equilibrium at the very outset incited sympathy, while his wit and humour made him the centre of every circle within which he moved.
See Vilhelm Christian Sigurd Topsöe, Polit. Portraetstudier (Copenhagen, 1878); Schöller Parelius Vilhelm Birkedal, Personlige Oplevelser (Copenhagen, 1890–1891). (R. N. B.)
HALL, CHARLES FRANCIS (1821–1871), American Arctic
explorer, was born at Rochester, New Hampshire. After
following the trade of blacksmith he became a journalist in
Cincinnati; but his enthusiasm for Arctic exploration led him
in 1859 to volunteer to the American Geographical Society
to “go in search for the bones of Franklin.” With the proceeds
of a public subscription he was equipped for his expedition
and sailed in May 1860 on board a whaling vessel. The whaler
being ice-bound, Hall took up his abode in the regions to the
north of Hudson Bay, where he found relics of Frobisher’s
16th-century voyages, and living with the Eskimo for two years
he acquired a considerable knowledge of their habits and language.
He published an account of these experiences under the
title of Arctic Researches, and Life among the Esquimaux (1864).
Determined, however, to learn more about the fate of the Franklin
expedition he returned to the same regions in 1864, and passing
five years among the Eskimo was successful in obtaining a
number of Franklin relics, as well as information pointing to the
exact fate of 76 of the crew, whilst also performing some geographical
work of interest. In 1871 he was given command of
the North Polar expedition fitted out by the United States
Government in the “Polaris.” Making a remarkably rapid
passage up Smith Sound at the head of Baffin Bay, which was
found to be ice-free, the “Polaris” reached on the 30th of August
the lat. of 82° 11′, at that time, and until the English expedition
of 1876 the highest northern latitude attained by vessel. The
expedition went into winter quarters in a sheltered cove on the
Greenland coast. On the 24th of October, Hall on his return
from a successful sledge expedition to the north was suddenly
seized by an illness of which he died on the 8th of November.
Capt. S. O. Buddington (1823-1888) assumed command, and
although the “Polaris” was subsequently lost after breaking
out of the ice, with only part of the crew aboard, the whole were
ultimately rescued, and the scientific results of the expedition
proved to be of considerable importance.
HALL, CHRISTOPHER NEWMAN (1816–1902), English Nonconformist divine, was born at Maidstone on the 22nd of May 1816. His father was John Vine Hall, proprietor and printer of the Maidstone Journal, and the author of a popular evangelical work called The Sinner’s Friend. Christopher was educated at University College, London, and took the London B.A. degree. His theological training was gained at Highbury College, whence he was called in 1842 to his first pastorate at the Albion Congregational Church, Hull. During the twelve years of his ministry there the membership was greatly increased, and a branch chapel and school were opened. At Hull Newman Hall first began his active work in temperance reform, and in defence of his position wrote The Scriptural Claims of Teetotalism. In 1854 he accepted a call to Surrey chapel, London, founded in 1783 by the Rev. Rowland Hill. A considerable sum had been bequeathed by Hill for the perpetuation of his work on the expiration of the lease; but, owing to some legal flaw in the will, the money was not available, and Newman Hall undertook to raise the necessary funds for a new church. By weekly offertories and donations the money for the beautiful building called Christ Church at the junction of the Kennington and Westminster Bridge Roads was collected, and within four years of opening (1876) the total cost (£63,000) was cleared. In 1892 Newman Hall resigned his charge and devoted himself to general evangelical work. Most of his writings are small booklets or tracts of a distinctly evangelical character. The best known of these is Come to Jesus, of which over four million copies have been circulated in forty different languages. Newman Hall visited the United States during the Civil War, and did much to promote a friendly understanding between England and America. A Liberal in politics, and a keen admirer of John Bright, few preachers of any denomination have exercised so far-reaching an influence as the “Dissenters’ Bishop,” as he came to be termed. He died on the 18th of February 1902.
See his Autobiography (1898); obituary notice in The Congregational Year Book for 1903.
HALL, EDWARD (c. 1498–1547), English chronicler and lawyer, was born about the end of the 15th century, being a son of John Hall of Northall, Shropshire. Educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, he became a barrister and afterwards filled the offices of common sergeant of the city of London and judge of the sheriff’s court. He was also member of parliament for Bridgnorth. Hall’s great work, The Union of the Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and York, commonly called Hall’s Chronicle, was first published in 1542. Another edition was issued by Richard Grafton in 1548, the year after Hall’s death, and another in 1550; these include a continuation from 1532 compiled by Grafton from the author’s notes. In 1809 an edition was published under the supervision of Sir Henry Ellis, and in 1904 the part dealing with the reign of Henry VIII. was edited by C. Whibley. The Chronicle begins with the accession of Henry IV. to the English throne in 1399; it follows the strife between the houses of Lancaster and York, and with Grafton’s continuation carries the story down to the death of Henry VIII. in 1547. Hall presents the policy of this king in a very favourable light and shows his own sympathy with the Protestants. For all kinds of ceremonial he has all a lawyer’s respect, and his pages are often adorned and encumbered with the pageantry and material garniture of the story. The value of the Chronicle in its early stages is not great, but this increases when dealing with the reign of Henry VII. and is very considerable for the reign of Henry VIII. Moreover, the work is not only valuable, it is attractive. To the historian it furnishes what is evidently the testimony of an eye-witness on several matters of importance which are neglected by other narrators; and to the student of literature it has the exceptional interest of being one of the prime sources of Shakespeare’s historical plays.
See J. Gairdner, Early Chroniclers of Europe; England (1879).
HALL, FITZEDWARD (1825–1901), American Orientalist, was born in Troy, New York, on the 21st of March 1825. He graduated with the degree of civil engineer from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy in 1842, and entered Harvard in the class of 1846; just before his class graduated he left college and went to India in search of a runaway brother. In January 1850 he was appointed tutor, and in 1853 professor of Sanskrit and English, in the government college at Benares; and in 1855 was made inspector of public instruction in Ajmere-Merwara and in 1856 in the Central Provinces. He settled in England in 1862 and received the appointment to the chair of Sanskrit, Hindustani and Indian jurisprudence in King’s College, London, and to the librarianship of the India Office. He died at Marlesford, Suffolk, on the 1st of February 1901. Hall was the first American to edit a Sanskrit text, the Vishnupurāna; his library of a thousand Oriental MSS. he gave to Harvard University.
His works include: in Sanskrit, Atmabodha (1852), Sānkhyaprāvachana (1856), Sāryasiddhānta (1859), Vāsavadattū (1859), Sānkhyasāra (1862) and Dasarūpa (1865); in Hindi, Ballantynes’ Hindi Grammar (1868) and a Reader (1870); on English philology, Recent Exemplifications of False Philology (1872), attacking Richard Grant White, Modern English (1873), “On English Adjectives in -able, with Special Reference to Reliable” (Am. Jour. Philology, 1877), Doctor Indoctus (1880).
HALL, ISAAC HOLLISTER (1837–1896), American Orientalist, was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, on the 12th of December 1837. He graduated at Hamilton College in 1859, was a tutor there in 1859–1863, graduated at the Columbia Law School in 1865, practised law in New York City until 1875, and in 1875–1877 taught in the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut, where he discovered a valuable Syriac manuscript of the Philoxenian version of a large part of the New Testament, which he published in part in facsimile in 1884. He worked with General di Cesnola in classifying the famous Cypriote collection in the Metropolitan Museum of New York City, and was a curator of that museum from 1885 until his death in Mount Vernon, New York, on the
