Each of his works has found a special editor; and a complete edition of his writings has been issued by F. Bech in the Deutsche Classiker des Mittelalters. See L. Schmid, Stand, Heimat, und Geschlecht des Minnesdéngers Hartmann (1874).
HARTSHORN, Spirits of, a name signifying originally the ammoniacal liquor obtained by the distillation of horn shavings, afterwards applied to the partially purified similar products of the action of heat on nitrogenous animal matter generally, and now popularly used to designate solution of ammonia. See Ammonia, vol. i. p. 741, and Chemistry, vol. v. p. 509.
HARUN ER RASHID. See Haroun al Raschid.
HARUSPICES (literally entrail-observers, cf. Skt. hils, Gr. χορδή), a class of soothsayers in Rome. Their art consisted especially in deducing from the appearance presented by the entrails of the slain victim the will of the gods. They also interpreted all portents or unusual phenomena of nature, especially thunder and lightning, and prescribed the expiatory ceremonies after such events. To please the god, the victim must be without spot or blemish, and the practice of observing whether the entrails presented any abnormal appearance, and thence deducing the will of heaven, was also very important in Greek religion. This art, however, appears not to have been, as some other modes of ascertaining the will of the gods undoubtedly were, of genuine Aryan growth. It is foreign to the Homeric poems, and must have been introduced into Greece after their composition, In like manner, as the Romans themselves believed, the art was not indigenous in Rome, but derived from Etruria, The Etruscans were said to have learned it from a being named Tages, grandson of Jupiter, who had suddenly sprung from the ground near Tarquinii. The art was practised in Rome chiefly by Etruscans, seldom by native-born Romans who had studied in the priestly schools of Etruria. Though it was of great importance under the early republic, it never became a part of the state religion. In this respect the haruspices ranked lower than the augurs; the latter were a more ancient and purely Roman institution, and were a most important element in the political organization of the city. In later times the art fell into disrepute, and the saying of Cato the censor is well known, that he wondered one haruspex could look another in the face without laughing (Cic., De Div, ii. 24). Under the empire, however, we hear of a regular collegium of sixty haruspices; and Claudius is said to have tried to restore the art and put it under the control of the pontifices.
HARVARD COLLEGE, the earliest institution of learning in the United States and on the continent of North America. The record gives its origin thus. The English colonists on Massachusetts Bay, settling at what is now Boston in 1630, began a plantation the next year three miles up Charles River, which they called "New Towne." The colony court of September 1636 "agreed to give £400," which exactly doubled the public tax for the year, "towards a schoole or collidge, whereof £200 to be paid the next yeare, and £200 when the work is finished, and the next court to appoint wheare and what building." In November 1637 "the Colledge is ordered to be at New Towne," the name of which had been changed to Cambridge, and a committee was appointed "to take order" for it. In March 1638–39 "it is ordered that the colledge agreed upon formerly to bee built at Cambridge shalbee called Harvard Colledge." The reason was that the Rev. John Harvard, B.A. 1632, and M.A. 1635, of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, England, dying in Charlestown, Massachusetts, September 14, 1638, by will left half his estate, about £800, and his library, to the wilderness seminary. The college charter of 1650 declared the object to be "the education of the English and Indian youth of this country in knowledge and godlynes." The first brick edifice on the college grounds, having rooms for twenty of the aborigines, was called "the Indian college." In it was printed the apostle Eliot's translation of the Bible into the language of the natives, with primers, grammars, tracts, &c. Several of the natives were members of the college; only one graduated from it. By generous aid received from abroad for this special object, the college was greatly helped in its infancy.
Thus from the beginning private munificence rather than the public treasury fostered and sustained the college, and with steadily increasing preponderance all through its history have its supplies and endowments come from the generosity of individuals. Grants from the colony, province, and State, of small sums for salaries and incidental purposes, made annually or at intervals, wholly ceased more than sixty years ago. With scarce an exception all the present invested funds of the college and of its professional schools, amounting to $3,615,538.87, with the halls, library, and apparatus, are the benefactions of its friends.
The charter constitutes as a corporation a president, treasurer, and five fellows, who initiate all measures concerning the college, hold its funds, and have the nomination for filling vacancies in their own body, as also of all the officers for instruction and for the internal government of the institution in all its departments, subject, however, to the advice and approval and final action of a board of overseers. The State, claiming as founder and patron, till quite recently regarded the college as a State institution, over which it should exercise a direct control through the legislature and the executive, by its authority in the membership and the election of the whole or a part of the board of overseers. Various modifications made from time to time in the composition or method of choice of the members of this board not relieving the controversies and embarrassments incident to legislative action, which proved prejudicial to the best interests of the college, its organic connexion with the State by this tie was severed by statute in 1866. The board of overseers as now constituted is composed of thirty of the alumni, besides the president and the treasurer, elected by the ballots of the alumni on commencement day at the college, in sections of five, serving a term of six years. With its complement of professional schools of law, medicine, theology, science, and many special departments of the latter, more than any other institution in America, and with but a few gaps yet to be filled in its completeness of method and equipment to bring it to comparison with foreign institutions of learning, Harvard College may claim to be in the most comprehensive sense of the term a university, a title which is, indeed, assumed, and generally applied to it. Recent changes in the course of study in the college have allowed a wide range for elective studies to undergraduates, the proportions being, one-fourth obligatory, three-fourths elective. In the professional schools most of the studies are obligatory. The number of bound volumes in the library and schools is 232,200. The number of halls owned and occupied for college uses is twenty-nine of brick or stone, including ten for students chambers. The whole number of professors, instructors, &c., in all departments, is 135; of librarians, proctors, and other officers in the service of the college, 28. The number of the alumni of the college proper about 9600; the number in all departments about 14,000.
