At ten o’clock we took leave of Mr. Harris and his interesting friends.  We retired with feelings of pride and gratification that we had been privileged to join a company which, though wearing the badge of a proscribed race, displayed in happy combination, the treasures of genuine intelligence, and the graces of accomplished manners.  We were happy to meet in that social circle a son of New England, and a graduate of one of her universities.  Mr. H. went to the West Indies a few months after the abolition of slavery.  He took with him all the prejudices common to our country, as well as a determined hostility to abolition principles and measures.  A brief observation of the astonishing results of abolition in those islands, effectually disarmed him of the latter, and made him the decided and zealous advocate of immediate emancipation.  He established himself in business in Barbados, where he has been living the greater part of the time since he left his native country.  His prejudices did not long survive his abandonment of anti-abolition sentiments.  We rejoiced to find him on the occasion above referred to, moving in the circle of colored society, with all the freedom of a familiar guest, and prepared most cordially to unite with us in the wish that all our prejudiced countrymen could witness similar exhibitions.  The gentleman at whose table we had the pleasure to dine, was born a slave, and remained such until he was seventeen years of age.  After obtaining his freedom, he engaged as a clerk in a mercantile establishment, and soon attracted attention by his business talents.  About the same period he warmly espoused the cause of the free colored people, who were doubly crushed under a load of civil and political impositions, and a still heavier one of prejudice.  He soon made himself conspicuous by his manly defence of the rights of his brethren against the encroachments of the public authorities, and incurred the marked displeasure of several influential characters.  After a protracted struggle for the civil immunities of the colored people, during which he repeatedly came into collision with public men, and was often arraigned before the public tribunals; finding his labors ineffectual, he left the island and went to England.  He spent some time there and in France, moving on a footing of honorable equality among the distinguished abolitionists of those countries.  There, amid the free influences and the generous sympathies which welcomed and surrounded him,—­his whole character ripened in those manly graces and accomplishments which now so eminently distinguish him.

Since his return to Barbadoes, Mr. H. has not taken so public a part in political controversies as he did formerly, but is by no means indifferent to passing events.  There is not, we venture to say, within the colony, a keener or more sagacious observer of its institutions, its public men and their measures.

When witnessing the exhibitions of his manly spirit, and listening to his eloquent and glowing narratives of his struggles against the political oppressions which ground to the dust himself and his brethren, we could scarcely credit the fact that he was himself born and reared to manhood—­A SLAVE.