a small seaport town of Cumberlandshire, 5 miles N. of Whitehaven, of which it is a sub-port. It is of modern date and neatly built. The harbour has 8 feet water; and at the pier-head is a fixed light 44 feet high, seen 11 miles off. Its chief exports are coal and lime. It has a station on the Whitehaven Junction Railway. Pop. of parish (1851) 2169.

James**, the author of the *Oceana*, was sprung from an ancient family in Rutlandshire, and was born in 1611. In his eighteenth year he entered Trinity College, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner. His tutor was the famous Chillingworth. At the close of his university career (during which he lost his father) he set out to travel on the Continent. He visited France and Italy, but most of his time was spent at the Hague, where he enjoyed the friendship of the Prince of Orange, who, when Harrington returned to England, entrusted to him the care of his interests there. On reaching home Harrington retired into the seclusion of private life, chiefly for the purpose of working out his thoughts on the philosophy of politics; but in 1646 he was appointed groom of the bed-chamber to Charles I., then the prisoner of his own subjects. The king enjoyed greatly his society and conversation; but on his removal to the Isle of Wight was deprived of his pleasant companion, who was put into confinement for refusing to swear that he would not help the king to escape if he made the attempt. His devotion to his royal master was such, that on the day of his execution he went with him to the block. After Charles's death Harrington once more withdrew into private life, and devoted his time to his *Oceana*. He made no secret of the purport of this work, which was avowedly republican in its tendency; and the author soon became an object of marked suspicion both with the Royalists and the leading men of the Commonwealth. When the *Oceana* was passing through the press it was seized by order of Cromwell, but restored to its author at the instance of the Protector's favourite daughter Mrs Claypole, whose sympathies Harrington had enlisted by an ingenious ruse, of which a full account is given in his *Life* by Toland. The leading principles of the *Oceana* are, that the natural element of power in states is property, and that of all kinds of property that in land is the most important, as it possesses certain characteristics which distinguish it in its natural and political action from all other property. Carrying out this principle, he insists on what he calls an equal Agrarian law as the basis of his imaginary republic. Another feature of the *Oceana* not to be overlooked is the plan of the vote by ballot, which Harrington advocates with great power. Many answers to the *Oceana* soon appeared. The most memorable of these was Baxter's *Holy Commonwealth*, which, however, was publicly burned at Oxford in 1683, along with the political writings of Hobbes and Milton. Harrington defended himself against these attacks both by his pen and by propagating his doctrines through the medium of the "Rota", a club which he instituted, and where he nightly lectured and discoursed on the advantages of his republic. At the Restoration this club was dissolved, but its founder was seized and thrown into prison as a conspirator. He vehemently denied the truth of the charges brought against him, but it was in vain that he applied either for his freedom or a public trial. His mind at last gave way, and his liberty was then restored. By skilful treatment his health was re-established, but his faculties never recovered their tone. He now married, but survived his marriage for only a short time, dying September 11, 1677, at the age of sixty-six.

Hallam, in his *Literature of Europe* (iv. 367), remarks of Harrington, "In general it may be said of him that he is prolix, dull, pedantic, yet seldom profound; but sometimes redeems himself by just observations." This is true of the style of the *Oceana*; but it is extremely unjust to the ingenuity, truth, and depth of many of Harrington's views on political philosophy. It is not fair to deny him the praise, undoubtedly due, of having expounded and illustrated the views he adopts more clearly than any preceding writer. Harrington's complete works were published in 1700 by Toland; and a more complete edition in 1737 by Birch.

**HARIOT, Thomas**, an eminent mathematician, was born at Oxford in 1560. After the usual preparatory training, he entered St Mary Hall as a commoner, and took his bachelor's degree in 1579. He then distinguished himself by his skill in the mathematics, and became preceptor in that science to Sir Walter Raleigh. In 1585 he accompanied the first colony sent out to Virginia; and having surveyed that country, ascertained its natural productions, and observed the manners and customs of the aboriginal population, he published an account of it, which was afterwards reprinted in Hakluyt's *Voyages*. On his return to England, after an absence of two years, he resumed his mathematical studies with such zeal and success, that Henry, Earl of Northumberland, the liberal and enlightened protector of the learned, assigned him a yearly pension of £120. The same nobleman also pensioned Robert Hues, known by his Treatise on the Globes, and Walter Warner, who is supposed to have communicated to Harvey the first hint concerning the circulation of the blood. Both these persons were mathematicians; and, in 1608, when the earl was committed to the Tower for life, they, along with Harriot, were his constant companions, and usually styled his magicians. They had a table at the charge of the earl, who constantly conversed with them, to beguile the tedium of his confinement as did also Sir Walter Raleigh, who was then a prisoner in the Tower. Harriot lived for some time at Sion College, and died at London on the 2d of July 1621, at the age of sixty, after having suffered much from a cancer in the lip, occasioned by a habit he had contracted of holding in his mouth instruments of brass often charged with verdigris. He was universally esteemed on account of his learning. A manuscript of his entitled *Ephemeris Chrysometria* is preserved in Sion College; and his *Artis Analyticae Praxis ad Aequationes Algebraicas Resolvendas* was published at London in 1631, folio. Descartes has been charged with taking from this book many improvements in algebra, which he afterwards published to the world as his own; but notwithstanding all that has been said by Wallis in his account of the discoveries of Harriot, and by Zach in the *Astronomical Ephemeris* for 1788, there seems to be no good ground for the charge; and it would even appear that much that incontestibly belongs to Vieta or Descartes has been ascribed to Harriot. Montucla has reduced to their just value the services of the English mathematician, and shown that these, when truly estimated, are sufficiently important to entitle him to a place in the second rank, amongst those men who have contributed to the progress of the mathematical sciences. (See Dissertations Third and Fourth, prefixed to this work.) From some papers of Harriot, discovered in 1784, it appears that he had either procured a telescope from Holland, or divined the construction of that instrument; and that he