648 



HAUSER HAUY. 



system, so that Prussia remained neutral. In 1805, 

 Haugwitz left his retreat, to negotiate with Napoleon 

 at Vienna, and concluded, after the battle of Auster- 

 litz, the convention by which Hanover was ceded to 

 Prussia, and the neutrality of northern 'Germany was 

 acknowledged. Haugwitz now recovered his former 

 favour, and received anew the portfolio of foreign 

 affairs. But the occupation of Hanover involved 

 Prussia with England, while, at the same time, her 

 relations with trance became more embarrassing 

 than ever. Haugwitz went to Paris to reconcile the 

 contending interests, but returned without accom- 

 plishing his object. He was a witness of the battle 

 of Jena, after which lie again retired to his estates in 

 Silesia, and avoided the hostile forces by taking 

 refuge in Vienna. In October, 1811, he was ap- 

 pointed curator of the university of Breslau. He 

 died at Vienna in February, 1832. 



HAUSER, CASPAR, the name of a personage 

 whose history is enveloped in mystery, and who was 

 assassinated by an unknown hand, at Anspach, in 

 Bavaria, on the 17th December, 1833. On the 26th 

 of May, 1828, a youth, apparently about sixteen or 

 seventeen years of age, was found at one of the gates 

 of Nuremberg ; but he was unable to give any ac- 

 count of himself, nor could it be discovered who 

 brought him there, whence he came, or who he was. 

 He was 4 feet and 9 inches in height ; was very 

 pale ; had a short delicate beard on his chin and 

 upper lip ; his limbs were slender ; his feet bore no 

 marks of having been confined in shoes; he scarcely 

 knew how to use his fingers or hands; and his 

 attempts to walk resembled the first efforts of a 

 child. When spoken to he understood nothing that 

 was said to him, and only replied in a few words of 

 unintelligible gibberish ; and his countenance was 

 expressive of gross stupidity. He held in his hand 

 a letter addressed to the captain of one of the cavalry 

 companies of Nuremberg, dated " Bavarian Fron- 

 tiers ; place nameless." Its purport was that the 

 bearer had been left with the writer, who was a 

 poor labourer, in October, 1812, and \vho, not 

 knowing his parents, had brought him up in his 

 house, without allowing him to stir out of it. A 

 note accompanying the Tetter contained these words : 

 " His father was one of the light cavalry ; send 

 him, when he is seventeen years old, to Nuremberg, 

 for his father was stationed there. He was born 

 April 30, 1812. I am a poor girl, and cannot sup- 

 port him ; his father is dead." A pen being put into 

 his hands, be wrote hi plain letters Caspar Hauser. 

 He appeared to be hungry and thirsty, but mani- 

 fested great aversion to eating or drinking any thing 

 that was offered to him except bread and water. 



He fell into the hands of persons who treated him 

 kindly, and taught him the use of language ; and he 

 manifested the most amiable and grateful disposition. 

 But he could give no account of himself, except that, 

 as far as he could remember, he had always in- 

 habited a small cell, continually seated on the 

 ground, with his feet naked, and having no covering 

 except a shirt and trowsers, and he had never seen 

 the sky. When he awoke from sleep he was ac- 

 customed to find near him some bread and a pitcher 

 of water ; but he never saw the face of the person 

 who brought them ; and it was at Nuremberg that 

 he first learnt there were other living creatures 

 besides himself and the man with whom he had 

 always been. Previous to his death, Hauser resided 

 at Anspach, where he had a little employment in 

 the registrar-office, and lord Stanhope had also pro- 

 vided for his support. Some time before his assas- 

 sination, an ineflectual attempt had been made upon 

 his life by the same assassin, as is supposed, that 

 finally inflicted the fatal blow with a dagger. 



HAUTBOY ; a portable wind instrument of the 

 reed kind, consisting of a tube gradually widening 

 from the top towards the lower end, and furnished 

 with keys and circular holes for modulating its 

 sounds. The general compass of this instrument 

 extends from the C cliff note to D in alt, but solo 

 performers frequently carry it two or three notes 

 higher. Its scale contains all the semitones, ex- 

 cepting the sharp of its lowest note. The tone of 

 the hautboy, in skilful hands, is grateful and soothing, 

 and particularly adapted to the expression of soft and 

 plaintive passages. 



HAUTELISSE, and BASSELISSE; French 

 words applied to tapestry. Hautelisse carpets are 

 those which are worked with a perpendicular warp, 

 and Basselisse carpets with a horizontal warp. The 

 latter are preferred in modern times, because they 

 are easier to be made, and yet possess equal beauty. 

 In the Netherlands, Brussels and Doomik furnish 

 the best works of this kind ; in France, the manu- 

 factory of Gobelins. 



HAUY, RENE JUST, abbe, a distinguished mineral- 

 ogist, the son of a poor weaver, born 1743, at Si 

 Just, in the department of the Oise, was at first chor- 

 ister, then studied theology, and, during twenty-one 

 years, occupied the place of a professor, at first in 

 the college of Navarra, and afterwards in that of the 

 cardinal Le Moine. He studied botany as a recrea- 

 tion, but his taste for mineralogy was awakened by 

 the lectures of Daubenton. An accident led him to 

 the formation of his system of crystalography. As he 

 was examining the collection of minerals belonging 

 to M. Frauce de Croisset, he dropped a beautiful 

 specimen of calcareous spar crystallized in prisms, 

 which was broken by the fall. Hauy observed, with 

 astonishment, that the fragments had the smooth, re- 

 gular form of the rhomboid crystals of Iceland spar 

 " I have found it all !" he exclaimed ; for at this mo- 

 ment he conceived the fundamental idea of his new 

 system. He took the fragments home, and discover- 

 ed the geometrical law of crystallization. He then 

 studied geometry, and invented a method of measur- 

 ing and describing the forms of crystals. He now, 

 for the first time, ventured to communicate the grand 

 discovery to his instructer Daubenton, who, with 

 Laplace, could with difficulty persuade the modest 

 Hauy to communicate his discovery to the academy, 

 which, in 1783, received him as adjunct in the class 

 of botany. He now devoted himself wholly to his 

 studies ; so that he remained a stranger to the revolu- 

 tion, with all its horrors, until, having refused to take 

 the oath of obedience to the constitution required of 

 the priests, he was deprived of his place, and was 

 arrested, in the midst of his calculations, as a recu- 

 sant priest. He calmly continued his studies in prison. 

 In the mean time, one of his pupils, Geoffroi de St 

 Hilaire, now member of the academy, exerted him- 

 self in favour of Hauy ; and the remark of a trades- 

 man, an officer of police in the quarter where Hauy 

 lived, that " it was better to spare a recusant priest 

 than put to death a quiet man of letters," saved his 

 life. Geoffroi hastened to him with an order for his- 

 release. It was very late, and Hauy, occupied only 

 with his researches, wished to remain in prison until 

 the next day. Hauy continued his studies, and even 

 ventured to write in favour of Lavoisier, who was 

 then in prison, and of Borda and Delambre, who had 

 been removed from their places. After the death of 

 Daubenton, the academy wished to name the modest 

 Hauy his successor ; but he recommended Dolomieu, 

 who was imprisoned in Sicily, in violation of the laws 

 of nations ; the Latter, however, having died soon 

 after his liberation, Hauy received his place from the 

 first consul. The convention had already appointed 

 him keeper of the mineralogical collections of the 



