JULIUS CHARLES, M.A., an eminent clergyman and dignitary of the Church of England, was born at Herstmonceux, in the county of Sussex, on the 13th of September 1795. His father, the Rev. Robert Hare, who was a younger son of Bishop Hare, held, along with the family living of Herstmonceux, the rectory of Barton Stacey, and in his later years was a prebendary of Winchester. His mother was a daughter of Dr. Shipley, Bishop of St Asaph. Their family consisted of four sons, of whom the subject of this notice was the third. The oldest, Francis, and the youngest, Marcus, died early, and without having acquired distinction; the second, Augustus William, who became a fellow of New College, Oxford, and rector of Alton Barnes, Wiltshire, though prematurely cut off in 1834, has secured for himself a permanent reputation, partly as the associate of his younger and more famous brother in one of his most widely circulated publications, partly by two volumes of sermons published after his death, and of which a very impartial and competent critic has said, that "for an illiterate audience—an audience of rustics—they appear in point of diction perfect models of what discourses ought to be."

The Rev. Robert Hare died while his sons were yet young. Their early education was superintended by their mother, a woman of cultivated mind, and who added to an energy derived from her father, a grace and beauty of character peculiarly her own. To her and to her sister, Lady Jones, widow of the celebrated orientalist, the subject of this notice owed much of his early training. Of his juvenile life a considerable portion was spent on the Continent, and there, it is presumed, were laid the foundations of several peculiarities both of style and sentiment by which he was afterwards characterized. After passing through the usual course at the Charter-house, he was removed to Cambridge, in 1812, where he remained, with a brief interval, for twenty years. He became a Fellow of Trinity College in 1818, and in 1822 he assumed the duties of assistant-tutor of the college. During his residence at Cambridge he was engaged in amassing that treasure of classical and philological learning which formed the basis of his intellectual furniture, and in forming that habit of mind and tendency of thought by which he was afterwards peculiarly distinguished. To this the study of German literature, and of the writings of Coleridge and Wordsworth, contributed, along with that of the literary treasures of ancient Greece and Rome. Nor were there wanting the plastic influences of congenial society and the collision of kindred minds, for Trinity College numbered then among its members, who were Mr Hare's contemporaries, not a few whose names have since added splendour to the ancient glories of that foundation. We have Mr Hare's own testimony to the effect that he owed "the building up of his mind, and much happiness for more than twenty years, to the friends he found amongst the members of Trinity College;" and one of the most distinguished of these friends has recorded that when Mr Hare left Cambridge it was to his "great sorrow and that of many more."

Whilst at Cambridge, Mr Hare published a work in two volumes, under the title of *Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers*. Part of this work, which consists of apophthegms and reflections in various departments of knowledge, was contributed by his elder brother, but the greater part was furnished by himself. There, too, he, in conjunction with his friend the Rev. Connop Thirlwall, now Bishop of St David's, executed the translation of the first two volumes of Niebuhr's *History of Rome*, of which vol. i. was published in 1828, and vol. ii. in 1832. He also united with the same friend and some others in publishing the *Philological Museum*, a periodical of which only two volumes were completed, but which contributed much to introduce a profounder habit of studying ancient literature than had previously for several generations characterized English scholars.

To this journal Mr Hare contributed largely, both by translations from the German and by original articles. Among the latter are some intended to vindicate those departures from the ordinary mode of spelling some words in which he indulged, and the uncouth appearance of which, together with some roughnesses of style, led a facetious critic to designate him pungently Julius Hirsutus.

The family living of Herstmonceaux having become vacant in 1832 by the death of his uncle, Mr Hare quitted Cambridge to assume the duties of rector of that parish. Before entering upon these, however, he availed himself of the opportunity to pay a visit to the Continent, in the course of which he spent some time at Rome. Here commenced his intimacy with the Chevalier Bunsen, an intimacy which was afterwards ripened into the most cordial friendship when the latter came to reside in England as the representative of the Prussian court. When he published his great work on *Hippolytus and his Age*, the learned diplomatist dedicated part of it to Mr Hare, "as a monument of a life-long friendship;" and in the body of the work he addresses him thus,—"My dearest friend, together with whom for nearly twenty years I have had the happiness of thinking and inquiring, and in whose love of truth I have found no less comfort than in your erudition and critical judgment."

At Herstmonceaux, Mr Hare devoted himself with landed fidelity to the duties of his office. He laboured to accommodate his style of thinking and speaking to his rustic auditors, with a perseverance deserving of all praise, though without, we fear, any large measure of success; at any rate, if the two published volumes of his Parish Sermons may be taken as a specimen of his ordinary teaching, the peasantry of Herstmonceaux must possess a taste for "painful preaching" exceeding even that of the Puritans, if they did not many a time weary for the close of his discourse. Nor did he much excel in the more private duties of a parish minister. The truth is, he was not quite in his place in such a sphere. His habits and the peculiar cast of his mind fitted him rather for the study than the pulpit, and for intercourse with the learned and the thoughtful than for acting the part of a teacher or a comforter of the illiterate. He had collected a magnificent library, to which he went on continually adding, until it had covered nearly all the inside walls of his rectory; and it was his delight to pursue, amidst these treasures of literature, with painstaking minuteness, researches into those departments to which he had addicted himself; and which, besides philology, embraced history, philosophy, and theology. The stores thus accumulated he delighted also to communicate to all who were privileged to enjoy his friendship, though it must be confessed that the stream sometimes came forth with a volume and a rapidity that made it impossible for less capacious minds to sustain themselves under it. As a preacher he was more in his place at Cambridge, where he delivered the two courses of sermons afterwards published under the title of *The Victory of Faith*, 8vo, 1840, and *The Mission of the Comforter*, 2 vols. 8vo, 1846; but even with such an audience there was something in his style of thought and expression that stood in the way of his success; and it is even recorded that on one occasion the spirit of undergraduate impatience found utterance, and his sermon "was closed amidst the audible scrapings and shufflings of a multitude of invisible feet on all sides of the eloquent preacher." When in 1840 he was appointed Archdeacon of Lewes, a still more congenial and suitable sphere was secured to him for the exercise of his peculiar powers, in the periodical charges which it formed part of his official duty to deliver to the clergy of that archdeaconry; though it must be confessed that even here also the acceptability and usefulness of his addresses were not a little marred by that excessive prolixity which was the besetting sin of his written discourses. "If I had been one of his clergy," said an eminent prelate, after looking over one of his published charges, "and been charged in that style, I should have been like a gun—I should have gone off."

Sometime after settling at Herstmonceaux, Mr Hare married a sister of his friend and former pupil, the Rev. F. D. Maurice. This union was a source of unfailing happiness to him, as well as in some respects of spiritual enlightenment and comfort. An internal disorder, to which he was subject, and under which his strength gradually sank, rendered invaluable the society and the tender care of such a partner. To her it was given to "cast a steady sunshine over his life" during its latest years. These years were years of unremitting toil, though also of frequent suffering and progressive decay. He delivered his last charge to his clergy in the autumn of 1854; he spoke with difficulty, and all could see that the hand of death was upon him; but he lingered on till the 23d of January 1855, when he peacefully expired in the arms of his wife. He was buried at Herstmonceaux on the 30th of the same month.

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1 Dedication of *The Victory of Faith*. 2 Whewell's Dedication of *Four Sermons on the Foundation of Morals*. 3 Vol. i., p. 330, 2d edit. 4 Quarterly Review, No. 193, p. 14. The works of Archdeacon Hare are chiefly theological and controversial. His translation of Niebuhr, and his contributions to the Philological Museum, constitute the whole of what he did of a purely literary character, if we except some early and unacknowledged translations from the German, and a few portions of the Guesses at Truth. His theological writings consist almost exclusively of sermons preached either in the ordinary course of parish duty or on special occasions. The most important in every point of view is his Mission of the Comforter, a series of discourses on John xvi. 7-11, followed by an immense mass of notes. His published charges are numerous, and relate to almost all the more prominent topics of public interest affecting religion which have been before the mind of the public during the last fourteen years of his life. Besides these, most of which are of a controversial character, he was the author of several publications on controverted topics; and at the time of his death he was engaged on the revival of the largest and perhaps the weightiest of these, his Vindication of Luther, which had first appeared as a note to the Mission of the Comforter. So many of these controversial publications were devoted to the vindication of others, that he used to say playfully that he should one day collect them all in one volume, under the title of "Vindicis Hariane, or the Hare with many friends," a witticism which, though not original, was one to which he had a hereditary right, the title of the old fable having been jocularly applied by the famous Duchess of Gordon to his relative, James Hare. His Life of Sterling may be regarded as coming under the head of these friendly vindications.

As a writer, Archdeacon Hare is distinguished by breadth of view, copiousness and accuracy of learning, massiveness of conception, and an earnest but not very dexterous handling of his materials. His writings have been debarred of their proper influence and reputation, partly by his orthographical peculiarities, principally by his rugged and operose style. Though thoroughly, almost fastidiously, English in respect of words and idioms, his style was German rather than English in respect of the construction of sentences. This was especially unfavourable to him as a controversialist. The great defect of his writings in this department is their want of point. An intelligent reader cannot but see that the true answer which the side espoused by the writer demands is there, but it is so involved in the mass of matter that it fails to tell as it otherwise might. In spite of such drawbacks, however, these writings contain such a vast amount of sound and wise thinking, are so pervaded by an almost boundless learning, and indicate such a truth-loving, just, and earnest spirit, that they cannot fail to secure for their author a permanent place among the theological writers of his age and country.

As a churchman, Archdeacon Hare belonged to what has been called the Broad Church, not so much from any latitudinarianism on the part of those composing it, as from the eclectic tendency of their theological studies. With the spirit of this party he was deeply imbued. He sought truth wherever it was to be found, and he embraced it when found with a simple and loving spirit. Standing aloof alike from Puseyite and Evangelical, he sought to admire what might be good in either party, or to learn from either whatever it had to teach that was true. On the cardinal truths of Christianity his opinions, as expounded in his writings, are very much those of the Evangelical Arminian school; though on some points, such as the nature of the atonement, his views seem vague and indefinite. See Quarterly Review, No. 193, and British and Foreign and Evangelical Review, No. V.