Part 245 (1/2)
HOLDEN, SIR ISAAC, inventor, born at Hurlet, Renfrews.h.i.+re; worked in a cotton-mill in Paisley, but betook himself to teaching, and in 1829, while a teacher of chemistry in Reading, discovered the principle of the lucifer match; turning to wool-combing as a means of livelihood, he became established near Paris, where he carried out elaborate experiments, which resulted in improvements in wool-combing machinery that brought him fame and fortune; in 1859 he transferred his works to the vicinity of Bradford; entered Parliament in 1865, and was created a baronet in 1893 (1807-1897).
HOLINSHED, RAPHAEL, English chronicler of the Elizabethan age; his ”Chronicle,” published in two vols. in 1577, supplied Shakespeare with materials for some of his historical plays; _d_. 1580.
HOLL, FRANK, artist, born in Kentish Town; was highly distinguished as an art student, and at 23 won the travelling students.h.i.+p of the Academy; came into notice first as a _genre_-painter, exhibiting pictures of a pathetic nature, such as ”Want--the p.a.w.nbroker's Shop,”
”Newgate--Committed for Trial,” ”Ordered to the Front,” &c.; subsequently he won a wide celebrity as a portrait-painter, producing portraits of the Prince of Wales, Mr. Gladstone, and other distinguished personages (1845-1888).
HOLLAND (4,795), officially known as the Netherlands, a small maritime country of Western Europe, bordered on its N. and W. by the German Ocean, and having Prussia on its E. and Belgium to the S.; its area, somewhat less than one-fourth the size of England and Wales, comprises, besides the mainland, two island groups, one in the N. and one in the S.; its flat surface in great part lies below the level of the sea, and where there are no natural sandhills is protected from inundation by enormous d.y.k.es, 365 ft. thick, forming excellent carriage-ways along the coast; much of the soil has been reclaimed by draining lakes and by pus.h.i.+ng back the sea walls, the size of the country having been increased by one-half since 1833; ca.n.a.ls traverse the country in all directions, and form with the shallow lakes and the great rivers a complete system of waterways. The climate is for the most part similar to that of England, but greater extremes of heat and cold are experienced.
Farming is the staple industry, although a considerable portion of the land is still unfit for cultivation; b.u.t.ter and cheese are the most valuable products, and are largely exported; the fisheries, coast and deep sea, are also of much importance; manufactures are r.e.t.a.r.ded by the want of coal, but the wind is made to supply the motive power, by means of windmills, to flouris.h.i.+ng textile factories (cotton, woollen, and silk), gin distilleries, pottery works, margarine and cocoa factories, &c. Holland no longer is the premier s.h.i.+pping country of Europe, a position it held in the 17th century, but it still maintains a busy carrying trade with all parts of the world, especially with its many rich colonies in the East and West Indies, which comprise an area 64 times larger than Holland itself. The government is a limited monarchy; the executive power is vested in the crown and the legislation in the States-General, an a.s.sembly consisting of two chambers, the one elected (for four years) by direct suffrage, the other (for nine years) by provincial councils. Primary education is free, but not compulsory.
Religion is not established, but about two-thirds of the people are Protestants, the remainder Roman Catholics. The birth of Holland as an independent European power took place in the 16th century, when, after an heroic and protracted struggle, it freed itself from the yoke of Spain, then the most powerful nation in the world.
HOLLAND, HENRY RICHARD FOX Va.s.sALL-HOLLAND, BARON, statesman, born in Wilts; succeeded to the t.i.tle in 1774; entered on a public career as a Whig under the patronage of his uncle Charles James Fox; held office under Grenville, Grey, and Melbourne; was imbued with a fine humanitarian spirit, and fought ably against the slave-trade and the corn-laws; his cultured literary taste is revealed in his writings, which embrace Spanish translations, lives of Guillen de Castro and Lope de Vega, Memoirs, &c. (1773-1840).
HOLLAND, SIR HENRY, physician and author, born at Knutsford, Ches.h.i.+re; graduated at Edinburgh in 1811; spent some years in Eastern Europe, and finally settled in London; he rose to be physician-in-ordinary to the Prince Consort and the Queen, and in 1853 was created a baronet; wrote various essays on various branches of medicine, physiology, psychology, besides ”Recollections of Past Life” (1758-1873).
HOLLAND, NORTH (819), one of the eleven provinces of Holland; comprises the peninsula lying between the Zuider Zee and the German Ocean. SOUTH HOLLAND, also a province, faces the German Ocean between Zealand and North Holland. These provinces form the most important part of the Netherlands, raise the best farm produce and cattle, and in their great ports Amsterdam, and Rotterdam, the bulk of the trade of Holland is carried on.
HOLLES, DENZIL, statesman, and one of the ”five members,” the son of the Earl of Clare, born at Houghton, Northamptons.h.i.+re; entering Parliament in 1624, he joined the opposition against the king, and actively resisted the imposition of tonnage and poundage, for which he was heavily fined and imprisoned; subsequently he was one of the five members whom Charles attempted to arrest in 1642 on a charge of high-treason; his opposition to the maintenance of a standing Puritan army involved him in trouble, and he fled the country; after Cromwell's death he returned, was prominent in promoting the Restoration, received a peerage, and for some years was engaged in public duties, still remaining a staunch upholder of the rights of Parliament (1559-1680).
HOLLOWAY (48), a northern district of London, in Islington parish.
HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL, a celebrated American author, born the son of a Congregational minister, at Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, and graduated in arts and medicine at Harvard; became professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Dartmouth College, but resigned and settled in Boston as a general pract.i.tioner; in 1847 he was elected to the chair of Anatomy in Harvard, a position he held till his resignation in 1882; a successful professor, it is as an essayist, novelist, and poet that he is remembered; the appearance of ”The Autocrat at the Breakfast-Table,” with its quaint humour, fresh thought, and charming egotism took literary America by storm; the ”Professor” and the ”Poet at the Breakfast-Table”
followed in after years, and remain his most widely popular works; ”Elsie Venner,” a novel dealing with the problem of heredity, ”The Guardian Angel,” ”Songs of Many Seasons,” ”Memoirs of Motley and of Emerson,” are some of his many works, all of which have the impress of his bright, engaging personality (1809-1894).
HOLOFERNES, the a.s.syrian general whom the Jewish Judith, entering his camp as it invested her native place, slew with her own hand, and bore his head as a trophy back to the town.
HOLSTEIN (560), which with Sleswick forms the Prussian province of SLESWICK-HOLSTEIN (q. v.), was till 1866 a duchy of Denmark, but in that year was annexed by Prussia.
HOLT, FRANK, artist, born in London; was distinguished as an artist from his early youth; produced a succession of works of eminent merit, and attained the highest excellence as a painter of portraits, to which department he devoted the last years of his life (1815-1888).
HOLT, SIR JOHN, English lawyer, born at Thame, Oxfords.h.i.+re; called to the bar in 1663; was a prominent counsel in the State trials of his age, and rose to be Lord Chief-Justice of the King's Bench under William III., an office whose duties he discharged with unflinching integrity and fairness (1642-1710).
HOLTZMANN, ADOLF, an eminent German philologist, born at Carlsruhe; gave himself to the study of theology and then of philology at various universities, and in 1852 became professor of the German Language and Literature at Heidelberg; author of various learned treatises on philology and kindred subjects (1810-1870).