may be formed from the author's acknowledgments to between sixty and seventy persons by name, for their obliging communications. To each of these incidents, memoranda, and sayings, is added such an abundance of comment, that the reader is wholly spared the trouble of reflecting for himself. We are not altogether admirers of this mode of discussing the deeds of the illustrious dead. The whole duty of a biographer is not included in that one word industry; although industry is of the greatest importance in the collection of incidents, and the eduction of appropriate reflections. There is another most important qualification judgment; without which there will be no due selection of the incidents fit to be recorded, from the incidents which ought to be thrown away: and this power of discrimination may, with great benefit, be applied also to the class of moral thoughts which the biographer may himself indulge, and which should ever imply in the reader a capacity to originate a few at least of the more obvious moralities that grow from the narrative. Had this useful quality characterized the present production, this closely printed octavo, of nearly seven hundred pages, might have been compressed into half the space; and the edification as well as the satisfaction of the reader would have borne a proportionate increase.

And now, if our readers have not taken the alarm at this repulsive commencement of our review, we request them, both for Dr. Brown's sake and their own, to read a little further. We have no more faults to find; and we will endeavour, with out further preface, to lay before them some of the delectable parts of the history and travels of that extraordinary man John Howard. He was indeed an extraordinary man; and as we have traced his movements from city to city, and from one part of the globe to another, we have felt as if we had been watching the course of some brilliant

meteor along the pathway of heaven. Eccentric it may have been, and unlike the orbit of others; but it shed a benignant, not a blasting, influence on all around it and beneath it. Like the star of Bethlehem, it was ever an index to a blessing : or rather, to speak without figure, it resembled, though at the infinite distance of frail mortality from Divine perfection, the journeyings of that adorable and beneficent Being to whom the star of Bethlehem pointed, and of whom the emphatic summary of scriptural narrative is, that "He went about doing good."

The volume before us is valuable chiefly on this account, that it has for its object the supply of a deficiency which the Christian reader could not fail to remark in previous memoirs of John Howard. In them the overt acts of his life were indeed blazoned forth, to attract the admiration of mankind, who could only gaze with astonishment at such a prodigy of self-denying virtue and philanthropy; but there was little attempt to unfold the recesses of the heart of this eminent man, and, by an analysis of the secret motives of his actions, to discover in them the spring of that power and energy which could prompt and execute his heroic enterprizes of benevolence. The chivalry was seen, but not the soul that gave it birth: the world witnessed with surprise the deeds of the man who could forgo the quiet of home, and the enjoyment of ease for travel and toil abroad, and that not for the self-gratifying purposes which move most migratory men from their spheres, but, as the just and oftquoted eulogy of Burke defines it, to dive into the depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospitals, to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, to remember the forgotten, and attend to the neglected;" but the fountain which sent forth these streams was sealed, and it has been Dr. Brown's object to unseal it. It is discovered that the philanthropy of Howard had that

same common source to which the zeal of confessors, and the patient endurance of apostles, prophets, and martyrs, are to be traced. How ard, it is seen, was in truth humble disciple of Him who, though rich, yet for our sakes became poor, and left us an example that we should tread in his steps; of him who quitted the bosom of the Eternal Father, and the riches of heavenly glory, travelling in the greatness of his strength from heaven to earth, to seek and to save the lost, to heal the broken hearted, to hush the sorrowful sighings of the prisoner, to give deliverance to the captives, and the opening of the dungeon to them that were bound, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

The first glance at the frontispiece to the work before us, suggests these thoughts. We see there, at the foot of a well executed engraving of this extraordinary man, whose countenance conveys the full expression of that decision, zeal, and benevolence, which marked his character, the simple inscription which he drew up for his own monument; an inscription which, when connected with the circumstances of a life of which the world would say he might indeed have been proud, develops the retiring modesty and self-renouncing faith of a genuine Christian. It is nothing more than this; "John Howard died aged My hope is in Christ." The Philanthropist and the Apostle were of the same mind: God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The light in which Howard's character as a sincere Christian is exhibited in the present memoir, is derived in a great measure from new sources of information, which were opened to the author by the confidential servant who attended Howard in most of his journeys of benevolence. This man, who was also with him at his death, closed a chequered existence in the infirmary at Liverpool; and on his death-bed

sent for a respectable minister of that town, into whose hands he delivered a rough journal of his travels, the memorandum-books which his master had with him at his death, some of his original letters, and other papers, not only illustrative of his unwearied labours in the cause of humanity, but of his real excellence in public and private life, and under circumstances of a very peculiar character. Some of the passages from his private journals are so excellent in Christian feeling, that we hope to find a place for them in the course of our review.

But we must first sketch a cursory outline of the philanthropist's history. It is somewhat singular that neither the place nor the year of Mr. Howard's birth can, with any certainty, be ascertained. Seven cities contended for the honour of giving birth to Homer; and almost as many tales are recorded, in a note at the end of this memoir, respecting the birth-place and parentage of Howard. One of them makes him a descendant of the noble family at the head of the British peerage. His biographer, however, fixes as the most probable place and date of his birth-the year 1727, at Clapton, in the parish of Hackney; to which place his parents seem to have removed a short time before that period. His father was an upholsterer and carpet warehouseman in an extensive business in Long Lane, Smithfield, and had acquired a considerable fortune. His son, soon after his birth, was sent to Cardington near Bedford, where his father had some little property, to be nursed by a cottager. In this circumstance originated Mr. Howard's connexion with, and attachment to, this village; where he purchased a larger estate, and added greatly to the happiness of his tenants and neighbours, by his charities and benevolent example.

Howard's father was a Calvinistic Independent Dissenter; and in principles congenial with his own, it was

natural that he should educate his son. Dr. Aikin, in his Memoir of Howard, had animadverted upon the elder Howard's selection of a tutor (Mr. Worsley) for his son. Dr. Brown, on the other hand, defends his conduct; and, as such a favourable opportunity for copious reflection was not to be lost, he indulges us with plentiful strictures on education and the selection of tutors, and with a refutation of Dr. Aikin's positions with regard to the character and extent of Mr. Howard's acquirements. It appears that his father intended, by the education he bestowed upon him, that he should be fitted for some commercial situation. He was therefore placed, on quitting school, with a wholesale grocer in the city, where, in all probability, he would have remained, had not the unexpected death of his father put him in possession of the means of purchasing the remainder of the term of his apprenticeship, and of a competent support without business.

His first care was to set about the repair of his father's house at Clapton; a circumstance to which we advert only for the sake of introducing a little anecdote, illustrative of the youthful benevolence of his character, and the kindness which he early felt for his dependents and the industrious poor. The gardener (then 90 years old), in the year 1790, was fond of relating the circumstance that "his young master never failed to be at the long buttressed wall which separated the garden from the road, just as the baker's cart was going past, when he would purchase a loaf, throw it over the wall, and, on entering the garden, good-humouredly say, Harry, look among the cabbages: you will find something for your family.'

Shortly after leaving his warehouse, Howard availed himself of the opportunity which his fortune afforded him of travelling on the continent. He made his first journey to France and Italy, and continued abroad probably two years.

His good taste appears to have received that gratification which the objects of those countries are pre-eminently calculated to afford; for, as Dr.Brown remarks, his grand projects were not yet conceived, and he was an enthusiastic admirer of the productions of taste and of learning. His after-visits to the continent were for nobler purposes; and it strikes us as an evidence of the power of religion, that those habitudes of mind, and those gratifications of intellect, which became the stronger and more fascinating for every indulgence, and which have the plea to offer of a prescription in their favour from the learned and the polished of all countries; and the very cultivation of which is reckoned among the indications of superiority in the human mind, are yet, tenacious as they are of their influence, so completely to be controlled, counteracted, and exterminated by the force of religious principle, that the scenes of their most enchanting enjoyment may be visited, and the means of their most luxurious pleasures be within reach; while the man of learning, and the man of taste, shall all the while be so bound as it were by the spell of some stronger charm, that he shall turn away from them all with a determination to "touch not, taste not, handle not," since he sees them in reference to the relative superiority of his present higher pursuits, to be "less than nothing, and vanity." Witness St. Paul at Athens: standing on the elevation of Mars' Hill, with the luxuriant scenery of Greece on the one side, and the plains of Marathon on the other; behind him the tower of the Acropolis, with those peerless temples, the very fragments of which have been regarded by travellers with an idolatry almost equal to that which reared them, and before him, in the plain, reclining against the slope of the hill, Athens, mother of the sciences and the arts: yet in the midst of this sublime and captivating scenery, was this great and classical Apostle

as insensible to all the surrounding associations of grandeur, as if nothing were before him but a treeless, turfless desert. Absorbed in the holy abstraction of his own mind, he beheld not this splendour, because," he saw the city wholly given to idolatry." To him it presented nothing but a magnificent mausoleum, decorated indeed with the richest productions of the scholar and the architect, but where the souls of men lay dead in trespasses and sins; while the dim light of philosophy, which still glimmered in the schools, appeared but as the lamp of the sepulchre, shedding its pale and sickly ray around the gorgeous chamber of death. So also it was with Howard: amidst the festivities of Turin, he could observe nothing but the desecration of the Sabbath. In the attractions of Lyons, we find him writing, "Oh, consider the everlasting worth of spiritual enjoyment! then thou wilt see the vanity and nothingness of worldly pleasures." And in reviewing the desolate places of ancient grandeur, and the still surviving glories of modern art, in Venice, Naples, and Rome, he breaks out into ardent desires after the pure pleasures of the world of spirits, and into deep lamentations over the moral desert in which the souls of the inhabitants of these countries were dwelling, a region of darkness and the shadow of death. The gilded baubles which are the idolatry of the worldling, and the more refined pleasures of the classic and the man of taste, were alike disregarded by him. Some have wondered at, and others have derided him for, this apparent apathy; but his defence has been so ably undertaken by the pen of Mr. Foster, the essayist, that in his hands we shall leave it.

"But the mere man of taste ought to be silent respecting such a man as Howard; he is above their sphere of judgment. The invisible spirits, who fulfil their commission of philanthropy among mortals, do not care about pictures, statues, and sumptuous buildings; and no more did he,

when the time in which he must have inspected and admired them, would have been taken from the work to which he had consecrated his life. The curiosity which he might feel was reduced to wait till the should be presented by conscience, which hour should arrive when its gratification kept a scrupulous charge of all his time, as the most sacred duty of that hour. If he was still at every hour, when it came, fated to feel the attractions of the fine arts but the second claim, they might be sure of their revenge; for no other man will ever visit Rome under such a despotic contime for surveying the magnificence of its sciousness of duty as to refuse himself ruins. Such a sin against taste is very far

beyond the reach of common saintship to commit. It implied an inconceivable severity of conviction that he had one thing to do, and that he who would do some great thing in this short life, must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces, as, to idle spectators who live only to amuse themselves, looks ly and tenaciously fixed on his object, that like insanity. His attention was so strong

even at the greatest distance, as the Egyptian pyramids to travellers, it appeared to him with a luminous distinctness as if it had been nigh, and beguiled the toilsome length of labour and enterprise by which he was to reach it. It was so conspicuous before him, that not a step deviated from the direction, and every movement and every day was an approximation. As his method referred every thing he did and thought to the end, and as his exertion did not relax for a moment, he made the trial, so seldom made, what is the utmost effect which may be granted to the last possible efforts of a human agent; and therefore what he did not accomplish, he might conclude to be placed beyond the sphere of mortal activity, and calmly leave to the immediate disposal of Omnipotence." (Foster's Essays.)

Soon after his return from the continent, Mr. Howard took lodgings at Stoke Newington; passing his time as any other benevolent, reflecting, and serious man might be expected to do. Whilst there, in a lodging to which he had removed for recovery from an illness with which he had been afflicted, he She was married his first wife.

his landlady; and the chief motive which influenced him in his choice, appears to have been her attention

to him during his sickness. This was one of the many proofs which he gave of his peculiarity of character; for the lady was twice his own age, very sickly, and greatly inferior to him in fortune. She appears, however, to have been an amiable and a pious woman; and she contributed greatly to his happiness till her death, which occurred four years after their union.

To change the scene after this affliction Howard took another journey to the continent, and visited the city of Lisbon just after its then recent calamity by an earthquake, and while it was yet smoking in its ruins. On his way thither he was captured by a French privateer, and carried to Brest. There he was confined in the castle jail for some time, and endured great privations. He was afterwards removed successively to Morlaix and Carpaix, where he was allowed the privilege of parole for two months, and was sent over to England on a promise to return to his captivity, if his own Government should refuse to exchange him for a French naval officer. On his arrival in England he suspended receiving the congratulations of his friends till he was apprized of the result of his application to the British Government; and there can be no doubt that, had his application been met by a refusal, he would, like another Regulus, have adhered with inflexible fidelity to his engagement, and have returned to voluntary exile.

The attention of the reader will with pleasure rest on this circumstance, at first sight of no greater consequence than the temporary inconvenience and suffering of the individual subject of these memoirs. But Howard himself thought more seriously of it. He says, that not only did this confinement, by rendering him an eye-witness of the barbarities and privations to which his gallant countrymen were exposed in the French prisons, interest him so deeply in their behalf as to cause him to make, on his return, a strong

representation of them to the commissioners of the sick and wounded seamen, who thanked him for the information, and took effectual measures to obtain a redress of the evil; but, what is still more important, it is to this event that he refers the first excitement of that attention to the distressed situation of those of his afflicted and deserted fellow-creatures, " sick and in prison," which afterwards occupied the greater part of sixteen years of his most laborious and useful life. If it has been an object of intense curiosity and delight to trace to its source some celebrated river, and if the energies of travellers the most enterprising, and of genius the most acute and patience the most unwearied, have been lavished upon such discoveries, it is surely not a matter of less interest in the annals of the philosophy of the human mind to develop the first movement and excitement of a principle which, like the philanthropy of Howard, has, for the remainder of life, ruled with uncontrollable and absorbing power all the faculties of the man, and proved a source of innumerable blessings to thousands of the neglected and unpitied, and of merited and imperishable honour to himself. And such a spring of moral action, under the superintending influence of an unseen Hand, was found in the untoward circumstance which took Howard from his course of enjoyment, and carried him to the hunger, and the damps, and the cruelties of a French dungeon.

On his return to Cardington, Mr. Howard devoted his attention to the study of philosophy, and particularly of meteorology; and as a proof that whatever he engaged in was done summis viribus, it is related, that in the winter time, when the frost set in, he used regularly during its continuance to leave his bed at two o'clock every morning, for the purpose of observing the state of a thermometer placed in his garden at some distance from his