is indicative of his thirst for knowledge, that he employed the small amount of pocket-money then at his disposal in paying for instruction in Latin. The vicissitudes of his subsequent career were many and severe, until the time of his appointment to the office he now so ably fills. Bitter experience probably weaned him from the day-dreams of a poet, to which he was disposed by nature. While employed in the business of a druggist, he learned to make experiments in analytical chemistry, directing his attention especially to the subjects of light and photography. During a residence in Cornwall on account of ill-health, he began a series of inquiries into the electricity of mineral veins. This tendency of his mind was strengthened when he became secretary to the Cornwall Polytechnic Society. On the formation of the museum of practical geology under the management of Sir Henry De la Beche, Mr. Hunt was appointed keeper of the mining records. Flattering and substantial testimony has been borne to the usefulness of his labours in this office. In 1860 the gentlemen interested in the mineral wealth and industries of the kingdom, presented to Mr. Hunt by subscription a silver service of the value of 200 guineas, a silver salver of 200 ounces, and a purse of 200 guineas. In Mr Hunt's literary works, the characteristics of a poet and of a man of science are sometimes found commingled. The titles of the books even indicate so much. His principal works are—"Researches on Light;" "Elementary Physics;" "The Poetry of Nature," an endeavour to show that the wonders of nature, as revealed by science, are more truly poetical than the vague imaginings of men ignorant of scientific discovery; "Panthea, the Spirit of Nature;" "Photography;" "Handbook to the Great Exhibition;" "Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain."—R. H.
HUNT, Thomas, D.D., a learned Hebraist, and professor at Oxford, was born in 1696. He was educated at Hart-hall, Oxford, and was one of the first four senior fellows when the society was incorporated under the name of Hertford college. His degree of B.D. was taken in 1743; that of D.D. the following year. In 1738 he was elected Laudian professor of Arabic, and became regius professor of Hebrew in 1747. The earliest of his publications was a fragment of Hippolytus from the Arabic MSS. in the Bodleian library, which was printed in Parker's Bibliotheca Biblica, 1728. His next publications were two Latin speeches on the Arabic; and in 1746 he issued proposals for publishing "Abdollatiphi Historiæ Ægypti Compendium," which, however, was not published, but instead of which the subscribers received his "Observations on several passages in the book of Proverbs," a posthumous work, edited by Dr. Kennicott. In 1757 he published the works of Dr. Hooper, who appears to have been one of his early patrons. The correspondence of Dr. Hunt was extensive, and some of his letters are to be found among those of Dr. Doddridge, published by Stedman. This eminent orientalist, who was not more respected for his learning than for his modesty, and amiable and unassuming disposition, died in October, 1774.
HUNT, Walter, an English monk of the fifteenth century, who, at the council of Florence, zealously opposed the proposed union between the Greek and Latin churches. His writings refer to this matter. He died in 1470.
HUNT, William, painter in water-colours, was born in London in 1790. In the main self-taught, he acquired his remarkable skill in the imitation of fruit, flowers, and "still-life" generally, and his almost unrivalled manipulative dexterity, by careful study of Dutch and Flemish pictures, and incessant copying from the objects themselves. From the time of his election as member of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, in 1824, Mr. Hunt's pictures were a leading attraction in the society's exhibitions. His range of subjects was confined to the actual and material as they commend themselves to the eye of a thorough Londoner; to the peasant boys and girls, whom he depicted in all their actual unsophisticated ugliness, as well as rusticity, and engaged in their ordinary everyday avocations and pleasures; and to the birds' nests, hawthorn and apple-blossoms, and primroses, which a stroll on a Surrey heath, or even to Hampstead, might enable him to discover; and to the apples, nuts, plums, and pine-apples, which he might procure in a visit to Covent Garden market. But these and other natural objects—kitchen interiors, and the like—which make the staple of his subjects, he copied with a downright truthfulness, and a patient, almost affectionate attention to every subtlety of texture, surface, colour, and detail, yet without disturbance of breadth and largeness of effect, which render them curiously attractive to the most instructed lover of art as well as to the uninitiated, and leave them, in their way, quite without rivals among water-colour pictures. Of the older school of water-colour painters Mr. Hunt perhaps made most use of body (or opaque) colours; yet in so doing he never lost sight of the characteristic qualities of the medium in which he worked. Six or eight of his pictures are in the national collection at South Kensington, and several small studies of shells, &c.—marvellous as minutely accurate imitations of simple natural objects—have been distributed by Mr. Ruskin among the art schools of the country. Hunt died in 1865. His bust is placed in the Gallery of the Society of Painters in Water Colours.
* HUNT, William Holman, one of the leaders of the so-called pre-Raphaelite painters, was born about 1826. Whilst still in the schools of the Royal Academy—though he had been an exhibitor at the public galleries for two or three years of pictures differing in no material respect from those of his elders—Mr. Hunt and a few fellow-students, incited apparently by the mediæval movement then in full activity in metropolitan circles, formed themselves into a "brotherhood," with the avowed purpose of restoring painting to its early religious earnestness, truth, and purity, by setting aside the received conventionalism, abandoning the classical or "pagan" motives and themes of the "great masters" of the later Italian schools, and devoting themselves to the study of the earlier religious painters who were the predecessors and teachers of Raphael and his contemporaries, and combining therewith a more direct and minute imitation of nature than had been customary with English painters. Among the brotherhood, Mr. Hunt and Mr. Millais from the first occupied the most conspicuous place in the public eye; the third member in the triumvirate of leaders, Mr. Rosetti, from not exhibiting his pictures publicly, remaining comparatively unknown. Of the remarkable influence of the school on recent English art, it does not belong to us here to speak. Suffice it to say, that whilst there has been among the "brethren" themselves a growing divergence, Mr. Hunt has on the whole remained steadfast in his adherence to the principles of the league, if he has with growing knowledge and experience seen occasion to modify somewhat the manner of developing them. Mr. Hunt's earliest pre-Raphaelite picture was "A converted British Family sheltering a Christian Missionary from the persecution of the Druids," which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850. This was followed in due course by others, of which the most important were "The Hireling Shepherd," 1852; "The Awakened Conscience," and "The Light of the World," 1854, the latter widely known by its separate exhibition throughout the provinces, and by the engraving. Mr. Hunt now made a prolonged visit to the Holy Land, in order to study on the spot scriptural scenery, costume, and character. Of this visit some particulars have been published in the memoir of Mr. Seddon. Its first-fruits were shown in the extraordinary picture exhibited in 1856, under the title of "The Scapegoat." Far more important in every way, however, is his later work, "Christ in the Temple," the result of numberless studies made in Jerusalem, and since his return in England, of some four years of constant devotion of mind and pencil. This picture was exhibited alone in the German gallery, London, in 1860, and proved so attractive that it was again made an independent exhibition with equal success in 1861. A few eastern studies are all that Mr. Hunt has shown, besides his great work, for the last two or three years.—J. T—e.
HUNTER, Alexander, a physician and agricultural writer, born at Edinburgh in 1729. After practising for some time at Gainsborough and Beverley, he finally settled at York. In 1770 he was one of the principal founders of an agricultural society, the proceedings of which he published under the title of "Georgical Essays," in 6 vols. 8vo, 1803-4. He also published an edition of Evelyn's Sylva. He was much occupied with cases of insanity, and secured the erection of a lunatic asylum at York. He died May 17, 1809.—G. BL.
HUNTER, Anne, wife of the celebrated anatomist John Hunter, was a writer of elegant but somewhat feeble verse, a collection of which was published in 1802. Her "Death Song" of the young Indian, the son of Alknomook, is the most spirited composition in the volume. Some of her best songs, being married to the immortal music of Haydn, are still sung in circles where the name of the amiable and accomplished writer is forgotten; such is "My Mother bids me bind my hair," which was first written to an air of Pleydell's. Mrs. Hunter survived
