estuary narrows suddenly into the river, and often exceeds 7 ft.
in height. It is felt as high up as Calcutta, and frequently destroys
small boats. The difference from the lowest point of low-water in
the dry season to the highest point of high-water in the rains is
reported to be 20 ft. 10 in. The greatest mean rise of tide, about
16 ft., takes place in March, April or May—with a declining range
during the rainy season to a mean of 10 ft., and a minimum during freshets of 3 ft. 6 in.
HUGLI, or Hooghly, a town and district of British India, in
the Burdwan division of Bengal, taking their name from the
river Hugli. The town, situated on the right bank of the Hugli,
24 m. above Calcutta by rail, forms one municipality with
Chinsura, the old Dutch settlement, lower down the river. Pop.
(1901) 29,383. It contains the Hooghly College at Chinsura,
a Mahommedan college, two high schools and a hospital with a
Lady Dufferin branch for female patients. The principal building
is a handsome imambara, or mosque, constructed out of funds
which had accumulated from an endowment originally left for
the purpose by a wealthy Shia gentleman, Mahommed Mohsin.
The town was founded by the Portuguese in 1537, on the decay
of Satgaon, the royal port of Bengal. Upon establishing themselves,
they built a fort at a place called Gholghat (close to the
present jail), vestiges of which are still visible in the bed of the
river. This fort gradually grew into the town and port of Hugli.
The District comprises an area of 1191 sq. m. In 1901 the population was 1,049,282, showing an increase of 1% in the decade. It is flat, with a gradual ascent to the north and north-west. The scenery along the high-lying bank of the Hugli has a quiet beauty of its own, presenting the appearance of a connected series of orchards and gardens, interspersed with factories, villages and temples. The principal rivers, besides the Hugli, are the Damodar and the Rupnarayan. As in other deltaic districts, the highest land lies nearest the rivers, and the lowest levels are found midway between two streams. There are in consequence considerable marshes both between the Hugli and the Damodar and between the latter river and the Rupnarayan. The district is traversed by the main line of the East Indian railway, with a branch to the pilgrim resort of Tarakeswar, whence a steam tramway has been constructed for a further distance of 31 m. The Eden canal furnishes irrigation, and there are several embankments and drainage works. Silk and indigo are both decaying industries, but the manufacture of brass and bell-metal ware is actively carried on at several places. There are several jute mills, a large flour mill, bone-crushing mills and a brick and tile works.
From an historical point of view the district possesses as much interest as any in Bengal. In the early period of Mahommedan rule Satgaon was the seat of the governors of Lower Bengal and a mint town. It was also a place of great commercial importance. In consequence of the silting up of the Saraswati, the river on which Satgaon was situated, the town became inaccessible to large ships, and the Portuguese settled at Hugli. In 1632 the latter place, having been taken from the Portuguese by the Mahommedans, was made the royal port of Bengal; and all the public offices and records were withdrawn from Satgaon, which rapidly fell into decay. In 1640 the East India Company established a factory at Hugli, their first settlement in Lower Bengal. In 1685, a dispute having taken place between the English factors and the nawab, the town was bombarded and burned to the ground. This was not the first time that Hugli had been the scene of a struggle deciding the fate of a European power in India. In 1629, when held by the Portuguese, it was besieged for three months and a half by a large Mahommedan force sent by the emperor Shah Jahan. The place was carried by storm; more than 1000 Portuguese were killed, upwards of 4000 prisoners taken, and of 300 vessels only 3 escaped. But Hugli district possesses historical interest for other European nations besides England and Portugal. The Dutch established themselves at Chinsura in the 17th century, and held the place till 1825, when it was ceded to Great Britain in exchange for the island of Sumatra. The Danes settled at Serampur in 1616, where they remained till 1845, when all Danish possessions in India were transferred to the East India Company. Chandernagore became a French settlement in 1688. The English captured this town twice, but since 1816 it has remained in the possession of the French.
See D. G. Crawford, A Brief History of the Hooghly District (Calcutta, 1903).
HUGO, GUSTAV VON (1764–1844), German jurist, was born
at Lörrach in Baden, on the 23rd of November 1764. From the
gymnasium at Carlsruhe he passed in 1782 to the university of
Göttingen, where he studied law for three years. Having
received the appointment of tutor to the prince of Anhalt-Dessau,
he took his doctor’s degree at the university of Halle in 1788.
Recalled in this year to Göttingen as extraordinary professor
of law, he became ordinary professor in 1792. In the preface to
his Beiträge zur zivilistischen Bücherkenntnis der letzten vierzig
Jahre (1828–1829) he gives a sketch of the condition of the civil
law teaching at Göttingen at that time. The Roman Canon and
German elements of the existing law were, without criticism or
differentiation, welded into an ostensible whole for practical needs,
with the result that it was difficult to say whether historical truth
or practical ends were most prejudiced. One man handed on the
inert mass to the next in the same condition as he had received
it, new errors crept in, and even the best of teachers could not
escape from the false method which had become traditional.
These were the evils which Hugo set himself to combat, and he
became the founder of that historical school of jurisprudence
which was continued and further developed by Savigny. His
magna opera are the Lehrbuch eines zivilistischen Kursus (7 vols.,
1792–1821), in which his method is thoroughly worked out,
and the Zivilistisches Magazin (6 vols., 1790–1837). He died at Göttingen on the 15th of September 1844.
For an account of his life see Eyssenhardt, Zur Erinnerung an Gustav Hugo (Berlin, 1845).
HUGO, VICTOR MARIE (1802–1885), French poet, dramatist and romance-writer, youngest son of General J. L. S. Hugo (1773–1828), a distinguished soldier in Napoleon’s service, was born at Besançon on the 26th of February 1802. The all but still-born child was only kept alive and reared by the indefatigable devotion of his mother Sophie Trébuchet (d. 1821), a royalist of La Vendée. Educated first in Spain and afterwards in France, the boy whose infancy had followed the fortunes of the imperial camp grew up a royalist and a Catholic. His first work in poetry and in fiction was devoted to the passionate proclamation of his faith in these principles.
The precocious eloquence and ardour of these early works made him famous before his time. The odes which he published at the age of twenty, admirable for their spontaneous fervour and fluency, might have been merely the work of a marvellous boy; the ballads which followed them two years later revealed him as a great poet, a natural master of lyric and creative song. In 1823, at the age of twenty-one, he married his cousin Adèle Foucher (d. 1868). In the same year his first romance, Han d’Islande, was given to the press; his second, Bug-Jargal, appeared three years later. In 1827 he published the great dramatic poem of Cromwell, a masterpiece at all points except that of fitness for the modern stage. Two years afterwards he published Les Orientales, a volume of poems so various in style, so noble in spirit, so perfect in workmanship, in music and in form, that they might alone suffice for the foundation of an immortal fame. In the course of nine years, from 1831 to 1840, he published Les Feuilles d’automne, Les Chants du crépuscule, Les Voix intérieures and Les Rayons et les ombres.
That their author was one of the greatest elegiac and lyric poets ever born into the world, any one of these volumes would amply suffice to prove. That he was the greatest tragic and dramatic poet born since the age of Shakespeare, the appearance of Hernani in 1830 made evident for ever to all but the meanest and most perverse of dunces and malignants. The earlier and even greater tragedy of Marion de Lorme (1828) had been proscribed on the ground that it was impossible for royalty to tolerate the appearance of a play in which a king was represented as the puppet of a minister. In all the noble and glorious life of the greatest poet of his time there is nothing on record
