HILL, Viscount (1772–1842). Rowland Hill, nephew of the Rev. Rowland Hill, was born at Prees, Shropshire, 11th August 1772. After receiving his early education at Ichtfield and Chester, he was gazetted to the 38th regiment, obtaining permission at the same time to improve himself in the knowledge of his profession in a military academy at Strasburg, where he continued after removing into the 53d regiment with the rank of lieutenant. In the beginning of 1793 he raised an independent company, and was promoted to the rank of captain. The same year he distinguished himself at the siege of Toulon ; and after serving for some time on the Continent he in 1797 set out as colonel of the 90th regiment with Sir Ralph Abercromby’s expedition to Egypt, where he acquired great distinction, and was wounded at the battle of Alexandria. Having in 1803 been gazetted brigadier-general, he in 1808 accompanied Sir Arthur Wellesley to Spain, and from Vimiera to Vittoria, in advance or retreat, he proved him- self the most indefatigable coadjutor of the great captain. In 1809 he was gazetted lieutenant-general, and in the following year was appointed to the independent command of the second army corps of Wellington in Portugal ; in 1811 he annihilated the French army under Girard at Arroyomolinos (Caceres), in recognition of which he received the order of the Bath; and for his capture of the forts of Almarez, which cut off the communication between the French armies on the north and south sides of the Tagus, he was in 1814 rewarded with the title of Baron Hill of Al- marez. In 1813 he held temporarily the command of the English and Hanoverian troops in Belgium, and two years later crowned the glories of his noble career by his conduct at Waterloo, where he was at the head of the brigade which resisted and repulsed the last effort made in behalf of the French by the imperial guard. When Wellington became premier in 1828 Hill received the appointment of general commanding-in-chief, and on resigning this office in 1842 he was created a viscount. Hedied on the 10th December of the same year. Lord Ifill was, next to Wellington, the most popular and able soldier of his time in the British service, and was so much beloved by the troops, especially those under his immediate command, that he gained from them the honourable title of “ the soldier’s friend.” ‘* With Hill,” they used to say, “both victory and life may be ours.” On the other hand, the strategic skill and military capacity he displayed in the Peninsula secured for him the not less honourable title of “the right arm of the duke of Wellington.” From the first day he entered the army he displayed the germs of those qualities that afterwards secured for him fame, rank, and power—boldness that amounted to daring and was yet always under the control of calm judgment, skill equal to independent commands of the most difficult kind, and a regard for the moral and physical welfare of the army such as had never before been shown by any commander-in-chief.
The Life of Lord Hill, G.C.B., by Rev. Edwin Sidney, A.M., appeared in 1845.
HILLAH, a town of Asiatic Turkey in the pashalik of Baghdad, from which town it lies 60 miles to the south. It is picturesquely situated, in the midst of a very fertile district, on both banks of the Euphrates, which are connected there by a floating bridge 450 feet in length. The estimated population, which includes a large number of Jews, varies from 6000 to much above 10,000. The bazaars are large and well supplied; and tanning, dyeing, and silk manufacture are carried on to a considerable extent. The horse mart has recently declined in repute. Hulah occupies the site of the ancient Babylon, and is to a large extent built of bricks obtained from the ruins.
HILLARD, George Stillman (1808–1879), an American author, was born at Machias, State of Maine, September 22, 1808. After graduating at Harvard College in 1828, he became joint rector of the Round Hill Seminary at Northampton. In 1833 he was called to the Boston bar, where he soon obtained a good practice. He was chosena member of the common council of Boston in 1845, and he was for six months its president. In 1849 he was elected a member of the State legisiature. The engrossing char- acter of his professional and other engagements did not, however, prevent him from devoting a large portion of his time to literature. Besides editing successively the Christian Register (a Unitarian paper), Zhe Jurist, and the Boston Courier, he published an edition of Spenser’s works (in 5 vols., 1839), and a selection from the works of Walter Savage Landor (1856), and wrote Six Months in Italy (2 vols., 1833), Life and Campaigns of George B. M‘Clellan (1865), a series of school-books which have met with wide acceptance, and various articles in periodicals and encyclo- peedias. In addition to this he made frequent successful appearances as a public lecturer. From 1867 to 1878 he was United States district attorney for Massachusetts. He died 27th January 1879.
HILLEL, a famous Jewish rabbi, sometimes called for distinction’s sake j2%5, “the elder” or “the old,” flourished about the time of Herod the Great. According to the Talmudists he was born of a poor Davidic family, at Babylon, apparently about the year 75 b.c. In his zeal for the study of the law he went, when already of mature age, to Jerusalem, where Shemaiah and Abtalion were at that time the leading teachers. While supporting himself and his family there by working as a day labourer, he was not always able to earn the fee which the porter of the Beth-Midrash or house of instruction is said to have required ; but such was his ardour for learning that on one occasion on a cold December morning, having failed to obtain admission, he climbed up to the window of the class-room, where some time afterwards he was found quite buried and half frozen to death under a heavy fall of snow. He was now made free of the schools, and so great were the attain- ments with which his diligence was ultimately rewarded that, according to the tradition, he understood all languages, including those of the hills and the valleys, the trees and the flowers, the beasts and the demons. In his later years he succeeded the “‘sons of Bethyras” in the presidency of the sanhedrin, and in this high position he became the author of several important rules of interpretation (the so- called seven “ middoth”; see Hermeneutics), and also of some authoritative legal decisions. A contemporary, and perhaps a pupil of his, was Shammai, who became the head of a rival and at times bitterly hostile school. Dying about the year 10 a.d., Hillel was succeeded in his official position by his son Simeon, and afterwards by his grandson Gamaliel I.
There is evidently a good deal of what is incredible in the above Talmudic account; for example, it is now recognized on all hands that the Talmudic statement as to Hillel’s presidency over the sanhedrin is absolutely irreconcilable with what we learn from the New Testament writers and from Josephus, and must be regarded as wholly unhistorical. But after every reasonable deduction has been duly made, we still have ample traces of a strong personality, characterized by unusual sweetness and light, bent on supporting
