of igneous rocks, such as hornblende-granite, syenite, diorite, hornblende-andesite, basalt, &c.; and in many crystalline schists, for example, amphibolite and hornblende-schist which are composed almost entirely of this mineral. Well-crystallized specimens are met with at many localities, for example: brilliant black crystals (syntagmatite) with augite and mica in the sanidine bombs of Monte Somma, Vesuvius; large crystals at Arendal in Norway, and at several places in the state of New York; isolated crystals from the basalts of Bohemia. (L. J. S.)
HORN-BOOK, a name originally applied to a sheet containing
the letters of the alphabet, which formed a primer for the use
of children. It was mounted on wood and protected with
transparent horn. Sometimes the leaf was simply pasted against
the slice of horn. The wooden frame had a handle, and it was
usually hung at the child’s girdle. The sheet, which in ancient
times was of vellum and latterly of paper, contained first a large
cross—the criss-crosse—from which the horn-book was called
the Christ Cross Row, or criss-cross-row. The alphabet in
large and small letters followed. The vowels then formed a line,
and their combinations with the consonants were given in a
tabular form. The usual exorcism—“in the name of the Father
and of the Sonne and of the Holy Ghost, Amen”—followed, then
the Lord’s Prayer, the whole concluding with the Roman
numerals. The horn-book is mentioned in Shakespeare’s
Love’s Labour’s Lost, v. 1, where the ba, the a, e, i, o, u, and the
horn, are alluded to by Moth. It is also described by Ben
Jonson—
“The letters may be read, through the horn, |
HORNBY, SIR GEOFFREY THOMAS PHIPPS (1825–1895),
British admiral of the fleet, son of Admiral Sir Phipps Hornby,
the first cousin and brother-in-law of the 13th earl of Derby,
by a daughter of Lieut.-General Burgoyne, commonly
distinguished as “Saratoga” Burgoyne, was born on the 20th
of February 1825. At the age of twelve he was sent to sea in the
flagship of Sir Robert Stopford, with whom he saw the capture
of Acre in November 1840. He afterwards served in the flagship
of Rear-Admiral Josceline Percy at the Cape of Good Hope,
was flag-lieutenant to his father in the Pacific, and came home
as a commander. When the Derby ministry fell in December
1852 young Hornby was promoted to be captain. Early in
1853 he married, and as the Derby connexion put him out of
favour with the Aberdeen ministry, and especially with Sir
James Graham, the first lord of the Admiralty, he settled down
in Sussex as manager of his father’s property. He had no
appointment in the navy till 1858, when he was sent out to
China to take command of the “Tribune” frigate and convey
a body of marines to Vancouver Island, where the dispute with
the United States about the island of San Juan was threatening
to become very bitter. As senior naval officer there Hornby’s
moderation, temper and tact did much to smooth over matters,
and a temporary arrangement for joint occupation of the island
was concluded. He afterwards commanded the “Neptune”
in the Mediterranean under Sir William Fanshawe Martin, was
flag-captain to Rear-Admiral Dacres in the Channel, was commodore
of the squadron on the west coast of Africa, and, being
promoted to rear-admiral in January 1869, commanded the
training squadron for a couple of years. He then commanded
the Channel Fleet, and was for two years a junior lord of the
Admiralty. It was early in 1877 that he went out as commander-in-chief
in the Mediterranean, where his skill in manœuvring
the fleet, his power as a disciplinarian, and the tact and determination
with which he conducted the foreign relations at the
time of the Russian advance on Constantinople, won for him
the K. C. B. He returned home in 1880 with the character of
being perhaps the most able commander on the active list of the
navy. His later appointments were to the Royal Naval College
as president, and afterwards to Portsmouth as commander-in-chief.
On hauling down his flag he was appointed G.C.B.,
and in May 1888 was promoted to be admiral of the fleet. From
1886 he was principal naval aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria,
and in that capacity, and as an admiral of the fleet, was appointed
on the staff of the German emperor during his visits to England
in 1889 and 1890. He died, after a short illness, on the 3rd of
March 1895. By his wife, who predeceased him, he left several
children, daughters and sons, one of whom, a major in the
artillery, won the Victoria Cross in South Africa in 1900.
His life was written by his daughter, Mrs Fred. Egerton, (1896).
HORNCASTLE, a market-town in the S. Lindsey or Horncastle
parliamentary division of Lincolnshire, England, at the foot of a
line of low hills called the Wolds, at the confluence of the Bain
and Waring streams; the terminus of a branch line of the Great
Northern railway, 130 m. N. from London. Pop. of urban
district (1901) 4038. The church of St Mary is principally
Decorated and Perpendicular, with some Early English remains
and an embattled western tower. Queen Elizabeth’s grammar
school was founded in 1562. Other buildings are an exchange,
a court-house and a dispensary founded in 1789. The prosperity
of the town is chiefly dependent on agriculture and its well-known
horse fairs. Brewing and malting are carried on, and there is
some trade in coal and iron.
Remains have been found here which may indicate the existence of a Roman village. The manor of Horncastle (Hornecastre) belonged to Queen Edith in Saxon times and was royal demesne in 1086 and the head of a large soke. In the reign of Stephen it apparently belonged to Alice de Cundi, a partisan of the empress Maud, and passing to the crown on her death it was granted by Henry III. to Gerbald de Escald, from whom it descended to Ralph de Rhodes, who sold it to Walter Mauclerc, bishop of Carlisle in 1230. The see of Carlisle retained it till the reign of Edward VI. when it was granted to Edward, Lord Clinton, but was recovered in the following reign. In 1230 Henry III. directed the men of Horncastle to render a reasonable aid to the bishop, who obtained the right to try felons, hold a court leet and have free warren. An inquisition of 1275 shows that the bishop had then, besides the return of writs, the assize of bread and ale and waifs and strays in the soke. Horncastle was a centre of the Lincolnshire rebellion of 1536. Royalist troops occupied the town in 1643, and were pursued through its streets after the battle fought at Winceby. It was never a municipal or parliamentary borough, but during the middle ages it was frequently the residence of the bishops of Carlisle. Its prosperity has always depended largely on its fairs, the great horse fair described by George Borrow in Romany Rye being granted to the bishop in 1230 for the octave of St Lawrence, together with the fair on the feast of St Barnabas. The three other fairs are apparently of later date.
See George Weir, Historical and Descriptive Sketches of the Town and Soke of Horncastle in the County of Lincoln and of Several Places adjacent (London, 1820).
HORN DANCE, a medieval dance, still celebrated during the
September “wakes” at Abbots Bromley, a village on the borders
of Needwood Forest, Staffordshire. Six or seven men, each
wearing a deer’s skull with antlers, dance through the streets,
pursued by a comrade who bestrides a mimic horse, and whips
the dancers to keep them on the move. The horn-dance usually
takes place on the Monday after Wakes Sunday, which is the
Sunday next after the 4th of September. Originally the dance
took place on a Sunday.
See Strand Magazine for November 1896; also Folk-lore, vol. vii. (1896), p. 381.
HORNE, GEORGE (1730–1792), English divine, was born on
the 1st of November 1730, at Otham near Maidstone, and
received his education at Maidstone school and University
College, Oxford. In 1749 he became a fellow of Magdalen,
of which college he was elected president in 1768. As a preacher
he early attained great popularity, and was, albeit unjustly,
accused of Methodism. His reputation was helped by several
clever if somewhat wrong-headed publications, including a
satirical pamphlet entitled The Theology and Philosophy of
Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis (1751), a defence of the Hutchinsonians
in A Fair, Candid and Impartial State of the Case
between Sir Isaac Newton and Mr Hutchinson (1753), and critiques
upon William Law (1758) and Benjamin Kennicott (1760).
In 1771 he published his well-known Commentary on the Psalms,
