tinguishes them from the sufferers. They do not remember that we are required to imitate our gracious Heavenly Parent, who is kind to the unthankful and to the evil; they also forget the vicissitudes of human affairs; the unexpected changes to which all men are liable; and that those whose circumstances are affluent, may in time be reduced to indigence, and become debtors and prisoners. And as to criminality, it is possible that a man who has often shuddered at hearing the account of a murder, may, on a sudden temptation, commit that very crime. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall, and commiserate those that are fallen."

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Such, in an abridged form, is the introductory section of Mr Howard's work, entitled "A General View of Distress in Prisons;" but in order fully to appreciate the enormous extent of his labours, it would be necessary to follow him into the remainder of the work, in which he describes and criticises, one by one, the various prisons, both foreign and British, which he had visited during the preceding four years. It is only in this way that one can gain an adequate conception of the misery and wretchedness of the prison system of Great Britain in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

DOMESTIC MISFORTUNES-NEW SCHEME OF PHILANTHROPY -SURVEY OF FOREIGN HOSPITALS.

Mr Howard did not consider that his labours were over when he had published his work on prisons, and laid before the world grievances which had long flourished in society undetected and unknown. In the end of the first edition of his work, he had made a promise that, "if the legislature should seriously engage in the reformation of our prisons, he would take a third journey through the Prussian and Austrian dominions, and the free cities of Germany. This," he says, "I accomplished in 1778, and likewise extended my tour through Italy, and revisited some of the countries I had before seen in pursuit of my object." His observations during this tour he published in a second edition of his work in 1780. Wishing, before the publication of a third edition, to acquire some f further knowledge on the subject, he again visited Holland, and some cities in Germany. "I visited also," he says, "the capitals of Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and Poland; and, in 1783, some cities in Portugal and Spain, and returned through France, Flanders, and Holland." The substance of all these travels he threw into a third and final edition of his work on prisons.

Thus, during ten years, had Howard laboured incessantly at a single object, allowing no other to interfere with it; travelling almost without intermission from place to place, and undergoing innumerable risks. From a table drawn up by one of his biographers, it appears that, between 1773 and 1783, he had travelled on his missions of philanthropy, at home and abroad, upwards of

forty thousand miles. Forty thousand miles travelled in ten years!-not from mountain to mountain, or from one object of natural beauty to another, but from jail to jail, and bridewell to bridewell no wonder that Howard, on the retrospect of such a labour fairly accomplished, wrote in his diary, "I bless God who inclined my mind to such a scheme."

During his journeys in Great Britain and Ireland, Mr Howard was usually accompanied by a single servant. He travelled generally on horseback, at the rate of forty miles a-day. "He was never," says his biographer, Dr Aikin, "at a loss for an inn. When in Ireland, or the Highlands of Scotland, he used to stop at one of the poor cabins that stuck up a rag by way of sign, and get a little milk. When he came to the town he was to sleep at, he bespoke a supper, with wine and beer, like another traveller; but made his man attend him, and take it away while he was preparing his bread and milk. He always paid the waiters, postilions, &c. liberally, because he would have no discontent or dispute, nor suffer his spirits to be agitated for such a matter; saying that, in a journey which might cost three or four hundred pounds, fifteen or twenty pounds in addition were not worth thinking about."

In the spring of 1784 Mr Howard, now about fifty-seven years of age, retired to his estate of Cardington, intending to spend the remainder of his life in peace and quiet, assisting in his private capacity in furthering those schemes of prison improvement which his disclosures had set on foot. He resumed the mode of life which he had led before commencing his prison inquiries; with this difference, that, being now a distinguished public character, his visitors were more frequent and more numerous than formerly. There was one sad circumstance, however, which embittered the peace of this benevolent man. His only son, who had received his early education at several academies in England, and had been sent in his eighteenth year to the university of Edinburgh, and placed under the care of the venerable and well-known Dr Blacklock, had unhappily contracted habits of extravagance and dissipation; which, to any parent, and especially to one of Howard's principles, must have caused poignant grief. Already the unfortunate young man had shown symptoms of that malady, brought on by his own imprudent and vicious conduct, which ultimately settled into complete insanity. Of the full extent of this domestic misfortune Mr Howard was not yet

aware.

After nearly two years of repose, interrupted only by the circumstance to which we have alluded, Mr Howard resolved to quit home on a new mission of philanthropy, fraught with greater danger than the one he had accomplished so successfully. During his inquiries into the state of prisons, his attention had been often directed to the spread of infectious diseases, and the inadequacy of the means provided for checking the progress of fever,

pestilence, &c. whether originating in jails or elsewhere. The subject thus suggested to him occupied much of his thoughts during his leisure at Cardington; and he at length determined to devote the remainder of his life to an inspection of the principal hospitals and lazarettos of Europe, with a view to ascertain their defects, and the possibility of effecting such improvements in them as would in future preserve the populations of Europe from the ravages of that dreadful visitation—the plague.

Towards the end of November 1785 Mr Howard left England on his new expedition of philanthropy. He proceeded first to France, with a view to inspect the lazaretto at Marseilles; but, owing to the jealousy of the French government, it was with the utmost difficulty he could accomplish his object; indeed he narrowly escaped apprehension and committal to the Bastile. After visiting the hospitals of Genoa, Leghorn, Pisa, and Florence, he next proceeded to Rome. Here he was privately introduced to Pope Pius VI., himself a benevolent man. On this occasion the ceremony of kissing the pope's toe was dispensed with; and at parting, his holiness laid his hand on his visitor's head, saying kindly, "I know you Englishmen do not mind these ceremonies, but the blessing of an old man can do you no harm.” From Rome our traveller went to Naples, and thence to Malta, pursuing always, as his single object, a knowledge of the state of the hospitals on his route. Writing from Malta to a friend in England, he says, "I have paid two visits to the Grand Master. Every place is flung open to me. I am bound for Zante, Smyrna, and Constantinople. One effect I find during my visits to the lazaretto; namely, a heavy headache-a pain across my forehead; but it has always quite left me in an hour after I have come from these places. As I am quite alone, I have need to summon all my courage and resolution.”

After remaining about three weeks at Malta, Mr Howard set out for Zante. "From thence," he says, "in a foreign ship I got a passage to Smyrna. Here I boldly visited the hospitals and prisons; but as some accidents happened, a few dying of the plague, several shrunk at me. I came thence to Constantinople, where I now am, about a fortnight ago. As I was in a miserable Turk's boat, I was lucky in a passage of six days and a half. I am sorry to say some die of the plague about us. One is just carried before my window; yet I visit where none of my conductors will accompany me. In some hospitals, as in the lazarettos, and yesterday among the sick slaves, I have a constant headache; but in about an hour after it always leaves me. I lodge at a physician's house, and I keep some of my visits a secret." From Constantinople he returned to Smyrna, where the plague was also raging; his object being to obtain a passage from that port to Venice, in order that he might undergo the full rigours of the quarantine system, and be able to report, from personal observation, respecting the economy of a lazaretto. On the

voyage from Smyrna to Venice, the ship in which he sailed was attacked by a Tunis privateer, and all on board ran great risks. At length, after a desperate fight, a cannon loaded with spikes, nails, and old iron, and pointed by Mr Howard himself, was discharged with such effect upon the corsair vessel, that it was obliged to sheer off. From Venice he writes thus to his confidential servant Thomasson, at Cardington; the letter being dated Venice Lazaretto, October 12, 1786:-"I am now in an infectious lazaretto, yet my steady spirits never forsook me till yesterday, on the receipt of my letters. Accumulated misfortunes almost sink me. I am sorry, very sorry, on your account. I will hasten home; no time will I lose by night or day. But forty days I have still to be confined here, as our ship had a foul bill of health, the plague being in the place from whence we sailed. Then that very hasty and disagreeable measure that is taken in London wounds me sadly indeed. Never have I returned to my country with such a heavy heart as I now do.” The two circumstances which he alludes to in this extract as distressing him so much, and making him so anxious to leave Venice and return home, were the misconduct of his son, of which he had received further accounts, and a proposal which had just been made in London, and of which intelligence had been conveyed to him, to erect a monument to commemorate the nation's sense of his former philanthropic labours.

The term of his quarantine at Venice being finished, he proceeded to Trieste, and thence to Vienna. How the thoughts of his sad domestic affliction mingled and struggled with his daily exertions in connexion with the great object of his tour, we may learn from the following touching postscript to a letter to Mr Smith of Bedford, written from Vienna, and dated 17th December 1786 :- "Excuse writing, &c. as wrote early by a poor lamp. What I suffered, I am persuaded I should have disregarded in the lazaretto, as I gained useful information. Venice is the mother of all lazarettos; but oh, my son, my son'!" At Vienna Mr Howard had an interview with the Austrian emperor, who entered into conversation with him on the subject of his tour, discussed with him the state of the prisons and hospitals in his Austrian dominions, and expressed his intention to adopt some of his suggestions for their improvement. The attention shown by the emperor to his distinguished visitor procured him the notice of many of the courtiers; and a characteristic anecdote is told of his interview with the governor of Upper Austria and his lady. The Austrian noble asked Howard, in a somewhat haughty manner, what he thought of the prisons in his government. "The worst in all Germany," said Howard; "particularly as regards the female prisoners; and I recommend your countess to visit them personally, as the best means of rectifying the abuses in their management." "I!" said the astonished countess "I go into prisons!" and she rapidly descended the

The

staircase with her husband, as if shocked beyond measure. philanthropist indignantly followed, and called after her, "Madam, remember you are but a woman yourself; and must soon, like the most miserable female in a dungeon, inhabit a little piece of that earth from which both of you sprung."

Returning home in February 1787, after an absence of fifteen months, Mr Howard found his unhappy son a confirmed and incurable lunatic. For some time he attempted to keep him in his own house at Cardington, under a mild restraint; at length, however, he yielded to the advice of the medical attendants, and suffered him to be removed to a well-conducted asylum at Leicester.

The proposal to erect a memorial to Mr Howard was so strenuously resisted by him on his return to England, that it was obliged to be given up. Out of £1533 which had been subscribed for the purpose, about £500 were returned to the donors; the remainder was placed in the stocks-£200 of it being employed in obtaining the discharge of fifty-five poor prisoners in London, a similar sum in the striking of a medal in memory of Howard, and the rest being appropriated, after his death, to the object for which it had been originally collected. Howard's opposition to the scheme of erecting to him any species of monument amounted to positive antipathy; indeed nothing was more remarkable in his character than his dislike to be praised for what he had done. When one gentleman happened to speak to him respecting his services to society in a flattering manner, Howard interrupted him by saying, "My dear sir, what you call my merit is just my hobby-horse."

The three years which followed Mr Howard's return from his first tour through the lazarettos of Europe, were spent by him in a new general inspection of the English, Scotch, and Irish prisons, with a view to ascertain whether any improvements had been effected in them since his former survey; and in the preparation of a work giving an account of his recent continental journey. This work was entitled, "An Account of the Principal Lazarettos of Europe, with Papers Relative to the Plague;" and was published in the year 1789. It contained, in the form of an appendix, additional remarks on the state of British prisons.

LAST PHILANTHROPIC JOURNEY-ILLNESS AND DEATH.

In the conclusion of his work on lazarettos, Howard announced his intention of again quitting England to visit the hospitals of Russia, Turkey, and the Eastern countries, in order to gain more accurate and extensive views of the plague. "I am not insensible," he says, "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.