the above-mentioned chief sources have been issued by the Verein
für hansische Geschichte. Of the secondary literature, the following
histories and monographs should be named. G. F. Sartorius,
Geschichte des hanseatischen Bundes (3 vols., Göttingen, 1802–1808),
Urkundliche Geschichte des Ursprunges der deutschen Hanse, herausgegeben
von J. M. Lappenberg (2 vols., Hamburg, 1830); F. W.
Barthold, Geschichte der deutschen Hansa (3 vols., 2nd ed., Leipzig,
1862); D. Schäfer, Die Hansestädte und König Waldemar von
Dänemark (Jena, 1879); W. Stein, Beiträge zur Geschichte der
deutschen Hanse bis um die Mitte des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts (Giessen,
1900); E. Daenell, Die Blütezeit der deutschen Hanse. Hansische
Geschichte von der zweiten Hälfte des XIV. bis zum letzten Viertel des
XV. Jahrhunderts (2 vols., Berlin, 1905–1906); J. M. Lappenberg,
Urkundliche Geschichte des hansischen Stahlhofes zu London (Hamburg,
1851); F. Keutgen, Die Beziehungen der Hanse zu England im letzten
Drittel des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts (Giessen, 1890); R. Ehrenberg,
Hamburg und England im Zeitalter der Königin Elisabeth (Jena,
1896); W. Stein, Die Genossenschaft der deutschen Kaufleute zu
Brügge in Flandern (Berlin, 1890); H. Rogge, Der Stapelzwang des
hansischen Kontors zu Brügge im fünfzehnten Jahrhundert (Kiel,
1903); A. Winckler, Die deutsche Hansa in Russland (Berlin, 1886).
(E. F. G.)
HANSEN, PETER ANDREAS (1795–1874), Danish astronomer,
was born on the 8th of December 1795, at Tondern, in the duchy
of Schleswig. The son of a goldsmith, he learned the trade of a
watchmaker at Flensburg, and exercised it at Berlin and Tondern,
1818–1820. He had, however, long been a student of science;
and Dr Dircks, a physician practising at Tondern, prevailed
with his father to send him in 1820 to Copenhagen, where he
won the patronage of H. C. Schumacher, and attracted the
personal notice of King Frederick VI. The Danish survey was
then in progress, and he acted as Schumacher’s assistant in work
connected with it, chiefly at the new observatory of Altona,
1821–1825. Thence he passed on to Gotha as director of the
Seeberg observatory; nor could he be tempted to relinquish
the post by successive invitations to replace F. G. W. Struve at
Dorpat in 1829, and F. W. Bessel at Königsberg in 1847. The
problems of gravitational astronomy engaged the chief part of
Hansen’s attention. A research into the mutual perturbations of
Jupiter and Saturn secured for him the prize of the Berlin
Academy in 1830, and a memoir on cometary disturbances was
crowned by the Paris Academy in 1850. In 1838 he published
a revision of the lunar theory, entitled Fundamenta nova investigationis,
&c., and the improved Tables of the Moon based upon
it were printed in 1857, at the expense of the British government,
their merit being further recognized by a grant of £1000, and by
their immediate adoption in the Nautical Almanac, and other
Ephemerides. A theoretical discussion of the disturbances
embodied in them (still familiarly known to lunar experts as
the Darlegung) appeared in the Abhandlungen of the Saxon
Academy of Sciences in 1862–1864. Hansen twice visited England
and was twice (in 1842 and 1860) the recipient of the Royal
Astronomical Society’s gold medal. He communicated to that
society in 1847 an able paper on a long-period lunar inequality
(Memoirs Roy. Astr. Society, xvi. 465), and in 1854 one on the
moon’s figure, advocating the mistaken hypothesis of its deformation
by a huge elevation directed towards the earth (Ib. xxiv.
29). He was awarded the Copley medal by the Royal Society
in 1850, and his Solar Tables, compiled with the assistance of
Christian Olufsen, appeared in 1854. Hansen gave in 1854 the
first intimation that the accepted distance of the sun was too
great by some millions of miles (Month. Notices Roy. Astr. Soc.
xv. 9), the error of J. F. Encke’s result having been rendered
evident through his investigation of a lunar inequality. He died
on the 28th of March 1874, at the new observatory in the town
of Gotha, erected under his care in 1857.
See Vierteljahrsschrift astr. Gesellschaft, x. 133; Month. Notices Roy. Astr. Society, xxxv. 168; Proc. Roy. Society, xxv. p. v.; R. Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie, p. 526; Wochenschrift für Astronomie, xvii. 207 (account of early years by E. Heis); Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (C. Bruhns). (A. M. C.)
HANSI, a town of British India, in the Hissar district of the
Punjab, on a branch of the Western Jumna canal, with a station
on the Rewari-Ferozepore railway, 16 m. E. of Hissar. Pop.
(1901) 16,523. Hansi is one of the most ancient towns in
northern India, the former capital of the tract called Hariana.
At the end of the 18th century it was the headquarters of the
famous Irish adventurer George Thomas; from 1803 to 1857
it was a British cantonment, and it became the scene of a
murderous outbreak during the Mutiny. A ruined fort overlooks
the town, which is still surrounded by a high brick wall, with
bastions and loop holes. It is a centre of local trade, with
factories for ginning and pressing cotton.
HANSOM, JOSEPH ALOYSIUS (1803–1882), English architect
and inventor, was born in York on the 26th of October 1803.
Showing an aptitude for designing and construction, he was taken
from his father’s joinery shop and apprenticed to an architect
in York, and, by 1831, his designs for the Birmingham town hall
were accepted and followed—to his financial undoing, as he had
become bond for the builders. In 1834 he registered the design
of a “Patent Safety Cab,” and subsequently sold the patent
to a company for £10,000, which, however, owing to the
company’s financial difficulties, was never paid. The hansom
cab as improved by subsequent alterations, nevertheless, took
and held the fancy of the public. There was no back seat for the
driver in the original design, and there is little beside the suspended
axle and large wheels in the modern hansom to recall
the early ones. In 1834 Hansom founded the Builder newspaper,
but was compelled to retire from this enterprise owing to insufficient
capital. Between 1854 and 1879 he devoted himself
to architecture, designing and erecting a great number of
important buildings, private and public, including churches,
schools and convents for the Roman Catholic church to which
he belonged. Buildings from his designs are scattered all over
the United Kingdom, and were even erected in Australia and
South America. He died in London on the 29th of June 1882.
HANSON, SIR RICHARD DAVIES (1805–1876), chief justice
of South Australia, was born in London on the 6th of December
1805. Admitted a solicitor in 1828, he practised for some time
in London. In 1838 he went with Lord Durham to Canada as
assistant-commissioner of inquiry into crown lands and immigration.
In 1840, on the death of Lord Durham, whose private
secretary he had been, he settled in Wellington, New Zealand.
He there acted as crown prosecutor, but in 1846 removed to
South Australia. In 1851 he was appointed advocate-general
of that colony and took an active share in the passing of many
important measures, such as the first Education Act, the District
Councils Act of 1852, and the Act of 1856 which granted constitutional
government to the colony. In 1856 and again from
1857 to 1860 he was attorney-general and leader of the government.
In 1861 he was appointed chief justice of the supreme
court of South Australia and was knighted in 1869. He died
in Australia on the 4th of March 1876.
HANSTEEN, CHRISTOPHER (1784–1873), Norwegian astronomer
and physicist, was born at Christiania, on the 26th of
September 1784. From the cathedral school he went to the
university at Copenhagen, where first law and afterwards
mathematics formed his main study. In 1806 he taught mathematics
in the gymnasium of Frederiksborg, Zeeland, and in the
following year he began the inquiries in terrestrial magnetism
with which his name is especially associated. He took in 1812
the prize of the Danish Royal Academy of Sciences for his reply
to a question on the magnetic axes. Appointed lecturer in 1814,
he was in 1816 raised to the chair of astronomy and applied
mathematics in the university of Christiania. In 1819 he published
a volume of researches on terrestrial magnetism, which was
translated into German by P. T. Hanson, under the title of
Untersuchungen über den Magnetismus der Erde, with a supplement
containing Beobachtungen der Abweichung und Neigung
der Magnetnadel and an atlas. By the rules there framed for
the observation of magnetical phenomena Hansteen hoped to
accumulate analyses for determining the number and position
of the magnetic poles of the earth. In prosecution of his
researches he travelled over Finland and the greater part of his
own country; and in 1828–1830 he undertook, in company
with G. A. Erman, and with the co-operation of Russia, a government
mission to Western Siberia. A narrative of the expedition
soon appeared (Reise-Erinnerungen aus Sibirien, 1854; Souvenirs
