Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/209

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HIGGINS


HINTON


court, amid hisses, by the magistrates. D. Dec., 1834.

HIGGINS, Godfrey, archaeologist. B. May 1, 1773. Ed. Cambridge (Trinity Hall). He studied law, but, receiving a large fortune at the death of his father, he abstained from practice, and devoted his time to the study of religion. From 1802 to 1816 he served in the army. His first work, Hora Sabbatic (1826), was a study of the origin of the Sabbath. In 1829 he published An Apology for the Life and Character of Mahommed and The Celtic Druids, which opened his serious study of religion. The rest of his research is incor porated in his posthumous Anacalypsis (2 vols., 1836). Higgins professed to be a Christian, in the naturalist sense, but was a Deist. D. Aug. 9, 1833.

HIGGINSON, Colonel Thomas Went- worth, American writer. B. Dec 22, 1823. Ed. Harvard. In 1848 he was ordained, and he became Pastor of the First Congre gational Church, Newburyport. Compelled to leave this on account of his opposition to slavery, he took a free church in Worcester until 1858, when he abandoned the ministry and flung himself into the anti-slavery campaign. He was a Colonel in the Civil War. After 1864 he devoted himself to letters and politics, sitting in the Massachusetts Legislature 1880-81 and on the State Board of Education 1881-83. He translated Epictetus and wrote many historical and biographical works. In an American symposium on immortality (In After Days, 1910) Colonel Higginson rejects " all sects and creeds," but believes in some sort of God and future life (ch. vi). D. May 9, 1911.

HILL, George Birkbeck Norman,

D.C.L., LL.D., writer. B. June 7, 1835. Ed. Oxford (Pembroke College). At Oxford he became a friend of Swinburne, Morris, and Eossetti, and shared their views. He was a schoolmaster from 1858 to 1869, then a journalist and author. He edited

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Boswell (6 vols., 1887), some of Johnson s works, and the letters of Hume and Eossetti. In one of his letters he says : " Priestcraft in every form I hate, and dogma I laugh at " (Letters of G. B. Hitt t 1906, p. 245). He thought Christianity " a very noble poem, but of such stuff as dreams are made of." D. Feb. 27, 1903.

HILLEBRAND, Professor Karl, Ger man writer. B. Sep. 17, 1829. Ed. Giessen and Heidelberg Universities. He was imprisoned for his share in the Eevolu- tion of 1848. Migrating to Paris, he was for a time secretary to Heine, but he graduated at the Sorbonne, taught German at the St. Cyr Military School, and eventu ally became professor of foreign literature at Douai. After the Franco-German War he settled in Italy, and wrote in French, German, and Italian. His essays alone fill seven volumes. In 1880 he lectured at the London Eoyal Institution (Lectures on German Thought). D. Oct. 19, 1884.

HINS, Eugene, Ph.D., D.es L., Belgian writer. B. Nov. 8, 1839. Hins, a strong Socialist as well as Eationalist, edited the Internationale for some years, and was one of the leading lecturers and writers of the Belgian Eationalists. In 1872 he was banished to Eussia. He was professor at the Eoyal Athenaeum, Charleroi, and wrote La Bussie devoilee au moyen de sa litterature populaire (1883) and other works, generally under the pseudonym " Diogene." After his retirement from the Belgian Civil Service in 1900 Hins was very active in the Eationalist world. " You waste your time and trouble in attacking clericalism," he wrote ; " attack its root religion."

HINTON, James, surgeon and philo sopher. B. 1822. Ed. Nonconformist School, Harpenden. At first a clerk, he qualified in medicine, and, after a few years practice as a naval surgeon, settled in London (1850) becoming a high autho rity on ear diseases. Always deeply interested in philosophy, and a member of 346