HUMBERT, RANIERI CARLO EMANUELE GIOVANNI MARIA FERDINANDO EUGENIO, King of Italy (1844-1900), son of Victor Emmanuel II. and of Adelaide, archduchess of Austria, was born at Turin, capital of the kingdom of Sardinia, on the 14th of March 1844. His education was entrusted to the most eminent men of his time, amongst others to Massimo d’Azeglio and Pasquale Stanislao Mancini. Entering the army on the 14th of March 1858 with the rank of captain, he was present at the battle of Solferino in 1859, and in 1866 commanded a division at Custozza. Attacked by the Austrian cavalry near Villafranca, he formed his troops into squares and drove the assailants towards Sommacampagna, remaining himself throughout the action in the square most exposed to attack. With Bixio he covered the retreat of the Italian army, receiving the gold medal for valour. On the 21st of April 1868 he married his cousin, Margherita Teresa Giovanna, princess of Savoy, daughter of the duke of Genoa (born at Turin on the 20th of November 1851). On the 11th of November 1869 Margherita gave birth to Victor Emmanuel, prince of Naples, afterwards Victor Emmanuel III. of Italy. Ascending the throne on the death of his father (9th January 1878), Humbert adopted the style “Humbert I. of Italy” instead of Humbert IV., and consented that the remains of his father should be interred at Rome in the Pantheon, and not in the royal mausoleum of Superga (see Crispi). Accompanied by the premier, Cairoli, he began a tour of the provinces of his kingdom, but on entering Naples (November 17, 1878), amid the acclamations of an immense crowd, was attacked by a fanatic named Passanante. The king warded off the blow with his sabre, but Cairoli, in attempting to defend him, was severely wounded in the thigh. The would-be assassin was condemned to death, but the sentence was by the king commuted to one of penal servitude for life. The occurrence upset for several years the health of Queen Margherita. In 1881 King Humbert, again accompanied by Cairoli, resumed his interrupted tour, and visited Sicily and the southern Italian provinces. In 1882 he took a prominent part in the national mourning for Garibaldi, whose tomb at Caprera he repeatedly visited. When, in the autumn of 1882, Verona and Venetia were inundated, he hastened to the spot, directed salvage operations, and provided large sums of money for the destitute. Similarly, on the 28th of July 1883, he hurried to Ischia, where an earthquake had engulfed some 5000 persons. Countermanding the order of the minister of public works to cover the ruins with quicklime, the king prosecuted salvage operations for five days longer, and personally saved many victims at the risk of his own life. In 1884 he visited Busca and Naples, where cholera was raging, helping with money and advice the numerous sufferers, and raising the spirit of the population. Compared with the reigns of his grandfather, Charles Albert, and of his father, Victor Emmanuel, the reign of Humbert was tranquil. Scrupulously observant of constitutional principles, he followed, as far as practicable, parliamentary indications in his choice of premiers, only one of whom—Rudini—was drawn from the Conservative ranks. In foreign policy he approved of the conclusion of the Triple Alliance, and, in repeated visits to Vienna and Berlin, established and consolidated the pact. Towards Great Britain his attitude was invariably cordial, and he considered the Triple Alliance imperfect unless supplemented by an Anglo-Italian naval entente. Favourably disposed towards the policy of colonial expansion inaugurated in 1885 by the occupation of Massawa, he was suspected of aspiring to a vast empire in north-east Africa, a suspicion which tended somewhat to diminish his popularity after the disaster of Adowa on the 1st of March 1896. On the other hand, his popularity was enhanced by the firmness of his attitude towards the Vatican, as exemplified in his telegram declaring Rome “intangible” (September 20, 1886), and affirming the permanence of the Italian possession of the Eternal City. Above all King Humbert was a soldier, jealous of the honour and prestige of the army to such a degree that he promoted a duel between his nephew, the count of Turin, and Prince Henry of Orleans (August 15, 1897) on account of the aspersions cast by the latter upon Italian arms. The claims of King Humbert upon popular gratitude and affection were enhanced by his extraordinary munificence, which was not merely displayed on public occasions, but directed to the relief of innumerable private wants into which he had made personal inquiry. It has been calculated that at least £100,000 per annum was expended by the king in this way. The regard in which he was universally held was abundantly demonstrated on the occasion of the unsuccessful attempt upon his life made by the anarchist Acciarito near Rome on the 22nd of April 1897, and still more after his tragic assassination at Monza by the anarchist Bresci on the evening of the 29th of July 1900. Good-humoured, active, tender-hearted, somewhat fatalistic, but, above all, generous, he was spontaneously called “Humbert the Good.” He was buried in the Pantheon in Rome, by the side of Victor Emmanuel II., on the 9th of August 1900.
(H. W. S.)
HUMBOLDT, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH ALEXANDER, Baron von (1769-1859), German naturalist and traveller, was born at Berlin, on the 14th of September 1769. His father, who was a major in the Prussian army, belonged to a Pomeranian family of consideration, and was rewarded for his services during the Seven Years’ War with the post of royal chamberlain. He married in 1766 Maria Elizabeth von Colomb, widow of Baron von Hollwede, and had by her two sons, of whom the younger is the subject of this article. The childhood of Alexander von Humboldt was not a promising one as regards either health or intellect. His characteristic tastes, however, soon displayed themselves; and from his fancy for collecting and labelling plants, shells and insects he received the playful title of “the little apothecary.” The care of his education, on the unexpected death of his father in 1779, devolved upon his mother, who discharged the trust with constancy and judgment. Destined for a political career, he studied finance during six months at the university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder; and a year later, April 25, 1789, he matriculated at Göttingen, then eminent for the lectures of C. G. Heyne and J. F. Blumenbach. His vast and varied powers were by this time fully developed; and during the vacation of 1789 he gave a fair earnest of his future performances in a scientific excursion up the Rhine, and in the treatise thence issuing, Mineralogische Beobachtungen über einige Basalte am Rhein (Brunswick, 1790). His native passion for distant travel was confirmed by the friendship formed by him at Göttingen with George Forster, Heyne’s son-in-law, the distinguished companion of Captain Cook’s second voyage. Henceforth his studies, which his rare combination of parts enabled him to render at once multifarious, rapid and profound, were directed with extraordinary insight and perseverance to the purpose of preparing himself for his distinctive calling as a scientific explorer. With this view he studied commerce and foreign languages at Hamburg, geology at Freiberg under A. G. Werner, anatomy at Jena under J. C. Loder, astronomy and the use of scientific instruments under F. X. von Zach and J. G. Köhler. His researches into the vegetation of the mines of Freiberg led to the publication in 1793 of his Florae Fribergensis Specimen; and the results of a prolonged course of experiments on the phenomena of muscular irritability, then recently discovered by L. Galvani, were contained in his Versuche über die gereizte Muskel- und Nervenfaser (Berlin, 1797), enriched in the French translation with notes by Blumenbach.
In 1794 he was admitted to the intimacy of the famous Weimar coterie, and contributed (June 1795) to Schiller’s new periodical, Die Horen, a philosophical allegory entitled Die Lebenskraft, oder der rhodische Genius. In the summer of 1790 he paid a flying visit to England in company with Forster. In 1792 and 1797 he was in Vienna; in 1795 he made a geological and botanical tour through Switzerland and Italy. He had obtained in the meantime official employment, having been appointed assessor of mines at Berlin, February 29, 1792. Although the service of the state was consistently regarded by him but as an apprenticeship to the service of science, he fulfilled its duties with such conspicuous ability that he not only rapidly rose to the highest post in his department, but was besides entrusted with several important diplomatic missions. The death of his mother, on the 19th of November 1796, set him free to follow the bent of his genius, and, finally severing his official connexions, he waited for an opportunity of executing his long-cherished schemes of travel. On the postponement of Captain Baudin’s proposed voyage of circumnavigation, which he had been officially invited to accompany, he left Paris for Marseilles with Aimé Bonpland, the designated botanist of the frustrated expedition, hoping to join Bonaparte in Egypt. Means of transport, however, were not forthcoming, and the two travellers eventually found their way to Madrid, where the unexpected patronage of the minister d’Urquijo determined them to make Spanish America the scene of their explorations.
Armed with powerful recommendations, they sailed in the “Pizarro” from Corunna, on the 5th of June 1799, stopped six days at Teneriffe for the ascent of the Peak, and landed, on the 16th of July, at Cumana. There Humboldt observed, on the night of the 12-13th of November, that remarkable meteor-shower which forms the starting-point of our acquaintance with the periodicity of the phenomenon; thence he proceeded with Bonpland to Caracas; and in February 1800 he left the coast for the purpose of exploring the course of the Orinoco. This trip, which lasted four months, and covered 1725 m. of wild and uninhabited country, had the important result of establishing the existence of a communication between the water-systems of the Orinoco and Amazon, and of determining the exact position of the bifurcation. On the 24th of November the two friends set sail for Cuba, and after a stay of some months regained the mainland at Cartagena. Ascending the swollen stream of the Magdalena, and crossing the frozen ridges of the Cordilleras, they reached Quito after a tedious and difficult journey on the 6th of January 1802. Their stay there was signalized by the ascent of Pichincha and Chimborazo, and terminated in an expedition to the sources of the Amazon en route for Lima. At Callao Humboldt observed the transit of Mercury on the 9th of November, and studied the fertilizing properties of guano, the introduction of which into Europe was mainly due to his writings. A tempestuous sea-voyage brought them to the shores of Mexico, and after a year’s residence in that province, followed by a short visit to the United States, they set sail for Europe from the mouth of the Delaware, and landed at Bordeaux on the 3rd of August 1804.
Humboldt may justly be regarded as having in this memorable expedition laid the foundation in their larger bearings of the sciences of physical geography and meteorology. By his delineation (in 1817) of “isothermal lines,” he at once suggested the idea and devised the means of comparing the climatic conditions of various countries. He first investigated the rate of decrease in mean temperature with increase of elevation above the sea-level, and afforded, by his inquiries into the origin of tropical storms, the earliest clue to the detection of the more complicated law governing atmospheric disturbances in higher latitudes; while his essay on the geography of plants was based on the then novel idea of studying the distribution of organic life as affected by varying physical conditions. His discovery of the decrease in intensity of the earth’s magnetic force from the poles to the equator was communicated to the Paris Institute in a memoir read by him on the 7th of December 1804, and its importance was attested by the speedy emergence of rival claims. His services to geology were mainly based on his attentive study of the volcanoes of the New World. He showed that they fell naturally into linear groups, presumably corresponding with vast subterranean fissures; and by his demonstration of the igneous origin of rocks previously held to be of aqueous formation, he contributed largely to the elimination of erroneous views.
The reduction into form and publication of the encyclopaedic mass of materials—scientific, political and archaeological—collected by him during his absence from Europe was now Humboldt’s most urgent desire. After a short trip to Italy with Gay-Lussac for the purpose of investigating the law of magnetic declination, and a sojourn of two years and a half in his native city, he finally, in the spring of 1808, settled in Paris with the purpose of securing the scientific co-operation required for bringing his great work through the press. This colossal task, which he at first hoped would have occupied but two years, eventually cost him twenty-one, and even then remained incomplete. With the exception of Napoleon Bonaparte, he was the most famous man in Europe. A chorus of applause greeted him from every side. Academies, both native and foreign, were eager to enrol him among their members. Frederick William III. of Prussia conferred upon him the honour, without exacting the duties, attached to the post of royal chamberlain, together with a pension of 2500 thalers, afterwards doubled. He refused the appointment of Prussian minister of public instruction in 1810. In 1814 he accompanied the allied sovereigns to London. Three years later he was summoned by the king of Prussia to attend him at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. Again in the autumn of 1822 he accompanied the same monarch to the congress of Verona, proceeded thence with the royal party to Rome and Naples, and returned to Paris in the spring of 1823.
The French capital he had long regarded as his true home. There he found, not only scientific sympathy, but the social stimulus which his vigorous and healthy mind eagerly craved. He was equally in his element as the lion of the salons and as the savant of the institute and the observatory. Thus, when at last he received from his sovereign a summons to join his court at Berlin, he obeyed indeed, but with deep and lasting regret. The provincialism of his native city was odious to him. He never ceased to rail against the bigotry without religion, aestheticism without culture, and philosophy without common sense, which he found dominant on the banks of the Spree. The unremitting benefits and sincere attachment of two well-meaning princes secured his gratitude, but could not appease his discontent. At first he sought relief from the “nebulous atmosphere” of his new abode by frequent visits to Paris; but as years advanced his excursions were reduced to accompanying the monotonous “oscillations” of the court between Potsdam and Berlin. On the 12th of May 1827 he settled permanently in the Prussian capital, where his first efforts were directed towards the furtherance of the science of terrestrial magnetism. For many years it had been one of his favourite schemes to secure, by means of simultaneous observations at distant points, a thorough investigation of the nature and law of “magnetic storms”—a term invented by him to designate abnormal disturbances of the earth’s magnetism. The meeting at Berlin, on the 18th of September 1828, of a newly-formed scientific association, of which he was elected president, gave him the opportunity of setting on foot an extensive system of research in combination with his diligent personal observations. His appeal to the Russian government in 1829 led to the establishment of a line of magnetic and meteorological stations across northern Asia; while his letter to the duke of Sussex, then (April 1836) president of the Royal Society, secured for the undertaking the wide basis of the British dominions. Thus that scientific conspiracy of nations which is one of the noblest fruits of modern civilization was by his exertions first successfully organized.
In 1811, and again in 1818, projects of Asiatic exploration were proposed to Humboldt, first by the Russian, and afterwards by the Prussian government; but on each occasion untoward circumstances interposed, and it was not until he had entered upon his sixtieth year that he resumed his early rôle of a traveller in the interests of science. Between May and November 1829 he, together with his chosen associates Gustav Rose and C. G. Ehrenberg, traversed the wide expanse of the Russian empire from the Neva to the Yenesei, accomplishing in twenty-five weeks a distance of 9614 m. The journey, however, though carried out with all the advantages afforded by the immediate patronage of the Russian government, was too rapid to be profitable. Its most important fruits were the correction of the prevalent exaggerated estimate of the height of the Central-Asian plateau, and the discovery of diamonds in the gold-washings of the Ural—a result which Humboldt’s Brazilian experiences enabled him to predict, and by predicting to secure.