HAREM, the apartment or suite of apartments in a Mohammedan’s house for the female inmates and their attendants, and the name given to the collective body of them.

HARFLEUR, a village in France with a strong fortress, 4 m.  S. of Havre, taken by Henry V. in 1415, and retaken afterwards by both French and English, becoming finally French in 1450.

HARGRAVES, EDMUND, discoverer of the gold-field in Australia, born at Gosport, Devon; had been to California, concluded that as the geological formation was the same in Australia where he had come from, he would find gold there too and found it in New South Wales in 1851, for which the Government gave him L10,000 (1818-1890).

HARGREAVES, JAMES, inventor of the spinning-jenny, born at Standhill, near Blackburn; was a poor and illiterate weaver when in 1760 he, in conjunction with Robert Peel, brought out a carding-machine; in 1766 he invented the spinning-jenny, a machine which has since revolutionised the cotton-weaving industry, but which at the time evoked the angry resentment of the hand-weaver; he was driven from his native town and settled in Nottingham, where he started a spinning-mill; he failed to get his machine patented, and died in comparative poverty (1745-1778).

HARI-KARI, called also a “happy despatch,” a form of suicide, now obsolete, permitted to offenders of high rank to escape the indignity of a public execution; the nature of it may be gathered from the name, “a gash in the belly.”

HAeRING, WILHELM, German novelist, born at Breslau; bred for law, but abandoned it for literature; wrote two romances, “Walladmor” and “Schloss Avalon,” under the pseudonym of “Walter Scott,” which imposed upon some; he afterwards assumed the name of Wilibald Alexis, a name by which he was long honourably known (1797-1871).

HARINGTON, SIR JOHN, courtier and miscellaneous writer, translated by desire of Queen Elizabeth Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso” (1561-1612).

HARIRI, Arabic philologist and poet of the 11th century, born at Bassorah; celebrated far and wide as the author of “Makameat,” a collection of tales in verse, the central figure in which is one Abu Seid, a clever and amusing production, and evincing a unique mastery of Arabic.

HARLAW, BATTLE OF, a battle fought at Harlaw, 18 m.  NW. of Aberdeen, on 24th July 1411, which decided the supremacy of the Lowland Scots over the Highland.

HARLECH, an old Welsh town in Merionethshire, facing the sea, 10 m.  N. of Barmouth; its grim old castle by the shore was a Lancastrian fortress during the Wars of the Roses, and its capture by the Yorkists in 1468 was the occasion of the well-known song, “The March of the Men of Harlech.”

HARLEQUIN, a character in a Christmas pantomime, in love with Columbine, presumed to be invisible, and deft at tricks to frustrate those of the clown, who is his rival lover.