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,
That man should look up with tears in his eyes?

Did God make this earth so abundant and fair,
That man should look down with a groan of despair?
Did God fill this earth with harmonious life,
That man should go forth with destruction and strife?
Did God scatter freedom o'er mountain and wave,
That man should exist as a tyrant and slave ?-
Away with so heartless, so hopeless a creed,
For the soul that believes it is darkened indeed !"

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

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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

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boldened himself to resign, a feeling word from the Colonel planted him yet more firmly at his desk. Harris never wrote poetry; but if poetry is feeling with the beautiful and the true, there is poetry in all this: and what is more than this, in his whole course of life, Harris, like many of his unostentatious class among all nations, did more than the greatest poet of Europe-he acted and lived poetry.

Such is Harris, as his character and his course of life unfold themselves to any individual who reflects upon them. Such he is in his constitution and traits, his labours and his fortune, his life and death. In the foregoing pages, there has been laid down nothing but what may be borne out by facts. There he is, a model of noble humanity for the copierwith no pretensions to genius, no astounding talents, no prose or poetry about him. He is simply a person of good common sense, of ordinary powers; but of firm purpose, diligent perseverance, steady self-study; true to his trust, true to himself; honouring and honoured, loving and beloved. He has only one shortcoming in his whole career-but this is one

1

to be eschewed: he was a political reformer, without being the social and the moral reformer also; and in this respect he stands in a painful contrast with another noble Indianthe great Rammohun Roy, buried thirty years ago in Bristol.

Education on western principles has done much for India, and is destined to do still more; national conceit will yield to knowledge, and superstition decay before progress; but yet, if the history of this very country, if not of the world itself, demonstrates one thing more distinctly than another, it is this, that it is perfectly unsafe to put any great reliance on political, or even on intellectual ability. Have we not had political freedom of yore?—have we not had martial glory in our time? A writer,* destined to live as long as the English language exists, spoke only too truly of our country, even in her later degeneracy, when he called it "a region of Asia equal in extent to the whole of Europe (exclusive of Russia), with a population of more than a hundred and forty millions, all of them aliens in blood, language, and religion; and many consisting of warlike tribes, so gallant and brave as to have again and

*The Rev. Dr. Duff.