

 tains a cattle market and baths. 



Hitchin was known to the Saxons 

 as Hiche, probably from the little 

 river Hiz, which rises in the vicin- 

 ity. Edward the ^^^^ 

 Confessor con- I 

 ferred the manor \ 

 upon Harold ; the j 

 present lord of the [. 

 manor is the King. j 

 The Priory, a seat 

 of the Radcliffe 

 family, is on the 

 site of a Carmelite 

 monastery, and 

 almshouses include 

 remains of a Gil- 

 bertine nunnery. 

 Shandy Hall, 

 residence of the 

 original of Sterne's 

 Uncle Toby, has 



HITT1TES 



disappeared. Hitchin is a busv 

 agricultural centre, grows lavcinl. r 

 and peppermint for distillation, and 

 engages in malting and straw-plait- 

 ing. The town gives its name to a 

 co. div. returning one member to 

 Parliament. Market day, Tues. 

 There are fairs at Easter and Whit- 

 suntide. Pop. (1921) 13,535. 



Hither Green. Residential dis- 

 trict and suburb of S.E. London. 

 It is in the met. bor. of Lewisham 

 (q.v.), 1 m. S.E. of Charing Cross on 

 the S.E. & C.R. Here is Park 1 1 . * 

 pital, one of the large fever hospitals 

 of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. 

 It overlooks Mountsfield Park, a 

 pleasure ground of 12f acres, opened 

 to the public in Aug., 1905. Pop. 

 25,000. 



Hitopadesa. Sanskrit collec- 

 tion of animal stories told with 

 moral purpose, the title signifying 

 " salutary counsel." A popular 

 summary of the Panchatantra, it 

 includes many of the fables asso- 

 ciated with the legendary Bidpai, 

 and is supposed to have been com- 

 piled by the Brahman Vishnusar- 

 man, Eng. trans. F. Johnson, 1847. 

 See Panchatantra ; Sanskrit. 



Hitteren. Large island on the 

 W. coast of Norway. Situated S.W. 

 of the entrance to the Trondhjem 

 Fiord, it is 30 m. long and 10 m. 

 wide, its area, including adjacent 

 small islands, being 203 sq. m. 

 On the S.E. coast is the port and 

 station of Havn. The island, which 

 contains numerous streams and 

 lakes, is hilly, rising in parts to 

 over 1,000 ft. Fishing is ex- 

 tensively carried on and deer 

 abound. Pop. 2,000. 



Hittites. Ancient people in W. 

 Asia. The Biblical names, Heth 

 and Hittite, denoted at first 

 diverse racial elements in pre- 

 Israelite Canaan and afterwards 

 various N. Syrian tribal con- 

 federacies. They are identifiable 

 with the Kheta of Egyptian annals 

 and bas-reliefs, and the (K)hatti 

 of Assyrio-Babylonian records. 

 Denoting primarily a dominant 

 tribe in the Halys plain, the name 



Hitchin, Hertfordshire. Market square and parish 

 church of S. Mary 



