Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/396

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HOR — HOR
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382 H U N H U N Bulgaria) or on the southern borders of Pannonia. The main body, however, appear to have resumed the position on the steppes of the river Ural which they had left less than a century before ; soon afterwards they reappear in history as the Bulgari (see Zeuss,Z>i e Deutschen,&c., p. 710), divided into two sections, the Kuturguri and the less for midable Uturguri, who for morethan seventy years (485-557) were a constant source of annoyance and danger to the Eastern empire, until they themselves fell under the rising power of the Avars. About the year 630 they succeeded in regaining their independence, under the leadership of a chief named Krobat, or more properly Kubrat, a person of great consequence, who made a treaty with the emperor Heraclius. After his death his dominions, according to Theophanes (who wrote about 800 A.D.), were divided among his five sons, of whom the eldest, Batbaias, remained with his own people near the Mteotis, while the third, Asperuch, crossed the Danube. At a later period the first of these divisions came into close relations with the Khazars on the Volga, and their territory is spoken of as Great Bulgaria ; for a brief account of the Danubian or " White " Bulgarians the article BULGARIA and the works there referred to may be consulted. We have no adequate philological data for conclusively determining the ethnological position of the ancient Huns ; and, in the attempt to solve the problem by other means, the student is at all points much hampered by the vague ness and inaccuracy with which designations, apparently ethnological, are applied by ancient writers. Since the publication of the Histoire Gene-rale des Huns, ties Tnrcs, des Mongols, et des autres Tartares Occidentaux of De Guignes (175G-58), it has been usual to identify the first mentioned with the Heungnoo or Hiungnu, a people who, about the end of the 3d century B.C., according to the Chinese annals, constituted a powerful empire extending from the Great Wall of China to the Caspian, but who, gra dually falling into a state of anarcliy, ultimately succumbed to the attacks of their enemies towards the close of the 1st Christian century. Their subsequent history is very obscure; but it appears that one section of them fled west ward and settled in the neighbourhood of the Ural river, and the extremely tempting hypothesis of De Guignes is that these were the direct ancestors of the Huns, who three centuries afterwards began, under Balamir, to exercise so formidable an influence on the affairs of Europe. If so, then the Huns in all probability belonged to the Turkish branch of the great Turanian race. According to the totally distinct line of investigation followed by Roesler, however, the Bulgarians, and therefore the Huns whose descendants they were, are to be regarded as of Finnic origin (see Romdnische Studien, p. 231 sqq.}. It has only to be added that by mediaeval writers, both Byzantine and Western, the word Hun is used much as the word Scythian was used by tho ancients, with the utmost generality. No very close connexion can be made out be tween the Huns and the Magyars (Ovyypoi, Ugri, Wengri, Ungri, Ungari, Hungari), who first became prominent about the 9th century and who were undoubtedly Finns. Literature. The contemporary authorities upon the subject of the Huns during the period of their greatest ascendency in Europe are the fragments of the eight books of the rhetorician Prisons, Concerning .Byzantium and the Occurrences connected with Attila, with the writings of Ammianus Marcellinus the Roman soldier, and of Jordanis the Gothic bishop. Tlio account of the Huns given by the last-named must always be read in the light of the fact that as a Goth he could hardly avoid giving a somewhat exag gerated picture of the great military power in the presence of which his own people had been able to show so little resistance. The truth of the somewhat elaborate sketch of the Huns by Ammianus has sometimes been doubted, but careful examination tends rather to establish its claim to ba regarded as trustworthy. After alluding to their portentous ugliness (of which, however, the only features he specifies are the round shoulders and the scarred beardless cheeks), lie proceeds to mention some of the habits which in liis opinion stamp them as surpassing all other barbarians in rudeness of life. Their food, in addition to such roots as they are able to find, con sists of the half-raw flesh of any sort of animal, prepared for use by being carried for some time between their persons and the backs of the hardy little horses which are their almost inseparable com panions. Houses they have none; and their clothing, which is made partly of linen and partly of the skins of field mice sewed to gether, continues to be worn until it falls to pieces. Their weapons are javelins or spears tipped with bone, and (for close combat) the sword and lasso. In warfare they seldom fight in rank, the method of attack they prefer being to throw the enemy into con fusion by repeated onset made in loose array. They are wholly without religion or sense of moral obligation. For later infor mation we are dependent on the writers of the Byzantine his tory (see Stritter, Memoriae popular urn olim ad Danubium, Pontum Euxinum, Paludcm Mceotidcm, Caucasum, d-c., incolcntium, ex scriptoribus Byzantims crutce ac digcstce, 1771-79, and the edition of the fragments of Menander Protector, published in the Bonn collection). For Chinese notices bearing or supposed to bear on the subject of the Huns, De Guignes, Yisdelou, and De Mailla remain our chief authorities; to these should be added M. Stanislas Julien s series of papers on the Thukiu in the 6th series of the Journal Asiatique, and Mr Wylie s translations from the Hun annals in the Journal of tlie Anthropological Institute. Other materials on the general subject will be found in the admirable notes to Lc Beau s History of the Byzantine Empire, and in the editions of the Arme nian historians by St Martin, Langlois, and Brosset. See also the History of Georgia by the last of these authors ; the Chronicle of Nestor, which is made available to Western students in the edition of M. Paris ; the works of Zeuss, Pallmann, and Roesler already cited; Thierry, Histoire d Attila, ct dc scs Succcsseurs, 1864; Sayous, Lcs Origincs ct I Epoque Paicnne de V Histoire des Hongrois, 1874; Jirecek, Gcsch. dcr Bulgarcn, 1877; Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, vol. ii., 18SO; Kruse s edition of Al Bekhri, with notes; the Account of the Khazars by M. Harkavy; that of the Ephthalitce or White Huns, by M. Vivien St Martin ; and a series of papers by Mr Howorth " On the Westerly Drifting of Nomades," published in the Journal of tlie Anthropological Institute. HUNT, JAMES HENRY LEIGH (1784-1859), one of the most delightful of English essayists and miscellaneous writers, and especially remarkable for his connexion with the most eminent literati of his time, was born at Southgate, October 19, 1784. His father, the son of a West Indian clergyman, had settled as a lawyer in Philadelphia, and his mother was the daughter of a merchant of that city. Having embraced the loyalist side, Leigh Hunt s father was com pelled to fly to England, where he took orders, and acquired some reputation as a popular preacher, but want of steadi ness, want of orthodoxy, and want of interest conspired to prevent his obtaining any preferment. Leigh Hunt was educated at Christ s Hospital, of which school as it existed in his time he has left a lively account in his autobiography. An impediment in his speech, afterwards removed, pre vented his being sent to the university. "For some time after I left school," he says, "I did nothing but visit my school-fellows, haunt the book stalls, and write verses." These latter were published in 1802 under the title of Juvenilia, and, although the mere literary exercises of a clever boy, contributed to introduce him into literary and theatrical society. He began to write for the newspapers, published a volume of theatrical criticisms in 1807, and in 1808 quitted the War Office, where he had for some time filled a situation as clerk, to assume the editorship of the Examiner newspaper, a speculation of his brother John. The new journal soon acquired a high reputation for inde pendence, both in political and literary criticism. It was perhaps the only newspaper of the time which owed no allegiance to any political party, but assailed whatever seemed amiss, " from a principle of taste," as Keats hap pily expressed it. The taste of the attack itself, indeed, was not always unexceptionable ; and one upon the prince regent, unseemly and imprudent without doubt, but the chief sting of which lay in its substantial truth, occasioned (1813) a prosecution and a sentence of two years imprison ment in the Surrey jail. The effect was naturally to make

Hunt a hero for the time being, and to give a political