152 CHAPTER VIII. THE POETRY OF HIS HEART. FEELING nature of his character.-Poverty unlocks the best sympathies of the heart.-Harris's grateful remembrance of past favours.-Emotion at mention of the name of his first kind Teacher.--His irrefragable ties of gratitude and reverence to Colonel Champneys.-His neglect of self-interest and advancement for the sake of the Colonel.-Harris and Rammohun Roy.--Military glory and valour not wanting in India even in her degenerate days.--Her intellectual vigour yet unsurpassed.--Social battle is the last achievement of humanity.--India has yet to fight it.--Harris did not commence it.--Nor has it yet commenced.-The Social Science Association in England.-A similar Institution for India recommended.-Necessity for Educated Natives travelling in India. An "Indian Travelling Fellowship."-Natives alone capacitated to describe social anomalies. BUT that trait in the character of Harris which procured for him the proud title of the "Indian Lucullus" in the vivid pages of Russell's Diary in India is worthy of separate consideration. His heart was of the noblest-ever glowing to assist the poor, ever ready to sympathise with all that was high and estimable. His ready zeal to assist the poor and the oppressed may be SOURCES OF BENEVOLENCE. 153 explained-we must once more recall it-as the result of the influence of poverty in early life. The man, we may justly say, who has not suffered, is unfit to be the minister of beneficence to others. We are all made alike, though not all suffering; and though there is a nobler, because severer kind of suffering, than that arising from mere poverty and external circumstances, yet to the poor man, the pinchings of his own state bring up vividly before his mind and heart the sufferings of others from a similar condition of things. Thus it is that the inner sympathies of the heart are unlocked; thus it is that some of the grandest lessons of humanity are brought home to the bosom and business of man; and were the rich and the poor to change positions for a short term, beneficence and sympathy would be far more active and expansive in our world than they have hitherto been, or will otherwise ever be. There are natures, no doubt, which are not proof against poverty: when it comes to them, their affections are scorched;* they grow impatient; * Indeed, it cannot be otherwise in this country, where, after reading the chapter on the condition of woman in India, the reader perceives an utter want of early religious instruction in the domestic circle. they droop and pine away, blaming God and cursing fate;-but when it comes to a rightminded man, he sustains it manfully, sustains its fires unscathed, and in the midst of burning sensations, looks up with a reverential eye to the Creator, blessing His dispensations, and blessing also his destiny; and from that time forth "comes out with harp in hand, qualified to be the minister and instructor of his race, a strong spiritual nature battling with despair, light as of old contending with darkness." "Did God set His fountains of light in the skies, Did God make this earth so abundant and fair, Hard, indeed, it may have been, to keep fast faith in God and life under circumstances such as were unmistakeably Harris's in the early part of his life-impressed, as they were, with absolute beggarism, and saddened by every disappointment when he threw himself on the world; but he bore them patiently and unmur TRAITS IN HARRIS'S CHARACTER. 155 muringly, and it was owing to this ordeal, through which life was passed for more than twenty long years, that he learnt the wholesome lessons of humanity. Besides his kindly and sympathising nature, his heart was full of the most ardent and generous feelings, of the deepest gratitude to those who had rendered him any assistance at one time or other of his existence. It has already been stated that Mr. Piffard was his first teacher at the Bhowaneepore Charity-school. His extreme kindness, and zeal in the interest of his pupil, had engendered feelings of the sincerest gratitude in the heart of Harris, so that on one occasion, in after life, in the plenitude of his power and position, when he met Mr. C. Piffard (the son, of the Calcutta bar) at a friend's residence, and who in conversation communicated to Harris the name of his father, its very recital brought up bright memories of the past, and swelled his bosom in grateful remembrance, until he burst out before a numerous company of both friends and strangers into tears of joy. Again, when, in the mock-court at Baboo Samboonath's, he displayed his clear judgment and shrewd analysis in settling the knotty points of their miniature code, his friends advised him to give up the writership under the Military Auditor, and assume his proper position under the Judge. But he remained firm, simply through feelings of grateful remembrance, to the profession which supported him in adversity, and justified his decision by maintaining that his situation as a clerk left him greater leisure than otherwise to aid the poor, by advice, and by petitions and letters, which every wrong-doer read with the blush of shame and the pallor of anticipated defeat. But in addition to this selfsacrificing spirit, Harris had another reason, too deeply-rooted in his bosom ever to be eradicated, for continuing in the Military Auditor General's Office, while he might successfully have shone at the bar. He did mention it once to a friend, not with a view to parade his virtue, but in the sacred confidence of friendship-as a reply, once for all, to the recommendations of others, that it was his feelings of gratitude that bound him in irrefragable ties to Colonel Champneys, and that so long as his benefactor remained connected with that department, he would not leave it for the world! No argument, no taunt, no ridicule, effected any change in his resolution; and even when he broke through it, and em |