OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Homage

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​HOMAGE (from homo, through the Low Lat. hominaticum, which occurs in a document of 1035), one of the ceremonies used in the granting of a fief, and indicating the submission of a vassal to his lord. It could be received only by the suzerain in person. With head uncovered the vassal humbly requested to be allowed to enter into the feudal relation; he then laid aside his sword and spurs, ungirt his belt, and kneeling before his lord, and holding his hands extended and joined between the hands of his lord, uttered words to this effect: “I become your man from this day forth, of life and limb, and will hold faith to you for the lands I claim to hold of you.” The oath of fealty, which could be received by proxy, followed the act of homage; then came the ceremony of investiture, either directly on the ground or by the delivery of a turf, a handful of earth, a stone, or some other symbolical object. Homage was done not only by the vassal to whom feudal lands were first granted but by every one in turn by whom they were inherited, since they were not granted absolutely but only on condition of military and other service. An infant might do homage, but he did not thus enter into full possession of his lands. The ceremony was of a preliminary nature, securing that the fief would not be alienated; but the vassal had to take the oath of fealty, and to be formally invested, when he reached his majority. The obligations involved in the act of homage were more general than those associated with the oath of fealty, but they provided a strong moral sanction for more specific engagements. They essentially resembled the obligations undertaken towards a Teutonic chief by the members of his “comitatus” or “gefolge,” one of the institutions from which feudalism directly sprang. Besides homagium ligeum, there was a kind of homage which imposed no feudal duty; this was homagium per paragium, such as the dukes of Normandy rendered to the kings of France, and as the dukes of Normandy received from the dukes of Brittany. The act of liege homage to a particular lord did not interfere with the vassal’s allegiance as a subject to his sovereign, or with his duty to any other suzerain of whom he might hold lands.
The word is also used of the body of tenants attending a manorial court, or of the court in a court baron (consisting of the tenants that do homage and make inquiries and presentments, termed a homage jury).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Homberg, Wilhelm

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​HOMBERG, WILHELM (1652–1715), Dutch natural philosopher, was the son of an officer of the Dutch East India Company, and was born at Batavia (Java) on the 8th of January 1652. Coming to Europe with his family in 1670, he studied law at Jena and Leipzig, and in 1674 became an advocate at Magdeburg. In that town he made the acquaintance of Otto von Guericke, and under his influence determined to devote himself to natural science. He, therefore, travelled in various parts of Europe for study, and after graduating in medicine at Wittenberg, settled in Paris in 1682. From 1685 to 1690 he practised as a physician at Rome; then returning to Paris in 1691, he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences and appointed director of ​its chemical laboratory. Subsequently he became teacher of physics and chemistry (1702), and private physician (1705) to the duke of Orleans. His death occurred at Paris on the 24th of September 1715. Homberg was not free from alchemistical tendencies, but he made many solid contributions to chemical and physical knowledge, recording observations on the preparation of Kunkel’s phosphorus, on the green colour produced in flames by copper, on the crystallization of common salt, on the salts of plants, on the saturation of bases by acids, on the freezing of water and its evaporation in vacuo, &c. Much of his work was published in the Recueil de l’Académie des Sciences from 1692 to 1714. The Sal Sedativum Hombergi is boracic acid, which he discovered in 1702, and “Homberg’s phosphorus” is prepared by fusing sal-ammoniac with quick lime.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Homel

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​HOMEL, or Gomel, a town of Russia, in the government of Mogilev, and 132 m. by rail S.S.E. of the town of Mogilev, on the Sozh, a tributary of the Dnieper. Pop. (1900) 45,081, nearly half of whom are Jews. It is an important junction of the railways from Vilna to Odessa and from Orel to Poland, and is in steamer communication with Kiev and Mogilev. In front of Prince Paskevich’s castle stands an equestrian statue of the Polish general Joseph Poniatowski, and in the cathedral is the tomb of the chancellor Nikolai Petrovich Rumantsev, by Canova. The town carries on a brisk trade in hops, corn and timber; there are also paper-pulp mills and oil factories. Homel was founded in the 12th century, and after changing hands several times between Poles and Russians was annexed to Russia in 1772. In 1648 it suffered at the hands of the Cossack chieftain Bogdan Chmielnicki.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Home, Daniel Dunglas

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​HOME, DANIEL DUNGLAS (1833–1886), Scottish spiritualist, was born near Edinburgh on the 20th of March 1833, his father being said to be a natural son of the 10th earl of Home, and his mother a member of a family credited with second sight. He went with his mother to America, and on her death was adopted by an aunt. In the United States he came out as a spiritualistic medium, though, it should be noted, he never sought to make money out of his exhibitions. In 1855 he came to England and gave numerous séances, which were attended by many well-known people. Robert Browning, the poet, went to one of these, but without altering his contempt for spiritualism, and he subsequently gave his impression of Home in the unflattering poem of “Sludge the Medium” (1864); Home, nevertheless, had many disciples, and gave séances at several European courts. He became a Roman Catholic, but was expelled from Rome as a sorcerer. In 1866 Mrs Lyon, a wealthy widow, adopted him as her son, and settled £60,000 upon him. Repenting, however, of her action, she brought a suit for the return of her money, ​on the ground that it had been obtained by “spiritual” influence. It was held that the burden of establishing the validity of the gift lay on Home, and as he failed to do so the case was decided against him. He continued, however, to give séances, mostly on the Continent, and in 1871 appeared before the tsar of Russia and two Russian scientists, who attested the phenomena evoked. Returning to England he submitted to a series of experiments designed to test his pretensions before Professor (subsequently Sir William) Crookes, which the latter declared to be thoroughly genuine; and Professor von Boutlerow, of the Russian Academy of Science, after witnessing a similar series of experiments, expressed the same opinion. Home published two volumes of Incidents of my Life and Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism. He married successively two well-connected Russian ladies. He died at Auteuil, France, on the 21st of June 1886.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Home Office

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​HOME OFFICE, a principal government department in the United Kingdom, the creation of which dates from 1782, when the conduct of foreign affairs, which had previously been divided between the northern and southern secretaries, was handed over to the northern department (see Foreign Office). The home department retained control of Irish and colonial affairs, and of war business until 1794, when an additional secretary of state was re-appointed. In 1801 the colonial business was transferred from the home department, which now attends only to domestic affairs. The head of the department, the principal secretary of state for home affairs, or home secretary, is a member of the government for the time being, and of the cabinet, receiving a salary of £5000 a year. He is the proper medium of communication between the sovereign and the subject, and receives petitions addressed to the crown. He is responsible for the maintenance of the king’s peace and attends to the administration of criminal justice, police and prisons, and through him the sovereign exercises his prerogative of mercy. Within his department is the supervision of lunatic asylums, reformatories and industrial schools, and it is his duty to see after the internal well-being of the country, to enforce the rules made for the health or safety of the community generally, and especially of those classes employed in special trades or dangerous occupations. He is assisted by a permanent under-secretary, a parliamentary secretary and several assistant under-secretaries.
See Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution. (1907).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Henty, George Alfred

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​HENTY, GEORGE ALFRED (1832–1902), English war-correspondent and author, was born at Trumpington, near Cambridge, in December 1832, and educated at Westminster School and Caius College, Cambridge. He served in the Crimea in the Purveyor’s department, and after the peace filled various posts in the department in England and Ireland, but he found the routine little to his taste, and drifted into journalism for the London Standard. He volunteered as Special Correspondent for the Austro-Italian War of 1866, accompanied Garibaldi in his Tirolese Campaign, followed Lord Napier through the mountain gorges to Magdala, and Lord Wolseley across bush and swamp to Kumassi. Next he reported the Franco-German War, starved in Paris through the siege of the Commune, and then turned south to rough it in the Pyrenees during the Carlist insurrection. He was in Asiatic Russia at the time of the Khiva expedition, and later saw the desperate hand-to-hand fighting of the Turks in the Servian War. He found his real vocation in middle life. Invited to edit a magazine for boys called the Union Jack, he became the mainstay of the new periodical, to which he contributed several serials in succession. The stories pleased their public, and had ever increasing circulation in book form, until Henty became a name to conjure with in juvenile circles. Altogether he wrote about eighty of these books. Henty was an enthusiastic yachtsman, having spent at least six months afloat each year, and he died on board his yacht in Weymouth Harbour on the 16th of November 1902.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Henschel, George

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​HENSCHEL, GEORGE [Isidor Georg] (1850– ), English musician (naturalized 1890), of German family, was born at Breslau, and educated as a pianist, making his first public appearance in Berlin in 1862. He subsequently, however, took up singing, having developed a fine baritone voice; and in 1868 he sang the part of Hans Sachs in Meistersinger at Munich. In 1877 he began a successful career in England, singing at the principal concerts; and in 1881 he married the American soprano, Lilian Bailey (d. 1901), who was associated with him in a number of vocal recitals. He was also prominent as a conductor, starting the London symphony concerts in 1886, and both in England and America (where he was the first conductor of the Boston symphony concerts, 1881) he took a leading part in advancing his art. He composed a number of instrumental works, a fine Stabat Mater (Birmingham festival, 1894), &c., and an opera, Nubia (Dresden, 1899).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Henselt, Adolf von

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​HENSELT, ADOLF VON (1814–1889), German composer, was born at Schwabach, in Bavaria, on the 12th of May 1814. At three years old he began to learn the violin, and at five the pianoforte under Frau v. Fladt. On obtaining financial help from King Louis I. he went to study under Hummel in Weimar, and thence in 1832 to Vienna, where, besides studying composition under Simon Sechter, he made a great success as a concert pianist. In order to recruit his health he made a prolonged tour in 1836 through the chief German towns. In 1837 he settled at Breslau, where he had married, but in the following year he migrated to St Petersburg, where previous visits had made him persona grata at Court. He then became court pianist and inspector of musical studies in the Imperial Institute of Female Education, and was ennobled. In 1852 and again in 1867 he visited England, though in the latter year he made no public appearance. St Petersburg was his home practically until his death, which took place at Warmbrunn on the 10th of October 1889. The characteristic of Henselt’s playing was a combination of Liszt’s sonority with Hummel’s smoothness. It was full of poetry, remarkable for the great use he made of extended chords, and for his perfect technique. He excelled in his own works and in those of Weber and Chopin. His concerto in F minor is frequently played on the continent; and of his many valuable studies, Si oiseau j’étais is very familiar. His A minor trio deserves to be better known. At one time Henselt was second to Rubinstein in the direction of the St Petersburg Conservatorium.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Henslow, John Stevens

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​HENSLOW, JOHN STEVENS (1796–1861), English botanist and geologist, was born at Rochester on the 6th of February 1796. From his father, who was a solicitor in that city, he imbibed a love of natural history which largely influenced his career. He was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he graduated as sixteenth wrangler in 1818, the year in which Sedgwick became Woodwardian professor of geology. He accompanied Sedgwick in 1819 during a tour in the Isle of Wight, and there he learned his first lessons in geology. He also studied chemistry under Professor James Cumming and mineralogy under E. D. Clarke. In the autumn of 1819 he made some valuable observations on the geology of the Isle of Man (Trans. Geol. Soc., 1821), and in 1821 he investigated the geology of parts of Anglesey, the results being printed in the first volume of the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (1821), the foundation of which society was originated by Sedgwick and Henslow. Meanwhile, Henslow had studied mineralogy with considerable zeal, so that on the death of Clarke he was in 1822 appointed professor of mineralogy in the university at Cambridge. Two years later he took holy orders. Botany, however, had claimed much of his attention, and to this science he became more and more attached, so that he gladly resigned the chair of mineralogy in 1825, to succeed to that of botany. As a teacher both in the class-room and in the field he was eminently successful. To him Darwin largely owed his attachment to natural history, and also his introduction to Captain Fitzroy of H.M.S. “Beagle.” In 1832 Henslow was appointed vicar of Cholsey-cum-Moulsford in Berkshire, and in 1837 rector of Hitcham in Suffolk, and at this latter parish he lived and laboured, endeared to all who knew him, until the close of his life. His energies were devoted to the improvement of his parishioners, but his influence was felt far and wide. In 1843 he discovered nodules of coprolitic origin in the Red Crag at Felixstowe in Suffolk, and two years later he called attention to those also in the Cambridge Greensand and remarked that they might be of use in agriculture. Although Henslow derived no benefit, these discoveries led to the establishment of the phosphate industry in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire; and the works proved lucrative until the introduction of foreign phosphates. The museum at Ipswich, which was established in 1847, owed much to Henslow, who was elected president in 1850, and then superintended the arrangement of the collections. He died at Hitcham on the 16th of May 1861. His publications included A Catalogue of British Plants (1829; ed. 2, 1835); Principles of Descriptive and Physiological Botany (1835); Flora of Suffolk (with E. Skepper) (1860).
Memoir, by the Rev. Leonard Jenyns (1862).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Henzada

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​HENZADA, a district of Lower Burma, formerly in the Pegu, but now in the Irrawaddy division. Area, 2870 sq. m. Pop. (1901) 484,558. It stretches from north to south in one vast plain, forming the valley of the Irrawaddy, and is divided by that river into two nearly equal portions. This country is protected from inundation by immense embankments, so that almost the whole area is suitable for rice cultivation. The chief mountains are the Arakan and Pegu Yoma ranges. The greatest elevation of the Arakan Yomas in Henzada, attained in the latitude of Myan-aung, is 4003 ft. above sea-level. Numerous torrents pour down from the two boundary ranges, and unite in the plains to form large streams, which fall into the chief streams of the district, which are the Irrawaddy, Hlaing and Bassein, all of them branches of the Irrawaddy. The forests comprise almost every variety of timber found in Burma. The bulk of the cultivation is rice, but a number of acres are under tobacco. The chief town of the district is Henzada, which had in 1901 a population of 24,756. It is a municipal town, with ten elective and three ex-officio members. Other municipal towns in the district are Zalun, with a population of 6642; Myan-aung, with a population of 6351; and Kyangin, with a population of 7183, according to the 1901 census. The town of Lemyethna had a population of 5831. The steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company call at Henzada and Myan-aung.
The district was once a portion of the Talaing kingdom of Pegu, afterwards annexed to the Burmese empire in 1753, and has no history of its own. During the second Burmese war, after Prome had been seized, the Burmese on the right bank of the Irrawaddy crossed the river and offered resistance to the British, but were completely routed. Meanwhile, in Tharawaddy, or the country east of the Irrawaddy, and in the south of Henzada, much disorder was caused by a revolt, the leaders of which were, however, defeated by the British and their gangs dispersed.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Henry of Romania

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​HENRY (c. 1174–1216), emperor of Romania, or Constantinople, was a younger son of Baldwin, count of Flanders and Hainaut (d. 1195). Having joined the Fourth Crusade about 1201, he distinguished himself at the siege of Constantinople in 1204 and elsewhere, and soon became prominent among the princes of the new Latin empire of Constantinople. When his brother, the emperor Baldwin I., was captured at the battle of Adrianople in April 1205, Henry was chosen regent of the empire, succeeding to the throne when the news of Baldwin’s death arrived. He was crowned on the 20th of August 1205. Henry was a wise ruler, whose reign was largely passed in successful struggles with the Bulgarians and with his rival, Theodore Lascaris I., emperor of Nicaea. Henry appears to have been brave but not cruel, and tolerant but not weak; possessing “the superior courage to oppose, in a superstitious age, the pride and avarice of the clergy.” The emperor died, poisoned, it is said, by his Greek wife, on the 11th of June 1216.
See Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. vi. (ed. J. B. Bury, 1898).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Henwood, William Jory

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​HENWOOD, WILLIAM JORY (1805–1875), English mining geologist, was born at Perron Wharf, Cornwall, on the 16th of January 1805. In 1822 he commenced work as a clerk in a mining office, and soon took an active interest in the working of mines and in the metalliferous deposits. In 1832 he was appointed to the office of assay-master and supervisor of tin in the duchy of Cornwall, a post from which he retired in 1838. Meanwhile he had commenced in 1826 to communicate papers on mining subjects to the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, and the Geological Society of London, and in 1840 he was elected F.R.S. In 1843 he went to take charge of the Gongo-Soco mines in Brazil; afterwards he proceeded to India to report on certain metalliferous deposits for the Indian government; and in 1858, impaired in health, he retired and settled at Penzance. His most important memoirs on the metalliferous deposits of Cornwall and Devon were published in 1843 by the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall. At a much later date he communicated with enlarged ​experience a second series of Observations on Metalliferous Deposits, and on Subterranean Temperature (reprinted from Trans. R. Geol. Soc. Cornwall, 2 vols., 1871). In 1874 he contributed a paper on the Detrital Tin-ore of Cornwall (Journ. R. Inst. Cornwall). The Murchison medal of the Geological Society was awarded to him in 1875, and the mineral Henwoodite was named after him. He died at Penzance on the 5th of August 1875.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Paymaster-General

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​PAYMASTER-GENERAL, in England, a public officer and a member of the ministry for the time being. The office was, by statutes passed in 1835 and 1848, consolidated with other offices through which moneys voted by parliament were previously paid. The paymaster-general is appointed by sign manual warrant, he is unpaid, and does not require to offer himself for re-election on acceptance of office. The money appropriated by parliament for the various services of the country is placed ​by order of the Treasury to the account of the paymaster-general, and a communication to that effect made to the comptroller and auditor-general. The paymaster-general then makes all payments required by the various departments in accordance with the parliamentary vote. The duties of the office are carried out by a permanent staff, headed by an assistant paymaster-general, acting on powers granted by the paymaster-general.