“And yet, Walter, there may be the truest and noblest heroism in sacrificing everything to these self-imposed duties, which you call duties up in the clouds.”
“O aunt, aunt!” exclaimed Walter, laughing, “are you going to be down upon me again about moral courage? You have not crossed your hands this time, and yet I daresay it will do us all good, my friends here as well as myself, to have a lesson on moral courage from you; so listen all to my dear aunt. She is teaching me moral courage by examples. Who is your hero, dear auntie, this time?”
“Shall I go on?” said Miss Huntingdon, looking round on her hearers; then seeing an expression of interest on every countenance, she continued, “Well, I will, if you wish it. My hero to-day is John Howard.”
“Not a soldier this time, Aunt Kate.”
“Not in your sense, Walter, but one of the truest and bravest in mine.”
“Pray, then, let us hear all about his exploits, dear aunt.”
“You shall, Walter. His exploits just consisted in this, that he imposed a great duty on himself as the one object of his life, and never let anything turn him from it, though obstacles met him in every direction such as nothing but the highest sense of duty could have nerved him to break through. In the first place, he was of a weakly constitution, and might therefore well have excused himself from any unnecessary labours, and might have indulged in luxuries which might almost have been considered as necessaries to one whose appetite was not strong. He could well have afforded such innocent indulgence, for he was a man of good fortune. He was, however, remarkable for his abstemious habits; and having been led, when high sheriff of his county, to look into the state of Bedford jail, he was so shocked with the miserable condition of the prisoners and their being crowded together in a place filthy, damp, and ill-ventilated, that he set himself to make a tour of inspection of all the county jails in England, and soon completed it, and was examined before the House of Commons on the state of our prisons. And here he had to suffer from that misrepresentation and misunderstanding which are too often the lot of those who have set themselves to some great and noble work. It seemed so extraordinary to some members of Parliament that a gentleman, out of pure benevolence, should devote himself to such a painful work, and run the risk of contagion, that they could hardly understand it; and one gentleman asked ‘at whose expense he travelled,’—a question which Howard could scarcely answer without some indignant emotion. You see, they could not appreciate such exalted heroism; and surely it required no little moral courage to persevere. But he did persevere, and his work grew upon him.
“From England he went abroad, and visited the prisons on the Continent, devoting his time and fortune to the great work of discovering, and, as far as might be, remedying, the abuses he found in these sad places of misery and often cruelty; and though he was introduced to the noble and the great wherever he went, he paid no visits of mere ceremony, but spoke out most fearlessly, even to the most exalted in rank, about the abuses he found in the prisons under their control. He had set himself one great work to do, and he did it. Suffering, toil, hardship were endured without a murmur. Ah! was not this true heroism?
“And now I come to a point which I want you, dear Walter, specially to notice. Howard might have spent a portion at least of his time when abroad in visiting the beautiful picture-galleries and other works of art in the towns to which his great work led him, but he never suffered himself to do so. He would not even read a newspaper, lest it should divert his thoughts from the one great purpose he had in view. I am not saying for a moment that he would have been wrong to indulge himself with relaxation in the shape of sight-seeing and reading the news; but surely when he made everything bend to his one grand self-imposed duty, we are constrained to admire and not to blame, far less to ridicule, his magnificent heroism. Yes; he never swerved, he never drew back; and, best of all, he did his work as a humble and earnest Christian, carrying it on by that strength and wisdom which he sought and obtained by prayer.
“I cannot give you a better summing up of my hero’s character than in the words of the great Edmund Burke. I have them here.” Saying which she opened a small manuscript book containing extracts from various authors in her own handwriting, which she kept in her work-basket, and read as follows:—“‘He 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 ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the curiosities of ancient art; not to collect medals, nor to collate manuscripts: but to dive into the depths of dungeons, and to plunge into the infection of hospitals; to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain; to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare the distresses of men in all countries. His plan is original, and it is as full of genius as it is of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery—a circumnavigation, of charity.’ Such was Burke’s true estimate of my hero. And surely never was a nobler heroism—it was so pure, so unselfish; for when they would have erected a monument to him in his lifetime, and had gathered large sums for that purpose during his absence abroad, he at once put a stop to the project on his return home.—Am I wrong, dear Walter, in taking John Howard for one of my special moral heroes?”