HALLAM, HENRY, philosophic historian and critic, son of the dean of Bristol, was b. at Windsor in 1777, and educated at Eton and Christchurch, Oxford, where he took his degree of m. A. He was first known by his writings in periodicals, especially by con tributing to the Edinburgh Review during its early years; afterwards. he was distinguished among the literary men of Europe for his extensive and profound learning, powers of generalization, taste, judgment, conscientiousness, exhibited in a succession of great works: View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages (2 vols. 4to, 1818); The Con stitutional History qf England from the Accession of henry VII. to the _Death of George II. (2 vols. 4to, 1827); and Introduction to the7,iterature of Europe in the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries (4 vols. 8vo, 1837-39), and a volume of supplementary notes to his History of the _Middle Ages (1848). All these works have gone through several editions, and been translated into the languages of the leading European nations. They have procured for their author the enviable reputation of having opened up a new and great field of author ship, and labored in it with a success that as yet has not been equaled by another. Their wonderful impartiality and veracity are a rebuke to ordinary historians; and it provokes a smile to read, at this distance of time, the strictures of Southey on the acrimony, the arrogance, the injustice, and the ill-temper of their author; for England never pro duced a man who loved truth more disinterestedly than Hallam. Hallam, while yet a
young man, was held in the highest estimation among the literary men of his time, both in London and Edinburgh. Haring the greater portion of his long life, however, he lived in London in privacy, devoting himself to linguistic and historical studies. In politics, he was a Whig; but for the conflict of parties lie was unsuited by his candor and general temperament, and took no part in them, but he displayed a genuine interest in all questions of social improvement, and acted with the Wilberforce party for the abolition of slavery, as well as in other humane schemes, and was one of the original promoters of the society for the diffusion of useful knowledge. Hallam had two sons, both of great promise, and both prematurely cut off; the elder, Arthur Henry, who died in 1833, was the friend of Alfred Tennyson the laureate, and is the subject of In _Memoriam. Of this son, Hallam wrote a touching memoir. Hallam died Jan., 1859. He was a fellow of the royal and many other societies, and a trustee of the British museum.