HAL, a town of Belgium, province of South Brabant, is situated on the Senne and the Charleroi canal, 9 miles S.S.W. of Brussels. It has a beautiful Gothic church of the 14th century, very much resorted to by pilgrims on account of a famous miracle-working image of the Virgin. The church has been enriched by a large number of votive gifts, and contains a beautifully carved high altar of white marble. The principal industries are tanning, soap-boiling, the manufacture of paper, and salt-refining. The population in 1869 was 6406.

HALA, or Halla (formerly known as Murtizâbâd), a town in Hyderabad district, Sind, India, situated on the Aliganj canal and immediately connected with the Trunk Road at two points, 25° 48' 30'' N. lat., 68° 27' 30" E. long. It was long famous for its glazed pottery and tiles, made from a fine clay obtained from the Indus, mixed with flints. The stisis, or trouser-cloths, for which the town is also celebrated, are manufactured to the value of .£750 yearly. Hâla was built about 1800 in consequence of old Hâla, 2 miles distant, being threatened with encroachment by the Indus. Among the antiquities round which the new town has grown up are the tomb and mosque of a pir or saint, who died in the 16th century, and in whose honour a fair, largely attended by Mahometans from all parts of the province, is held twice a year. The local trade, chiefly of grain, piece goods, ghi, cotton, and sugar, is valued approximately at £3900; the transit trade (in the same articles) at about £700. Population (1872), 4096, including 2646 Mahometans and 1234 Hindus.

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° 3Γ E. long. The most noteworthy buildings are the Calvinist and Roman Catholic churches, and the Jewish synagogue. IIalas 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. In the spring of 1879 the town was much injured by floods. 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 Eode, 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 mediaeval wood-architecture is still preserved. About a mile and a half distant from Halberstadt are the Spiegel'sche Berge, 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 Romanesque style, dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, and restored in 1848, containing noteworthy wall paintings and figures in relief. Among the other old buildings may be mentioned the town-house, dating from the 14th century and restored in the 17th century; the town hall orypt, dating from the 15th 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 ...

HALBERT, Halbard (French, Haleharde), 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 Halbbαrthe. “half battle-axe.” The earliest halberts represented in the miniatures of the 14th century, or preserved in the collections of Switzerland and Germany, have the axe-blade often prolonged 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 hallebardes to be made at Angers and other places in 1475. The Swiss had a mixed armament of pikes and 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 ark 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 magistrates on public occasions in some of the burghs of Scotland. The Lochaber axe may be called a species of halbert furnished 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 history 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 afterwards 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 Indiaman 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 Jong and unexpected detention of his ship, begun a careful study of the Bible, he came under deep religious impressions and, somewhat 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 he 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 repeated missionary journeys, preaching wherever he could obtain hearers, and generally in the open air. Not originally disloyal to the Church of Scotland, he w as gradually driven by the hostility of the Assembly and the exigencies of his position into a separatistic attitude; in 1799 he was ordained on the principles of Independency as pastor ...

HALE, Sir Matthew (1609-1676), lord chief-justice of England, was born on November 1, 1609, at Alderley in Gloucestershire, where his father, a retired barrister, had a small estate. His paternal grandfather was a rich clothier of Wotton-under-Edge; on his mother’s side he was connected with the noble family of the Poyntzes of Acton. Both his parents having died before he was five years old, the future chief-justice was placed by his guardian under the care of Mr Staunton, vicar of Wotton-under-Edge, through whose influence he became strongly imbued with puritanical principles. There he remained till he attained his sixteenth year, when he entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford, under the tuition of the puritanical but learned Obadiah Sedgwick. At Oxford Hale devoted himself for several terms to the study of Aristotle and Calvin with a view to holy orders, and manifested that steadiness and application which in after years secured his reputation and advancement. But suddenly there came a change. The diligent student, at first attracted by a company of strolling players, threw aside his studies, and plunged carelessly into gay society. He soon decided to change his profession; and resolved to trail a pike as a soldier under the prince of Orange in the Low Countries. Before going abroad, however, Hale found himself obliged to proceed to London in order to give instructions for his defence in a legal action which threatened to deprive him of his patrimony. His leading counsel was the celebrated Serjeant Glanville, who, perceiving in the acuteness and sagacity of his youthful client a peculiar fitness for the legal profession, succeeded, with much difficulty, in inducing him to renounce his military for a legal career, and on the 8th November 1629 Hale became a member of the ...

HALES, Stephen (1677-1761), physiologist and inventor, was born at Beckesbourn in Kent, on the 7th September 1677. He was the sixth son of Thomas Hales, whose father, Sir Robert Hales, was created baronet by Charles II. in 1670. Of his early education little is known, but in June 1696 he was entered as a pensioner of Bene’t (now Corpus Christi) College, Cambridge, with the view of taking holy orders. On 16th April 1702 he was elected and in February 1703 admitted to a fellowship. He received the degree of master of arts in 1703, and of bachelor of divinity in 1711. While at college one of his most intimate friends was William Stukeley, with whom he studied anatomy, chemistry, &c. In 1710 Hales was presented to the perpetual curacy of Teddington in Middlesex, where he remained all his life, notwithstanding that he was subsequently appointed rector of Porlock in Somerset, and later of Farringdon in Hampshire. In March 1717 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society, to whose Transactions he contributed many valuable papers. In 1732 he was named one of a committee for establishing a colony in Georgia, and the next year he received the degree of doctor of divinity. He was appointed almoner to the princess-dowager of Wales in 1750. On the death of Sir Hans Sloane in 1753, Hales was chosen foreign associate of the French Academy of Sciences. He died at Teddington, January 4, 1761....