1877-78 was 625, attended by 22,666 pupils. The principal educa tional institution in the district is the Hooghly College, attended in 1872 by 3142 students, on which the expenditure was 5143.
Rice forms the staple crop of the district, occupying about thirteen-sixteenths of the cultivated area; the other cereals are barley, wheat, and Indian corn. The other crops consist of pease, pulses oil-seeds, vegetables, jute, hemp, cotton, sugar-cane, indigo, mulberry, tobacco, and pan. Blights occasionally visit Hooghly and Howrah, but they have not affected any crop throughout the entire district. An exceptional case was that of the ^Bombay sugar-cane," which was totally destroyed by blight in 1860. Droughts caused by deficiency of rainfall sometimes occur, but not to airy serious extent. Floods are rare. The trade of the district is chiefly carried on by means of permanent markets. The prin- cotton. In 1870 there were 400 miles of road in Hooghly district, maintained at a cost of 4000. The East Indian Railway has its principal terminus at Howrah, and runs through the district for about 45 miles ; there are 10 stations in the district. There are six canals in Hooghly district used for water-carriage, of a total length of 33 miles.
The climate does not differ from that of Lower Bengal generally. The average maximum temperature is 92 F., the minimum 68 F., and the average annual rainfall about 70 inches. The diseases of the district are fever, cholera, dysentery, &c. An epidemic malarious fever has raged at intervals, and is said to have carried off more than half the population and to have almost depopulated certain villages. There are 7 hospitals and dispensaries.
From an historical point of view the district possesses as much interest as any in Bengal, or indeed in India. In the early period of the Mahometan rule Satgdon was the seat of the governors of Lower Bengal and a mint town. It was also a place of great com mercial importance. In consequence of the silting up of the Saraswati, the river on which Satgaon waa situated, the town be came inaccessible to large ships, and the Portuguese moved to Hooghly. In 1632 the latter place, having been taken from the Portuguese by the Mahometans, was made the royal port of Bengal ; and all the public offices and records were withdrawn from Satgaon, which rapidly fell into decay. In 1640 the East India Company established a factory at Hooghly. This was the first English settle ment in Lower Bengal. In 1685, a dispute having taken place between the English factors and the nawab of Bengal, the town was bombarded and burned to the ground. This was not the first time that Hooghly had been the scene of a struggle deciding the fate of a European power in India. In 1629, when held by the Portuguese, it was besieged for three months and a half by a large Mahometan force sent by the emperor Shah Jahan. The place was carried by storm ; more than 1000 Portuguese were killed, upwards of 4000 prisoners taken, and of 300 vessels only 3 escaped. But Hooghly district possesses historical interest for other European nations besides England and Portugal. The Dutch established themselves at Chinsurah in the 17th century, and held the place till 1825, when it was ceded to Great Britain in exchange for the island of Java. The Danes settled at Serampur, where they remained till 1825, when all Danish possessions in India were transferred to the East India Company. Chandarnagar became a French settle ment in 1683. The English captured this town twice, but since 1816 it has remained in the possession of the French.
Hooghly, the administrative headquarters of the above district, is a town situated on the right or west bank of the Hooghly, 22 54 44" N. lat. and 88 2G 28" E. long. Hooghly and Chinsurah form one municipality, and the two towns were treated as one in the enumeration of 1872. Population, 34,761, viz., 17,114 males and 17,647 females: Hindus, 27,429; Mahometans, 6952; Christians, 328 ; " others," 52. Hooghly is a station on the East Indian Railway, 25 miles from Calcutta. The principal building is a handsome " imAmbara," constructed out of funds which had accumulated from an endowment origin ally left for the purpose by a wealthy Shia gentleman, Muhammad Mohsin. The town is said to have been founded by the Portuguese in 1537, on the decay of Satg&on, the royal port of Bengal. Upon establishing themselves they built a fort at a place called Gholghat (close to the present jail), vestiges of which are still visible in the bed of the river. This fort gradually grew into the town and port of Hooghly.
(w. w. h.)
HOOGSTRATEN, Samuel Dirksz van, was born, it is said, in 1627 at the Hague, and died at Dort, October 19, 1678. This artist, who was first a pupil of his father, lived at the Hague and at Dort till about 1640, when on the death of Dirk Hoogstraten he changed his residence to Amsterdam and entered the school of Rembrandt. A hort time afterwards he started as a master and painter of portraits, set out on a round of travels which took him (1651) to Vienna, Rome, and London, and finally retired to Dort, where he married in 1656, and held an appoint ment as " provost of the mint." Hoogstraten s works are scarce ; but a sufficient number of them has been preserved to show that he strove to imitate different styles at different times. In a portrait dated 1645 in the Lichtenstein collection at Vienna he imitates Rembrandt ; and he con tinues in this vein as late as 1653, when he produced that wonderful figure of a Jew looking out of a casement, which is one of the most characteristic examples of his manner in the Belvedere at Vienna. A view of the Vienna Hofburg, dated 1652, in the same gallery displays his skill as a painter of architecture, whilst in a piece at the Hague re presenting a Lady Reading a Letter as she crosses a Court yard, or a Lady Consulting a Doctor, iu the Van der Hoop Museum at Amsterdam, he imitates De Hooch. One of his latest works is a portrait of Mathys van den Brouck, dated 1670, in the gallery of Amsterdam. The scarcity of Hoogstraten s pictures is probably due to his versatility. Besides directing a mint, he devoted some time to literary labours, wrote a book on the theory of painting, and composed sonnets and a tragedy. We are indebted to him for some of the familiar sayings of Rembrandt. He was an etcher too, and some of his plates are still pre served. His portrait engraved by himself at the age of fifty still exists.
HOOK, Theodore Edward (1788–1841), novelist, dramatist, and improvisatore, was born in London 22d September 1788. At Harrow he received but a scant education, and although he subsequently matriculated at Oxford he never actually resided at the university. Indeed he seems to have abandoned all thought of serious study about 1802, on the death of his mother, nee Madden, a lady of singular beauty and ability. The father, James Hook, a composer of some distinction, took great delight in exhibiting the extraordinary musical and metrical gifts of the stripling, and before many months the precocious Theodore had become "the little pet lion of the green room." A.t the age of sixteen he scored a dramatic success with The Soldier s Return, a comic opera, and this he rapidly followed up with a series of over a dozen sparkling ventures, the instant popularity of which was hardly dependent on the inimitable acting of Listen and Mathews. But an overweening love of society withheld Hook from a lucrative career as a dramatic author, and for some ten of the best years of his life he gave himself up to the pleasures of the town, winning a foremost place in the world of fashion by his matchless powers of improvisation and mimicry, and startling the public by the audacity of his practical jokes. His unique gift of impromptu minstrelsy "mystified" Sheridan, astonished Coleridge, and eventually charmed the Prince Regent into a declaration that "some thing must be done for Hook." The prince was as good as his word, and the victim of social success was appointed accountant-general and treasurer of the Mauritius with a salary of 2000 a year. For five delightful years Hook was the life and soul of the island, but in 1817, a serious deficiency having been discovered in the treasury accounts, he was arrested and brought to England on a criminal charge. It transpired that a sum of about .12,000 had been abstracted by a deputy official, and for this amount Hook was held responsible.
