victory or slavery. The Venetians, therefore, fought with the courage of despair. But their numbers were limited, and their arms indifferent. Howard, though now witnessing actual fighting for the first time, fought himself on deck with the courage of an old warrior. His coolness and presence of mind saved the crew. He assumed the direction of the only large gun on board. This he rammed almost to the muzzle with nails, spikes, etc., and waiting for his opportunity-when the privateer with all her crew on deck was bearing down on them, expecting to see the Venetians strike their flag-he sent the contents in among them with such murderous effect, that in a few moments the corsairs hoisted sail, and made off. The danger had been even greater than Howard imagined, for the captain, rather than fall into the hands of the pirates, had determined to blow up his vessel.

After a voyage of sixty days Venice was reached. Howard was placed in rigorous quarantine for forty days, the daily experience of which he has put on record in a minute and interesting chapter of his work on lazarettos. Being in the worst class of the suspected, the miseries, privations, and perils of the confinement, were beyond expectation.

While enduring this self-imposed punishment, he received letters from England, which went like arrows into his heart. They told him that a subscription was commenced in London to raise a statue to his honour, that a committee was formed, and money pouring in from all quarters. This occasioned him the utmost distress.

But a far deeper wound came from letters which spoke of his son's misconduct, and which darkly hinted at the unsoundness of his intellect. He longed to return home, but he was a prisoner, consumed by a fever brought on by the intolerable stench of the establishment, wasting with heart-sickness at the idea of the interval which must intervene, ere he could know the worst of his dearly loved boy. Howard now felt in their bitterest form the horrors of a prisoner's cell. He spent these dreary days translating into English the regulations of the Venetian lazaretto, in spiritual exercises, and in writing letters; he besought his friends to put a stop to the progress of the "Howard Fund," and to tell him, without reserve, the simple truth about his son.

He came weak and ill out of his confinement, and had to remain some days in Venice to recruit his strength before travelling farther. As soon as he was able to move again, he crossed the Adriatic to Trieste, and going thence to Vienna, entered the imperial city, with the same precautions he had observed at St Petersburg. Here his health was so bad, he was obliged to remain longer than he wished. He received letters confirming his suspicions of the failing of his son's reason, and of the further progress of the "Howard Fund." He wrote at once to the committee, praying that the scheme might be abandoned.

Though under a reforming emperor, the prisons of Vienna had not improved. Howard felt an attraction towards Joseph II., referring with pleasure to his

desire to do good. He had not been a month on the throne before he had seen, with his own eyes, every hospital and prison in Vienna. He went about the streets like a private individual. He looked into everything himself. "I think he means well," says Howard, who regarded him as a sort of disciple.

On Christmas Day he had an interview with the emperor, at whose earnest desire it was brought about. Of this Howard himself wrote a very minute account. The emperor received the philanthropist with every mark of personal respect in a cabinet fitted up like a merchant's office. Both stood during the interview, which lasted two hours. Howard spoke most freely and openly to his Majesty upon the defects and abuses of his prisons and hospitals. Joseph admired the honesty and fearlessness of his remarks. He winced, as he well might, when Howard alluded to the "Maison de la Force" at Ghent, which Joseph had ruined; but he had not come to flatter his vain-glory, but to lay before him the naked truth, and to speak to him of his doings with the impartiality of history. At parting, the Emperor of Germany pressed the hand of the English gentleman with much cordiality, thanking him repeatedly for his visit and his counsels.

Making a rapid journey through the heart of Europe, Howard reached England in February 1787, and on arriving at Cardington he found his son a raving maniac. Intense and indescribable was the father's The house at Cardington was given up to

agony.

the madman and his keepers. Howard returned to his desolate home in London.

With great difficulty and trouble he succeeded at last in putting an end to the statue scheme. He made a new and, as it proved to be, final inspection of all the gaols in the British isles, which occupied him more than eighteen months. When completed the results were given to the world, together with his recent observations on the plague and its preventives in his great work on lazarettos.

The charge brought against Howard by his detractors, that his excessive severity caused the insanity of his son, is utterly groundless. Vicious habits and extreme dissipation, in which Thomasson was his constant companion, were the real causes which contributed to the mental derangement of this unhappy youth, and from which he never recovered.

After Howard had been some two years in England, his son was removed to a lunatic asylum at Leicester, and he went down to Cardington a brokenhearted man. His hair was grey, and his step feeble. He went to take leave of the village; he had already arranged the plan of another continental tour, and he came among his Bedfordshire friends and dependants, impressed with the idea that he and they would not meet again on earth. He wished now to visit some lands in the east and south, and extend his inquiries on the subject of the plague. Referring to this plan in the conclusion to his work on lazarettos,' he says, "Should it please God to cut off my life in the pro

secution of this design, let not my conduct be uncandidly imputed to rashness or enthusiasm, but to a serious, deliberate conviction that I am pursuing the path of duty, and to a sincere desire of being made an instrument of more extensive usefulness to my fellow-creatures, than could be expected in the narrower circle of a retired life."

He made his will, took solemn and affecting farewells of all his private friends, and quitted England 5th July 1789, to return no more. From Holland he proceeded through Germany to Riga, thence to St Petersburg and Moscow, visiting everywhere the prisons and hospitals. The latter at Moscow he describes as in a sad state, 70,000 sailors and recruits having died in them in one year. War was raging between Turkey and Russia. With a courier's pass he crossed the great steppes to the shores of the Black Sea. Horrors met him on all sides. On forced marches over wretched roads, thousands of recruits fell sick by the way, and were left to die of starvation. He went down the Dnieper to Cherson, a new town built on an unhealthy morass, where he examined all the prisons and hospitals. In one of the latter, out of 1500 men, 260 died in one month. All kinds of tricks were played to deceive him as to the condition of the hospitals, but he always baffled these designs, and discovered horrors and abuses, notwithstanding the efforts made to conceal them from him. He speaks in the severest terms of the abuses of these Russian hospitals, and with deep