Part 231 (1/2)
HALLOWE'EN, the eve of All Saints' Day, 31st October, which it was customary, in Scotland particularly, to observe with ceremonies of a superst.i.tious character, presumed to have the power of eliciting certain interesting secrets of fate from wizard spirits of the earth and air, allowed, as believed, in that brief s.p.a.ce, to rove about and be accessible to the influence of the charms employed.
HALOGENS (i. e., salt producers), name given to the elementary bodies, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and fluorine as in composition with metals forming compounds similar to sea-salt.
HALS, FRANS, an eminent Dutch portrait-painter, born at Antwerp; is considered to be the founder of the Dutch school of _genre_-painting; his portraits are full of life and vigour; Vandyck alone among his contemporaries was considered his superior (1581-1666).
HALSBURY, HARDINGE STANLEY GIFFORD, LORD, Lord Chancellor of England, born in London; was called to the bar in 1850; he was Solicitor-General in the last Disraeli Government; entered Parliament in 1877, and in 1885 was raised to the peerage and made Lord-Chancellor, a position he has held in successive Conservative Governments; _b_. 1825.
HALYBURTON, THOMAS, Scottish divine, known as ”Holy Halyburton,”
born at Dupplin, near Perth; was minister of Ceres, in Fife, and from 1710 professor of Divinity in St. Andrews; was the author of several widely-read religious works (1674-1712).
HAM, a son of Noah, and the Biblical ancestor of the southern dark races of the world as known to the ancients.
HAM, a town in the dep. of Somme, France, 70 m. NE. of Paris, with a fortress, used in recent times as a State prison, in which Louis Napoleon was confined from 1840 to 1846.
HAMADAN (30), an ancient Persian town, at the foot of Mount Elwend, 160 m. SW. of Teheran, is an important _entrepot_ of Persian trade, and has flouris.h.i.+ng tanneries; it is believed to stand on the site of ECBATANA (q. v.).
HAMADRYAD, a wood-nymph identified with a particular tree that was born with it and that died with it.
HAMAH (45), the Hamath of the Bible, an ancient city of Syria, on the Orontes, 110 m. NE. of Damascus; manufactures silk, cotton, and woollen fabrics; is one of the oldest cities of the world; has some trade with the Bedouins in woollen stuffs; during the Macedonian dynasty it was known as Epiphania; in 1812 Burckhardt discovered stones in it with Hitt.i.te inscriptions.
HAMAN, an enemy of the Jews in Persia, who persuaded the king to decree the destruction of them against a particular day, but whose purpose was defeated by the reversal of the sentence of doom.
HAMANN, JOHANN GEORG, a German thinker, born at Konigsberg; a man of genius, whose ideas were appreciated by such a man as Goethe, and whose writings deeply influenced the views of Herder (1730-1788).
HAMBURG, a small German State (623) which includes the free city of Hamburg (323; suburbs, 245), Bergedorf, and Cuxhaven; the city, the chief emporium of German commerce, is situated on the Elbe, 75 m. E. of the North Sea and 177 NW. of Berlin; was founded by Charlemagne in 808, and is to-day the fifth commercial city of the world; the old town is intersected by ca.n.a.ls, while the new portion, built since 1842, is s.p.a.ciously laid out; the town library, a fine building, contains 400,000 volumes; its princ.i.p.al manufactures embrace cigar-making, distilling, brewing, sugar-refining, &c.
HAMELN (14), a quaint old Prussian town and fortress in the province of Hanover, situated at the junction of the Hamel with the Weser, 25 m.
SW. of Hanover city; a.s.sociated with the legend of the Pied Piper; a fine chain bridge spans the Weser; there are prosperous iron, paper, and leather works, breweries, &c.
HaMERKIN or HaMMERLEIN, the paternal name of THOMAS a KEMPIS (q. v.).
HAMERLING, ROBERT, Austrian poet, born at Kirchberg in the Forest, Lower Austria; his health gave way while teaching at Trieste, and while for upwards of 30 years an invalid in bed, he devoted himself to poetical composition; his fame rests chiefly on his satirical epics and lyric compositions, among the former ”The King of Iron,” ”The Seven Deadly Sins,” and ”Cupid and Psyche,” and among the latter ”Venus in Exile”
(1830-1889).
HAMERTON, PHILIP GILBERT, English critic, particularly of art; edited the Portfolio, an art magazine; author of a story of life in France ent.i.tled ”Marmorne,” and of a volume of essays ent.i.tled ”The Intellectual Life” (1834-1894).