perhaps the best boy's book that was ever written. The chief characters are drawn from life. The book throws great light on the character of that greatest of teachers, Dr. Arnold. In 1858 came out The Scouring of the White Horse; in 1861 Tom Brown at Oxford; and in 1869 Alfred the Great. He was all the time practicing law, and became queen's counsel in 1869 and county court judge in 1882. He early became associated with Maurice and Kingsley in the work of social and health reform among the London poor. He also represented Frome in Parliament from 1868 to 1874. He gained the good will of the working classes by his endeavor to promote a better understanding between employers and their men. In 1880 Hughes assisted in founding a coöperative colony in the United States, describing it in his Rugby, Tennessee. To him Chicago owes the founding of its public library in 1871. He died at Brighton, Sussex, March 22, 1896.
Hu'go, Victor Marie, was born at Besançon, France, in 1802, and was educated at Paris and Madrid. He produced a tragedy at fourteen; and nearly won the Academic prize at fifteen. At twenty he published his first Odes and Ballads, following it by Hans d'Islande the next year and then by his famous Cromwell, a tragedy almost impossible to act and difficult to read. In 1828 he published his Orientales, which is masterful in style and beautiful in wording. In 1830 appeared his great lyric Hernani, which gave rise to long arguments between the Romanticists, Hugo's party, and the Classicists; the year 1831 saw the birth of his famous novel, Notre Dame de Paris and the production of his plays, Marion Delorme and Le Roi s' Amuse ("The King is Amused",) which was allowed to be produced for only one night. Then, in quick succession, came Lucréce Borgia, Marie Tudor and Claude Gueux. Ruy Blas, the next greatest drama after Hernani, was produced in 1838. Then followed a period of comparative inactivity until 1856, when his beautiful poems, The Meditations, appeared. These were followed in 1862 by the publication, in ten languages, of Les Misérables, by many considered the best of Hugo's fiction, and in 1865 by The Man Who Laughs. During his after-life he wrote poems, plays, novels and pamphlets, in many far outstripping all previous flights of imagination, portraying characters, extreme, sublime and ridiculous. He is acknowledged as the most wonderful manipulator of the language that ever graced the history of French literature. Hugo took a leading part in the French politics of his time, exiling himself while Napoleon III was emperor and, after his return in 1870, sitting in the constituent assembly, and in 1876 was made a senator. He was a greater novelist than a dramatist and a greater poet than a novelist. The range and capacity of his genius in rhythm and rime have not their equal in French literature. It is said of him: "He found French poetry a piece of brick and stucco, and left it a palace builded of jewels—a palace of the Arabian Nights." Hugo died at Paris, May 22, 1885.
Huguenots (hū'gē-nots), the name formerly applied to the adherents of the Reformation in France. In the time of Calvin (about 1525) many of the noble and middle classes joined the movement; but Francis I, being opposed to it, caused many to be burned as heretics. When Henry II of France joined the Protestants (1547-59), it gave the Reformation a great impetus; but it was stopped by the ascendency at court of the family of Guise. Under Francis II a chamber for the punishment of Protestants was established in each parliament, and executions, confiscations and banishments were common. The Protestants took up arms, appointing Louis I, prince of Bourbon-Condé, their leader, and on Feb. 1, 1560, at Nantes, petitioned the king for freedom of religion and the removal of the Guises. In the event of refusal, they were to seize the king and proclaim Condé governor-general. The king, being warned, fled to Amboise, where some bands of Protestants bearing arms afterward appeared, but were taken prisoners and 1,200 of them executed. When Charles IX, not yet of age, ascended the throne, his mother, Catherine de Medici, removed the Guises and was compelled to seek the support of the Protestants against them, and in July, 1561, there appeared an edict exempting the Huguenots from the penalty of death, and in 1562 another, giving noblemen the right of free exercise of religious worship on their own estates. The Guises then imprisoned the king and Catherine. The duke of Guise defeated the Protestants at Dreux and marched upon Condé at Orleans, but was assassinated in camp on Feb. 18, 1563. Then Catherine concluded the peace of Amboise, allowing free religion, except in certain districts; but, becoming allied with the Spaniards, she attempted the lives of Condé and Coligni and executed over 3,000 Huguenots. On March 13, 1569, Condé was killed at the battle of Jarnac.
Catherine, failing to suppress the Protestants by fair means, brought about the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572, wherein in two months over 30,000 were slain in Paris and the provinces. After the peace of Beaulieu Guise organized a Catholic association called the Holy League, at the head of which the king placed himself, and the sixth religious war began. Peace was again concluded in 1577, but on account of a violation of the terms of the treaty by the court, war was again commenced, only to be ended in 1580.
