General Sir Henry Drury Harness. By General Collinson, R.E. (the
late), and General Webber, R.E. (R.E. Institute Com- mittee.)—This volume contains a record, kept austerely free of all kinds of ornament or rhetoric, of General Harness's many services. " I never met his like outside a book," was Lord Clyde's emphatic testimony to his remarkable character. This we are told in the preface. In the book itself we simply learn what he did. H. D. Harness passed out of Woolwich in 1824, but had to wait till 1827 before he got his commission. Part of this interval he occupied in a silver mine in Mexico. (Three other cadets went with him; one remained, and had made his fortune by 1857.) In 1834 he was appointed Instructor in Fortification at Woolwich, and introduced great reforms into the teaching of that subject. Afterwards he did work with the Railway Commission and at the Mint, returned to Woolwich for a short time as Professor, and in July, 1857, went out in command of the Royal Engineers in India, where he remained for about two years. In 1865 he retired from service, and died at Oxford in 1901. The interest of the book is, as has been said, mainly professional, but now and then we catch a little glimpse of the man.
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