Item 180 - Letter from Julius Charles Hare

12 pp

WW will have seen in the papers that JCH has been preoccupied with a libel trial. He feels no doubt about the result - 'the only thing like doubt was occasioned by the Judge's strange declaration, that our archdeacon has nothing to do with the morals and conduct of the clergy, except so far as relates to the fabric and furniture of their churches'. This startled the Jury but luckily a just verdict was finally made: 'The pleas of adultery and perjury [directed at JCH] were declared by the Judge not to be legally substantiated, in consequence of certain technical defects in the evidence: and so far as I am personally concerned, the first issue, that the letter is no libel, is the only material one'. JCH was upset that the man most suited for the Divinity Professorship at Cambridge only received WW's vote. He is also concerned at the poor showing of Trinity in the Classical Tripos: 'What has happened to Trinity? One man in the first class, and he the 7th; when we used to have six or seven out of eight'. JCH is also concerned about WW's temperament: 'Last year I was greatly delighted at hearing from several persons how kind and gentle and affable your manner had become since your appointment to the mastership...But from many reports which have reached me in the last six months, I am very much afraid that the additional burden of the vice-chancellor's cares has somewhat ruffled you again, and called out the vehemence of the natural man, what is always difficult to repress'. WW should over come this mood - 'not merely because it must so materially hurt your character and popularity, but still more because it must so much diminish the influence, which you wd exercise otherwise in the university, and which might be so beneficial'. Of course JCH is pleased that as vice-chancellor WW has petitioned the Welsh sees, but he wishes he could have done something of higher importance to the university: 'an attempt at least to do something toward lessening those two terrible evils in our system, the practice of private tuition, and the use of emulation as the one great spur to the acquirement of knowledge. You know how deeply I feel the mischief of these two evils. I believe it is very much owing to them that our position relatively to Oxford has altered so much in the last twenty years. Oxford has vision, and we have sunk; and we shall continue to sink, unless we get rid of our system of drilling for parade and of our morbid stimulants, and adopt a system which will call forth a living power and train our students to walk without leading strings.You are the person to whom I look for these improvements; and Worsley [Thomas Worsley] will help you heart and hand in effecting them'. With regard to the Welsh sees, JCH does not think the petition will succeed this year 'because practical men, all but the very greatest, are often obstinate in proportion as they are wrong'.