the _Morning Star_, a few months since, appeared a letter from William
Howitt, intimating that if the religious public wished to hear a man
truly eloquent and religious, a Christian and a genius, they could not do
better than go and hear the Rev. Mr. Harris. Accordingly, one Sunday in
January, we found ourselves part of a respectable congregation, chiefly
males, assembled to hear the gentleman aforesaid. The place of meeting
was the Music Hall, Store-street; the reverend gentleman occupying the
platform, and the audience filling up the rest of the room. It is
difficult to judge of numbers, but there must have been four or five
hundred persons present. Mr. Harris evidently is an American, is, we
should imagine, between thirty and forty, and with his low black
eye-brows, and black beard, and sallow countenance, has not a very
prepossessing appearance. He had very much of the conventional idea of
the methodist parson. I do not by this imply that the conventional idea
is correct, but simply that we have such a conventional idea, and that
Mr. Harris answers to it. As I have intimated that I believe Mr. Harris
is an American, I need not add that he is thin, and that his figure is of
moderate height. The subject on which he preached was the axe being laid
at the foot of the tree, and at considerable length--the sermon lasted
more than an hour--the reverend gentleman endeavoured to show that men
lived as God was in them, and that we were not to judge from a few
outward signs that God was in them, and, as instances of men filled and
inspired by God's Spirit, we had our Saxon Alfred, Oliver Cromwell, and
Florence Nightingale. In the prayer and sermon of the preacher there was
very little to indicate that he was preaching a new gospel. The
principal thing about him was his action, which, in some respects,
resembled that of the great American Temperance orator, Mr. Gough. Mr.
Harris endeavours as much as possible to dramatise his sermon. He stands
on tiptoe, or he sinks down into his desk, he points his finger, and
shrugs up his shoulders. He has a considerable share of poetical and
oratorical power, but he does not give you an idea of much literary
culture. He does not bear you away "far, far above this lower world, up
where eternal ages roll." You find that it was scarce worth while coming
all the way from New York to London, unless the Rev. Gentleman has much
more to say, and in a better manner, than the sermon deli