HELOISE, heroine of the mediæval tragedy of real life, in which Abelard is the hero, was born probably about 1101, and was the niece of Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame. Educated carefully at the convent of Argenteuil, Heloise learned not only Latin, but a little Greek and Hebrew, and her combination of female learning—prodigious for those days—with beauty and amiability, led to her fall. Her uncle wished her to be taught; Abelard offered to be her teacher, and becoming a resident in Fulbert's house, he forgot the tutor in the lover. When the fruits of their intercourse became visible, he sent her in her uncle's absence to his native Brittany, and on Fulbert's discovery of her seduction and abduction, he was terrified into bringing her back to Paris and offering to make her his wife. Merging the feelings of the woman in the transcendant desire for her lover's success, Heloise, strange to say, opposed a marriage which was, she thought, to rob the church of Abelard. When the marriage was performed, with the condition insisted on by Abelard, that it should be kept secret, Fulbert proclaimed it, and Heloise, in the supposed interest of her lover, resolutely denied its existence. Then came Abelard's removal of her to Argenteuil, under circumstances which made Fulbert suspect that he meant to deny the marriage and make her a nun. It was under the influence of this suspicion that the uncle perpetrated the memorable outrage on the husband of his niece. Heloise took the veil at Argenteuil, of which she rose in a few years to be the prioress. On the acquisition of Argenteuil by the abbot of St. Denis, the nuns were dispersed, and Abelard made over to her as a refuge his once flourishing oratory of the Paraclete, and paid her here the few formal visits which alone befitted their vocations and circumstances. It was the perusal of his autobiographical "Historia Calamitatum," addressed to a friend, which led her to commence the correspondence with him, still extant, although some doubts have been raised as to its genuineness. The letters of Heloise breathe rather than express a deep mournfulness, tempered by a devout resignation, through which is apparent an unextinguishable and unselfish affection. Divided in life, they were united in the grave. After Abelard's death his remains were re-interred by her at the Paraclete; and at her own death she was laid beside him in the same coffin. In 1164, thirty-two years after him, she died, venerated by pope and people, and abbess of the Paraclete, which had prospered under her wise government.—F. E.
* HELPS, Arthur, essayist and historian, was born in 1817, and studied at Trinity college, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1835. As private secretary to Lord Monteagle, Mr. Helps early enjoyed an opportunity of familiarizing himself with the official arena, from which, however, he withdrew to rural seclusion and studious leisure on a little estate of his own in Hampshire. From a passage in "A Letter on Uncle Tom's Cabin," published in 1852, we gather that Mr. Helps has established in his house a free lending library for the use of readers in his vicinity. Mr. Helps' earliest work was published in 1835, when he quitted Cambridge, and was entitled "Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd." This, like all his works, with one exception, was published anonymously. In 1841 appeared a little volume with the title, "Essays written in the Intervals of Business," in which knowledge of the world was displayed not only without worldliness, but with indications of a careful self-culture both of head and heart. The work was very successful. In 1843 appeared two dramas by Mr. Helps, "Catherine Douglas, a tragedy," and "King Henry the Second, a historical drama." Two years afterwards Mr. Helps grappled genially yet earnestly with a delicate and difficult social problem in "The Claims of Labour, an essay on the duties of the employer to the employed; to which is added an essay on the means of improving the health, &c., of the labouring classes," published in 1845. The volume was practical and suggestive. In "Friends in Council," published in 1847-49, Mr. Helps took a wider range than before, and by the use of the dialogue-form gave a dramatic liveliness to the expression of his meditations on men and things. "Companions of my Solitude," published in 1851, may be considered a sequel to "Friends in Council," of which a second series, chiefly collected from Fraser's Magazine, appeared in 1859. The question of slavery is one which has had a great interest for Mr. Helps. "The Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen" was published in 1848. Recast and expanded, this reappeared in 1855 as "The Spanish Conquest in America, and its relations to the history of slavery and to the government of colonies;" volume fourth of which, completing the work, was published in 1861. This is the only work by Mr. Helps on the title-page of which his name appears. Besides the "Letter on Uncle Tom's Cabin," another result of Mr. Helps' interest in slavery is the drama of "Oulita the Serf," published in 1858. In 1860 Mr. Helps was appointed clerk of (the privy) council.—F. E.
HELSHAM, Richard, M.D., professor of physic and natural philosophy in Trinity college, Dublin. He was on terms of intimacy with Swift, Sheridan, Delany, Arbuthnot, and the other wits of his time. Swift, whose medical adviser he was, entertained a high regard for Helsham, and speaks of him as a man "à son aise at home and abroad." He wrote a course of "Lectures on Natural Philosophy," which was published the year after his death, and was for near a century a class book in college. He died in 1738.—J. F. W.
HELST, Bartholomeus Vander, a Dutch portrait-painter, born at Haarlem in 1613. He acquired a great reputation at Amsterdam by his portraits, which are among the best of the Dutch school. In the museum there, is the great picture he painted in commemoration of the peace of Münster in 1648, representing a life-size group of the captain, C. J. Wits of Witsen, and three-and-twenty of his company of the civil guard of Amsterdam. This picture Sir Joshua Reynolds has pronounced "perhaps the first picture of portraits in the world." His style is elaborate and yet large in manner, but at the same time somewhat hard. The National gallery possesses one good specimen by him. He died rich at Amsterdam in 1670.—R. N. W.
HELVETIUS, Claude Adrien, born at Paris in January, 1715. He occupies a foremost place among those French philosophers of the last century who were the preachers of materialism. His father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, were all distinguished physicians. The father devoted much care to the education of his gifted son, whose mind, however, was not of rapid or brilliant growth. While at college, Claude Adrien read Locke's Essay on the Understanding, which made a deep impression on his mind. On leaving college he was sent to reside with a maternal uncle, who was controller of the taxes at Caen; and there having learned something of the details of that complicated and ruinous system of finance which then reigned in France, he was at the age of twenty-three appointed a farmer-general. From this office—partly a sinecure, and partly something worse—Helvétius derived an income equal in English money to about £12,000 a year. He was indebted for the appointment to Louis XV.'s ill-used and neglected queen, Marie Leczinska, to whom his father was principal physician. Handsome, vain, inclined to licentiousness, unboundedly generous, Helvétius was likewise unboundedly popular. At first he wished only to be the patron of literary men; but he made some attempts in poetry, which were unhappy enough. Emboldened by the example of Condillac, then rising to eminence; inspired by contact with Diderot, D'Alembert, and others, who are known to us by the name of encyclopædists—Helvétius resolved to take an active share in the universal philosophical movement. That he might have the more leisure for his labours, he resigned the office of farmer-general after holding it for thirteen years. In July, 1751, he married the daughter of Count De Ligneville, a beautiful, amiable, accomplished woman, with a warm and instinctive benevolence equal to his own. Voltaire accepted the homage of Helvétius, and was not grudging of incense in return, calling his friend Atticus. This modern Atticus published in 1758 his famous work "De L'Esprit," which went much further than Voltaire, who was a diplomatist, deemed advisable. The good or the evil of every metaphysical system must be sought in its moral fruits. What is to be condemned in the book "De L'Esprit" and that "On Man," its continuation and commentary, which appeared after the death of Helvétius, is the enthronement of selfishness as the grand moral principle. To this principle Helvétius proved faithful in the hour of peril; for when his work "De L'Esprit" was condemned by political and ecclesiastical courts, and when it was solemnly and publicly burned along with other obnoxious productions, Helvétius wrote a series of cowardly and hypocritical retractations. He did not live to see the full political, social, and spiritual results of the doctrines which he had preached. On the 26th December, 1771, he died, his strong constitution having been gradually undermined by gout. He left two daughters, who were married to French noblemen. His widow, born in 1719, survived till August, 1800.—W. M—l.
