HALAS, a corporate town of Hungary, in the megye or county of Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kis-Kun, is situated about 76 miles S.S.E. from Budapest, in 46 24 N. lat. and 19 31 E. long. The most noteworthy buildings are the Calvinist and Roman Catholic churches, and the Jewish synagogue. Halas contains also a Protestant gymnasium, various literary institutions, and a local tribunal. The inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood are mostly engaged in cattle- breeding and agricultural pursuits. Not far from Halas is a lake of the same name, containing an island which was once fortified, and served as a place of refuge to the inhabitants from the incursions of the Turks. Prior to ! 1876 Halas belonged to the old district of Little Cumania. j In the spring of 1879 the town was much injured by floods. I The population in 1870 amounted to 13,127, of whom the greater number were Magyars.
HALBERSTADT, the chief town of a circle in the government district of Magdeburg, Prussian province of Saxony, is situated in a beautiful and fertile country on the Holzemme, a tributary of the Bode, and at the junction point of four railways, 29 miles S.W. of Magdeburg. It has an antique appearance, and in a large number of the buildings the medheval wood-architecture is still preserved. About a mile and a half distant from Halberstadt are the /Spiegtl sche Serge, from which there is obtained a fine view of the surrounding country. The town possesses a cathedral in the Pointed style, dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, and restored between 1850 and 1871, containing a rich Gothic screen of the date of 1510, other interesting antiquities, beautiful glass windows, and several valuable paintings. Of the remaining churches the only one of special interest is the Liebfrauenkirche, a basilica in the later Rr>manesque style, dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, and restored in 1848, containing noteworthy wall paintings and figures in relief. Among the other old build ings may be mentioned the town-house, dating from the 14th century and restored in the 17th century; the town hall cry pt, dating from the loth century; and the Petershof, formerly the residence of the bishop, but now used as a custom house. The principal educational establishments are the gymnasium the new buildings for which were opened in 1875 with a library of 30,000 volumes; the real-school of the first order ; the normal school, connected with which there is a deaf and dumb institute ; and the provincial trade school. Near the cathedral is a building called the temple of friendship which contains a collection of the portraits of the friends of the poet Gleim, who was a resident in the town, and whose house was the resort of a large circle of poets and scholars. In the same neigh bourhood a beautiful monument in the Early Pointed style has been elected to the memory of those who fell in the late Franco-German war. The principal manufactures of the town are linen and woollen cloth, leather, paper, gloves, wadding, cigars, soap, oil, sugar, chemical products, brandy, and liqueurs. The population in 1875 was 27,757.
Halberstadt owes its origin to the foundation in the 9th century of the bishopric of which it became the seat. It received town rights from Bishop Arnulf in 998. It was burnt down in 1113 by the emperor Henry V., and in 1179 by Henry the Lion. At the peace of Westphalia in 1648 the bishopric was united as a princi pality to Brandenburg. At the Tilsit peace in 1807 it was joined to Westphalia, but in 181 3 it again came into the possession of Prussia.
See Lucanus, Der Dom zu Halberstadt, 1837, Wegwciscr durcli Halberstadt, 2d edition 1866, and Die Liebfrauenkirche zu Halber stadt, 1872 ; Scheffer, Inschriftcn und Legcndcn Halbcrstadtischcr Bautcn, 1864 ; Schmidt, Urkundcnbuch der Stadt Halberstadt, Halle, 1878.
HALBERT, Halbard (French, Ifalebarde), a weapon consisting of an axe-blade balanced by a pick and having an elongated pike-head at the end of the staff, which was usually about 5 or 6 feet in length. Various derivations have been suggested for the term, but M. Demmin seems to have hit the right one in the German Halb-barlhe* " half battle-axe." The earliest halberts represented in the minia tures of the 14th century, or preserved in the collections of Switzerland and Germany, have the axe-blade often pro longed beyond the end of the staff, and thus resemble the English bill of the 15th century. Fauchet, in his Origines des Dignitez, printed in 1600, states that Louis XI. of France ordered certain new weapons of war called halle- bardes to be made at Angers and other places in 1475. The Swiss had a mixed armament of pikes arid halbards at the battle of Morat in 1476. We find the same mixture of billmen and halbardiers in the English army at the same period. In the 15th and 16th centuries the halbards became larger, and the blades were formed in many varieties of shape, often engraved, inlaid, or pierced in open work, and exquisitely finished as works of art This weapon was in use in England from the reign of Henry VII. to the reign of George III., when it was still carried by sergeants in the guards and other infantry regiments. It is still retained as the symbol of authority borne before the magis trates on public occasions in some of the burghs of Scotland. The Lochaber axe may be called a species of halbert fur nished with a hook on the end of the staff at the back of the blade.
HALDANE, James Alexander (1768–1851), whose disinterested labours in the cause of religion have secured for his name an honourable place in the ecclesiastical his tory of Scotland, was the younger son of Captain James Haldane of Gleneagles, Perthshire, and was born at Dundee on July 14, 1768. Educated first at Dundee and after wards at the High School and university of Edinburgh, he shortly after the completion of his sixteenth year entered the service for which he had been from his childhood destined, by joining the "Duke of Montrose" East India- man as a midshipman. After four voyages to India he in the summer of 1793 was nominated to the command of the "Melville Castle"; but having, during a long and unex pected detention of his ship, begun a careful study of the Bible, he came under deep religious impressions and, some what abruptly resolving to quit the naval profession, returned to Scotland before his ship had sailed. About the year 1796 he became acquainted with the celebrated evangelical divine, Simeon of Cambridge, in whose society he made through Scotland more than one tour, in the course of which he endeavoured by tract-distribution and other means to awaken others to somewhat of that interest in religious subjects which he himself so strongly felt. In May 1797 hs preached, at Gilmerton near Edinburgh, his first sermon with a success which was considered to be very encouraging ; and during the next few years he made re peated missionary journeys, preaching wherever he could obtain hearers, and generally in the open air. Not originally disloyal to the Church of Scotland, he was gradu ally driven by the hostility of the Assembly and the exigencies of his position into a scparatistic attitude ; in 1799 he was ordained on the principles of Independency as pastor of a large congregation in Edinburgh, to which he continued gratuitously to minister for more than fifty years ; and in 1808 he made public avowal of his conversion to Baptist views. As advancing years compelled him to with draw from the more exhausting labours of itineracy and open-air preaching, he sought more and more to influence the discussion of current religious and theological questions by means of the press, and by numerous pamphlets took part in the controversies connected with the names of Edward Irving, Erskine of Linlathen, Campbell of Row, and others. His latest works were a treatise on the Doc trine of the Atonement (1845) and an Exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians (1848). He died on the 8th of February 1851.
