firm of Lister & Holden, which established a factory near Paris in 1848, carried on a successful business, and in 1859, when Lister retired, was succeeded by Isaac Holden and Sons, which became the largest wool-combing business in the world, employing upwards of 4000 workpeople. In 1865 Holden's medical advisers insisted on complete change of occupation, and he entered parliament as Liberal member for Knaresborough. From 1868 to 1882 he was without a seat, but in the latter year he was elected for the northern division of the West Riding, and in 1885 for Keighley. He was created a baronet in 1893, and died suddenly at Oakworth House, near Keighley, on the 13th of August 1897. His son and heir, Sir Angus Holden, was in 1908 created a peer with the title of Baron Holden of Alston. HOLDERLIN, JOHANN CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH (1770-1843), German poet, was born on the 20th of March 1770, at Lauffen on the Neckar. His mother removing, after a second marriage, to Nurtingen, he began his education at the classical school there. He was destined by his relations for the church, and with this view was later admitted to the seminaries at Denkendorf and Maulbronn. At the age of eighteen he entered as a student of theology the university of Tubingen, where he remained till 1793. He was already the writer of occasional verses, and had begun to sketch his novel _Hyperion_, when he was introduced in this year to Schiller, and obtained through him the post of tutor to the young son of Charlotte von Kalb. A year later he left this situation to attend Fichte's lectures, and to be near Schiller in Jena. The latter recognized in the young poet something of his own genius, and encouraged him by publishing some of his early writings in his periodicals _Die neue Thalia_ and _Die Horen_. In 1796 Holderlin obtained the post of tutor in the family of the banker J. F. Gontard in Frankfort-on-Main. For Gontard's beautiful and gifted wife, Susette, the "Diotima" of his _Hyperion_, he conceived a violent passion; and she became at once his inspiration and his ruin. At the end of two years, during which time the first volume of _Hyperion_ was published (1797), a crisis appears to have occurred in their relations, for the young poet suddenly left Frankfort. In spite of ill-health, he now completed _Hyperion_, the second volume of which appeared in 1799, and began a tragedy, _Der Tod des Empedokles_, a fragment of which is published among his works. His friends became alarmed at the alternate depression and nervous irritability from which he suffered, and he was induced to go to Switzerland, as tutor in a family at Hauptwill. There his health improved; and several of his poems, among which are _Der blinde Sanger_, _An die Hoffnung_ and _Dichtermut_, were written at this time. In 1801 he returned home to arrange for the publication of a volume of his poems; but, on the failure of this enterprise, he was obliged to accept a tutorship at Bordeaux. "Diotima" died a year later,