king of Italy, son of Victor Emmanuel, whom he succeeded
in 1878; took while crown prince an active part in the movement for
Italian unity, and distinguished himself by his bravery; _b_. 1844.

HUMBOLDT, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH ALEX., BARON VON, great traveller and
naturalist, born in Berlin; devoted all his life to the study of nature
in all its departments, travelling all over the Continent, and in 1800,
with AIME BONPLAND (q. v.) for companion, visiting S. America,
traversing the Orinoco, and surveying and mapping out in the course of
five years Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico, the results of
which he published in his "Travels"; his chief work is the "Kosmos," or
an account of the visible universe, in 4 vols., originally delivered as
lectures in Paris in the winter of 1827-28; he was a friend of Goethe,
who held him in the highest esteem (1769-1859).

HUMBOLDT, KARL WILHELM VON, an eminent statesman and philologist,
born at Potsdam, elder brother of the preceding; represented Prussia at
Rome and Vienna, but devoted himself chiefly to literary and scientific
pursuits; wrote on politics and aesthetics as well as philology, and
corresponded with nearly all the literary grandees of Germany
(1767-1835).

HUME, DAVID, philosopher and historian, born in Edinburgh, the
younger son of a Berwickshire laird; after trial of law and mercantile
life gave himself up to study and speculation; spent much of his life in
France, and fraternised with the sceptical philosophers and
encyclopedists there; his chief works, "Treatise on Human Nature" (1739),
"Essays" (1741-42), "Principles of Morals" (1751), and "History of
England" (1754-61); his philosophy was sceptical to the last degree, but
from the excess of it provoked a reaction in Germany, headed by Kant,
which has yielded positive results; he found in life no connecting
principle, no purpose, and had come to regard it as a restless aimless,
heaving up and down, swaying to and fro on a waste ocean of blind
sensations, without rational plot or counterplot, God or devil, and had
arrived at an absolutely _non-possumus_ stage, which, however, as hinted,
was followed by a speedy and steady rebound, in speculation at all
events; Hume's history has been characterised by Stopford Brooke as clear
in narrative and pure in style, but cold and out of sympathy with his
subject, as well as inaccurate; personally, he was a guileless and kindly
man (1711-1776).

HUME, JOSEPH,