Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/555

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HAU—HAU
523

time chiefly consisted of motets, masses, cantatas, and songs. lis opera Muthilde was performed at Cassel with great success. In 1842 Hauptmann obtained the position of cantor at the Thomas-school of Leipsic (long previously occupied by the great Johann Sebastian Bach) together with that of professor at the conservatoire, and it was in this capacity that his unique gift as a teacher developed itself and was acknowledged by a crowd of enthusiastic and more or Jess distinguished pupils. He died on January 3, 1868, and the universal regret felt at his death at Leipsic is said to have been all but equal to that caused by the loss of his friend Mendelssohn many years before, Hauptmann’s compositions are marked by symmetry ani perfection of workmanship rather than by

spontaneous invention.


Amongst his vocal compositions—by far the most importent portion of his work—may be mentioned two masses, choral songs for mixed voices (Op. 32, 47), and numerous part songs. The re- sults of his s-ientific rescarch were embodied in his book Die Natur der IIarmonik und Mctrik (1858), a standard work of its kind, in which a philosophic explanation of the forms of music is attempted.

HAURAN. See Bashan.

HAUSER, Kaspar, a German youth whose life was remarkable from the circumstances of apparently inexplic- abie mystery in which it was involved. He appeared on May 20, 1828, in the streets of Nuremberg, dressed in the 2irb of a peasant, aul with such a helpless and bewildered air that he attracted the attention of the passers-by. In his possession was found a letter purporting to be written by a poor labourer, stating that the boy was given into his custody on the 7th October 1812, and that according to agreement he had instructed him in reading, writing, and the Christian religion, but that up to the time fixed for relinquishing his custody he had kept him in close confine- ment. Along with this letter was enclosed another pur- porting to be written by the boy’s mother, stating that he was bora on the 30th April 1812, that his name was Kaspi, and that his father, formerly a cavalry officer in the 6th regiment at Nuremberg, was dead. The appear- ance, bering, and professions of the youth corresponded closcly with these credentials. He showed a repugnance to all nourishment except bread and water, was seemingly ignorant of outward objects, wrote his name as Kaspar Hauser, an said that he wished to be a cavalry officer like his father. For some tims he was detained in prison at Nuremberg as a vagrant, but on July 18, 1828, he was delivered over to the care of Professor Daumer, who under- took to be his guardian and to take the charge of his educa- tion. On October 17, 1829, lh was found to have received a wound in the forchead, which according to his own state- ment had been inflicted on him by a man with a blackened face. Having on this account been removed to the house of a magistrate and placed under close surveillance, he was visited by Earl Stanhope, who became so interested in his history that he sent him to Ansbach to be educated. After this he beeime clerk in the office of Feuerbach, presilent of the court of appeal, and his strange history was almost forgotten by the public when the interest in it was suddenly revivel by his death on the 14th December 1833 from a deep wound on his left breast. He affirmed that the wound was inflicted by a stranger, but many believed it to be the work of his own hand, and that he did not intend it to be fatal, but only so severe as to give a sufficient colouring of truth to his story.


In 1830 a pamphlet was published at Berlin, entitled Kaspar Heuser nicht unwahrscheinlich cin Betriger; but the truthfulness of his statements was defended by Daumer, who published Afittheil- ungen uber Kaspar Hauser (Nuremberg, 1832), and Einthiillungen aber Kaspar Hauser (Frankfort, 1859) ; as well as Kaspar Hauser, sein Wesen, seine Unschuld, &e. (Regensburg, 1878), in answer to Meyer's Authentische Mittheilungen iiber Kaspar Hauser (Ansbach, 1872). Feuerbach awakened considerable psychological interest in the case by his pamphlet Kaspar Hauser, Beispiel eines Verbrechens am Scelenleben (Ansbach, 1832), and Earl Stanhope also took part in the discussion by publishing Afaterialien zur Geschichte K. Hausers (Heidelberg, 1836). The theory of Daumer and Feuer- bach was that the youth was the son of the grand-duke Charles of Baden, and that he had been kidnapped by the countess of Hoch- berg in order to secure the succession to the children of the grand- duke Charles Frederick; but this thcory was set aside in 1875 by the publication in the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung of the official record of the baptism, post-mortem examination, and burial of the heir supposed to have been kidnapped. See Kaspar Hauser und sein badisches Prinzenthum (Heidelberg, 1876).

HAÜY, René Just (1743–1822), an eminent French

mineralogist, commonly styled the Abbé Haiiy, from being an honorary canon of Notre Dame, was born at St Just, in the department of Oise, February 28, 1743. His parents were in a humble rank of life, and were only enabled by the kindness of friends to educate theirson. He was sent to Paris to the college of Navarre, and afterwards to that of Lemoine, where he finished his course amid incredible privations and difficulties. He escaped from these when, in 1764, he was himself appointed one of the teachers in the first of the above-named colleges. He began to devote his leisure hours to the study of botany; but an accident directed his attention to another field in natural history. Happening to let fall a beautiful specimen of calcareous spar belonging to a friend, he discovered, by examining the fragments, the geometrical law of crystallization. By experimenting on a hexahedral crystal of this substance, he found that it could be so dissected, by dividing it by planes parallel to certain edges, as to exhibit a rhombo- hedral nucleus, and, by extending his experiments, he farther showed that the same result could be obtained from mechanical division of every crystal of the same species. This Jed him to the theory that crystals are composed of what he called “integrant molecules,” which he held had each the same shape as the respective nuclei got at by mechanical division. To obtain the different crystalline forms these molecules were supposed to be built up in layers round the nucleus, each layer diminishing regularly in the number of rows of molecules, and the rows at the same time dim:inish- ing in the number of molecules according to the nature of the crystal. A full account of his mathematical theory of this subject is given by Haiiy in his 7raité de Minéralogie (sec Crystallography). Daubenton and Laplace immedi- ately recognized the scientific value of the discovery, which, when communicated to the Academy, secured for its author a place in that society. Besides the important service which he rendered to crystallography, Haiiy also greatly increased our knowledge of pyro-clectricity. He demon- strated by experiment in the case of tourmaline that the positive and negative charges of electricity at the re- spective ends of the crystal diminish rapidly as we approach the middle point, where they disappear. He showed also that each particle of a broken pyro-electric crystal itself exhibits polarity ; and he was likewise the first to observe that, in all minerals, the pyro-electric state has an important connexion with the want of symmetry of the crystals, In tourmaline, for instance, he found the vitreous charge always at the summit with six, and the resinous at the summit with three faces (see Electricity). When the Revolution broke out, Hatiy was thrown into prison, and his life was even ia danger, when he was saved by the intercession of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Under Napoleon he becime professor of mineralogy at the museum of natural lustory. He also obtained other scientific preferment, of which he was deprived by the feeble Government of the Restoration, though his royalism had been a serious bar to his promotion under the empire. His latter days were consequently clouded by the poverty which had threatened to blight his early career. But the courage and high moral

qualities which had helped him forward in his youth did