HALE HALL. 



615 



cient to give offence to the protector ; and, finding 

 he could not retain his office with honour, he refused 

 to preside again on criminal trials. After the death 

 of Oliver Cromwell, he refused a new commission 

 from his son and successor. He was a member of 

 the parliament which restored Charles II., and he 

 was one of the members most active in passing the 

 act of indemnity. In November, 1660, he was 

 knighted, and made chief baron of the court of ex- 

 chequer. He presided at the condemnation of some 

 persons arraigned for witchcraft, at Bury St Ed- 

 mund's, in 1664, and was the last English judge who 

 sanctioned the conviction of culprits for that imagi- 

 nary crime. He was raised to the chief justiceship 

 of the king's bench in 1671, where he sat till 1676, 

 towards the end of which year lie died. After his 

 death appeared his History of the Pleas of the 

 Crown, the Jurisdiction of the Lords' House, and 

 The History of the Common Law of England ; 

 of which there have been repeated editions, with 

 comments. His valuable collection of manuscripts 

 relating to history and jurisprudence, is preserved 

 in the library of Lincoln's Inn. Sir Matthew Hale 

 also wrote several works on scientific and religious 

 subjects. 



HALE, NATHAN, an officer in the American revo- 

 lutionary army, was born in Coventry, Connecticut, 

 and was graduated at Yale college, in 1773. As 

 the contest between the mother country and the 

 colonies was then waging, he offered his services to 

 the latter, and obtained a captain's commission in 

 colonel Knowlton's regiment of light infantry, which 

 formed the van of the American army. After the 

 retreat of general Washington from Long Island, by 

 which it was left in the possession of the British, that 

 commander applied to colonel Knowlton to adopt 

 some means of gaining information concerning the 

 strength, situation, and future movements of the 

 enemy. The colonel communicated this request to 

 Captain Hale, who immediately volunteered his ser- 

 vices ; and, conquering his repugnance to assume a 

 character foreign to his nature, in the hope of being 

 useful to his country, passed in disguise to Long Is- 

 land, examined every part of the British army, and 

 obtained all the requisite information. In attempt- 

 ing to return, however, he was apprehended, and 

 brought before sir William Howe, who ordered him 

 to be executed, the next morning, on his acknow- 

 ledging who he was, and what was his object, when 

 he found the proof against him too strong to be gain- 

 sayed. This sentence (conformable, it is true, to 

 the laws of war) was carried into effect in the most 

 unfeeling manner. He was refused the attendance 

 of a clergyman ; and the letters which he wrote, a 

 short time before his death, to his mother and others, 

 were destroyed, in order, as was said by the provost 

 marshal, " that the rebels should not know they had 

 a man in their army who could die with so much 

 firmness." The untimely end of this promising but 

 unfortunate young man resembles that of major 

 Andre. 



HALES, ALEXANDER DE ; surnamed the irrefra- 

 gable doctor; an English ecclesiastic, celebrated 

 among the controversialists of the thirteenth century. 

 He studied at the universities of Oxford and Paris, in 

 which latter city he died in 1245. 



HALF MARK; a noble, or six shillings and 

 eight pence. 



HALF MOON, in fortification ; an outwork 

 composed of two faces, forming a salient angle, 

 whose gorge is in form of a half moon. 



HALF PIKE ; a defensive weapon, composed of 

 an iron spike, fixed on an ashen staff. Its use is to 

 repel the assault of boarders in a manner similar to 

 the defence of the charged bayonet among infantry ; 



hence it is frequently termed a boarding pike. It 

 takes the epithet of half, from its having a much 

 shorter staff than the whole pike. 



HALIBUT. See Halibut. 



HALICARNASSUS ; the capital of Caria, in 

 Asia Minor, and the residence of the Carian kings. 

 It was once an important commercial city. The 

 present name is Bodrun or Budron. It lies opposite 

 the island of Stanchio. Queen Artemisia erected 

 here the celebrated mausoleum in honour of her hus- 

 band, king Mausolus. Halicarnassus was the native 

 place of Herodotus, Dionysius the historian, and 

 Dionysius the musician (who wrote on music in the 

 time of Adrian); also of the poets Hecatseus and 

 Callimachus. For a description of its charming 

 situation, see the Travels of the Younger Anachar sis. 



HALIFAX, a large manufacturing town in the 

 west riding of Yorkshire, erected into a borough in 

 1831, and which now sends two members to parlia- 

 ment. Population by last census, 31,317. 



HALIFAX ; a city, and the capital of Nova 

 Scotia, on Chebucto bay. The harbour of Halifax is 

 one of the best in America ; a thousand ships may 

 ride in it in safety. It is in lat. 44 40 1 N., and Ion. 

 63 4CX W. from Greenwich. It is easy of access at 

 all seasons of the year. Its length from N. to S. is 

 about sixteen miles, and it terminates in a beautiful 

 sheet of water, called Bedford Basin, within which 

 are ten square miles of good anchorage. The har- 

 bour is well fortified, and has an extensive dock- 

 yard. The city of Halifax is situated on the western 

 side of the harbour, on the declivity of a command- 

 ing hill, whose summit is 256 feet above the level of 

 the sea. Halifax was first settled by a colony 

 under the command of the honourable Edward Corn- 

 wallis, in 1749. In 1790, it contained 4000 inhabi- 

 tants ; in 1828, the number of houses was 1580, and 

 the population 14,439. At the same period, there 

 were two Episcopal churches, a large and splendid 

 Catholic chapel, two meeting-houses for Presbyte- 

 rians, one for Methodists, two for Baptists, and one 

 for Sandemanians. The most important of the go- 

 vernment establishments is the dock-yard. It has a 

 high wall on the side towards the town, and con- 

 tains very commodious buildings for the residence of 

 the officers and their servants, besides stores, ware- 

 houses, and work-shops. The province-building is 

 an elegant edifice, and contains the various provincial 

 offices, and apartments for the council, house of as- 

 sembly, and superior court. There are several other 

 public buildings of good construction ; but in general 

 the large buildings of the city are of freestone, and 

 are not designed for splendour. Dalhousie college 

 was established in 1820, but has not gone into oper- 

 ation. There are no periodicals published, nor are 

 any European or American books reprinted at Hali- 

 fax. The only publications in Nova Scotia are the 

 newspapers, of which there were, in 1828, six at 

 Halifax and one at Pictou. See Haliburton's Account 

 of Nova Scotia, Halifax, 1829. 



HALIFAX, LORD. See Montague. 



HALL, ROBERT, a celebrated divine among the 

 dissenters in England, was born at Arnsby, Leices- 

 tershire, in August, 1764. He was the son of the 

 reverend Robert Hall, a Baptist minister of Arnsby. 

 His father early remarked his precocity of talent, 

 and observed to a friend, that at " nine years, he 

 fully comprehended the reasoning in the profoundly 

 argumentative treatise of Jonathan Edwards on the 

 will and affections." In 1773, he was placed under 

 the instruction of the eccentric, yet learned and pious 

 John Ryland, of Northampton. At about fifteen 

 years of age, he became a student in the Baptist 

 college at Bristol. On reaching his eighteenth year, 

 Mr Hall entered king's college, Aberdeen, having 



