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borough, Devon. He was the eldest of eight children, and being a delicate child he was left at liberty to follow the bent of his early taste for reading and contemplation. His father car ried on a small business as a tailor and draper. To his pious mother the contemplative boy was much attached and much indebted. She died when he was about fourteen years of age.

About a year before her death his parents removed to Bristol. They attended at first at the cathedral, but on one Sunday, owing to a heavy fall of rain, they went to the Tabernacle, where a few months after both parents became members of the Church, and the children became scholars in the Sunday-school. Young Harris s first public duty was to take part in a prayer-meeting conducted by the boys of this school, and he soon after gave an address at Baptist Mills, on occasion of the death of one of the scholars. Towards the close of the year 1816 he was brought under the notice of the late Mr. Wills, the manager of the Tabernacle, by composing a poem on the perfections of God, after hearing a lecture on astronomy. Mr. Wills got the lines inserted in Felix Farley s Bristol Journal, on the llth January, 1817, and became the friend and helper of the young poet. In his sixteenth or seventeenth year, young Harris became a member of the Church at the Tabernacle.

At this time he assisted his father in the shop, but spent much of the night in mental improvement. While still young he preached in the villages round the city, in connection with the Bristol Itinerant Society, and became exceedingly popular as the &quot; boy preacher.&quot; Mr. Wills introduced him to the late Mr. Thomas Wilson, and after passing a year in preparatory study under the Rev. Walter Scott, at Rowell, he was admitted to Hoxton Academy. There he pursued his academic studies in such a way as to awaken high expectations in those who marked his course.

In 1825 he left college, and became the pastor of the Con gregational Church at Epsom, over which he presided for twelve years. The healthful neighbourhood suited his delicate con-

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