'I CANNOT name this gentleman without remarking that his labours and writings have done much to open the eyes and hearts of all mankind. He has visited all Europe--not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces or the stateliness of temples; not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the curiosities of modern art; nor to collect medals or collate manuscripts; but to dive into the depth of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospitals, to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain; to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries. His plan is original; it is as full of genius as of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery, a circumnavigation of charity. Already the benefit of his labour is more or less felt in every country; I hope he will anticipate his final reward by seeing all its effects fully realised in his own.'

In these noble words, glowing with the fire of genius, Edmund Burke addressed the electors of Bristol in 1780. All are familiar with the passage, and all know that it refers to John HowardHoward the Philanthropist, as he is called, a name which has sufficed to point many a charitable appeal, and to round many an eloquent period. But what manner of man Howard was, and what was the nature of the work in which he engaged; what difficulties he had to overcome, and how he succeeded in

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overcoming them; how it is that his name has become a sort of synonym for philanthropy-these things, we fear, are known to but few. To the great majority of people, Howard is a name, and nothing besides. To make the actual flesh-and-blood man appear before the reader, and to give some insight into the work he accomplished, is the object of the following paragraphs. Bedford.

Neither the exact place nor the exact date of Howard's birth is known. The monument to him in St. Paul's Cathedralwhich, we have read, from the circumstance of the key held in the hand of the statue, has been sometimes taken by foreigners for the representation of the Apostle St. Peter-has inscribed on the pedestal that Howard 'was born in Hackney, in the county of Middlesex, September 2, 1726.' The matter is of no great consequence, and this account may be accepted as sufficiently accurate for all practical purposes. Howard's father, who was a Calvinist and a Dissenter, had acquired a considerable fortune in business as an upholsterer and carpet warehouseman in Smithfield. He is said to have been a man of rather penurious habits-a circumstance which has excited the surely unnecessary wonder of some of Howard's biographers, who think it extraordinary that the father of a man so benevolent should have been rather miserly. The circumstance of father and son differing in the bent of their disposition is not so uncommon as to be a matter of surprise. Howard's mother died while he was still an infant, and her loss was a matter of lasting regret to him. Both his parents appear to have been worthy, industrious, and somewhat dull people, of strict puritanical principles, who lived decent and respectable if somewhat dark and colourless lives.

Howard, who was a rather sickly boy, received a fair, and nothing more than a fair, education. The first school he attended was one taught by a certain Rev. John Worsley, at which he remained seven years. 'I left that school,' he is recorded to have said to Dr. Aikin, 'not fully taught in any one thing.' Probably no boy ever yet did leave school fully taug t

Howard's Education.

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in any one thing; and too much stress must not be laid upon this remark of Howard, who at no time was distinguished by intellectual quickness and brilliancy, and who, while at school, appears to have been known as a remarkably dull boy. His second schoolmaster was Mr. John Eames, who kept an academy in London, a man of superior abilities and honoured by the friendship of Sir Isaac Newton, through whose influence he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. While at this seminary, Howard formed a close and intimate friendship with the boy who afterwards became celebrated as Dr. Richard Price, a name familiar to all students of Burke's 'Reflections on the French Revolution,' his mention in which may, perhaps, be said, without much injustice, to constitute his principal title to remembrance nowadays. The alliance which sprung up between him and Howard well illustrates a truth examples of which are of every-day occurrence—that friendships are more frequently formed between those possessing great diversity in intellectual character than between those possessing great similarity. Compared with Howard's, Price's intellect was of diamond acuteness and brilliance. Howard was one of the dullest boys in the school, Price held the foremost place in all his classes. But the solid worth, the veracity, the simple, honest, undeviating adherence to duty which even at that early period prominently distinguished Howard's character, irresistibly attracted the clever and versatile Price, who afterwards became very useful to Howard in the preparation of his reports on prisons.

Howard left school with an education which in our day would be considered inadequate for a lad of his position; but which was very respectable, as things went in the middle of last century. Though he never acquired the art of writing his own language with ease and correctness, and though his slips in grammar and in spelling are rather conspicuous in his private correspondence, he had acquired sufficient knowledge to be a good business man; and it was for business that his father, emulous that his son should tread in his own footsteps, designed

him. He was apprenticed to a wholesale grocer in London; a premium of £700 was paid with him; separate apartments were allowed him; and he was furnished with a pair of saddlehorses. These facts show that the elder Howard must have held no contemptible position in the commercial world. Howard himself seems to have had many of the qualities necessary for success in business-unflinching honesty, patience, perseverance, and a dogged tenacity of purpose, that never relaxed its efforts in the pursuit of an end until that end was attained. However, he never took kindly to the drudgery of office-work, and on the death of his father, in 1742, he made arrangements to terminate his apprenticeship. By his father's will, he was left heir to a considerable amount of property, and £7,000 in money. Into his inheritance, however, he was not to enter till his twenty-fourth year, the property in the intervening period being under the management of certain trustees. But such was the confidence in his discretion and honour with which Howard even at this early age had inspired all with whom he came into contact, that the trustees saw fit to entrust him immediately with a considerable part of the management of the estate.

Freed from the trammels of business and possessed of an ample fortune, Howard gave the first indication of that fondness for travel which clung to him throughout life, by undertaking a tour on the Continent, soon after his father's death. According to one of his biographers, it was at this time that he brought with him from Italy those paintings by which he afterwards embellished his favourite seat at Cardington.

On his return from the Continent, Howard went into lodgings at Stoke Newington, where he remained for several years. His health had always been delicate, and at this period appears to have been especially so, requiring very careful regimen. In spite of all his precautions, he was attacked with a severe illness while lodging in the house of Mrs. Loidore, a widow-lady of small independent property. She appears to have been of a rather humble station in life, and was a per