Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/429

Hennell he was appointed to a post in the customs at Liverpool, but heartily disliking the new duties he quitted the place, and went back to his old employment at Glasgow. When the growing practice of lithography threatened to deprive him of his livelihood by substituting a new method of printing fabrics, he acquired the art of drawing on stone, and especially devoted himself to making designs for textiles. About this time he began the study of plants as a source of design, and in 1838 he was studying botany for its own sake while at Millport. The Athenæum at Glasgow was started in 1848, and in that year he began to teach a class in botany, and in the following year he was engaged in a similar capacity at the Mechanics' Institute.

In 1851 he embarked in business with a partner, but the concern does not appear to have been very successful, although prosecuted during six years. He was appointed professor of botany at the Andersonian University at Glasgow in 1863, which chair he occupied till his death, 22 Oct. 1877, at Whitehall, near Bothwell, Lanarkshire.

The manual which he drew up for the use of his botanical class, the ‘Clydesdale Flora,’ was published at Glasgow, 1865, and went through three editions in the lifetime of the author; a fourth, entitled ‘The Memorial Edition,’ came out after his death in 1878.

He married, in 1834, a daughter of David Cross of Rutherglen, who survived him.

 HENNELL, CHARLES CHRISTIAN (1809–1850), author of ‘An Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity,’ was born in Manchester on 30 March 1809, the fifth of a family of eight children. His father, first a foreign agent, and afterwards a partner in a mercantile house, died in 1816. By this time the family had removed to Hackney, where Charles attended a day school; from this he went to a school at Derby, kept by an uncle, Edward Higginson, a unitarian minister. Here he remained fourteen months, leaving with a fair knowledge of Latin and French, and some acquaintance with Greek. When he was barely fifteen he obtained a junior clerkship with a firm of foreign merchants in London. His leisure was devoted to his studies, which embraced German, Italian, music, and physical science. In 1836, after twelve years' service in his situation, he began business on his own account in Threadneedle Street as a silk and drug merchant, and in 1843, on the recommendation of his former employers, he was appointed manager of an iron company.

In 1836 Charles Bray [q. v.], author of ‘The Philosophy of Necessity,’ married Hennell's sister Caroline. When subsequently the extent of Bray's rationalism became fully known to the Hennells, who had been brought up in the unitarianism of Priestley and Belsham, Hennell, for his own and his sister's satisfaction, undertook an examination of the New Testament narratives, not doubting that the conclusions in which he had hitherto rested would be confirmed. This anticipation was not realised. His studies resulted in the ‘Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity,’ the first edition of which appeared in 1838. The main conclusion of the work is that Christianity is to be accepted as forming simply a portion of natural human history. While unflinching in its conclusions the work is moderate and reverent in tone; in this respect, as well as the scientific temper in which the investigation is conducted, it marked in the history of English rationalism the first considerable departure from the acrimonious deism of the eighteenth century. Among those who sought the acquaintance of the author was Dr. Brabant, a retired physician of Devizes, and an indefatigable German scholar. Brabant introduced the book to Strauss, with whose ‘Leben Jesu’ or the works of other recent German critics Hennell was when he wrote unacquainted. The ‘Inquiry’ was translated into German at the instigation of Strauss, who wrote for it a preface (November 1839), in which he said: ‘Those excellent views which the learned German of our time appropriates to himself as the fruit of the religious development of his nation, this Englishman, to whom the greater part of our means was wanting, has been able to evolve by his own efforts.’ An Italian edition published afterwards was placed on the Index Expurgatorius. Hennell's acquaintance with Dr. Brabant was followed (1843) by a marriage with his daughter, whom he had previously induced to begin the translation of the ‘Leben Jesu;’ this undertaking was now transferred to Miss Evans, afterwards known as George Eliot [see ]. Miss Evans, at the time an intimate friend of the Brays, was greatly interested and influenced by the ‘Inquiry,’ and in 1852 she wrote an account of it for the ‘Analytical Catalogue’ of Chapman's publications. Hennell published in 1839 ‘Christian Theism;’ an essay, constructive in its character, which discusses the direction that religious sentiment may be expected to take after the relinquishment of belief in miraculous revelation. He was associated with ‘Barber Beaumont’ [see ] in the