Britain; then, finding that answer, over the Jails of the
habitable Globe! "A voyage of discovery, a circum-navigation of
charity; to collate distresses, to gauge wretchedness, to take
the dimensions of human misery:" really it is very fine.
Captain Cook's voyage for the Terra Australis, Ross's, Franklin's
for the ditto Borealis: men make various cruises and voyages in
this world,--for want of money, want of work, and one or the
other want,--which are attended with their difficulties too, and
do not make the cruiser a demigod. On the whole, I have myself
nothing but respect, comparatively speaking, for the dull solid
Howard, and his "benevolence," and other impulses that set him
cruising; Heaven had grown weary of Jail-fevers, and other the
like unjust penalties inflicted upon scoundrels,--for scoundrels
too, and even the very Devil, should not have _more_ than their
due;--and Heaven, in its opulence, created a man to make an end
of that. Created him; disgusted him with the grocer business;
tried him with Calvinism, rural ennui, and sore bereavement in
his Bedfordshire retreat;--and, in short, at last got him set to
his work, and in a condition to achieve it. For which I am
thankful to Heaven; and do also,--with doffed hat, humbly salute
John Howard. A practical solid man, if a dull and even dreary;
"carries his weighing-scales in his pocket:" when your jailer
answers, "The prisoner's allowance of food is so and so; and we
observe it sacredly; here, for example, is a ration."--" Hey! A
ration this?" and solid John suddenly produces his
weighing-scales; weighs it, marks down in his tablets what the
actual quantity of it is. That is the art and manner of the man.
A man full of English accuracy; English veracity, solidity,
simplicity; by whom this universal Jail-commission, not to be
paid for in money but far otherwise, is set about, with all the