HARPENDEN, an urban district in the Mid or St Albans parliamentary division of Hertfordshire, England, 25 m. N.W. by N. from London by the Midland railway, served also by a branch of the Great Northern railway. Pop. (1901) 4725. It is a favourite outlying residential district for those whose work lies in London. The church of St Nicholas is a modern reconstruction with the exception of the Perpendicular tower. In the Lawes Testimonial Laboratory there is a vast collection of samples of experimentally grown produce, annual products, ashes and soils. Sir John Bennet Lawes (d. 1900) provided an endowment of £100,000 for the perpetuation of the agricultural experiments which he inaugurated here at his seat of Rothamsted Park. The success of his association of chemistry with botany is shown by the fact that soil has been made to bear wheat without intermission for upwards of half a century without manure. The country neighbouring to Harpenden is very pleasant, including the gorse-covered Harpenden Common and the narrow well-wooded valley of the upper Lea.
HARPER’S FERRY, a town of Jefferson county, West Virginia, U.S.A., finely situated at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers (which here pass through a beautiful gorge in the Blue Ridge), 55 m. N.W. of Washington. Pop. (1900) 896; (1910) 766. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio railway, which crosses the Potomac here, by the Winchester & Potomac railway (Baltimore & Ohio) of which it is a terminus, and by boats on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, which passes along the Maryland side of the Potomac. Across the Potomac on the north rise the Maryland Heights; across the Shenandoah, on the West Virginia side, the Virginia or Loudoun Heights; and behind the town to the W. the Bolivar Heights. A United States arsenal and armoury were established at Harper’s Ferry in 1796, the site being chosen because of the good water-power; these were seized on the 16th of October 1859 by John Brown (q.v.), the abolitionist, and some 21 of his followers. For four months before the raid Brown and his men lived on the Kennedy Farm, in Washington county, Maryland, about 4 m. N.W. of Harper’s Ferry. The engine-house in which Brown was captured was exhibited at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago and was later rebuilt on Bolivar Heights; a marble pillar, marked “John Brown’s Fort,” has been erected on its original site. On Camp Hill is Storer College (state-aided), a normal school for negroes, which was established under Free Baptist control in 1867, and has academic, normal, biblical, musical and industrial departments.
The first settlement here was made about 1747 by Robert Harper, who ran a ferry across the Potomac. The position of Harper’s Ferry at the lower end of the Shenandoah Valley rendered it a place of strategic importance during the Civil War. On the 18th of April 1861, the day after Virginia passed her ordinance of secession, when a considerable force of Virginia militia under General Kenton Harper approached the town—an attack having been planned in Richmond two days before—the Federal garrison of 45 men under Lieutenant Roger Jones set fire to the arsenal and fled. Within the next few days large numbers of Confederate volunteers assembled here; and Harper was succeeded in command (27th April) by “Stonewall” Jackson, who was in turn succeeded by Brigadier-General Joseph E. Johnston on the 23rd of May. Johnston thought that the place was unimportant, and withdrew when (15th June) the Federal forces under General Robert Patterson and Colonel Lew Wallace approached, and Harper’s Ferry was again occupied by a Federal garrison. In September 1862, during General Lee’s first invasion of the North, General McClellan advised that the place be abandoned in order that the 10,000 men defending it might be added to his fighting force, but General Halleck would not consent, so that when Lee needed supplies from the Shenandoah Valley he was blocked by the garrison, then under the command of Colonel Dixon S. Miles. On Jackson’s approach they were distributed as follows: about 7000 men on Bolivar Heights, about 2000 on Maryland Heights, and about 1800 on the lower ground. On the 13th of September General Lafayette McLaws carried Maryland Heights and General John G. Walker planted a battery on Loudoun Heights. On the 14th there was some fighting, but early on the 15th, as Jackson was about to make an assault on Bolivar Heights, the garrison, surrounded by a superior force, surrendered. The total Federal loss (including the garrisons at Winchester and Martinsburg) amounted to 44 killed (the commander was mortally wounded), 12,520 prisoners, and 13,000 small arms. For this terrible loss to the Union army the responsibility seems to have been General Halleck’s, though the blame was officially put on Colonel Miles, who died immediately after the surrender. Jackson rejoined Lee on the following day in time to take part in the battle of Antietam, and after the battle General McClellan placed a strong garrison (the 12th Corps) at Harper’s Ferry. In June 1863 the place was again abandoned to the Confederates on their march to Pennsylvania. After their defeat at Gettysburg, the town again fell into the hands of the Federal troops, and it remained in their possession until the end of the war. On the 4th of July 1864 General Franz Sigel, who was then in command here, withdrew his troops to Maryland Heights, and from there resisted Early’s attempt to enter the town and to drive the Federal garrison from Maryland Heights. Harper’s Ferry was seriously damaged by a flood in the Shenandoah in October 1878.
HARPIES (Gr. Ἅρπυιαι, older form Ἀρέπυιαι, “swift robbers”), in ancient mythology, the personification of the sweeping storm-winds. In Homer, where they appear indifferently under the name of ἄρπυιαι and θύελλαι, their function is to carry off those whose sudden disappearance is desired by the gods. Only one of them is there mentioned (Iliad, xvi. 150) by name, Podargē, the mother of the coursers of Achilles by Zephyrus, the generative wind. According to Hesiod (Theog. 265) they are two in number, Aëllo and Ocypetē, daughters of Thaumas and Electra, winged goddesses with beautiful locks, swifter than winds and birds in their flight, and their domain is the air. In later times their number was increased (Celaeno being a frequent addition and their leader in Virgil), and they were described as hateful and repulsive creatures, birds with the faces of old women, the ears of bears, crooked talons and hanging breasts; even in Aeschylus (Eumenides, 50) they appear as ugly and misshapen monsters. Their function of snatching away mortals to the other world brings them into connexion with the Erinyes, with whom they are often confounded. On the so-called Harpy monument from Lycia, now in the British Museum, the Harpies appear carrying off some small figures, supposed to be the daughters of Pandareus, unless they are intended to represent departed souls. The repulsive character of the Harpies is more especially seen in the legend of Phineus, king of Salmydessus in Thrace (Apollodorus i. 9, 21; see also Diod. Sic. iv. 43). Having been deprived of his sight by the gods for his ill-treatment of his sons by his first wife (or for having revealed the future to mortals), he was condemned to be tormented by two Harpies, who carried off whatever food was placed before him. On the arrival of the Argonauts, Phineus promised to give them particulars of the course they should pursue and of the dangers that lay before them, if they would deliver him from his tormentors. Accordingly, when the Harpies appeared as usual to carry off the food from Phineus’s table, they were driven off and pursued by Calaïs and Zetes, the sons of Boreas, as far as the Strophades islands in the Aegean. On promising to cease from molesting Phineus, their lives were spared. Their place of abode is variously placed in the Strophades, the entrance to the under-world, or a cave in Crete. According to Cecil Smith, Journal of Hellenic Studies, xiii. (1892-1893), the Harpies are the hostile spirits of the scorching south wind; E. Rohde (Rheinisches Museum, i., 1895) regards them as spirits of the storm, which at the bidding of the gods carry off human beings alive to the under-world or some spot beyond human ken.
See articles in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie and Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités. In the article [Greek Art], fig. 14 gives a representation of the winged Harpies.
HARPIGNIES, HENRI (1819- ), French landscape painter, born at Valenciennes in 1819, was intended by his parents for a business career, but his determination to become an artist was so strong that it conquered all obstacles, and he was allowed at the age of twenty-seven to enter Achard’s atelier in Paris. From this painter he acquired a groundwork of sound constructive draughtsmanship, which is so marked a feature of his landscape painting. After two years under this exacting teacher he went to Italy, whence he returned in 1850. During the next few years he devoted himself to the painting of children in landscape setting, and fell in with Corot and the other Barbizon masters, whose principles and methods are to a certain extent reflected in his own personal art. To Corot he was united by a bond of warm friendship, and the two artists went together to Italy in 1860. On his return, he scored his first great success at the Salon, in 1861, with his “Lisière de bois sur les bords de l’Allier.” After that year he was a regular exhibitor at the old Salon; in 1886 he received his first medal for “Le Soir dans la campagne de Rome,” which was acquired for the Luxembourg Gallery. Many of his best works were painted at Hérisson in the Bourbonnais, as well as in the Nivernais and the Auvergne. Among his chief pictures are “Soir sur les bords de la Loire” (1861), “Les Corbeaux” (1865), “Le Soir” (1866), “Le Saut-du-Loup” (1873), “La Loire” (1882), and “Vue de Saint-Privé” (1883). He also did some decorative work for the Paris Opéra—the “Vallée d’Egérie” panel, which he showed at the Salon of 1870.