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three arbitrators, one to be chosen by the masters and one by themselves, the third, they unanimously decided, should be chosen by Dr. Hook. After twenty-two years of labour in Leeds Dr. Hook accepted in 1859 the deanery of Chichester, offered him by Lord Derby. Dr. Hook has been an extensive contributor to ecclesiastical and theological literature. Besides many sermons and minor treatises, he is the author of the elaborate "Church Dictionary," and "Ecclesiastical Biography, containing the Lives of Ancient Fathers and Modern Divines." He is now engaged in the preparation of an important contribution to the biography of the English church, the "Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury," of which the first volume, comprising the Anglo-Saxon period, has already reached a second edition.—F. E.

HOOKE, Nathaniel, remembered chiefly as the author of a "History of Rome," made his début in literature by publishing in 1723 a translation, from the French, of the Life of Fénélon, of whom he was a spiritual disciple. The date and place of his birth are unknown, and his early history is a blank. He was a friend of Pope; and the Roman catholic priest who visited the poet on his deathbed was summoned by Hooke. He was patronized by the great. Lord Chesterfield, it is said, introduced him to the duchess of Marlborough when she required literary assistance in drawing up the well-known "Account of the Duchess of Marlborough from her first coming to Court to the year 1700," published in 1742. There is some discrepancy in the versions given of the circumstances connected with the composition of this work; the two chief are to be found in the notice of Hooke in Nichols' Literary Anecdotes, and both agree in stating that Hooke received £5000 for his trouble. His "Roman History" was published in four volumes in the years 1733-71; and, although once a standard work, is now seldom consulted, being more of a translation and compilation than an original performance. Hooke attacked, in a separate work, Middleton's views of the Roman senate; and in his history espoused the cause of the plebeians in their contests with the patricians. He published also a translation of Ramsay's Travels of Cyrus, and died in the July of 1763.—F. E.

HOOKE, Robert, an eminent mechanical and natural philosopher, was born at Freshwater in the Isle of Wight on the 18th July, 1635. He was such a sickly child that his father, who was minister of the parish, was obliged to educate him at home. His mechanical genius was shown in the construction of toys, clocks, and ships; and such were his inventive powers that, while he was at Westminster school under Dr. Busby, he communicated to Dr. Wilkins thirty different methods of flying. When he was at Christ church, Oxford, he was introduced in 1655 to the Philosophical Society there, and he assisted Robert Boyle in his chemical researches. At this period he discovered the connection between the state of the barometer and that of the weather; he contrived the clockmaker's cutting engine; he invented a 'scapement for the small vibrations of pendulums; the spiral spring for regulating the vibrations of a watch balance, and soon afterwards the double-barrelled air-pump. The most important of these was the regulator for watches, for which he took out a patent without receiving any benefit from the invention. In the establishment of the Royal Society in 1660 he took an active part, and was long one of the most valuable contributors to its Transactions. His papers on the conical pendulum, on the catenarian curve, and on capillary attractions, excited so much interest that he was appointed curator of experiments to the society, with a salary of £30 a year. In 1664 he was appointed professor of geometry in Gresham college; and in the following year he published his interesting work entitled "Micrographia," containing physiological descriptions and accurate drawings of various insects. In 1677 he published his "Lampas," containing an account of improvements on lamps and water poises; and in 1679 appeared his "Lectiones Cutlerianæ," a collection of scientific lectures founded by Sir John Cutler, with a salary of £50 a year. On the death of Oldenburg in 1677, Hooke was appointed secretary to the Royal Society; and between 1677 and 1681 he published the seven numbers of the Philosophical Collections, which are regarded as a part of the Philosophical Transactions. Our limits will not permit us to give any intelligible account of the various other inventions of this remarkable man. He invented the marine barometer and sea-gage, a reflecting quadrant, a clock for registering the weather, a screw for dividing astronomical instruments, the spirit level, and the areometer; he suggested the temperatures of freezing and of boiling water as fixed points in the scale of heat; he proposed a pendulum as a standard measure, and a steam-engine on Newcomen's principle; he observed the separability of light and heat by a plate of glass; and he discovered the secondary vibrations of sounding bodies. Before his appointment to the secretaryship of the Royal Society, Hooke was brought by his discoveries into a painful collision with Sir Isaac Newton. He had made important discoveries, now acknowledged by philosophers, on the interesting subject of the colours of thin plates, and had partly anticipated the theory of them on the undulatory hypothesis. He had suggested also the doctrine of gravitation, the general law of the planetary motions, and the diminution of gravity as the square of the distance. If he took too much credit to himself for these sagacious views as anticipations of Newton's discoveries, he but yielded to the natural impulse of an ardent mind conscious of its powers, and did not thereby justify the harsh judgments which some of his biographers have passed upon his character. His difference with Newton gave rise to a correspondence, which Sir David Brewster found among Newton's MSS., and which does honour to the character of both.—(Memoirs, &c., of Sir Isaac Newton, vol. i. p. 140.) He is said to have been so much engrossed with his inventions and theories, that for the last two or three years of his life he never undressed himself and went to bed. He died at Gresham college on the 3rd of March, 1702, in the eighty-seventh year of his age, and was buried in St. Helen's church, Bishopsgate Street, his remains being accompanied by all the fellows of the Royal Society then in London.—D. B.

HOOKER or HOKER, otherwise VOWEL, John, was the son of Robert Hooker, a respectable citizen of Exeter, and was born at that place in or about 1524. In 1529 his father filled the office of mayor. John was educated at Oxford, but at which college is uncertain. He subsequently proceeded on a tour through some parts of Germany, and remained at Cologne for a certain length of time as a law student. Upon his return, which is supposed to have taken place in 1554, he was made chamberlain of Exeter, a dignity which was first created in his person. In 1567-68 he was sent to Ireland in connection with the affairs of Sir Peter Carew, and in the Irish parliament of 1568 he sat for Athenry, county Galway. He did not probably remain very long from home; at all events, he had returned before 1571, in which year he represented Exeter in the English house of commons. Little appears to be known of his subsequent career; he died in 1601, and lies buried in Exeter cathedral. Hooker wrote "Order and usage of the keeping of the Parliaments in England," 1572, 4to; "The events of Comets or Blazing Stars made upon the sight of the Comet Pagania," which appeared in November and December, 1577, London, for John Vowel, 8vo; "Catalogue of the Bishops of Exeter," 1584, 4to; "Office and duties of every particular sworn officer of the City of Exeter," 1584, 4to; "Life of Sir Peter Carew," printed in Archæologia, xxviii. He was also an important contributor to Holinshed's Chronicles, in the second volume of which are introduced his additions to Irish history, 1546-68, and a translation of the History of the Conquest of Ireland, by Giraldus Cambrensis. The author of the Ecclesiastical Polity was his nephew.—W. C. H.

* HOOKER, Joseph Dalton, a British botanist, the son of Sir William Ja kson Hooker, was born about 1817 He was educated for the medical profession, and took the degree of M.D. in the university of Glasgow. He did not engage in the practice of medicine, but has devoted his whole energies to the advancement of science. He has followed in the footsteps of his father, and has acquired with him a European reputation as a botanist. With the view of promoting science he entered the navy, and in 1839 he was appointed assistant-surgeon to the Erebus, in which vessel he accompanied Sir James Ross to the antarctic regions. The results of his labours were given in a splendid work on the Flora of the Antarctic regions, which appeared under government patronage. He had an opportunity of examining the floras of Van Diemen's Land, New Zealand, and the Galapagos Islands; and he has published standard works on the plants of these countries, illustrated by drawings of the highest excellence. His attention was directed especially to the geographical distribution of plants, and he has propounded philosophical views on this subject which are likely to lead to the highest results. Perhaps no one, since Humboldt, has done so much for this department of botany. In his writings on the subject he shows enlarged and comprehensive views of science,