Part 48

HAZEL (O. Eng. _haesel_[1]; cf. Ger. _Hasel_, Swed. and Dan. _hassel_, &c.,; Fr. _noisetier, coudrier_), botanically _corylus_, a genus of shrubs or low trees of the natural order Corylaceae. The common hazel, _Corylus Avellana_ (fig. 1), occurs throughout Europe, in North Africa and in central and Russian Asia, except the northernmost parts. It is commonly found in hedges and coppices, and as an undergrowth in woods, and reaches a height of some 12 ft.; occasionally, as at Eastwell Park, Kent, it may attain to 30 ft. According to Evelyn (_Sylva_, p. 35, 1664), hazels "above all affect cold, barren, dry, and sandy soils; also mountains, and even rockie ground produce them; but more plentifully if somewhat moist, dankish, and mossie." In Kent they flourish best in a calcareous soil. The bark of the older stems is of a bright brown, mottled with grey, that of the young twigs is ash-coloured, and glandular and hairy. The leaves are alternate, from 2 to 4 in. in length, downy below, roundish heart-shaped, pointed and shortly stalked. In the variety _C. purpurea_, the leaves, as also the pellicle of the kernel and the husk of the nut, are purple, and in _C. heterophylla_ they are thickly clothed with hairs. In autumn the rich yellow tint acquired by the leaves of the hazel adds greatly to the beauty of landscapes. The flowers are monoecious, and appear in Great Britain in February and March, before the leaves. The cylindrical drooping yellow male catkins (fig. 2) are 1 to 2(1/2) in. long, and occur 2 to 4 in a raceme; when in unusual numbers they may be terminal in position. The female flowers are small, sub-globose and sessile, resembling leaf-buds, and have protruding crimson stigmas; the minute inner bracts, by their enlargement, form the palmately lobed and cut involucre or husk of the nut. The ovary is not visible till nearly midsummer, and is not fully developed before autumn. The nuts have a length of from 1/2 to 3/4 in., and grow in clusters. Double nuts are the result of the equal development of the two carpels of the original flower, of which ordinarily one becomes abortive; fusion of two or more nuts is not uncommon. From the light-brown or brown colour of the nuts the terms _hazel_ and _hazelly_, i.e. "in hue as hazel nuts" (Shakespeare, _Taming of the Shrew_, ii. 1), derive their significance.[2] The wood of the hazel is whitish-red, close in texture and pliant, and has when dry a weight of 49 lb. per cub. ft.; it has been used in cabinet-making, and for toys and turned articles. Curiously veined veneers are obtained from the roots; and the root-shoots are largely employed in the making of crates, coal-corves or baskets, hurdles, withs and bands, whip-handles and other objects. The rods are reputed to be most durable when from the driest ground, and to be especially good where the bottom is chalky. The light charcoal afforded by the hazel serves well for crayons, and is valued by gunpowder manufacturers. An objection to the construction of hedges of hazel is the injury not infrequently done to them by the nut-gatherer, who "with active vigour crushes down the tree" (Thomson's _Seasons_, "Autumn"), and otherwise damages it.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Hazel (_Corylus Avellana_).--1, Female catkin (enlarged); 2, Pair of fruits (nuts) each enclosed in its involucre (reduced).]

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Catkin of Hazel (_Corylus Avellana_), consisting of an axis covered with bracts in the form of scales, each of which covers a male flower, the stamens of which are seen projecting beyond the scale. The catkin falls off entire, separating from the branch by an articulation.]

The filbert,[3] among the numerous varieties of _Corylus Avellana_, is extensively cultivated, especially in Kent, for the sake of its nuts, which are readily distinguished from cob-nuts by their ample involucre and greater length. It may be propagated by suckers and layers, by grafting and by sowing. Suckers afford the strongest and earliest-bearing plants. Grafted filberts are less liable than others to be encumbered by suckers at the root. By the Maidstone growers the best plants are considered to be obtained from layers. These become well rooted in about a twelvemonth, and then, after pruning, are bedded out in the nursery for two or three years. The filbert is economically grown on the borders of plantations or orchards, or in open spots in woods. It thrives most in a light loam with a dry subsoil; rich and, in

## particular, wet soils are unsuitable, conducing to the formation of too

much wood. Plantations of filberts are made in autumn, in well-drained ground, and a space of about 10 ft. by 8 has to be allowed for each tree. In the third year after planting the trees may require root-pruning; in the fifth or sixth they should bear well. The nuts grow in greatest abundance on the extremities of second year's branches, where light and air have ready access. To obtain a good tree, the practice in Kent is to select a stout upright shoot 3 ft. in length; this is cut down to about 18 in. 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 ft. 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.

Filbert nuts required for keeping must be gathered only when quite ripe; they may then be preserved in dry sand, or, after drying, by packing with a sprinkling of salt in sound casks or new flower-pots. Their different forms include the Cosford, which are thin-shelled and oblong; the Downton, or large square nut, having a lancinated husk; the white or Wrotham Park filbert; and the red hazel or filbert, the kernel of which has a red pellicle. The last two, on account of their elongated husk, have been distinguished as a species, under the name _Corylus tubulosa_. Like these, apparently, were the nuts of Abella, or Avella, in the Campania (cf. Fr. _aveline_, filbert), said by Pliny to have been originally designated "Pontic," from their introduction into Asia and Greece from Pontus (see _Nat. Hist._ xv. 24, xxiii. 78). Hazel-nuts, under the name of Barcelona or Spanish nuts, are largely exported from France and Portugal, and especially Tarragona and other places in Spain. They afford 60% of a colourless or pale-yellow, sweet-tasting, non-drying oil, which has a specific gravity of 0.92 nearly, becomes solid at -19 deg. C. (Cloez), and consists approximately of carbon 77, and hydrogen and oxygen each 11.5%. Hazel nuts formed part of the food of the ancient lake-dwellers of Switzerland and other countries of Europe (see Keller, _Lake Dwellings_, trans. Lee, 2nd ed., 1878). By the Romans they were sometimes eaten roasted. Kaltenbach (_Pflanzenfeinde_, pp. 633-638, 1874) enumerates ninety-eight insects which attack the hazel. Among these the beetle _Balaninus nucum_, the nut-weevil, seen on hazel and oak stems from the end of May till July, is highly destructive to the nuts. The female lays an egg in the unripe nut, on the kernel of which the larva subsists till September, when it bores its way through the shell, and enters the earth, to undergo transformation into a chrysalis in the ensuing spring. The leaves of the hazel are frequently found mined on the upper and under side respectively by the larvae of the moths _Lithocolletis coryli_ and _L. Nicelii_. Squirrels and dormice are very destructive to the nut crop, as they not only take for present consumption but for a store for future supply. Parasitic on the roots of the hazel is found the curious leafless _Lathraea Squamaria_ or toothwort.

The Hebrew word _luz_, translated "hazel" in the authorized version of the English Bible (Gen. xxx. 37), is believed to signify "almond" (see Kitto, _Cycl. of Bibl. Lit._ ii. 869, and iii. 811, 1864). A belief in the efficacy of divining-rods of hazel for the discovery of concealed objects is probably of remote origin (cf. Hosea iv. 12). G. Agricola, in his treatise _Vom Bergwerck_ (pp. xxix.-xxxi., Basel, 1557), gives an account, accompanied by a woodcut, of their employment in searching for mineral veins. By certain persons, who for different metals used rods of various materials, rods of hazel, he says, were held serviceable simply for silver lodes, and by the skilled miner, who trusted to natural signs of mineral veins, they were regarded as of no avail at all. The virtue of the hazel wand was supposed to be dependent on its having two forks; these were to be grasped in the fists, with the fingers uppermost, but with moderate firmness only, lest the free motion of the opposite end downwards towards the looked-for object should be interfered with. According to Cornish tradition, the divining or dowsing rod is guided to lodes by the pixies, the guardians of the treasures of the earth. By Vallemont, who wrote towards the end of the 17th century, the divining-rod of hazel, or "baguette divinatoire," is described as instrumental in the pursuit of criminals. The Jesuit Vaniere, who flourished in the early part of the 18th century, in the _Praedium rusticum_ (pp. 12, 13, new ed., Toulouse, 1742) amusingly relates the manner in which he exposed the chicanery of one who pretended by the aid of a hazel divining-rod to point out hidden water-courses and gold. The burning of hazel nuts for the magical investigation of the future is alluded to by John Gay in _Thursday, or the Spell_, and by Burns in _Halloween_. The hazel is very frequently mentioned by the old French romance writers. _Corylus rostrata_ and _C. americana_ of North America have edible fruits like those of _C. Avellana_.

The witch hazel is quite a distinct plant, _Hamamelis virginica_, of the natural order Hamamalideae, the astringent bark of which is used in medicine. It is a hardy deciduous shrub, native of North America, which bears a profusion of rich yellow flowers in autumn and winter when the plant is leafless.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It has been supposed that the origin is to be found in O. Eng. _haes_, a behest, connected with _hatan_ = Ger. _heissen_, to give orders: the hazel-wand was the sceptre of authority of the shepherd chieftain ([Greek: poimen laon]) of olden times, see _Grimm, Gesch. d. deutsch. Sprache_, p. 1016, 1848. The root is _kas_-, cf. Lat. _corulas, corylus_; and the original meaning is unknown.

[2] On the expression "hazel eyes," see _Notes and Queries_, 2nd ser. xii. 337, and 3rd ser. iii. 18, 39.

[3] For derivations of the word see Latham's _Johnson's Dictionary_.

HAZLETON, a city of Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., about 25 m. S. of Wilkes-Barre. Pop. (1890) 11,872; (1900) 14,230, of whom 2732 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 25,452. It is served by the Lehigh Valley, the Pennsylvania (for freight), and the Wilkes-Barre & Hazleton (electric) railways. The city is built on a broad tableland on Nescopeck or Buck Mountain, a spur of the Blue Mountains, about 1620 ft. above sea-level. It has a park and a number of handsome residences; and its agreeable climate and picturesque situation make it attractive as a summer resort. The city has a public library. Hazleton is near the centre of one of the richest coal regions (the Lehigh or "Eastern Middle Coal Field") of the state, and its principal industry is the mining and shipping of anthracite coal. It has silk mills, knitting mills, shirt factories, breweries, macaroni factories, lumber and planing mills, important iron works, a casket factory and a large electric power plant. The value of the city's factory products increased from $998,823 in 1900 to $2,185,876 in 1905, or 118.8%, only three other cities in the state having a population of 8000 or more in 1900 showing a greater rate of increase. There is a state hospital here for the treatment of persons injured in mines. Hazleton was settled in 1820, was laid out in 1836, was incorporated as a borough in 1856 and received a city charter in 1891. The local coal industry dates from 1837.

HAZLITT, WILLIAM (1778-1830), British literary critic and essayist, was born on the 10th of April 1778 at Maidstone, where his father, William Hazlitt, was minister of a Unitarian congregation. The father took the side of the Americans in their struggle with the mother-country, and during a residence at Bandon, Co. Cork, interested himself in the welfare of some American prisoners at Kinsale. In 1783 he migrated with his family to America, but in the winter of 1786-1787 returned to England, and settled at Wem in Shropshire, where he ministered to a small congregation. There his son William went to school, till in 1793 he was sent to the Hackney theological college in the hope that he would become a dissenting minister. For this career, however, he had no inclination, and returned, probably in 1794, to Wem, where he led a desultory life until 1802, and then decided to become a portrait painter. His elder brother John was already established as a miniature painter in London. The monotony of life at Wem was broken in January 1798 by the visit of Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Shrewsbury, where young Hazlitt went to hear him preach. Coleridge encouraged William Hazlitt's interest in metaphysics, and in the spring of the next year Hazlitt visited Coleridge at Nether Stowey and made the acquaintance of William Wordsworth. The circumstances of this early intercourse with Coleridge are related with inimitable skill in a paper in Hazlitt's _Literary Remains_ (1839). On visits to his brother in London he made many acquaintances, the most important being a friendship with Charles Lamb, said to have been founded on a remark of Lamb's interpolated in a discussion between Coleridge, Godwin and Holcroft, "Give me man as he is _not_ to be." He also formed an acquaintance with John Stoddart, whose sister Sarah he married in 1808. In October 1802 he went to Paris to copy portraits in the Louvre, and spent four happy months in Paris. When he returned to London he undertook commissions for portraits, but soon found he was not likely to excel in his art; his last portrait, one of Charles Lamb as a Venetian senator (now in the National Portrait Gallery), was executed in 1805. In that year he published his first book, _An Essay on the Principles of Human Action: being an argument in favour of the Natural Disinterestedness of the Human Mind_, which had occupied him at intervals for six or seven years. It attracted little attention, but remained a favourite with its author. Other works belonging to this period are: _Free Thoughts on Public Affairs_ (1806); _An Abridgment of the Light of Nature Revealed, by Abraham Tucker ..._ (1807); _The Eloquence of the British Senate ..._ (2 vols., 1807); _A Reply to Malthus, on his Essay on Population_ (1807); _A New and Improved Grammar of the English Tongue ..._ (1810).

Hazlitt married in 1808. His domestic life was unhappy. His wife was an unromantic, business-like woman, while he himself was fitful and moody, and impatient of restraint. The dissolution of the ill-assorted union was nevertheless deferred for fourteen years, during which much of Hazlitt's best literary work had been produced. Mrs Hazlitt had inherited a small estate at Winterslow near Salisbury, and here the Hazlitts lived until 1812, when they removed to 19 York Street, Westminster, a house that was once Milton's. Hazlitt delivered in 1812 a course of lectures at the Russell Institution on the _Rise and Progress of Modern Philosophy_. He soon abandoned philosophy, however, to give his whole attention to journalism. He was parliamentary reporter and subsequently dramatic critic for the _Morning Chronicle_; he also contributed to the _Champion_ and _The Times_; but his closest connexion was with the _Examiner_, owned by John and Leigh Hunt. In conjunction with Leigh Hunt he undertook the series of articles called _The Round Table_, a collection of essays on literature, men and manners which were originally contributed to the _Examiner_. To this time belong his _View of the English Stage_ (1818), and _Lectures on the English Poets_ (1818), on the _English Comic Writers_ (1819), and on the _Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth_ (1821). By these works, together with his _Characters of Shakespeare's Plays_ (1817), and his _Table Talk; or Original Essays on Men and Manners_ (1821-1822), his reputation as a critic and essayist was established. Next to Coleridge, Hazlitt was perhaps the most powerful exponent of the dawning perception that Shakespeare's art was no less marvellous than his genius; and Hazlitt's criticism did not, like Coleridge's, remain in the condition of a series of brilliant but fitful glimpses of insight, but was elaborated with steady care. His lectures on the Elizabethan dramatists performed a similar service for the earlier, sweeter and simpler among them, such as Dekker, till then unduly eclipsed by later writers like Massinger, better playwrights but worse poets. Treating of the contemporary drama, he successfully vindicated for Edmund Kean, whose genius he recognized from the first, the high place which he has retained as an actor, and his enthusiasm for Mrs Siddons knew no bounds. His criticisms on the English comic writers and men of letters in general are masterpieces of ingenious and felicitous exposition, though rarely, like Coleridge's, penetrating to the inmost core of the subject. Moreover, at the time when the lectures were written, Hazlitt's views, orthodox as they may seem now, were novel enough.

As an essayist Hazlitt is even more effective than as a critic. Being enabled to select his own subjects, he escapes dependence upon others either for his matter or his illustrations, and presents himself by turns as a metaphysician, a moralist, a humorist, a painter of manners and characteristics, but always, whatever his ostensible theme, deriving the essence of his commentary from himself. This combination of intense subjectivity with strict adherence to his subject is one of Hazlitt's most distinctive and creditable traits. Intellectual truthfulness is a passion with him. He steeps his topic in the hues of his own individuality, but never uses it as a means of self-display. The first reception of his admirable essays was by no means in accordance with their deserts. Hazlitt's political sympathies and antipathies were vehement, and he had taken the unfashionable side. _The Quarterly Review_ attacked him with deliberate malignity, stopped the sale of his writings for a time and blighted his credit with publishers. Hazlitt retaliated by his _Letter to William Gifford_ (1819), accusing the editor of deliberate misrepresentation. In downright abuse and hard-hitting, Hazlitt proved himself more than a match even for Gifford. By the writers in _Blackwood's Magazine_ Hazlitt was also scurrilously treated.[1] He had become estranged from his early friends, the Lake poets, by what he uncharitably but not unnaturally regarded as their political apostasy; and he had no scruples about recording his often very unfavourable opinions of his contemporaries. He displayed, moreover, an exasperating facility in grounding his criticisms on facts that his victims were unable to deny. His inequalities of temper separated him for a time even from Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb, and on the whole the period of his most brilliant literary success was that when he was most soured and broken. Domestic troubles supervened; he had gone to live in Southampton Buildings in September 1819, and his marriage, long little more than nominal, was dissolved in consequence of the infatuated passion he had conceived for his landlord's daughter, Sarah Walker, a most ordinary person in the eyes of every one else. It is impossible to regard Hazlitt as a responsible agent while he continued subject to this influence. His own record of the transaction, published by himself under the title of _Liber Amoris, or the New Pygmalion_ (1823), is an unpleasant but remarkable psychological document. It consists of conversations between Hazlitt and Sarah Walker, drawn up in the spring of 1822, of a correspondence between Hazlitt and his friend P. G. Patmore between March and July, and an account of the rupture of his relations with Sarah. The business-like dissolution of his marriage under the law of Scotland is related with amazing naivete by the family biographer. Rid of his wife and cured of his mistress, he shortly afterwards astonished his friends by marrying a widow. "All I know," says his grandson, "is that Mrs Bridgewater became Mrs Hazlitt." They travelled on the continent for a year and then parted finally. Hazlitt's study of the Italian masters during this tour, described in a series of letters contributed to the _Morning Chronicle_, had a deep effect upon him, and perhaps conduced to that intimacy with the cynical old painter Northcote which, shortly after his return, engendered a curious but eminently readable volume of _The Conversations of James Northcote, R.A._ (1830). The respective shares of author and artist are not always easy to determine. During the recent agitations of his life he had been writing essays, collected in 1826 under the title of _The Plain Speaker: opinions on Books, Men and Things_ (1826). _The Spirit of the Age; or Contemporary Portraits_ (1825), a series of criticisms on the leading intellectual characters of the day, is in point of style perhaps the most splendid and copious of his compositions. It is eager and animated to impetuosity, though without any trace of carelessness or disorder. He now undertook a work which was to have crowned his literary reputation, but which can hardly be said to have even enhanced it--_The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte_ (4 vols., 1828-1830). The undertaking was at best premature, and was inevitably disfigured by partiality to Napoleon as the representative of the popular cause, excusable in a Liberal politician writing in the days of the Holy Alliance. Owing to the failure of his publishers Hazlitt received no recompense for this laborious work. Pecuniary anxieties and disappointments may have contributed to hasten his death, which took place on the 18th of September 1830. Charles Lamb was with him to the last.