IIILDA, SAINT, 614-80; a Saxon lady whose name is intimately associated with the history of the early English church and of early English literature. She wits a member of the royal family of Northumbria, her father Heretic being a nephew of king Edwin; and it -vas along with her royal kinsman that, as a girl of she received baptism at the hands of Paulinus. During the pagan reaction which followed Edwin's defeat and death, Hilda was tempted to settle with her widowed sister Hereswith at the monastery of Chelles, 12 in. from Paris; but she was recalled to England by bishop Aldan, the missionary from Iona, and in 019, two years after her consecration as a nun, she was appointed to succeed Hen' the abbess of Heortea or Hartlepool. When. in fulfillment of the vow which he had made before the decisive battle with Penda. Oswy came to dedicate his diourliter to God, it was to the care of Hilda that he intrusted her. In 658 the abliess founded the famous monastery on the cliffs:of Streoneshath or Whitby, and for the next 22 years she ruled with rare ability and virtue over the double community of monks and nuns which gathered around her. Among those who shed the most abiding luster on the establishment were St. John of Beverley and the Saxon poet Ctedmon. Hilda died, full of years, mourned by her nuns as their common mother. There is a St. ililda's church both at South Shields and at Hartlepool, and the latter preserves
her effigy on its ancient seal. At Whitby the tradition long lingered that on a slimmer forenoon, when the sun shone in the highest windows of the n. part of the abbey', the figure of lady Hilda could be disc( riled. and the fossil ammonites of the neighborhood are popularly known as St. Hilda's snakes.
Ill LDBURGHACSEN, chief t, of a circle in. 1.11(.: duchy of Sax'-Memmgen. Ger tnany, in a•wide and fruitfUl Valley on the river I'Verraund on the Werra railroad, 17 in. sac. of Meiningen; pop. '75, 5.162. It is the seat of a' district court, of a court of appeal, mid of the jury court for the duchy. The streets are wide and regular, and the principal buildings arc the former castle of the duchy, erected 1685-95, now used as bar racks, with a park in which there is a monument to queen Louise of Prussia; the old town-house, the government. buildings, the gymnasium erected in 1877, the normal semi nary, and the lunatic asylum. A monument has been erected to those of the citizens who died in the France-Prussian war of 1870-71. The manufactures are very various, and include linen fabrics, cloth, papier-mache, toys, buttons, optical instruments, agri cultural machines, knives, mineral waters, condensed soups, and condensed milk.