* HORSLEY, Charles, the composer, was born at Kensington, December 16, 1821. He was educated at Kensington grammar-school, and received the rudiments of his musical knowledge from his father, William Horsley, Mus. Bac, Oxon. In 1839 he went to Cassel, and was further instructed in composition by Hauptmann, Spohr, and Mendelssohn. In 1841 he returned to London, and commenced his career as a musical composer. In 1849 he wrote his first oratorio of "David," which was refused by the Sacred Harmonic Society. It was performed, November 12, 1850, by the Liverpool Philharmonic Society. Two years later he produced his second great work, the oratorio of "Joseph," which was performed by the Liverpool Philharmonic Society, May, 1852. In 1854 he produced in London with great success his cantata of "Comus." His last work is the oratorio of "Gideon," composed for the Glasgow Musical Festival, January, 1860. It was repeated in London, at St. James' hall, June 12, 1861. Besides the works we have enumerated, Mr. Horsley has written a great many others, such as symphonies (played in Germany), overtures, quartetts, anthems, pianoforte and vocal music, &c. Mr. Horsley was one of the principal founders (and secretary pro tem.) of the Musical Society of London. We may also add that he is grand organist to the Freemasons, to which situation he was appointed upon the resignation of Sir George Smart.—E. F. R.
HORSLEY, John, an eminent antiquary, born in Mid-Lothian in 1685 of a Northumberland family. After studying at one of the Scotch universities, he became pastor of a dissenting congregation at Morpeth, where he died in 1731. In the following year appeared his "Britannia Romana, or the Roman antiquities of Britain," in three books. This valuable work contains an account of all the vestiges of the Roman connection with this island, a description of the Roman walls, illustrated with maps, and excellent engravings of Roman inscriptions and sculptures.—G. BL.
* HORSLEY, John Callcott, A.R.A., was born in London, January, 1817. Carefully trained in art, first in private and then in the schools of the Royal Academy, he began very early to contribute to the art exhibitions, but first attracted notice when, in 1843, his "St. Augustine preaching" gained one of the three second-class prizes of £200 at the Cartoon competition; and in the Fresco competition which followed, he was one of the six artists who obtained commissions to make designs for the walls of the new house of lords. His design of "The Spirit of Religion" was approved, and he executed it in fresco in one of the arches over the strangers' gallery. A year or two later, he painted another fresco from Milton in the Poets' hall of the same building. He has since confined himself, we believe, entirely to cabinet pictures, selecting his subjects chiefly from Shakspeare and Milton, as "L' Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," painted in 1851 for the prince consort; "Malvolio i' the Sun," &c.; or scenes of religious and social life; or the domestic side of English history, of which such titles as "Lady Jane Grey" and "Roger Ascham," "Administration of the Lord's Supper," and his most recent work, "Lost and Found"—an English reading of the parable of the Prodigal Son—will sufficiently indicate the character. Mr. Horsley was for some time one of the head masters in the government school of design, Somerset-house; he was elected A.R.A. in 1854.—J. T—e.
HORSLEY, Samuel, an eminent prelate of the Church of England, was born in London, 1733, his father at the time holding the curacy of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. After the usual education at Westminster school, and at Trinity hall, Cambridge, he took orders in 1759, when his father resigned to him his living of Newington-Butts in Surrey. At this period science divided his attention with theology. In 1767 he published a tract on "The power of God, deduced from the computable instantaneous production of it in the solar system;" was the same year elected a fellow of the Royal Society; and he became its secretary in 1773. In 1768 Horsley went to Christ church, Oxford, as private tutor to Lord Guernsey, eldest son of the earl of Aylesford, and there took the degree of LL.D. In 1770 appeared from the Clarendon press his first mathematical work—"Apollonii Pergaei Inclinationum, Lib. ii." Halley had published the Conics of the same mathematician, Oxford, 1710, folio. In 1773 the earl of Aylesford presented Dr. Horsley to the living of Aldbury, which he held by dispensation along with his previous rectory; and in 1774 he married the daughter of his predecessor at Aldbury. The same year he published on the acceleration of the pendulum, &c. In 1776 he projected a uniform edition of the philosophical works of Sir Isaac Newton, and circulated proposals for it. It was published at length in five quartos, the last being issued in 1784. Bishop Lowth now made him his chaplain, and he was preferred to a prebend in St. Paul's. He became archdeacon of St. Alban's in 1781, having previously resigned Aldbury and obtained the living of Thorley, which again he resigned on receiving, in 1782, the vicarage of South Weald in Kent. In 1783 he delivered his famous charge to the clergy of his archdeaconry. He had already touched this class of subjects five years previously, in his "Man's Free Agency." The charge is a skilful and vigorous attack on Priestley's History of the Corruptions of Christianity, the chief alleged corruption being the divinity of the Saviour. Horsley labours to prove upon his heretical opponent, ignorance of Greek, especially of ecclesiastical Greek and Platonic nomenclature, and to involve him in the sophistry of reasoning in a circle. Priestley replied, and Horsley followed up in "Seventeen Letters." The characteristic qualities of his mind were brought out in bold relief in these publications. His intrepidity assumes the tone of defiant challenge, and his proofs are wielded with a grasp and vigour that occasionally culminate into impetuous dogmatism. His erudition is not the most minute or profound, but his self-possession is always sustained; and his masterly reasonings are rendered yet more scornful by his air of conscious superiority, his merciless exposures, and his trenchant polemical style. Lord Chancellor Thurlow, on the confessed principle that "those who defend the church should be supported by the church," gave him a prebendal stall in Gloucester, and in 1788 he became bishop of St. David's. In 1783-84 a controversy of another character had occupied him—the question being the conduct of Sir Joseph Banks, as president of the Royal Society; and in the latter of the years just mentioned, he published a pamphlet on the dissension. He then, from dissatisfaction with some appointments, left the society, adding his farewell in these proud terms—"I quit that temple where philosophy once presided, and where Newton was her officiating minister." Bishop Horsley's first charge to his clergy in 1791 did not belie his earlier antecedents. It is a vigorous defence of evangelical preaching; of preaching the distinctive doctrines of the gospel in contrast with the practice of those whom he contemptuously terms "apes of Epictetus." A few hits at Wesleyan "fanaticism" give edge and character to the piece. Horsley was translated to the see of Rochester in 1793, and made dean of Westminster. At his primary visitation in 1796 he delivered a charge of miscellaneous matters—the need of learning to the christian ministry; the province of reason; the danger from the "twin furies," jacobinism and infidelity; and a long interpretation and appliance of the Curate's act. His second charge is an alarmist address on the French revolution, and the danger of conventicles and dissenting Sunday schools. In 1802 Horsley was translated to St. Asaph. His charge in 1806 refers to many points of canonical duty, and in it he boldly avows his belief in the Calvinism of the Church of England. Bishop Horsley died at Brighton, 4th October, 1806, and was buried at Newington, Surrey. In the house of peers. Bishop Horsley's speeches were conservative, and sometimes as intolerant in spirit as they are intemperate in language. He could see no harm in penal laws against nonconformity; his hostility to dissent was expressed with a rancour unworthy of his mitre. About the Roman catholic claims which he had strongly opposed, he says, however, four weeks before his death, that his mind was never so long unsettled on any great question before; and his son affirmed afterwards, that ultimately he would have supported them. Bishop Horsley's works are arranged in eight volumes—three of biblical criticism, with a commentary on Psalms and Hosea, the last, the best certainly of the collection, which is full of bold conjectures and textual emendations: three volumes of charges, tracts, and sermons, the sermons being among the first in the language for masterly discussion and racy style: and two volumes of speeches in the house of peers, dedicated by his son, the editor, to Lord Grenville. Bishop Horsley's intellectual power appears in all his compositions—seizing hold of his subject with a firm grasp, and never quitting it; throwing down difficulties, tearing up objections, and arraying arguments with a force and directness rarely to be parried or turned aside. He was the last of the race of polemical giants in the English church—a learned, mighty, fearless, and haughty champion of the theology and constitution of the Anglican establishment.—J. E.
