Lord Glenelg; and Mr. Lamb, afterwards Lord Melbourne. This was in 1829. With his friends he went into quasi-opposition to the duke of Wellington, and had he lived would probably have entered with the three named the first reform ministry of Lord Grey. It was not to be. On the 15th of September, 1830, the Liverpool and Manchester railway was opened, and Mr. Huskisson, who had been suffering for some time from ill-health, assisted at the ceremony. When the train reached Parkside he and others alighted, and dispersed about the line. The duke of Wellington was in one of the carriages, and Mr. Huskisson went to greet him, the more eagerly on account of their previous misunderstanding. He had shaken hands with the duke, when an engine was seen approaching on the other line, and the cry was raised, "Get in." Mr. Huskisson seems to have been noted from early life for a certain awkwardness in emergencies. On this occasion, the carriage door at which he grasped swung him round. He fell on the other line, and the advancing engine crushed him as it passed. He was conveyed immediately to Eccles, near Manchester, and died, after great agony, on the same evening. Previous illness, and the debility produced by it, no doubt contributed to this result. His death caused a gloom, which not even the success of the great experiment in locomotion could dissipate; and the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway has ever since been associated with the mournful fate of William Huskisson. In 1831 an edition of his speeches, in three volumes, was published, with a copious biographical memoir, evidently from authentic sources; and of both we have availed ourselves in this sketch.—F. E.
HUSS, John, or more properly Hus, was born in 1369, or according to others in 1373, at Husinec in Bohemia, and studied philosophy and theology at the university of Prague. In 1394 he became bachelor of theology, and in 1396 master of arts. In 1398 he began to teach in the university, and in the following year took part in a public academic disputation, in which he defended against some of his colleagues several of the opinions of Wickliffe. As early as 1391 he had been led to study the writings of the English reformer by the advice and example of his teacher, Stanislaus von Znaim, who belonged to the more liberal party in the university; and these writings, as well as those of Matthias von Janow, had great influence upon his spirit and views. But at first nothing was further from his thoughts than to offer an opposition to the church's authority. He thought only of practical reforms. Sincerely pious and strictly moral in his own character and life, he lamented and condemned the moral disorders of the church, especially of the higher orders of the clergy; and his aim was to bring back the church to apostolic simplicity and purity of manners. Along with his function as a teacher in the university of Prague, he held the office of preacher in the Bethlehem chapel of that city. In most of the churches of Prague there was then no preaching at all; and Huss' preaching was so earnest, fervent, practical, and powerful, that the burghers flocked in crowds to hear him. His chief appeals were to the understanding of his hearers; and he arrested attention by the clearness and acuteness of his intellect, by the unfailing tact with which he went to the core of every question, by the ease with which he opened up every subject to the apprehension of all his hearers, and by his great familiarity with the holy scriptures. A book of his "Postils" has recently been translated out of Bohemian into German by Dr. Nowotm, which has supplied the means of forming a better idea than could be previously arrived at of Huss' qualities as a preacher. These "Postils" are full of allusions to the state of the church. They were "sermons for the times;" and they set forth the chief points in which Huss contended for the necessity of a reformation. They show also that he was no mere echo of Wickliffe, for they contain nothing against the celibacy of the clergy, or the monastic system, or the worship of the saints, which were all favourite topics of the Oxford reformer. Still Wickliffe was held by him in high honour; and in 1403 when the university assembled to pronounce judgment upon forty-five theses, which were alleged to have been collected out of Wickliffe's writings, Huss took part with others in the reformer's defence, and maintained that many of those theses were falsely imputed to him, and were not to be found in his writings when fairly interpreted and understood. The theses, however, were solemnly condemned by the university; and the liberal party fell under grave suspicions of being infected with the taint of English heresy. At last Huss came to an open breach with the archbishop of Prague. By his influence with Queen Sophia, as her confessor, he had succeeded in obtaining an edict from the king in reference to the administration of the university, which led to the secession of the whole of the German students and professors, and by restoring the predominance of the native Bohemian element, gave a decisive ascendancy to the party of reform. This took place in 1409, when Huss was rector of the university, and the event drew after it important consequences. The German party in the university had been the chief obstacle to reform, and from the moment of their secession the spirit and principles of Huss rose into favour both in the university and the nation. From that time the archbishop and his clergy became his declared enemies, and never ceased to pursue him till they brought him to the stake. On the 20th December, 1409, they obtained a bull from Pope Alexander V., in which the archbishop was enjoined to take energetic action against the heresies of Wickliffe; to forbid the use of his writings, under pain of excommunication; and to require all who had copies of any of them to deliver them up; all priests who should disobey the injunction to be put in prison, deprived of their benefices, and in case of need delivered over to the secular arm; all preaching in private chapels to be prohibited, and sermons to be strictly confined to cathedrals, parish churches, and cloister-chapels. The publication of the bull called forth a loud protest from the Bohemian nation. The king, the university, the people, all rose up against it; and when the clergy proceeded to burn the books which they had seized, and to pronounce sentence of excommunication upon Huss and his friends, nothing but the energetic interposition of the king—who commanded that the cost of the books should be repaid out of the revenues of the archbishop, and published a declaration that the sentence of excommunication should remain without effect—prevented the most violent explosions of popular fury, and the effusion of priestly blood. The reformer appealed against the sentence to Pope John XXIII., but the pope dismissed his appeal, and summoned Huss to Bologna to answer for his heresies. His friends, alarmed for his safety, prevailed on the king to forbid the journey, and to demand that his cause should be heard by papal commissioners in Bohemia. Huss sent his declaration to Rome, and was a second time excommunicated for contumacy. An interdict was also threatened against any place that should shelter him; but the king remained firm; the archbishop quailed before the opposition of a whole nation. In July, 1411, mutual concessions were made. In September Huss read before the university a declaration of his dogmatic faith, which was sustained as orthodox, and the death of the archbishop before the end of the same month brought on a temporary pause in the conflict. But the flame burst forth again soon afterwards. The papal legate who brought the pallium from Rome for Albicus, the new archbishop, brought also a bull, in which the pope proclaimed a crusade, nay, a war of extermination against King Ladislaus of Naples, who had espoused the cause of his rival, Pope Gregory XII. The bull was published in Prague by the legate, in which forgiveness of sins was assured to all who should assist, either personally or by gifts of money, in the crusade; and a bitter curse was pronounced upon Ladislaus, upon all his friends and abettors, and upon all his children and children's children to the third generation. The king had weakly allowed the publication of this unchristian bull; but Huss thundered against it from his pulpit in the Bethlehem chapel, and announced a public disputation on the subject for the 7th of June, 1412. A new crisis in the struggle with Rome was brought on. The appointed day arrived; Huss condemned the bull on twelve different grounds. Many of his former friends grew faint-hearted, and deserted him; but the great mass of his hearers caught the fire of his indignation, and the bull was carried through the streets of Prague by an excited multitude, and thrown into the flames amidst general execration and contempt. It was impossible that such an insult to the Holy See should remain unavenged. The Cardinal Petrus de St. Angelo was empowered by the pope to proceed against Huss. The sentence of excommunication formerly pronounced was read against him in all the churches of the kingdom, and Prague was laid under interdict for sheltering the daring heretic. The sacraments were denied to the citizens, the rites of burial were withheld, and to calm the public excitement produced by such a state of things, the king was obliged to request Huss to leave Prague for a time. He withdrew to the castles of his friends
