extortion, or suspicious brutality.--He felt, that as his purpose was
heavenly, the powers of Heaven would be displayed in his support; that
iniquity and oppression would not dare to lift a hand against him,
though they knew it was the business of his life to annihilate their
sway in their most secret dominion. How admirably did the progress of
his travels evince and justify the pure and enlightened confidence of
his spirit! All dangers, all difficulties, vanish before his gentleness,
his regularity, his perseverance. Insolence and ferocity seem to turn,
at his approach, into docility and respect. Every hardship he endures,
every step he advances, in his wide and laborious career of Beneficence,
instead of impairing his strength, invigorates his frame; instead of
diminishing his influence, increases the utility of his conduct, by
making the world acquainted with the sanctity of his character. Witness,
ye various regions of the earth! with what surprize, delight, and
veneration, ye beheld an unarmed, and unassuming traveller instructing
you in the sublime science of mitigating human misery, and giving you a
matchless example of tenderness and magnanimity! O, England! thou
generous country! ever enamoured of glory, contemplate in this, the most
perfect of thy illustrious sons; contemplate those virtues, and that
honour, in which thy parental spirit may most happily exult!--What
spectacle can be more flattering to thy native, thy honest pride, than
to behold the proudest potentates of distant nations listening with
pleasure to a private Englishman; and learning, from his researches, how
to relieve the most injured of their subjects! how to abolish the
enormities of perverted Justice! To form a complete account of the good
arising to the world from the life and labours of Howard, would be a
task beyond the limits of any human mind: an exact statement of the
benefits he has conferred upon society, could be rendered only by the
attendant Spirit whom Providence commissioned to watch over him, and who
might discern, by the powers of supernatural vision, what pregnant