Mr Howard, though frequently requested, would never consent to sit for his picture; and the various portraits, which have been given of him, are said by his intimate friends to be totally unlike. The nearest resemblance, is said to be a head sketched by an artist in London, and copied for Dr Aikin's View of his Character ; which, though considered as some what of a caricature, is said to have exactly the expression of his countenance, when in a very serious and attentive mood. His eye was lively and penetrating, and his features strong and prominent ; his gait quick, and his gestures animated. In his youth, his constitution was delicate, and his habit supposed to be consumptive ; hut he afterwards attained (probably in consequence of his abstemiousness in diet and application to exercise) a power of enduring, without inconvenience, the greatest corporeal privations and fa tigues. The strict regimen in point of food, which he had originally adopted from a regard to health, he afterwards continued from choice. He made no use of animal food, or of fermented and spirituous drinks. Water and the plainest vegetables sufficed for his ordinary diet, and milk, tea, butter and fruit, were his luxuries. He was sparing in the quantity of his food, and indifferent as to the stated times of taking his meals. He was equally tolerant of heat, cold, and all the vicissitudes of climate ; and could without difficulty dispense with the ordinary seasons and proportions of sleep. When he travelled in England or Ireland, it was generally on horseback, and he rode regu larly about forty English miles a day. He was never at a loss for an inn ; but, in Ireland or the Highlands of Scot land, could accommodate himself with a little milk at any of the poor cabins in his way. When he came to the town where lie was to sleep, he bespoke a supper like other travellers, but made his servant remove it, while he was preparing his bread and milk. When he travelled on the continent, he usually went post in his own chaise, in which he slept as occasion required ; and has been known to tra vel twenty days and twenty nights without going to bed. He used to carry with him a small tea-kettle, some cups, a little pot of sweet-meats, and a few loaves. At the post house he would get some water boiled, send out for milk, and make his repast, while his servant went to the inn. Ile was remarkably attentive to the perfect cleanliness of his whole person ; and water was always an indispensable ne cessary for his ablutions. His peculiar habits of life, and his exclusive attention to a few important objects, made him appear more averse to society than he really was. Ile assiduously shunned all engagements, which would involved him in the irregularities of general intercourse ; but he received his select friends with the truest hospi tality, and was often extremely communicative in conver sation, enlivening a small circle with the most entertaining. relations of his travels and adventures. Ile was never negligent of the received forms of polite life ; and, how ever much he might be charged with singularities, no one could refuse his title to the character of a gentleman. He was distinguished especially by his respectful attention to the female sex ; and nothing afforded him so much plea sure as the conversation of women of good education and cultivated manners. His own voice and demeanour were so gentle as to be almost denominated feminine ; and fur nished a striking contrast to the energy of his mind and the extent of his exertions. His language and manners were invariably pure and delicate ; and it must have been no small triumph of duty over inclination, which brought him to submit, in the prosecution of his benevolent de signs, to such frequent communications with the most abandoned of mankind. Yet the nature of his errand ap pears to have inspired the most profligate with respect ; and he has himself recorded, that he never met with a sin gle insult from the prisoners, in any of the jails which he visited. He possessed an elegant taste for neatness in his house and furniture ; and employed much of his leisure time in the cultivation of useful and ornamental plants. In the course of his various travels, he brought home many curious vegetables ; and his garden became an object of curiosity, both for the elegant manner in which it was planned, and for the excellent productions which it con tained. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1756 ; and contributed a few short papers which have been published in its Transactions.* His philosophical re searches were chiefly directed to meteorological observa tions, and he seldom travelled without some instrument for that purpose. He applied himself, liketvise, with con siderable assiduity, to the prosecution of experiments on the effects of the union of the primary colours in different proportions. In his intellectual character, he discovered less of the faculty of extensive comprehension than of la borious accuracy. By his talent of minute examination and detail, he was peculiarly qualified for the patient investiga tions in which he engaged ; and in his modest estimates of his own abilities, he was used to say of himself, a I am the plodder, who goes about to collect materials for men of genius to make use of." His liberality with respect to pecuniary concerns, was early and uniformly displayed ; and he appears never to have considered money in ally other light than as an instrument of procuring happiness to himself and others. Contented with the competence which he inherited, he never thought of increasing it ; and made it a rule with himself to lay up no part of his annual income, but to expend in some useful or benevolent scheme the surplus of every year. Moderate in all his de sires, and untainted by the lust of growing rich, he was elevated above every thing mean and sordid. He expend ed much in charities, and displayed in all his transactions a spirit of the utmost honour and generosity. lie imbibed
from his earliest years a devout principle of religion, which continued steady and uniform through every period of his life. The body of Christians, to whom he particularly at tached himself, Nvere the Baptists ; and the system of be lief, to which he adhered, was what has generally been called moderate Calvinism. But he was always less soli citous about modes and opinions, than the internal spirit of piety and sincerity ; and though always warmly attached to whatever interests he espoused, he possessed that true spirit of catholicism, which led him to honour virtue and religion wherever he found them. It was his constant practice to join in the service of the esiablishcd church, when he had not the opportunity of attending a dissenting place of worship ; and he often dwells in his works, with great complacency, on the pure zeal and genuine Christian charity, which he frequently discovered among the Roman Catholic clergy. But the peculiar feature of his character certainly consists in that decisive energy, and unshaken per severance, with which he prosecuted the great work of benevolence, to which he seemed to have devoted his life. He was distinguished by decision and dispatch in all his proceedings ; and this was rather the predominant habit of his mind, than the occasional result of any excited feeling. " At no time of his life," says his friend and biographer Dr Aikin, " was he without some object of warm pursuit ; and, in every thing he pursued, he was indefatigable in aiming at perfection. Give him a hint of any thing he had left short, or any new acquisition to be made ; and, while you might suppose he was deliberating about it, you were sur prised with finding it was done." Nor was it during a short period of ardour, that his exertions were thus awak ened. He had the still rarer quality of being able, for any length of time, to bend all the powers and faculties of his mind to one point, unseduced by every allurement, which curiosity or any other affection might throw in his way, and unsusceptible of that satiety and disgust, which are so apt to steal upon a protracted pursuit." " Impressed with the idea of the importance of his designs, and the uncertainty of human life, he was impa tient to get as much done as possible within the allotted limits. And in this disposition consisted that enthusiasm, by which the public supposed him actuated ; for, otherwise, his cool and steady temper gave no idea of the character usually distinguished by that appellation. He followed his plans, indeed, with wonderful vigour and constancy, but by no means with that heat and eagerness, that inflamed and exalted imagination, which denote the enthusiast." Neither was he moved, as some supposed, by mere sternness of principle, or rigidity of habit, or insensibility of feeling. ,4 I have equally," says the last quoted author, " seen the tear of sensibility start into his eyes on recalling some of the distressful scenes to which he had been witness, and the spirit of indignation flash from them, on relating in stances of baseness and oppression. Still, however, his constancy of mind and self-collection never deserted him : He was never agitated, never off his guard." His coolness and intrepidity proceeded both from nature and principle ; and when marching in the path of duty, he was fearless of consequences. This resolute temper neither originated in any idea of his being moved by an irresistible impulse, or a persuasion of his being secured from the natural conse quences of the dangers which he encountered ; but from a steady sense of religious obligation and pious confidence, which rendered him superior to mere worldly considera tions. His own testimony sufficiently expresses the senti ments by which he was actuated. " My medical acquaint ance," he says in a letter during his last journey, " give me but little hope of escaping the plague in Turkey. I do not look back, but would readily endure any hardships, and en counter any dangers, to be an honour to my Christian pro fession." So heroic a philarithrophist, (though not devoid of sonic singularities and foibles, which have sometimes drawn the sneer of contempt from trivial and selfish minds, unworthy and incapable to pronounce upon a character so far above their sphere of judgment,) could not fail to attract the admiration of every friend of humanity. The sublimest strains of poetry and eloquence have been frequently de voted to the celebration of his exertions ; and his name is become indissolubly associated with every idea of pure and elevated benevolence. The following tribute to his fame, which burst, in all the enthusiasm of genius, from the lips of Mr Burke, though probably familiar to the reader, can bear to be reperused, and may suitably close our feeble sketch of this extraordinary character.* " I cannot name this gentleman without remarking, that his labours and writings have done much to open the eyes and hearts of mankind. Ile has visited all Europe,--not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, or the stateliness of temples ; not to make accurate measurements of the remains of an cient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the curiosity (Two dern art ; nor to collect medals, or collate manuscripts ; but to dive into the depths of dungeons ; to plunge into the infection of hospitals ; to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain ; to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, de pression, and contempt ; to remember the forgotten, to at tend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, to compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries. His plan is original : it is as full of genius as it is of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery ; a circumnavigation of charity." See various lives and anecdotes of Howard ; and particular ly Dr Aikin's View of his Life and Character. (q)