their children in the same religious. profession: and the subject of these memoirs was many years a member of that congregation, at Bedford, of which John Bunyan had formerly been pastor

Mr. Howard is said to have been born at Enfield in Middlesex, about. the year 1725; but the entry of his birth is not to be found in the parish register there, and the register of the old dissenting congregation at Enfield does not reach so far back. His father left, both to himself and sister, handsome fortunes at his discease, and, by his will, ordered that his son should not be considered as of age till he was five and twenty. What might be the old gentleman's reason for thus protracting his son's minority, we know not; but desirous, perhaps, that the fortune which he had accumulated might be increased, he bound his son apprentice to Mr. Nathanel Newnham, of Watling Street, grandfather to Mr. Alderinan Newnham, wholesale grocer, with whom he served his time. Mr. Howard however, does not seem to have been very earnest in pursuit of that increase of riches, which trade might have procured, for he never went into business. His constitution was naturally feeble, and his health precarious, and his attention to business during his apprenticeship had considerably injured it; he therefore forsook an avocation which, as his father was dead, he did not think himself bound in duty to follow.

His circumstances were sufficient to procure him respect, even if his eminent virtues had not called forth a sentiment more warm and more honourable; but his fortune was narrow, when compared to the ample generosity of his soul. Indeed when we consider with how small an income this amiable philanthropist has dispensed more benefits to mankind than the power and affluence of princes ever bestowed, we are taught to excuse ourselves no longer for the little good we do towards society, on account of the want of affluence; and are instructed, how considerable a proportion of the happiness imparted by charity depends upon the benevolence of the heart, and the industry and

attention with which that benevolence is carried into execution.

About the time that Mr. Howard came of age, he took apartments in Church Street, Stoke Newington, Middlesex; but not meeting with that attention which his delicate constitution required, he removed to another lodging in the same street, in the house of Mrs. Sarah Lardeau, a worthy sensible woman, but an invalid, being much troubled with the gout. She was a widow, and her husband had been clerk to the lead works of Sir James Creed. While he resided here, he had an illness of which he languished a considerable time. Mrs. Lardeau watched and attended him with the greatest assiduity: to her tender care, and pious and sensible conversation he ascribed his recovery. The grateful heart of Mr. Howard knew not how to make a suitable return, without rendering his kind hostess the mistress of his fortune. And as gratitude, in tender and benevolent minds, is nearly allied to love, he seems to have made his proposal in terms which shew all the ardour of that passion; telling her that if she did not consent to marry him, he should immediately quit his friends and country, never to see them more. The lady remonstrated on the difference of their age, she being turned of fifty cue, and himself, at that time, not more than twenty eight. To

this he replied, that gratitude dictated the step, and that his resolution was immovable. He gave her twenty-four hours to consider of his proposal, she consented, and they were accordingly privately married in the year 1752. To compleat his generosity, Mr. Howard made a present to her sister of the fortune which his bride was possessed of.

This was a singular union, and, in the opinion of the system makers, could not be a happy one, for Mrs. Howard was not only twenty three years older than her husband, but was, in constitution, twenty years older than her real age, an.l of this she had fully apprised him. However, they lived more than three years in possession of the greatest happiness. She died Nov. 10, 1755, in her fifty fifth year: and he was a sincere and affectionate mourner for her death.

During the life of Mrs. Howard he proposed to purchased a house, and appropiate it as a parsonage house for the dissenting minister at Stoke Newington: towards this himself gave fifty pounds, being, as he said, desirous to support the respectability of a worthy minister of the gospel.

He often was heard to say, in the latter part of his life, that he owed much of his desire to be useful to the excellent example of this wife, whom he always mentioned with the highest respect: and to whose memory he erected a monument in Whitechapel Church.

About the year 1756, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and in the same year a circumstance befel him to which he ascribes the particular direction towards which his active benevolence was SO uniformly biassed: though certainly a mind like his could never have been inactive in a community where affliction and misery existed, and where pain and anguish were heard to sigh, or utter the groan of complaint.

On November 1, 1755, a great earthquake had desolated the fine city of Lisbon, and greatly altered the general face of the neighbouring country; Mr. Howard had a great desire to make the tour of Portugal that he might view the awful ravages which it had occasioned: but he was much persuaded against it by his friends, as they deemed it a presumptuous undertaking.

In consequence of this, he held several conferences with a minister of his acquaintance, and having got satisfaction in this point, he embarked, about Midsummer, in the Hanover packet, for Lisbon.

France and England were then at war, and the packet was captured by a French privateer, and carried into Brest. On this occasion, he not only saw, but felt, the hardships attending a state of captivity. "Before I reached Brest, (says he) I suffered the extremity of thirst, not having, for above forty hours, one drop of water, nor hardly a morsel of food. In the Castle of Brest I lay six nights upon straw; and observing how cruelly my countrymen were used there, and at Morlaix, whither I was carried next; during the two months I was at Morlaix upon parole, I corresponded with the English prisoners at Brest, Marlaix, and Dinnan. 1 got sufficient evidence from this, that they were treated with such barbarity, that many hundreds of them had perished; and that thirty-six

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had been buried in a hole at Dinnan in one day. Perhaps what I suffered on this occasion encreased my sympathy with these unhappy people." Howard on Prisons, p. 1.

When he came to England, still on his parole, he communicated these particulars to the commissioners for sick and wounded prisoners. The information was received with the attention due to the authenticity and humanity with which it was given: the commissioners returned their thanks to the informant, caused a remonstrance to be made to the court of France, and thus procured redress to the captives.

The circumstances of distress to which Mr. Howard had been a witness, sunk deep in his mind, and he soon found that France was not the only country in which there was cause for the like complaint, and that prisoners of war were not the only sufferers by the loathsome inconveniences which give additional horrors to the loss of liberty. In his own country-in England-he found that the debtor and the felon were equal sharers in the diseases and distresses incident to confinement, unsoftened by humanity and unalleviated by any of those attentions which might preserve health: he not only saw the injustice of classing both these descriptions of, men together, under the same general punishment, but his strong benevolence would not admit that even guilt should suffer beyond what justice and necessity demands.

“I grant (says he, after speaking of prisoners of war) there is a material difference in the circumstances of foreign and domestic prisoners, but there is none in their nature. Debtors and felons, as well as hostile foreigners, are men, and by men they ought to be treated as such. Those gentlemen who, when they are told of the misery which our prisoners suffer, content themselves with saying, Let them take care and keep out, prefaced, perhaps, with an angry oath, seem not duly sensible of the favor of Providence which distinguishes them from the sufferers; they do not remember that we are required to imitate our gracious heavenly parent, who is good to the unthankful and to the unholy; they also forget the vicissitudes of human affairs, the unexpected changes to which all men are liable, and that those whose circumstances are affluent may, in time, be reduced to indigence, and themselves become debtors and prisoners. And as to criminality, it is not impossible that a man who has often shuddered at hearing the account of a murder, may, on a sudden temptation, commit that very crime. Let him that thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall, and commiserate those that are fallen."

After the disagreeable affair of France, Mr. Howard again visited the continent, and made the tour of Italy, from whence he returned about the beginning of the year 1758; and on the 25th of April ensuing, he married Miss Harriet Leeds, only daughter of Edward Leeds, Esq. of Croxton, in the county of Cambridge, king's serjeant. He then retired to the sequestered villa of Brokenhurst, in the New Forest Hampshire. His lady died in 1765, in child-bed of her only child, which was a son. This unfortunate son was the innocent cause of much anguish of heart to his father.

1.After the death of his second wife, he left this neighbourhood, and resided on his estate at Cardington, in Bedfordshire. This residence

was the more agreeable to him, because of the vicinity of Mr. Whitbread, M. P., who was a relation by the father's side.

In his retirements at Brokenhurst and Cardington, but especially at the latter place, it was his perpetual study to make his neighbours happy. His neat but humble mansion, says Mr. Palmer, in his funeral sermon, was ever hospitable to a few select friends, but was never the seat of riot or luxurious banquetting. Though polite to all, he neither sought nor admitted the company of the profligate, however distinguished by rank or fortune. His charity had no bounds, except those of prudence; and was not more commendable for the extent of it, than for the manner in which it was exercised. He gave not his bounty to encourage vice aud idleness, but to countenance virtue and industry. He was singularly useful in furnishing employment for the labouring poor of both sexes, at those seasons when a scarcity of work rendered their situation most compassionable. And at other times,' though never inattentive to the tale of woe, he was not easily imposed upon by it but made himself acquainted with the case. He had, indeed, a general acquaintance with the cases and characters of the poor around him, and made it his business to visit the hodes of affliction.

In circumstances of bodily disorder he often acted the part of a physicia as well as friend. But his kindness was not confined to the bodies of his fellow creatures, it extended to their spiritual and immortal part. He carefully watched over the morals of the poor, and used his advice, his admonitions, and his influence, to discountenance immorality of all kinds, and to promote the knowledge and practice of religion. As a most effectual mean to this great end, he provided for the instruction of poor children, by erecting and supporting schools, which he carefully superintended. In short, he was an universal blessing to the village where he resided. The cottages which he built for the poor were many, and which still remain as proofs both of his liberality

and taste.

His bounty extended also to adjacent places, in which there are many who still call him blessed. Nor was it confined to persons of his own religious persuasion, but comprehended the necessitous and deserving of all parties; while he was particularly useful in serving the interests of the Christian society to which he belonged. The only condition which he ever imposed upon such as were the subjects of his benevolence was, that they should attend every Lord's day at some place of public worship, according to the religion which they professed. This he always religiously performed himself; and while he lived at Cardington, he uniformly went to Bedford every Lord's day morning, that he might attend one or other of the dissenting meetings there, and returned again at night, almost always on foot.

Was it possible that such a man could have enemies? Yet some he had. One, an idle and dissolute wretch, having been often reproved by him for his vices, formed the desperate resolution to murder him as he was going to public worship. But Providence remarkably interposed to preserve so valuable a life, by inclining him to go on horseback, and by a different road.

TO BE CONTINUED.

MR. WINCHESTER'S WRITINGS PUBLISHED IN HOLLAND.

Extract of a Letter from Amsterdam.

FEE. 11. 1800.

"INFORMED you last year that I had published the first five letters of Mr. Winchester in answer to Mr. Pain's Age of Reason, in Dutch; the whole ten are now translated, as also his two admirable discourses upon the Woe Trumpets, and are published in that language. They are greatly commended by several learned societies, who have conveyed the knowledge of them through the several provinces of the republic, by publishing their highest approbation of them in their reviews and magazines, for several months successively-They seem as though they never could write enough in commendation of works so deeply enlightened in the vast importance of prophecy, and in the prophecies themselves. Mr. Winchester's name is mentioned by them with the greatest respect; they so much admire his writings, and the measure of his illumination in God's word in this dark age, that they can but thank heaven for raising up such a light in it. When they consider this, they are greatly encouraged to hope that God has not left the people of this age to their own vain imaginations.

The society that has for some years written a monthly publication entitled Extracts of the LEARNED WORLD, has made one of the most affecting prefaces to their work of the year 1800, that I ever read; complaining of the infidelity of the present age, and of the fallen state of the church, in a stile like the lamentations of Jeremiah. They recommend to their readers the works of those virtuous men whose writings were foremost in their Extracts, and they begin with Mr. Winchester, expressly declaring that his contain the greatest fund of deep and useful knowledge, made intelligible to the meanest capacity.

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"If these two small works are so highly esteemed by these pious Dutch gentlemen, what would the whole of Mr. Winchester's be? If translated into Dutch, they would no doubt be cordially and gratefully. received and especially if the Universal Doctrine was preached by an able minister in that language. I was determined to let Mr. Vidler see what I had begun towards propagating this doctrine in Holland, that he may use such measures as he may judge fit for its encouragement at any future time.

"The freedom of inquiry is now enjoyed more than formerly in this country. I think that though the dragon has cast a flood out of his mouth to destroy the church, yet the earth helpeth the woman."