HARRIS, John, D.D. (c. 1667-1719), an English writer, best known as the editor of the Lexicon Technicum, which ranks as the earliest of the long line of English encyclopaedias, and as the compiler of the Collection of Voyages and Travels which passes under his name. He was educated at St J ohn’s College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in 1687, and proceeded M.A. in 1690. Having entered the church, he was soon presented to the rectory of Winchelsea in Sussex; and as early as 1698 he was in sufficient repute as a learned divine to be entrusted with the delivery of the seventh series of the Boyle lectures— Atheistical Objections against the Being of God and His Attributes fairly considered and fully refuted. Between 1702 and 1704 we find him lecturing on mathematics on the foundation of Charles Cox, and advertizing himself as a mathematical tutor at Amen Corner. The friendship of Sir William Cowper, afterwards lord chancellor, soon after raised him to a much higher position. Besides receiving the office of private chaplain to Sir William, he was presented in 1708 with a prebend in Rochester Cathedral, and appointed to the rectory of the united parishes of St Mildred, Bread Street, and St Margaret Moses. In this position he showed himself an ardent supporter of the Government, and got into a bitter quarrel with the Rev. Charles Humphreys, who afterwards was chaplain to Dr Sacheverel. Harris was one of the early members of the Royal Society, and for a time acted as vice-president. Besides his contributions to the society’s Transactions, and the two important works by which he is still remembered, he published a number of treatises on mathematics and occasional sermons; and at his death on September 7, 1719, he was busy completing an elaborate History of Kent, of which the first volume bad just left the press. He is said to have died in poverty brought on by his own bad management of his affairs. There is only one good account of his life, that by Nichols in the Literary Anecdotes, vol. ix., and this even, owing to scarcity of materials, is strangely defective.

HARRIS, John (1802-1856), divine and theologian, was born at Ugborough in Devonshire, March 8, 1802. At the age of fifteen he joined the Independent Church, and began to preach to the rustics of the neighbourhood as a member of the Bristol Itinerant Society. After studying at the Independent college at Hoxton he was in 1827 ordained pastor of a small congregation at Epsom. There in 1836 he wrote his essay, Hammon, or Covetousness the Sin of the Christian Church, which won a prize of 100 guineas offered by Dr Conquest, and brought its author into notice, thirty thousand copies being sold within a few years. In 1838 he received the degree of doctor of divinity from Brown University, America, and was appointed president and professor of theology in Cheshunt college; and in 1850, when the Independent colleges at Highbury, Homerton, and Coward, near London, were united, Dr Harris was elected principal of the New College thus formed. He died December 21, 1856.

Besides Mammon, he wrote the Great Teacher (1835); two prize essays, Britannia (1837) and The Great Commission (1842); and Contributions to Theological Science. The Ρre-Adamite Earth (1847), Man Primaeval (1849), and Patriarchy (1855), form the beginning of a series, intended to illustrate the history of man from a theological point of view, but interrupted by his death.

HARRIS, Sir William Snow (1791-1867), a distinguished electrician, was descended from an old family of Plymouth solicitors, and was born there 1st April 1791. He received his early education at the Plymouth grammarschool, and completed a course of medical studies at the university of Edinburgh, after which he established himself as a general medical practitioner in Plymouth. On his marriage in 1824 he resolved to abandon his profession on account of its duties interfering too much with his favourite study of electricity. As early as 1820 he had invented a new method of arranging the lightning conductors of ships, the peculiarity of which was that the metal was permanently fixed in the masts and extended throughout the hull; but it was only with great difficulty, and not till nearly thirty years afterwards, that his invention was adopted by the Government for the royal navy. In 1826 he read a paper before the Royal Society “On the Relative Powers of various Metallic Substances as Conductors of Electricity,” which led to his being elected a member of the society in 1831. Subsequently, in 1834, 1836, and 1839, he read before the society several valuable papers on the elementary laws of electricity, and he also communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh various interesting accounts of his experiments and discoveries in the same field of inquiry. In 1835 he received the Copley gold medal from the Royal Society for his papers on the “Laws of Electricity by High Tension,” and in 1839 he was chosen to deliver the Bakerian lecture. Meanwhile, although a Government commission had recommended the general adoption of his conductors in the royal navy, and the Government had granted him an annuity of £300 “in consideration of services in the cultivation of science,” the naval authorities continued to offer various objections to his invention; to aid in removing these he in 1843 published his work on Thunderstorms, and also about the same time contributed a number of papers to the Nautical Magazine illustrative of damage by lightning. His system was actually adopted in the Russian navy before he succeeded in removing the prejudices against it in England, and in 1845 the emperor of Russia in acknowledgment of his services presented him with a valuable ring and a superb vase. At length, every doubt as to the efficiency of his system having been removed, he received in 1847 the honour of knighthood, and subsequently a grant of £5000. After succeeding in introducing his invention into general use Harris resumed his labours in the field of original research, but as he failed to realize the advances that had been made by the new school of science his application resulted in no discoveries of much value. His manuals of Electricity, Galvanism, and Magnetism, contributed to Weale’s rudimentary series, were however written with great clearness, and passed through several editions. He died 22d January 1867, while having in preparation a Treatise on Frictional Electricity, which was published posthumously in the same year, with a memoir of the author by Charles Tomlinson, F.R.S.

Harrisburg received its name from John Harris, an Englishman who settled on the site of the town in 1726, and whose son established a ferry over the Susquehanna in 1753. The town was founded in 1785 under the name of Haιτisburg, which was afterwards changed to Louisbourg; in 1791 it was incorporated under its present name; in 1812 it became the capital of the State; and in 1860 it was made a city.

In Harrison’s time the Government of the country had become fully alive to the necessity of determining more accurately the longitude at sea. For this purpose they passed an Act in 1714 offering rewards of £10,000, £15,000, and £20,000 to any who should construct chronometers that would determine the longitude within 60, 40, and 30 miles respectively. Harrison applied himself vigorously to the task, and in 1735 went to the Board of Longitude with a watch which he also showed to Halley, Graham, and others. Through their influence he was allowed to proceed in a king’s ship to Lisbon to test it; and the result was so satisfactory that the commissioners gave him £500 to carry out further improvements. Harrison worked at the subject with the utmost perseverance, and, after making several watches, went up to London in 1761 with one which he considered very perfect. His son William was sent on a voyage to Jamaica to test it; and, on his return to Portsmouth in 1762, the watch was found to have lost only 1 minute 54 j seconds. This was surprisingly accurate, as it determined the longitude within 18 miles, and Harrison claimed the full reward of £20,000. After some further trials £10,000 of it was paid to him in 1765, and the remainder in 1767, after he had written such a description of his instrument as would enable other artists to copy it. . Harrison died in 1776, at the age of eighty-two. Hie want of early education was felt by him greatly throughout life. He was unfortunately never able to express his ideas clearly in writing, although in conversation he could give a very precise and exact account of his many intricate mechanical contrivances. He wrote a book entitled Description concerning such Mechanism as will afford α Nice, or True Mensuration of Times,

HARRISON, William Henry (1773-1841), ninth president of the United States, third son of Governor Benjamin Harrison, was bornât Berkeley, Charles City co., Virginia, February 9, 1773. In 1792 he joined the army with the commission of ensign, and in the following year he became lieutenant and acted as aide-de-camp to Wayne in his expedition against the Western Indians. He was promoted to a captaincy in 1795, but resigned in 1797 on being appointed secretary of the North-West Territory. In 1799 he was chosen to represent that territory in congress, and after its division in 1801 he became governor of the new territory of Indiana and superintendent of negotiations with the Indians, over whom, on the breaking out of hostilities in 1811, he gained the important victory of Tippecanoe. In 1813 as major-general and commander of the north-western army he defeated the British forces at the battle of the Thames. In 1814 he concluded a treaty with the North-Western Indians, and in the same year he resigned his commission. He was elected in 1816 member of congress for Cincinnati, in 1819 member of the State senate of Ohio, in 1824 United States senator, and in 1828 minister to Colombia, an office which he held for less than a year, when he retired for a time into private life. By the urgent request of the Whigs he was induced in 1836 to stand for the presidency of the United States, and though unsuccessful, he at the next election in 1840 defeated the same candidate Van Buren by an overwhelming majority, after a canvass memorable for the extraordinary enthusiasm it awakened, and historically important for its introduction of new political methods— many of the most characteristic features of Western elections having their origin in this “Harrison campaign.” He was scarcely spared, however, to enter upon the discharge of his duties as president, dying April 4, 1841, about a month after his inauguration. Harrison published at Cincinnati in 1838 a small treatise on the Indians entitled A Discourse on the Aborigines of the Ohio Valley,