Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/583

Rh ready access. In 1819, a very productive year, Williamson obtained from 57 trees, mostly not above six years old, and growing on 360 square yards of ground, 2 cwt. of nuts. To obtain a good tree, the practice in Kent is to select a stout upright shoot 3 feet in length; this is cut down to about 18 inches, of which the lower 12 are kept free from outgrowth. The head is pruned to form six or eight strong offsets ; and by judicious use of the knife, and by training, preferably on a hoop placed within them, these are caused to grow outwards and upwards to a height of about 6 feet, so as to form a bowl-like shape. Excessive luxuriance of the laterals may be combated by root-pruning, or by checking them early in the season, and again later, and by cutting back to a female blossom bud, or else spurring nearly down to the main branch in the following spring. In certain conditions of growth the trees may bear almost exclusively male or female flowers, and those produced im the first blossoming are stated (Gent. Mag., 1788, vol. Iviii., pt. 1, p. 495) to be female only. The fertilization of the latter may be secured by suspending amongst them a branch with male bloom.

1em 1em

1em  HAZEL-HEN. See.  HAZLETON, a post-borough of Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, U.S., is situated about 80 miles N.N.W. of Philadelphia. Owing to its elevated and healthy situa- tion, its agreeable climate, and the facilities afforded by its railway connexions with other districts, it has become a favourite and fashionable health-resort in summer. The manufactures include both iron and timber; and a part of the rolling-stock of the Lehigh Valley Railway is male in the town. There are several valuable coal- niines in the vicinity. The population in 1860 was only 1707 ; in 1870 it was 4317, and since then it has con- siderably increased.  HAZLITT, (1778–1830), one of the most eminent of English critics, was born April 10, 1778, at Maidstone, where his father was minister of the Presby- terian congregation. He was educated privately, and after- wards at the Unitarian College at Hackney, where he first began to speculate upon metaphysical subjects. Feeling disinclined to enter the dissenting ministry, he returned to Wem in Shropshire, where his father had in the meantime settled, and there led an idle and desultory life until, about 1802, he determined upon becoming a painter. Meta- physics and art continued his joint passion throughout his life. It was his singular lot to be animated by an equal enthusiasm for two of the most dissimilar fields of human effort, in neither of which was he capable of achieving eminence, and yet, by a combination of the qualities proper to both, to obtain the most distinguished success in another sphere which he only entered by accident. The secret of his distinction as a critic is the union in him of the meta- phlysician’s acuteness with the painter’s eye for colour and substance. Nowhere else is abstract thought so pictur- esquely bodied forth by concrete illustration. He com- menced the practice of painting in London, where his elder brother had already acquired some reputation as an artist, and soon found his way into literary and artistic circles, be- coming especially intimate with Lamb, Hunt, and Godwin. Previously to this he had (January 1798) been powerfully influenced by Coleridge, who had come to preach in his father’s neighbourhood, and of whose conversation and general demeanour he has left a most vivid picture. His professional painting did not prosper, and little remains of it except a few portraits; but in 1805 he published his Essay on the Principles of Tuman Action, which had occupied him at intervals for six or seven years. This work, further defined by the author as an argument in favour of the natural disinterestedness of the human mind, was preferred by him to all his other writings, but never attracted any attention from the public. In 1807 appeared a most useful abridgment of Abraham Tucker's Light of Nature Pursued, and a clever but fallacious attempt to invalidate the natural law established in Malthus’s Lssay on Population. In the following year he married Sarah, sister of Dr Stoddart, well known for his connexion with the journalism of the day, a woman of literary tastes and great strength of character, but cold, formal, and utterly uncongenial to him. No man indeed could well be less adapted for domestic life than Hazlitt, whose habits, not- withstanding his exemplary sobriety, were most irregular,