“a celebrated beauty of those times was in the cross bath, and one of the crowd of her admirers took a glass of the water in which the fair one stood, and drank her health to the company. There was in the place a gay fellow, half fuddled, who offered to jump in, and swore, though he liked not the liquor, he would have the toast. He was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave foundation to the present honour which is done to the lady we mention in our liquor, who has ever since been called a toast.” Skeat adds (Etym. Dict., 1908), “whether the story be true or not, it may be seen that a ‘toast,’ i.e. a health, easily took its name from being the usual accompaniment to liquor, especially in loving cups,” &c.
Health drinking had by the beginning of the 17th century become a very ceremonious business in England. At Christmas 1623 the members of the Middle Temple, according to one of the Harleian MSS. quoted in The Life of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, drank to the health of the princess Elizabeth, who, with her husband the king of Bohemia, was then suffering great misfortunes, and stood up, one after the other, cup in one hand, sword in the other, and pledged her, swearing to die in her service. Toasts were often drunk solemnly on bended knees; according to one authority, Samuel Ward of Ipswich, in his Woe to Drunkards (1622), on bare knees. In 1668 at Sir George Carteret’s at Cranbourne the health of the duke of York was drunk by all in turn, each on his knees, the king, who was a guest, doing the like. A Scotch custom, still surviving, was to drink a toast with one foot on the table and one on the chair. Healths, too, were drunk in a definite order. Braithwaite says: “These cups proceed either in order or out of order. In order when no person transgresseth or drinkes out of course, but the cup goes round according to their manner of sitting: and this we call a health-cup, because in our wishing or confirming of any one’s health, bare headed and standing, it is performed by all the company” (Laws of Drinking, 1617). Francis Douce’s MSS. notes say: “It was the custom in Beaumont and Fletcher’s time for the young gallants to stab themselves in the arms or elsewhere, in order to drink the health of their mistresses.” Pepys, in his Diary for the 19th of June 1663, writes: “To the Rhenish wine house, where Mr Moore showed us the French manner when a health is drunk, to bow to him that drunk to you, and then apply yourself to him, whose lady’s health is drunk, and then to the person that you drink to, which I never knew before; but it seems it is now the fashion.” A Frenchman visiting England in Charles II.’s time speaks of the custom of drinking but half your cup, which is then filled up again and presented to him or her to whose health you drank. England’s divided loyalty in the 18th century bequeathed to modern times a custom which possibly yet survives. At dinners to royalties, until the accession of Edward VII., finger-glasses were not placed on the table, because in early Georgian days those who were secretly Jacobites passed their wine-glasses over the finger-bowls before drinking the loyal toasts, in allusion to the royal exiles “over the water,” thus salving their consciences. Lord Cockburn (1779–1854), in his Memorials of his Time (1856), states that in his day the drinking of toasts had become a perfect social tyranny; “every glass during dinner had to be dedicated to some one. It was thought sottish and rude to take wine without this, as if forsooth there was nobody present worth drinking with. I was present about 1803 when the late duke of Buccleuch took a glass of sherry by himself at the table of Charles Hope, then lord advocate, and this was noticed afterwards as a piece of direct contempt.” In Germany to-day it is an insult to refuse to drink with any one; and at one time in the west of America a man took his life in his hands by declining to pledge another. All this is a survival of that very early and universal belief that drinking to one another was a proof of fair play, whether it be in a simple bargain or in matters of life and death. The ceremony surrounding the Loving Cup to-day is reminiscent of the perils of those times when every man’s hand was raised against his fellow. This cup, known at the universities as the Grace Cup, was originated, says Miss Strickland in her Lives of the Queens of Scotland, by Margaret Atheling, wife of Malcolm Canmore, who, in order to induce the Scots to remain at table for grace had a cup of the choicest wine handed round immediately after it had been said. The modern “loving cup” sometimes has a cover, and in this case each guest rises and bows to his immediate neighbour on the right, who, also rising, removes and holds the cover with his right hand while the other drinks; the little comedy is a survival of the days when he who drank was glad to have the assurance that the right or dagger hand of his neighbour was occupied in holding the lid of the chalice. When there is no cover it is a common custom for both the left- and the right-hand neighbour to rise while the loving cup is drunk, with the similar object of protecting the drinker from attack. The Stirrup Cup is probably the Roman poculum boni genii, the last glass drunk at the banquet to a general “good night.”
See Chambers, Book of Days; Valpy, History of Toasting (1881); F. W. Hackwood, Inns, Ales, and Drinking Customs (London, 1909).
HEALY, GEORGE PETER ALEXANDER (1808–1894), American painter, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 15th of July 1808. Going to Europe in 1835 Healy studied under Baron Gros in Paris and in Rome. He received a third-class medal in Paris in 1840, and one of the second class in 1855, when he exhibited his “Franklin urging the claims of the American Colonies before Louis XVI.” Among his portraits
of eminent men are those of Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Guyot, Seward, Louis Philippe, and the presidents of the United States from John Quincy Adams to Grant—this series being painted for the Corcoran Gallery, Washington. His large group, “Webster replying to Hayne,” containing 150 portraits, is in Faneuil Hall, Boston, Mass. He was one of the most prolific and popular painters of his day. He died in Chicago, Illinois, on the 24th of June 1894.
HEANOR, an urban district in the Ilkeston parliamentary division of Derbyshire, England, 10 m. N.W. of Nottingham, on the Great Northern and Midland railways. Pop. (1901) 16,249. Large hosiery works employ many of the inhabitants, and collieries are worked in the parish. The urban district includes Codnor-cum-Loscoe. Shipley Hall, to the south of Heanor, is a mansion built on a hill, amidst fine gardens. The ruin of the ancient moated castle of Codnor stands, overlooking the vale of the Erewash, on land which was once Codnor Park, and is now the site of large ironworks.
HEARING (formed from the verb “to hear,” O. Eng. hyran, heran, &c., a common Teutonic verb; cf. Ger. hören, Dutch hooren, &c.; the O. Teut. form is seen in Goth. hausjan; the initial h makes any connexion with “ear,” Lat. audire, or Gr. ἀκούειν very doubtful), in physiology, the function of the ear (q.v.), and the general term for the sense or special sensation, the cause of which is an excitation of the auditory nerves by the vibrations of sonorous bodies. The anatomy of the ear is described in the separate article on that organ. A description of sonorous vibrations is given in the article Sound; here we shall consider the transmission of such vibrations from the external ear to the auditory nerve, and the physiological characters of auditory sensation.
1. Transmission in External Ear.—The external ear consists of the pinna, or auricle, and the external auditory meatus, or canal, at the bottom of which we find the membrana tympani, or drum head. In many animals the auricle is trumpet-shaped, and, being freely movable by muscles, serves to collect sonorous waves coming from various directions. The auricle of the human ear presents many irregularities of surface. If these irregularities are abolished by filling them up with a soft material such as wax or oil, leaving the entrance to the canal free, experiment shows that the intensity of sounds is weakened, and that there is more difficulty in judging of their direction. When waves of sound strike the auricle, they are partly reflected outwards, while the remainder, impinging at various angles, undergo a number of reflections so as to be directed into the auditory canal. Vibrations are transmitted along the auditory canal, partly by the air it contains and partly by its walls, to the membrana tympani. The absence of the auricle, as the result of accident or injury, does not cause diminution of hearing.
