and of extending his tour in the East, adding these words, " I am not insensible of the dangers that must attend such a journey. Trusting, however, in the protection of that kind providence which has hitherto preserved me, I calmly and cheerfully commit myself to the disposal of unerring wisdom. Should it please God to cut off my life in the prosecution of this design, let not my conduct be uncandidly imputed to rashness or enthusiasm, but to a serious, deliber ate conviction that I am pursuing the path of duty, and to a sincere desire of being made an instrument of more extensive usefulness to my fellow-creatures than could be expected in the narrower circle of a retired life." The execution of the purpose he had thus expressed was delayed for some time by the necessity for making special arrange ments with regard to his private affairs in consequence of the confirmed insanity of his sun; but early in July 1789 he finally embarked in what proved to be his last journey. Travelling overland from Amsterdam by Hanover, Berlin, Kb nigsberg, and Riga to St Petersburg and Moscow, and so southwards, and visiting in passing the military hospitals that lay on his route, he reached Cherson in November. In the hospitals of this place and of the immediate neigh bourhood he found more than enough to occupy his attention while he awaited the means of transit to Constantinople. Towards the end of the year his medical advice was asked in the case of a young lady who was suffering under the camp faver then prevalent, and in attending her he himself took the disease, which terminated fatally on January 20, 1790. " Give we no monument," he had said, " but lay me quietly in the earth ; place a sundial over my grave, and let me be forgotten ;" but a life like his had made such a burial even in a foreign land impossible, and his remains were followed, respectfully and sorrowfully, by many thousands to the grave, where they now lie near the village of Dauphigny on the road to St Nicolas. A statue by Bacon with a suitable inscription was afterwards erected to his memory
in St Paul s, London.In personal appearance Howard is described as having been short, thin, and sallow, unprepossessing apart from the attraction of a penetrating eye and a benevolent smile. " There was an animation in his manner and a quickness in his gait which corresponded with the activity of his mental powers. In his address he was dignified, kind, and con descending, always adapting himself to the persons with whom he conversed ; as free from a cringing servility amongst his superiors in station as he was from arrogancy towards those of lower rank " (Field). In point of intel lectual ability he cannot be said to have been possessed of more thin the ordinary endowments ; nor had education done all that was possible for the development of those which he had. That he was of a deeply religious tempera ment is abundantly shown by the meagre remains we have of his letters and diaries ; while the greater part of his life shows that his enthusiasm of humanity was the unusual yet normal outcome of the sincerest piety. His benevo lent impulses were sustained by a rare degree of energy and determination, while they were guided by a remarkable delicacy of tact and an equally remarkable vigour of prac- tisal common sense. It would be idle to speculate how fir Howard s work could have been done when it was, and as it was, by a man differently endowed. Doubtless the reforms which he inaugurated were reforms urgently called for by the spirit and enlightenment of his age ; but this fact rather enhances than diminishes the imperishable glory which belongs to him of having been the foremost to give an articulate voice to that demand. "In the scale of moral desert the labours of the legislator and the writer are as far below his as earth is below heaven. His kingdom was of a better world ; he died a martyr after living an rpostle " (Bentham).
See Anecdotes of the Life and Character of John Howard, written by a Gentleman (1790); Aikiu, View of the Character and Public Services of the late John Howard ; Memoirs, by Baldwin Brown (1818), Taylor (1836), Hepworth Dixon (1849), Field (1850), and Stoughton (1853) ; and Correspondence of John Howard, ivith brief Memoir and Anecdotes (1855).
later Puritan divines, was born May 17, 1630, at Lough- borough, Leicestershire, of which parish his father was minister. Wlien hardly five years old he was removed to Ireland by his father, who, unable to support the ecclesi astical policy of Archbishop Laud, had been ejected from his living. On the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in 1641, the exiles returned to England ; and, fixing his abode in Lancashire, the elder Howe contiuctud in person the I studies of his son, who in his seventeenth year (May 19, ! 1647) entered Christ s College, Cambridge, as a sizar, and I in the following year took his degree of B.A. During his | residence in this university he made the acquaintance of I Cud worth, More, and Smith, from intercourse with whom, | doubtless, as Calamy suggests, as well as from direct acquaintance with the Dialogues themselves, his mind received that " Platonic tinge " which is so perceptible in his writings. Immediately after graduation at Cambridge, he removed to Oxford, where he took the same degree in the following year, and, after becoming a fellow of Magdalen College, proceeded M.A. in 1652. On leaving Oxford in that year ho returned to his father s retreat in Lancashire, and received ordination at Winwick from the hands of Mr Herle, the minister of the parish, who was assisted by the ministers of the neighbouring chapelries. Sometime afterwards an unexpected conduct of divine providence " bore him to Great Torrington in Devonshire, where he spent S jme years as pastor. It was there that he preached those discourses which at a later period took shape in his treatises on The Blessedness of the Righteous and on Delighting in God. There also it was I that he married the daughter of "his inner friend" Mr George Hughes. In the beginning of 1657 a journey to London accidentally brought Howe under the notice of Cromwell, who, struck by his appearance and preaching, made him his domestic chaplain. In this prominent position, which he had accepted with very great reluctance, his conduct as the almoner and confidential adviser of the Protector was such as to win the praises of even the bitterest enemies of his party. Without overlooking the due claims of the Puritans, he omittud no opportunity of helping pious and learned men of other denominations, Ward (afterwards bishop of Exeter) and Thomas Fuller having been among the number of those who profited by Howe s kindness, and who were not ashamed subsequently to express their gratitude for it. On the deposition of Richard Cromwell, Howe returned to Great Torrington, where, like all who had played a conspicuous part under the Common- I wealth, he soon after the Restoration found himself an object of suspicion and hatred ; in 1662 the passing of the Act of Uniformity drove him from his parish. For several years he now led a wandering and uncertain life, preaching in secret as occasion offered to handfuls of trusted hearers. More than once his liberty was in imminent peril and it is alleged by Calamy, though on doubtful grounds, that for two months in 1665 he was imprisoned in the Isle of St Nicholas in Plymouth Sound. Impelled by the demands of pressing want, he in 1668 published the treatise entitled The Blessediieys of the Righteous ; the reputation which he had acquired by it procured for him in 1669 an invitation from Lord Massarene of Antrim Castle, Ireland, to become his domestic chaplain. At Antrim, where he was soon joined by his family, he accordingly spent six years of quiet, during which he frequently preached in public, with the
approval of the bishop of the diocese, and also found time
