f recompence is come. Justly
hast thou cautioned mankind not to impute thy conduct to rashness or
enthusiasm. Weak and wavering in their own pursuits of felicity, thou
wilt not wonder to see them so in their sense of thy merit, and their
zeal for thy honour: but I am commissioned to bear thee to that
All-seeing Power, who can alone truly estimate, and perfectly reward thy
desert. I know that the praise of beings, inferior to thy GOD, never
influenced thy life; but the homage of good minds is grateful to the
purest inhabitants of Heaven; and in departing from a world so much
indebted to thy virtue, let it gratify thy perfect spirit to foresee,
that as long as the earth endures, the most enlightened of her sons will
remember and revere thee as one of her sublimest benefactors."

As soon as the divine messenger had ceased to speak, every voice in the
reanimated multitude, that heard him, raised a shout of benediction on
the name of HOWARD. I started in transport at the sound; and the effort
that I made to join the universal acclamation terminated my vision.

Pardon me, thou gentlest and most indulgent of Friends! that, conscious
as I am of the sincerity with which thy pure mind ever wished to avoid
all exuberance of praise, I yet presume to send into the world such a
tribute to thy virtues as thy humility might reject. Let the motives of
the publication atone for all its defects!

This little work is made public, not from a vain expectation, or desire,
in the Writer to obtain any degree of literary distinction; for, if his
wishes and endeavours are successful, the world will not know from what
hand it proceeds.

Thou most revered object of my regard, who art looking down, perhaps,
with compassion on the petty labours of various mortals, now trying to
commemorate thy merit, thou seest that I am influenced by no arrogant
conceit of having praised with peculiar felicity the perfections that I
so ardently admire. No! I am perfectly sensible, that the most worthy
memorial of thy virtues will be found in those pure records of thy
public services which thy own hand has given to the world with all the
amiable and affecting simplicity that distinguished thy character, and
in the more comprehensive composition of some accomplished Biographer,
who may have opportunities and ability to do justice to thy life.

The chief aim of these few and hasty pages is to recall, at this
particular time, to the liberal spirits of our countrymen