The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 238

HEIR PRESUMPTIVE, one whose right of succession is sure if not barred by the birth of one nearer.

HEJAZ, EL, the holy land of the Moslems, a district of Arabia Felix, and so called by containing the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina.

HEJIRA or HEJRA (Arabic, "going away"), a word applied to Mahomet's flight from Mecca to Medina in A.D. 622; Calif Omar, 17 years later, adopted this date as the starting-point of a new Mohammedan calendar.

HEL or HELA, in Scandinavian mythology an inexorable divinity, the death-G.o.ddess who presides over the icy realm of the dead; her maw was insatiable and her heart pitiless.

HELDENBUCH, a collection of German heroic poems relating heroic deeds and events connected with the inroads of the barbarians on the empire.

HELDER, THE (25), a strongly fortified and flouris.h.i.+ng seaport in North Holland, on the Marsdiep, at the N. end of the North Holland Ca.n.a.l, 51 m. NW. of Amsterdam; is an important naval centre, and has an excellent harbour.

HELEN, the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta; the most beautiful of women, who was carried off to Troy by Paris, to revenge whose abduction the princes of Greece, who had pledged themselves to protect her, made war on Troy, a war which lasted ten years.

HELENA, ST., the mother of Constantine the Great; is said to have visited Jerusalem and discovered the Holy Sepulchre and the cross on which Christ was crucified; _d_. 328, at the age of 80. Festival, Aug.

18. There are several other saints of the same name.

HELENSBURGH (8), a pleasantly situated watering-place in Dumbarton, on the Firth of Clyde, at the entrance of the Gareloch, 4 m. N. of Greenock.

HELENUS, a son of Priam and Hecuba, celebrated for his prophetic foresight; is said to have deserted his countrymen and joined the Greeks.

HELIAND, an old Saxon poem of the 9th century, of great philological value, but of no great literary merit; deals with the life and work of Christ; of the two extant MSS. one is in the British Museum.

HELICON, a mountain in Boeotia, Greece, sacred to Apollo and the Muses; famous for the fountains on its slopes dedicated to the latter.

HELIGOLAND (2, but rising to 14 in summer), an islet of the North Sea, 35 m. from the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser; German since 1890; consists of the _Oberland_, a plateau, with some 400 houses, and the _Unterland_ on the sh.o.r.e, 206 ft. beneath, with a group of 70 dwellings.

In the summer it is crowded with visitors, bathing being the chief attraction; fis.h.i.+ng is the staple industry of the native Frisians.

HELIODORUS, the most noted and earliest of the Greek romancists, born at Emesa, Syria; flourished in the second half of the 3rd century A.D.; his romance "aethiopica" is a love tale of great beauty and told with nave simplicity; has had considerable influence over subsequent romance writers, e. g. Ta.s.so.

HELIOGA'BALUS, a Roman emperor; invested, while yet a youth, with the Imperial purple by the army in 218; ruled with a show of moderation at first, but soon gave way to every manner of excess; was after four years put to death by the Praetorian Guard, and his body thrown into the Tiber.

HELIOGRAPHY, a method of signalling from distant points by means of the sun's rays flashed from mirrors; messages can in this manner be transmitted a distance of 190 m.; it has been found of great practical value in military operations.

HELIOPOLIS (i. e. City of the Sun), in Egyptian _On_, one of the oldest and most sacred cities of Egypt; was situated about 10 m. N. of Cairo, on the eastmost branch of the Nile; it was the centre of Egyptian learning; Solon and Plato are said to have studied there, and Potiphar was one of its chief priests; the famous obelisk PHARAOH'S NEEDLE stands near; and CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE, now on the Thames Embankment, was originally of this city. Also the name of Baalbec.

HELIOS, the G.o.d of the sun, mistakenly identified with Apollo, but of an older dynasty, was the brother of SELENE (q. v.) and EOS (q. v.); a G.o.d of the brood of the t.i.tANS (q. v.), and the source of light to both G.o.ds and men; he rises from the bosom of OKEANOS (q. v.) in the morning, and loses himself in his dark abyss every evening.

HELIOTROPE or BLOODSTONE, a variety of quartz (chalcedony or jasper) of a deep green colour, with bright red spots. The finest specimens, which come from South Asia, are of fairly translucent chalcedony; those of jasper are opaque; they are used as seals, ring-stones, &c.

h.e.l.l FIRE, the infinite terror to a true man, the infinite misery which he never fails to realise must befall him if he come short in his loyalty to truth and duty.

h.e.l.l GATE or HURL GATE, a narrow pa.s.s in the East River, between the city of New York and Long Island; at one time its hidden shoals and swift narrow current were dangerous to s.h.i.+ps, but extensive blasting operations, completed in 1885, have greatly widened and cleared the pa.s.s.

h.e.l.lAS, the name of the abode of the ancient Greeks, and of greater extent than Greece proper.

h.e.l.lE, a maiden who, with her brother Phrixus, fled on the golden-fleeced ram to escape from the cruelty of her step-dame Ino, and fell into the strait called the h.e.l.lespont after her, in which she was drowned. See GOLDEN FLEECE.

h.e.l.lENISTS, originally Jews who would fain have seen Jewish thought and life more or less transformed in spirit as well as fas.h.i.+on after a Greek pattern; eventually those who by contact with Greek civilisation became Grecianised, and were open to learn as much from the civilisation of the Greeks as was consistent with the maintenance in their integrity of the principles of their own religion.

h.e.l.lER, STEPHEN, a distinguished pianist and composer, born at Pesth; made his _debut_ at nine, and by 17 had won a reputation throughout the great cities of Europe; in 1838 he settled in Paris, and gave himself to teaching and composition; he ranks beside Chopin as a master of technique; his works are almost entirely pianoforte pieces (1814-1888).

HELMHOLTZ, HERMANN VON, an eminent German scientist, born at Potsdam, Brandenburg; was first an army doctor, and in 1849 became professor of Physiology in Konigsberg, and subsequently in Bonn and Heidelberg; in 1871 he became professor of Physics in Berlin; was enn.o.bled, and in 1887 nominated head of the Charlottenburg Inst.i.tute; to physiology he made contributions of great value on the various sense-organs, and to physics on the conservation of energy; but his most original work was done in connection with acoustics in its relation to optics; his published works include "Theory of Sound Sensations'" and "Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music"

(1821-1894).

HELMONT, JEAN BAPTIST VAN, a celebrated German chemist, the father of chemistry, born at Brussels; his early years were divided between the study of medicine and the practice of a religious mysticism; the works of Paracelsus stimulated his interest in chemistry and physics, and having married a n.o.ble Brabant lady, he settled down on the family estate near Vilvorde, where he devoted himself to scientific research; mixed up a good deal of mysticism and alchemy with his scientific discoveries, and made a special study of gases; he was the first to prove the indestructibility of matter in chemical changes by utilising the balance in a.n.a.lysis; he invented the word gas, first used the melting-point of ice and the boiling-point of water as limits of a thermometric scale, and his physiological speculations led him to regard the stomach as the seat of the soul! (1577-1644).

HELOSE, niece of Canon Fulbert, born at Paris; celebrated for her amour with ABELARD (q. v.); became prioress of the convent of Argenteuil and abbess of the Paraclete, where she founded a new convent and lived a pious life (1101-1164).

HELOSE, NOUVELLE, a romance by Rousseau.

HELOTS, slaves who formed the lowest grade of the population of Sparta, were descendants of the original inhabitants of Laconia, or prisoners of war; they were slaves belonging to the State, from the State alone could they receive manumission; they were employed as tillers of the ground, waited at meals, filled various menial offices for private individuals, and were treated with the utmost harshness; were whipped annually to remind them of their servile position; slaughtered when their numbers increased too much, and were forced to exhibit themselves under intoxication as a warning to the Spartan youth.

HELPS, SIR ARTHUR, essayist and historian, born in Surrey; for a time held official posts in connection with the government of the day, and finally that of Clerk to the Privy Council, in which capacity he was brought into connection with the Queen, which led to his being appointed editor of the "Princ.i.p.al Speeches and Addresses of the late Prince Consort" and Her Majesty's "Leaves from a Journal of our Life in the Highlands"; he is the author of "Friends in Council," published one series in 1847 and a second in 1859, which dealt with a variety of subjects, and was, along with "Companions of my Solitude," very popular; he did also plays and romances as well as historical sketches (1817-1875).

HELSINGFORS (77), a strongly fortified seaport and capital of Finland, is in a commanding position placed on a rocky peninsula in the Gulf of Finland, 191 m. W. of St. Petersburg; the numerous islands and islets at the entrance of the harbour are strongly fortified; the town is handsomely laid out, and has a flouris.h.i.+ng university (student roll, 1703), and does a good Baltic trade.