Part 11

After leaving public life he resumed the practice of the law, and in 1898 was retained by the government of Venezuela as its leading counsel in the arbitration of its boundary dispute with Great Britain. In this capacity he appeared before the international tribunal of arbitration at Paris in 1899, worthily maintaining the reputation of the American bar. After the Spanish-American War he strongly disapproved of the colonial policy of his party, which, however, he continued to support. He occupied a portion of his leisure in writing a book, entitled _This Country of Ours_ (1897), treating of the organization and administration of the government of the United States, and a collection of essays by him was published posthumously, in 1901, under the title _Views of an Ex-President_. He died at Indianapolis on the 13th of March 1901. Harrison's distinguishing trait of character, to which his success is to be most largely attributed, was his thoroughness. He was somewhat reserved in manner, and this led to the charge in political circles that he was cold and unsympathetic; but no one gathered around him more devoted and loyal friends, and his dignified bearing in and out of office commanded the hearty respect of his countrymen.

President Harrison was twice married; in 1853 to Miss Caroline Lavinia Scott, by whom he had a son and a daughter, and in 1896 to Mrs Mary Scott Lord Dimmock, by whom he had a daughter.

A "campaign" biography was published by Lew Wallace (Philadelphia, 1888), and a sketch of his life may be found in _Presidents of the United States_ (New York, 1894), edited by James Grant Wilson. (J. W. Fo.)

HARRISON, FREDERIC (1831- ), English jurist and historian, was born in London on the 18th of October 1831. Members of his family (originally Leicestershire yeomen) had been lessees of Sutton Place, Guildford, of which he wrote an interesting account (_Annals of an Old Manor House_, 1893). He was educated at King's College school and at Wadham College, Oxford, where, after taking a first-class in _Literae Humaniores_ in 1853, he became fellow and tutor. He was called to the bar in 1858, and, in addition to his practice in equity cases, soon began to distinguish himself as an effective contributor to the higher-class reviews. Two articles in the _Westminster Review_, one on the Italian question, which procured him the special thanks of Cavour, the other on _Essays and Reviews_, which had the probably undesigned effect of stimulating the attack on the book, attracted especial notice. A few years later Mr Harrison worked at the codification of the law with Lord Westbury, of whom he contributed an interesting notice to Nash's biography of the chancellor. His special interest in legislation for the working classes led him to be placed upon the Trades Union Commission of 1867-1869; he was secretary to the commission for the digest of the law, 1869-1870; and was from 1877 to 1889 professor of jurisprudence and international law under the council of legal education. A follower of the positive philosophy, but in conflict with Richard Congreve (q.v.) as to details, he led the Positivists who split off and founded Newton Hall in 1881, and he was president of the English Positivist Committee from 1880 to 1905; he was also editor and part author of the Positivist _New Calendar of Great Men_ (1892), and wrote much on Comte and Positivism. Of his separate publications, the most important are his lives of Cromwell (1888), William the Silent (1897), Ruskin (1902), and Chatham (1905); his _Meaning of History_ (1862; enlarged 1894) and _Byzantine History in the Early Middle Ages_ (1900); and his essays on _Early Victorian Literature_ (1896) and _The Choice of Books_ (1886) are remarkable alike for generous admiration and good sense. In 1904 he published a "romantic monograph" of the 10th century, _Theophano_, and in 1906 a verse tragedy, _Nicephorus_. An advanced and vehement Radical in politics and Progressive in municipal affairs, Mr Harrison in 1886 stood unsuccessfully for parliament against Sir John Lubbock for London University. In 1889 he was elected an alderman of the London County Council, but resigned in 1893. In 1870 he married Ethel Berta, daughter of Mr William Harrison, by whom he had four sons. George Gissing, the novelist, was at one time their tutor; and in 1905 Mr Harrison wrote a preface to Gissing's _Veranilda_ (see also Mr Austin Harrison's article on Gissing in the _Nineteenth Century_, September 1906). As a religious teacher, literary critic, historian and jurist, Mr Harrison took a prominent part in the life of his time, and his writings, though often violently controversial on political and social subjects, and in their judgment and historical perspective characterized by a modern Radical point of view, are those of an accomplished scholar, and of one whose wide knowledge of literature was combined with independence of thought and admirable vigour of style. In 1907 he published _The Creed of a Layman, Apologia pro fide mea_, in explanation of his religious position.

HARRISON, JOHN (1693-1776), English horologist, was the son of a carpenter, and was born at Faulby, near Pontefract in Yorkshire, in the year 1693. Thence his father and family removed in 1700 to Barrow in Lincolnshire. Young Harrison at first learned his father's trade, and worked at it for several years, at the same time occasionally making a little money by land-measuring and surveying. The bent of his mind, however, was towards mechanical pursuits. In 1715 he made a clock with wooden wheels, which is in the patent museum at South Kensington, and in 1726 he devised his ingenious "gridiron pendulum," which maintains its length unaltered in spite of variations of temperature (see CLOCK). Another invention of his was a recoil clock escapement in which friction was reduced to a minimum, and he was the first to employ the commonly used and effective form of "going ratchet," which is a spring arrangement for keeping the timepiece going at its usual rate during the interval of being wound up.

In Harrison's time the British government had become fully alive to the necessity of determining more accurately the longitude at sea. For this purpose they passed an act in 1713 offering rewards of L10,000, L15,000 and L20,000 to any who should construct chronometers that would determine the longitude within 60, 40 and 30 m. 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 Edmund Halley, George 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 he was paid L500 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 almost perfect. His son William was sent on a voyage to Jamaica to test it; and, on his return to Portsmouth in 1762, it was found to have lost only 1 minute 54(1/2) seconds. This was surprisingly accurate, as it determined the longitude within 18 m., and Harrison claimed the full reward of L20,000; but though from time to time he received sums on account, it was not till 1773 that he was paid in full. In these watches compensation for changes of temperature was applied for the first time by means of a "compensation-curb," designed to alter the effective length of the balance-spring in proportion to the expansion or contraction caused by variations of temperature. Harrison died in London on the 24th of March 1776. His 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.

Among his writings were a _Description concerning such Mechanism as will afford a Nice or True Mensuration of Time_ (1775), and _The Principles of Mr Harrison's Timekeeper_, published by order of the Commissioners of Longitude (1767).

HARRISON, THOMAS (1606-1660), English parliamentarian, a native of Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, the son of a butcher and mayor of that town, was baptized in 1606. He was placed with an attorney of Clifford's Inn, but at the beginning of the war in 1642 he enlisted in Essex's lifeguards, became major in Fleetwood's regiment of horse under the earl of Manchester, was present at Marston Moor, at Naseby, Langport and at the taking of Winchester and Basing, as well as at the siege of Oxford. At Basing Harrison was accused of having killed a prisoner in cold blood. In 1646 he was returned to parliament for Wendover, and served in Ireland in 1647 under Lord Lisle, returning to England in May, when he took the side of the army in the dispute with the parliament and obtained from Fairfax a regiment of horse. In November he opposed the negotiations with the king, whom he styled "a man of blood" to be called to account, and he declaimed against the House of Lords. At the surprise of Lambert's quarters at Appleby on the 18th of July 1648, in the second civil war, he distinguished himself by his extraordinary daring and was severely wounded. He showed a special zeal in bringing about the trial of the king. Charles was entrusted to his care on being brought up from Hurst Castle to London, and believed that Harrison intended his assassination, but was at once favourably impressed by bis bearing and reassured by his disclaiming any such design. Harrison was assiduous in his attendance at the trial, and signed the death-warrant with the fullest conviction that it was his duty. He took part in suppressing the royalist rising in the midlands in May 1649, and in July was appointed to the chief command in South Wales, where he is said to have exercised his powers with exceptional severity. On the 20th of February 1651 he became a member of the council of state, and during Cromwell's absence in Scotland held the supreme military command in England. He failed in stopping the march of the royalists into England at Knutsford on the 16th of August 1651, but after the battle of Worcester he rendered great service in pursuing and capturing the fugitives. Later he pressed on Cromwell the necessity of dismissing the Long Parliament, and it was he who at Cromwell's bidding, on the 20th of April 1653, laid hands on Speaker Lenthall and compelled him to vacate the chair. He was president of the council of thirteen which now exercised authority, and his idea of government appears to have been an assembly nominated by the congregations, on a strictly religious basis, such as Barebone's Parliament which now assembled, of which he was a member and a ruling spirit. Harrison belonged to the faction of Fifth Monarchy men, whose political ideals were entirely destroyed by Cromwell's assumption of the protectorate. He went immediately into violent opposition, was deprived of his commission on the 22nd of December 1653, and on the 3rd of February 1654 was ordered to confine himself to his father's house in Staffordshire. Suspected of complicity in the plots of the anabaptists, he was imprisoned for a short time in September, and on that occasion was sent for by Cromwell, who endeavoured in a friendly manner to persuade him to desist. He, however, incurred the suspicions of the administration afresh, and on the 15th of February 1655 he was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle, being liberated in March 1656 when he took up his residence at Highgate with his family. In April 1657 he was arrested for supposed complicity in Venner's conspiracy, and again once more in February 1658, when he was imprisoned in the Tower. At the Restoration, Harrison, who was excepted from the Act of Indemnity, refused to take any steps to save his life, to give any undertaking not to conspire against the government or to flee. "Being so clear in the thing," he declared, "I durst not turn my back nor step a foot out of the way by reason I had been engaged in the service of so glorious and great a God." He was arrested in Staffordshire in May 1660 and brought to trial on the 11th of October. He made a manly and straightforward defence, pleading the authority of parliament and adding, "May be I might be a little mistaken, but I did it all according to the best of my understanding, desiring to make the revealed will of God in His holy scriptures a guide to me." At his execution, which took place at Charing Cross on the 13th of October 1660, he behaved with great fortitude.

Richard Baxter, who was acquainted with him, describes Harrison as "a man of excellent natural parts for affection and oratory, but not well seen in the principles of his religion of a sanguine complexion, naturally of such a vivacity, hilarity and alacrity as another man hath when he hath drunken a cup too much, but naturally also so far from humble thoughts of himself that it was his ruin." Cromwell also complained of his excessive eagerness. "Harrison is an honest man and aims at good things, yet from the impatience of his spirit will not wait the Lord's leisure but hurries me on to that which he and all honest men will have cause to repent." Harrison was an eloquent and fluent expounder of the scriptures, and his "raptures" on the field of victory are recorded by Baxter. He was of the chief of those "fiery spirits" whose ardent and emotional religion inspired their political action, and who did wonders during the period of struggle and combat, but who later, in the more sober and difficult sphere of constructive statesmanship, showed themselves perfectly incapable.

Harrison married about 1648 Katherine, daughter and heiress of Ralph Harrison of Highgate in Middlesex, by whom he had several children, all of whom, however, appear to have died in infancy.

See the article on Harrison by C. H. Firth in the _Dict. of Nat. Biog.; Life of Harrison_ by C. H. Simpkinson (1905); _Notes and Queries_, 9 series, xi. 211.

HARRISON, THOMAS ALEXANDER (1853- ), American artist, was born in Philadelphia on the 17th of January 1853. He was a pupil of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, whither he went in 1878, having previously been with a United States government survey expedition on the Pacific coast. Chafing under the restraints of the schools, he went into Brittany, and at Pont Aven and Concarneau turned his attention to marine painting and landscape. In 1882 he sent a figure-piece to the Salon, a fisher boy on the beach, which he called "Chateaux en Espagne." This attracted attention, and in 1885 he received an honourable mention, the first of many awards conferred upon him, including the Temple gold medal (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1887), first medal, Paris Exhibition (1889), and medals in Munich, Brussels, Ghent, Vienna and elsewhere. He became a member of the Legion of Honour and _officier_ of Public Instruction, Paris; a member of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris; of the Royal Institute of Painters in Oil Colours, London; of the Secession societies of Munich, Vienna and Berlin; of the National Academy of Design, the Society of American Artists, New York, and other art bodies. In the Salon of 1885 he had a large canvas of several nude women, called "In Arcady," a remarkable study of flesh tones in light and shade which had a strong influence on the younger men of the day. But his reputation rests rather on his marine pictures, long waves rolling in on the beach, and great stretches of open sea under poetic conditions of light and colour.

His brother, BIRGE HARRISON (1854- ), also a painter, particularly successful in snow scenes, was a pupil of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, under Cabanel and Carolus Duran; his "November" (honourable mention, 1882) was purchased by the French government. Another brother, BUTLER HARRISON (d. 1886), was a figure painter.

HARRISON, WILLIAM (1534-1593), English topographer and antiquary, was born in London on the 18th of April 1534. He was educated, according to his own account, at St Paul's school and at Westminster under Alexander Nowell. In 1551 he was at Cambridge, but he took his B.A. degree from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1560. He was inducted early in 1559 to the rectory of Radwinter, Essex, on the presentation of Sir William Brooke, Lord Cobham, to whom he had formerly acted as chaplain; and from 1571 to 1581 he held from another patron, Francis de la Wood, the living of Wimbish in the same county. He became canon of Windsor in 1586, and his death and burial are noted in the chapter book of St George's chapel on the 24th of April 1593.

His famous and amusing _Description of England_ was undertaken for the queen's printer, Reginald Wolfe, who designed the publication of "an universall cosmographie of the whole world ... with particular histories of every knowne nation." After Wolfe's death in 1576 this comprehensive plan was reduced to descriptions and histories of England, Scotland and Ireland. The historical section was to be supplied by Raphael Holinshed, the topographical by Harrison. The work was eventually published as _The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland ..._ by Raphael Holinshed and others, and was printed in two black-letter folio volumes in 1577. Harrison's _Description of England_, humbly described as his "foule frizeled treatise," and dedicated to his patron Cobham, is an invaluable survey of the condition of England under Elizabeth, in all its political, religious and social aspects. Harrison is a minute and careful observer of men and things, and his descriptions are enlivened with many examples of a lively and caustic humour which makes the book excellent reading. In spite of his Puritan prejudices, which lead him to regret that the churches had not been cleared of their "pictures in glass" ("by reason of the extreme cost thereof"), and to exhaust his wit on the effeminate Italian fashions of the younger generation, he had an eye for beauty and is loud in his praise of such architectural gems as Henry VII.'s chapel at Westminster. He is properly contemptuous of the snobbery that was even then characteristic of English society; but his account of "how gentlemen are made in England" must be read in full to be appreciated. He is especially instructive on the condition and services of the Church immediately after the Reformation; notably in the fact that, though an ardent Protestant, he is quite unconscious of any breach of continuity in the life and organization of the Church of England.

Harrison also contributed the translation from Scots into English of Bellenden's version of Hector Boece's Latin _Description_ of Scotland. His other works include a "Chronologie," giving an account of events from the creation to the year 1593, which is of some value for the period covered by the writer's lifetime. This, with an elaborate treatise on weights and measures, remains in MS. in the diocesan library of Londonderry.

For the later editions of the _Chronicles of England ..._ see HOLINSHED. The second and third books of Harrison's _Description_ were edited by Dr F. J. Furnivall for the New Shakspere Society, with extracts from his "Chronologie" and from other contemporary writers, as _Shakspere's England_ (2 vols., 1877-1878).

HARRISON, WILLIAM HENRY (1773-1841), ninth president of the United States, was born at Berkeley, Charles City county, Virginia, on the 9th of February 1773, the third son of Benjamin Harrison (c. 1740-1791). His father was long prominent in Virginia politics, and became a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1764, opposing Patrick Henry's Stamp Act resolutions in the following year; he was a member of the Continental Congress in 1774-1777, signing the Declaration of Independence and serving for a time as president of the Board of War; speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates in 1777-1782; governor of Virginia in 1781-1784; and in 1788 as a member of the Virginia Convention he actively opposed the ratification of the Federal Constitution by his state. William Henry Harrison received a classical education at Hampden-Sidney College, where he was a student in 1787-1790, and began a medical course in Philadelphia, but the death of his father caused him to discontinue his studies, and in November 1791 he entered the army as ensign in the Tenth Regiment at Fort Washington, Cincinnati. In the following year he became a lieutenant, and subsequently acted as aide-de-camp to General Anthony Wayne in the campaign which ended in the battle of Fallen Timbers on the 10th of August 1794. He was promoted to a captaincy in 1797 and for a brief period served as commander of Fort Washington, but resigned from the army in June 1798. Soon afterwards he succeeded Winthrop Sargent as secretary of the North-west Territory. In 1799 he was chosen by the Jeffersonian party of this territory as the delegate of the territory in Congress. While serving in this capacity he devised a plan for disposing of the public lands upon favourable terms to actual settlers, and also assisted in the division of the North-west Territory. It was his ambition to become governor of the more populous eastern portion, which retained the original name, but instead, in January 1800, President John Adams appointed him governor of the newly created Indiana Territory, which comprised until 1809 a much larger area than the present state of the same name. (See INDIANA: _History_.) He was not sworn into office until the 10th of January 1801, and was governor until September 1812. Among the legislative measures of his administration may be mentioned the attempted modification of the slavery clause of the ordinance of 1787 by means of an indenture law--a policy which Harrison favoured; more effective land laws; and legislation for the more equitable treatment of the Indians and for preventing the sale of liquor to them. In 1803 Harrison also became a special commissioner to treat with the Indians "on the subject of boundary or lands," and as such negotiated various treaties--at Fort Wayne (1803 and 1809), Vincennes (1804 and 1809) and Grouseland (1805)--by which the southern part of the present state of Indiana and portions of the present states of Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri were opened to settlement. For a few months after the division in 1804 of the Louisiana Purchase into the Orleans Territory and the Louisiana Territory he also acted as governor of the Louisiana Territory--all of the Louisiana Purchase N. of the thirty-third parallel, his jurisdiction then being the greatest in extent ever exercised by a territorial official in the United States.