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 oil, sugar, rice, lumber and citrus fruits. Houston is important also as a manufacturing centre, its factory product being valued at $13,564,019 in 1905, an increase of 81% over the factory product in 1900. There are extensive railway car-shops, cotton-seed oil, petroleum and sugar refineries, cotton gins and compresses, steel rolling mills, car-wheel factories, boiler, pump and engine works, flour mills, rice mills and a rice elevator, breweries, planing and saw-mills, pencil factories, and brick and tile factories. Its proximity to the Texas oil fields gives the city a cheap factory fuel. The assessed valuation of taxable property in the city increased from $27,480,898 in 1900 to $51,513,615 in 1908. The No-Tsu Oh Carnival week each November is a distinctive feature of the city. Houston, like Galveston, adopted in 1905 a very successful system of municipal government by commission, a commission of five (one of whom acts as mayor) being elected biennially and having both executive and legislative powers. The waterworks are owned and operated by the municipality, which greatly improved them from the city’s surplus under the first two years of government by commission. In 1908 extensive improvements in paving, drainage and sewerage were undertaken by the city. The payment of an annual poll-tax of $2.50 is a prerequisite to voting. Houston was settled and laid out in 1836, and was named in honour of General Sam Houston, whose home in Caroline Street was standing in 1908. In 1837–1839 and in 1842–1845 Houston was the capital of the Republic of Texas. About 15 m. E.S.E. of the city is the battleground of San Jacinto, which was bought by the state in 1906 for a public memorial park.

HOUWALD, CHRISTOPH ERNST, (1778–1845), German dramatist and author, was born at Straupitz in Lower Lusatia, a son of the president of the district court of justice, on the 28th of November 1778. He studied law at the university of Halle, and on completion of his academic studies returned home, married, and managed the family estates. In 1816 he afforded a home to his friend K. W. S. Contessa (1777–1825), himself a poet, who had met with serious reverses of fortune; Contessa lived with Houwald, assisting and stimulating him in his literary work, for eight years. In 1821 Houwald was unanimously elected syndic for Lower Lusatia, an office which placed him at the head of the administration of the province. He died at Neuhaus, near Lübben, on the 28th of January 1845.

Houwald is remembered as the author of several so-called “Fate tragedies” (see ), of which the best known are Das Bild, Der Leuchtturm, Die Heimkehr, Fluch und Segen (all published in 1821). They have, however, small literary value, and Houwald is seen to better advantage in his narratives and books for juvenile readers, such as Romantische Akkorde (publ. by W. Contessa, Berlin, 1817); Buch für Kinder gebildeter Stände (1819–1824); and Jakob Thau, der Hofnarr (1821). Houwald’s collected works, Sämtliche Werke, were published in five volumes (Leipzig, 1851; 2nd ed., 1858–1859). See J. Minor, Die Schicksalstragödie in ihren Hauptvertretern (Frankfurt, 1883), and Das Schicksalsdrama in Kürschner’s Deutsche Nationalliteratur, vol. cli. (Stuttgart, 1884); O. Schmidtborn, C. E. von Houwald als Dramatiker (1909).

HÒVA, the name originally applied to the middle-class Malayo-Indonesian natives of (q.v.), as distinct from the noble class Andrìana and the slave class Andèvo. Hòva has now come to mean the most numerous and powerful of the tribes which form the native population of Madagascar. The Hòva, who occupy the province of Imérina, the central plateau of the island, are of Malayo-Indonesian origin. The period at which the Hòva arrived in Madagascar is still a subject of dispute. Some think that the immigration took place in very early times, before Hinduism reached the Malay Archipelago, since no trace of Sanskrit is found in Malagasy. Others believe that the Hòva did not reach the island until the 12th or 13th century. At the French conquest of Madagascar (1895), the Hòva were the most powerful and, politically, the dominant people; but were far from having subjected the whole of the island to their rule. The Hòva are short and slim, with a complexion of a yellowish olive, many being fairer than the average of southern Europeans. Their hair is long, black and smooth but coarse. Their heads are round, with flat straight foreheads, flat faces, prominent cheekbones, small straight noses, fairly wide nostrils, and small black and slightly oblique eyes. The physical contrast to the negro is usually very obvious, but, especially among the lower classes, there is a tendency to thick lips, kinky hair and dark skin. In many of their customs, such as taboo, infanticide, marriage and funeral rites, they show their Indonesian origin. Most of them now profess Christianity.

HOVE, a municipal borough of Sussex, England, adjoining the watering-place of Brighton on the west, on the London, Brighton, & South Coast railway. Pop. (1901) 36,535. The great seawall of Brighton continues along the front at Hove, forming a pleasant promenade. Here is the Sussex county cricket ground. The municipal borough, incorporated in 1898, includes the parishes of Hove and Aldrington, of which the first is within the parliamentary borough of Brighton, but the second is in the Lewes division of the county. The corporation consists of a mayor, 10 aldermen and 30 councillors. Area, 1521 acres.

HOVENDEN, THOMAS (1840–1895), American artist, was born in Dunmanway, Co. Cork, Ireland, on the 28th of December 1840. He was a pupil of the South Kensington Art Schools and those of the National Academy of Design, New York, whither he had removed in 1863. Subsequently he went to Paris and studied in the École des Beaux Arts under Cabanel, but passed most of his time with the American colony in Brittany, at Pont-Aven, where he painted many pictures of the peasantry. Returning to America in 1880, he became an academician in 1882, and attracted attention by an important canvas of “The Last Moments of John Brown” (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art). His “Breaking Home Ties,” a picture of American farm life, was engraved with considerable popular success. Hovenden was mortally injured in a heroic effort to save a child from a railroad train in the station at Germantown, near Philadelphia, and died at Norristown, Pennsylvania, on the 14th of August 1895. Among his principal works are:—“News from the Conscript” (1877), “Loyalist Peasant Soldier of La Vendée” (1879). “A Breton Interior,” “Image Seller” and “Jerusalem the Golden” (in the Metropolitan Museum of Art).

HOW, WILLIAM WALSHAM (1823–1897), English divine, son of a Shrewsbury solicitor, was born on the 13th of December 1823, and was educated at Shrewsbury school and Wadham College, Oxford. He was ordained in 1846, and for upwards of thirty years was actively engaged in parish work at Whittington in Shropshire and Oswestry (rural dean, 1860). He refused preferment on several occasions, but his energy and success made him well known, and in 1879 he became a suffragan bishop in London, under the title of bishop of Bedford, his province being the East End. There he became the inspiring influence of a revival of church work. He founded the East London Church Fund, and enlisted a large band of enthusiastic helpers, his popularity among all classes being immense. He was particularly fond of children, and was commonly called “the children’s bishop.” In 1888 he was made bishop of Wakefield, and in the north of England he continued to do valuable work. His sermons were straightforward, earnest and attractive; and besides publishing several volumes of these, he wrote a good deal of verse, including such well-known hymns as “Who is this so weak and helpless,” “Lord, Thy children guide and keep.” In 1863–1868 he brought out a Commentary on the Four Gospels; and he also wrote a Manual for the Holy Communion. In the movement for infusing new spiritual life into the church services, especially among the poor, How was a great force. He died on the 10th of August 1897. He was much helped in his earlier work by his wife. Frances A. Douglas (d. 1887).

See his Life by his son, F. D. How (1898).

HOWARD. Among English families, the house of Howard has long held the first place. Its head, the duke of Norfolk, is the first of the dukes and the hereditary earl marshal of England, while the earls of Suffolk, Carlisle and Effingham and the Lord Howard of Glossop represent in the peerage its younger lines.

Its founder was a Norfolk lawyer, William Howard or Haward,