, Howard derived not only his
unrivalled and immortal reputation, but the perfect restoration of
enfeebled health; not to mention those high gratifications of the heart
and conscience, which are superior to all the enjoyments both of health
and glory. With such temperance in diet, that his daily food would
appear to most people not sufficient to support the common functions of
life, he chearfully sustained the hardships of long travel, through
regions where travelling is most difficult and dangerous. With a figure,
voice, and deportment, that seemed to preclude him from all personal
influence and authority; and with no mental acquisitions, except those
which are common to every cultivated mind, he secured to himself not
only universal admiration, but, I may venture to say, the just and moral
idolatry of the world. So invigorating are projects of extensive
Beneficence! so powerful is the energy of Public Virtue!

"Never, indeed, was the astonishing influence of plain and simple
goodness more strikingly displayed, than in the deference and respect
which this private and meek individual received, not only from foreign
and imperious Rulers of the Earth, but from hardened and atrocious
wretches, on whom Justice herself could hardly make any mental
impression, though armed with all the splendour, and all the violence of
power. Two particular examples of the influence I am speaking of, I
shall mention here, not only as honourable to the prime object of our
regard, but as they may suggest to contemplative minds some useful
ideas, by shewing how far the mere weight of an upright and benevolent
character alone may give to the most callous nerves a trembling
sensibility, and awaken the most ferocious spirit to self-correction.

"When our indefatigable Visitor of prisons was in Russia, he beheld, in
public, the punishment of the knoot severely administered by a strong
and stern executioner.

"On the following day he waited on this man, to request from him various
information. The executioner attended him obsequiously; but this
athletic savage, though trained to acts of cruelty, and conscious he had
a legal sanction for the barbarous violence he had exerted, could not
behold without shuddering the meek and gentle Missionary of Compassion.

"The second and more memorable example of his singular influence
occurred in a prison of his own country, and relates to an outrageous
female delinquent. A corrupt and ferocious woman is, perha