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HOLMFIRTH—HOLSTEN

are his principal publications; and he became widely recognized as one of the great jurists of his day.

Bibliography.—Holmes’s Complete Works, in 13 volumes, were published at Boston in 1891. See J. T. Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes (London, 1896); G. B. Ives, Bibliography (Boston, 1907); and the bibliography in P. K. Foley’s American Authors (Boston, 1897). An essay by Sir Leslie Stephen is prefixed to the “Golden Treasury” edition (1903) of The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. See also monographs by William Sloane Kennedy (Boston, 1882); Emma E. Brown (Boston, 1884).  (J. T. Mo.) 


HOLMFIRTH, an urban district in the Holmfirth parliamentary division of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, on and Holme and the Ribble, 6 m. S. of Huddersfield, and on the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway. Pop. (1901) 8977. The valley, walled by bold hills, is very picturesque. In 1852 great destruction was wrought in the town by the bursting of a reservoir in the vicinity. The large industrial population is employed in woollen manufactories, and in the neighbouring stone quarries.


HOLOCAUST (Gr. ὁλόκαυστον, or ὁλόκαυτον, wholly burnt), strictly a sacrifice wholly destroyed by fire, such as the sacrifices of the Jews, described in the Pentateuch as “whole burnt offerings” (see Sacrifice). The term is now often applied to a catastrophe on a large scale, whether by fire or not, or to a massacre or slaughter.


HOLOCENE (from Gr. ὅλος, whole, καινός, recent), in geology, the time division which embraces the youngest of all the formations; it is equivalent to the “Recent” of some authors. The name was proposed in 1860 by P. Gervais. The oldest deposits that may be included are those containing neolithic implements; deposits of historic times should also be grouped here; presumably the youngest are those to be chronicled by the last man. The Holocene formations obviously include all the varieties of deposits which are accumulating at the present day: the gravels and alluvia of rivers; boulder clays, moraines and fluvio-glacial deposits; estuarine, coastal and abyssal deposits of the seas, and their equivalents in lakes; screes, taluses, wind-borne dust and sand and desert formations; chemical deposits from saline waters; peat, diatomite, marls, foraminiferal and other oozes; coral, algal and shell banks, and other organic deposits; mud, lava and dust deposits of volcanic origin and extrusions of asphalt and pitch; to all these must be added the works of man.


HOLROYD, SIR CHARLES (1861–  ), British artist, was born in Leeds on the 9th of April 1861. He received his art education under Professor Legros at the Slade School, University College, London, where he had a distinguished career. After passing six months at Newlyn, where he painted his first picture exhibited in the Royal Academy, “Fishermen Mending a Sail” (1885), he obtained a travelling scholarship and studied for two years in Italy, a sojourn which greatly influenced his art. At his return, on the invitation of Legros, he became for two years assistant-master at the Slade School, and there devoted himself to painting and etching. Among his pictures may be mentioned “The Death of Torrigiano” (1886), “The Satyr King” (1889), “The Supper at Emmaus,” and, perhaps his best picture, “Pan and Peasants” (1893). For the church of Aveley, Essex, he painted a triptych altarpiece, “The Adoration of the Shepherds,” with wings representing “St Michael” and “St Gabriel,” and designed as well the window, “The Resurrection.” His portraits, such as that of “G. F. Watts, R.A.,” in the Legros manner, show much dignity and distinction. Sir Charles Holroyd has made his chief reputation as an etcher of exceptional ability, combining strength with delicacy, and a profound technical knowledge of the art. Among the best known are the “Monte Oliveto” series, the “Icarus” series, the “Monte Subasio” series, and the “Eve” series, together with the plates, “The Flight into Egypt,” “The Prodigal Son,” “A Barn on Tadworth Common” (etched in the open air), and “The Storm.” His etched heads of “Professor Legros,” “Lord Courtney” and “Night,” are admirable alike in knowledge and in likeness. His principal dry-point is “The Bather.” In all his work Holroyd displays an impressive sincerity, with a fine sense of composition, and of style, allied to independent and modern feeling. He was appointed the first keeper of the National Gallery of British Art (Tate Gallery), and on the retirement of Sir Edward Poynter in 1906 he received the directorship of the National Gallery. He was knighted in 1903. His Michael Angelo Buonarotti (London, Duckworth, 1903) is a scholarly work of real value.


HOLSTEIN, FRIEDRICH VON (1837–1909), German statesman, for more than thirty years head of the political department of the German Foreign Office. Holstein’s importance began with the dismissal of Bismarck in 1890. The new chancellor, Caprivi, was ignorant of foreign affairs; and Holstein, as the repository of the Bismarckian tradition, became indispensable. This reluctance to emerge into publicity has been ascribed to the part he had played under Bismarck in the Arnim affair, which had made him powerful enemies; it was, however, possibly due to a shrinking from the responsibility of office. Yet the weakness of his position lay just in the fact that he was not ultimately responsible. He protested against the despatch of the “Kruger telegram,” but protested in vain. On the other hand, where his ideas were acceptable, he was generally able to realize them. Thus it was almost entirely due to him that Germany acquired Kiao-chau and asserted her interests in China, and the acquisition of Samoa was also largely his work. If the skill and pertinacity with which Holstein carried through his plans in these matters was learned in the school of Bismarck, he had not acquired Bismarck’s faculty for foreseeing their ulterior consequences. This is true of his Chinese policy, and true also of his part in the Morocco crisis. The emperor William II.’s journey to Tangier was undertaken on his advice, as a protest against the supposed attempt at the isolation of Germany; but of the later developments of German policy in the Morocco question he did not approve, on the ground that the result would merely be to strengthen the Anglo-French entente; and from the 12th of March 1906 onwards he took no active part in the matter. To the last he believed that the position of Germany would remain unsafe until an understanding had been arrived at with Great Britain, and it was this belief that determined his attitude towards the question of the fleet, “beside which,” he wrote in February 1909, “all other questions are of lesser account.” His views on this question were summarized in a memorandum of December 1907, of which Herr von Rath gives a résumé. He objected to the programme of the German Navy League on three main grounds: (1) the ill-feeling likely to be aroused in South Germany, (2) the inevitable dislocation of the finances through the huge additional charges involved, (3) the suspicion of Germany’s motives in foreign countries, which would bind Great Britain still closer to France. As for the idea that Germany’s power would be increased, this—he wrote in reply to a letter from Admiral Galster—was “a simple question of arithmetic”; for how would the sea-power of Germany be relatively increased if for every new German ship Great Britain built two? Herr von Holstein retired on the resignation of Prince Bülow, and died on the 8th of May 1909.

See Hermann von Rath, “Erinnerungen an Herrn von Holstein” in the Deutsche Revue for October 1909. He is also frequently mentioned passim in Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe’s Memoirs.


HOLSTEIN, formerly a duchy of Germany. Until about 1110 the county of Holstein formed part of the duchy of Saxony, and it was made a duchy in 1472. From 1460 to 1864 it was ruled by members of the house of Oldenburg, some of whom were also kings of Denmark. It is now the southern part of the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein. (See Schleswig-Holstein, and for history Schleswig-Holstein Question.)


HOLSTEN, KARL CHRISTIAN JOHANN (1825–1897), German theologian, was born at Güstrow, Mecklenburg, on the 31st of March 1825, and educated at Leipzig, Berlin and Rostock, where in 1852 he became a teacher of religion in the Gymnasium. In 1870 he went to Bern as professor of New Testament studies, passing thence in 1876 to Heidelberg, where he remained until his death on the 26th of January 1897. Holsten was an adherent of the Tübingen school, and held to Baur’s views on the alleged antagonism between Petrinism and Paulinism.

Among his writings are Zum Evangelium d. Paulus und d. Petrus (1867); Das Evangelium des Paulus dargestellt (1880); Die synoptischen Evangelien nach der Form ihres Inhalts (1886).