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HOM proficiency in fresco displayed in his extensive series of religious works executed in 1737 in the benedictine convent church of Schwarzach, near Würzburg, in Bavaria. The martyrdom of St. Sebastian is considered the most masterly, but all have suffered from time and neglect. Through these works Holzer has been considered the reviver of fresco in Germany, and the pioneer of the now great modern school of fresco-painters in Germany. His compositions are described as successful in every department of art, and had not his untimely death cut him off in the commencement of his career, he would doubtless have given far greater proofs of his powers. He died of a cold and fever at Clemensworth, where he was about to commence a series of frescoes for the elector of Cologne, in July, 1740, aged only thirty.—(See Zapf's Life of Holzer in Meusel's Miscellaneen, Artistischen Inhalts, 1781.)—R. N. W.  HOMANN,, born 20th March, 1663, was destined to a monastic life, to avoid which he left home, and went to Nuremberg, where he became a Lutheran. The maps and charts produced by him were much valued, and he collected about two hundred of them into an atlas in 1716. He also constructed armillary spheres, globes, &c., was member of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, was geographer to Charles V. and the Czar Peter I. His "Atlas Methodicus" appeared in 1719, and he commenced the "Atlas Astronomicus," which Doppelmayer finished. Homann died in 1724.—B. H. C.  HOMBERG,, was born on January 8, 1652, at Batavia in Java, where his father Johann Homberg, a Saxon refugee, was commandant of the citadel. The family returning to Europe, young Homberg studied jurisprudence at Leipsic, but paid at the same time much attention to botany and astronomy. At Magdeburg, where he practised as an advocate, he became acquainted with Otto Guericke, the inventor of the air-pump. Growing tired of the law, he went to Italy, studied medicine at Padua, investigated the Bologna stone, and prepared from it the pyrophorus which bears his name. He next studied optics under Antonio Celio at Rome, and even turned his attention to painting, sculpture, and music. We successively find him working in the laboratory of Boyle in England, studying anatomy under De Graaf in Holland, and graduating as doctor of medicine in Wittenberg. He obtained from Kunckel the method of preparing phosphorus, then a great secret. He visited in succession the mines of Saxony, Bohemia, Hungary, and Sweden, and operated for some time in the royal mining laboratory of Stockholm. He next visited France, where the advantages offered him by the king and the minister Colbert determined him to remain. In 1682 he embraced catholicism, and became in consequence totally estranged from his family. In 1688 he went to Rome, and practised medicine with some success. Soon afterwards he returned to Paris, and in 1691 was elected member of the Academy of Sciences and director of its laboratory. Honours and emoluments now accumulated upon him. The duke of Orleans assigned him a pension in 1702, fitted up for him the most complete laboratory then in existence, and placed in his hands the Tschirnhaus burning-glass. In 1704 he became first physician to the duke of Orleans. In 1708 he married a. daughter of the celebrated botanist, Dodart; and on September 24, 1715, he died of a violent attack of dysentery. Though devoid of original genius, Homberg was one of the most learned chemists of his age. He collected the processes and receipts of others, and published them with all needful details, and in plain language. His chief discoveries were boracic acid, and the pyrophorus which bears his name. His other labours may be found in the Memoirs of the French Academy from 1699 to 1714.—J. W. S.  HOME or HUME,, a Scottish protestant minister, who lived in the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. Having removed to France, he was in succession minister of two reformed churches—that of Duras in lower Guienne and that of Gergeau in Orleans. He was held in such high estimation by King James, that he commissioned him to attend the national synod of the French churches held at Tonneins in May, 1614, with a view to form a union of all the protestant dioceses of Europe under one confession of faith. Home was also employed by the same monarch to effect a reconciliation between Silenus and Du Moulin, who had engaged in a keen controversy on the subject of justification. He is the author of two vigorous treatises against the jesuits, and the doctrine of the lawfulness of assassinating heretical princes. The title of the first is "Le contr' assassin, ou Responce a l'Apologie des Jesuites," 1612. The other is entitled "L'Assassinat du Roi, ou maximes du vieil de la Montague Vaticane et de ses assassinats pratiquées en la personne du defunct Henri le Grand," which was published in 1614, and reached a third edition.—J. T.  HOME,, surgeon and physiologist, was the son of William Home of Greenlaw castle, Berwick, at one time a surgeon in Burgoyne's regiment of horse. Born in 1756, educated at Westminster school, in 1772 he became the pupil of the celebrated John Hunter, who had married his sister. After remaining six years with his brother-in-law. Home obtained the appointment of assistant-surgeon to the naval hospital at Plymouth, at that time filled with the wounded in Keppel's action. He afterwards went abroad, and in 1784 returned from Jamaica, where he had served as staff-surgeon In 1785 he became assistant to Hunter in his professional and scientific avocations, and in 1787 he was appointed assistant-surgeon to St. George's hospital. During the latter part of Hunter's life he intrusted to Home the duties of delivering his surgical lectures, and of communicating to the world such discoveries and facts as he thought worthy to be published. At Hunter's death Home was left joint-executor with Dr. Baillie, and trustee of his museum. He practised during the remainder of his life in the metropolis. In 1813 George IV. created him a baronet, and also appointed him sergeant-surgeon. He was surgeon to Chelsea hospital, professor of anatomy and surgery to the Royal College of Surgeons, and for several years president of that body. He was also V.P.R.S. and F.S.A. He died at Chelsea in 1832. The destruction of the manuscripts of Hunter has left a blot on Home's memory which can never be effaced. The reason he gave for this unparalleled act was that it was the fulfilment of Hunter's wish expressed verbally to himself. As, however, the destruction did not take place, or was not communicated to any one till 1823, and as the alleged injunction of Hunter was in direct contravention to his expressed wishes with regard to his museum property, it has been universally held that Home was in the highest degree blameworthy. Home was the author of numerous papers in the Philosophical Transactions, the materials for which, it was rumoured, might have been found in the manuscripts which he afterwards destroyed. He also published lectures on comparative anatomy, and several works on surgical subjects.—F. C. W.  HOME,, Lord Kames, a distinguished Scotch lawyer and author, was the son of a country gentleman of an old family but reduced circumstances, and was born in Berwickshire in 1696. He received his early education under the care of a private tutor, and subsequently studied civil law and municipal jurisprudence at the university of Edinburgh. He was apprenticed to a writer to the signet in 1712; but an accidental interview with the president of the court of session is said to have fired him with the ambition of pursuing a higher branch of the legal profession than that to which he was originally destined. He was called to the bar in 1723 at the age of twenty-seven, and his ability and diligence ultimately obtained for him the highest eminence as a pleader. He also published various works on legal subjects, and was appointed in 1752, at the age of fifty-six, one of the judges of the court of session by the title of Lord Kames. In 1763 he was also nominated a lord of justiciary in the supreme criminal court of Scotland. Three years later he came into possession of the extensive estate of Blair-Drummond, which was inherited by his wife, to whom he had been married in his forty-fifth year, and he immediately set himself with his characteristic energy and skill to improve and adorn his new possessions. He invented a plan by which an extensive moss on his estate was floated into the frith of Forth, and a large tract of the finest land in Scotland was brought under cultivation. Lord Kames continued to discharge the duties of his judicial offices, and to carry on with unabated ardour his numerous literary, agricultural, and manufacturing projects till within a few days of his death. That event took place, 27th December, 1782, when he had attained the great age of eighty-seven. Lord Kames was both a very conspicuous man in his day and a voluminous writer. He wrote a considerable number of professional treatises; but his fame rests mainly on his metaphysical and critical works. From early years he had a very strong partiality for metaphysical studies, and carried on a correspondence on various abstruse questions with Dr. Samuel Clarke, Butler, and Berkeley. At a later period he became 