To the kingdom of Ponemah,
The land of the Hereafter.
Highland Mary.—A song by Robert Burns, which Burns himself thought was in his happiest manner, and which refers, he says, to one of the most interesting passages of his youthful days. By this he means his attachment to Mary, a servant in the family of Mr. Hamilton, “who will be remembered,” says Alexander Smith, “with Dante’s Beatrice and Petrarch’s Laura.” It was arranged that the lovers should become man and wife, and that Mary should go to her friends to prepare for the wedding. But before her departure came the farewell scene so touchingly described in the poem:
Our parting was fu’ tender;
And, pledging aft to meet again,
We tore oursels asunder:
But oh! fell death’s untimely frost
That nipt my flower sae early!
Now green’s the sod, and cauld’s the clay,
That wraps my Highland Mary!
Hilda.—A New England girl of the most sensitive delicacy and purity of mind, in Hawthorne’s romance, The Marble Faun. She is an artist, living in Rome, and typifies, perhaps, the conscience.
Hildebrand (hil´de-brand).—The Nestor of German romance, a magician and champion.
Hildesheim (hil´des-hīm).—In an old German legend, the monk of Hildesheim, doubting how a thousand years with God could be “only one day,” listened to the melody of a bird, as he supposed, for only three minutes, but found that he had been listening to it for a hundred years.
Hobbididance.—The name of one of the fiends mentioned by Shakespeare in Lear, and taken from the history of the Jesuits’ impostures.
Hohenlinden (hō´en-lin´den).—A poem by Thomas Campbell, published in 1802, celebrating the battle of Hohenlinden, gained by Moreau and the French over the Austrians. The poet visited the battle field on December 3, 1800.
Holofernes (hol-ō-fer´nēz).—(1) A pedant living in Paris, under whose care Gargantua is placed for instruction. (2) A pedantic schoolmaster in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost.
Holt, Felix.—The hero of George Eliot’s novel by the same name.