"By this community, I am confident, such public honours will be paid to HOWARD, as may be most suitable to the peculiar interest which it becomes us to take in his glory. What these honours shall be is a point to be settled by this liberal and enlightened Assembly, which assuredly will not fail to remember that he suggested to Legal Authority her omissions and defects with the modest and endearing tenderness of a Friend; that he laboured in the service of Justice with that intelligence, fortitude, and zeal, which her votaries cannot too warmly admire, or too gratefully acknowledge."
The President arose as he thus ended his speech; and the members of the Assembly seemed beginning to confer among themselves; but what debates ensued, or what measure was adopted, I am unable to tell, as my visionary Guides immediately hurried me to the adjoining Temple.
This second structure, though less extensive and less solid than the first, was more attractive to the eye, as it abounded with scientifical and diversified decorations. The Assembly consisted of men, who appeared to me equally remarkable for keenness of intellect and elegance of manners. The seat of pre eminence among them was filled by a person who possessed in a very uncommon degree these two valuable qualities, so happily conducive to medical utility and medical distinction. Though left a young orphan, without patrimony, and obliged to struggle with early disadvantages, he raised himself by meritorious exertion to the head of a profession in which opulence is generally the just attendant on knowledge and reputation. But neither opulence, nor his long intercourse with sickness and death, have hardened the native tenderness of his heart; and I had lately known him shed tears of regret on the untimely fate of an amiable patient, whom his consummate skill and attention were unable to save.
Thus strongly prepossessed in his favour, I was delighted to observe that he was preparing to address the Assembly in the moment we entered. My celestial Guides smiled on each other in perceiving my satisfaction; and being placed by them instantaneously in a commodious situation, I heard the following discourse; which the character I have described delivered with an ease and refined acuteness peculiar to himself, never raising his voice above the pitch of polite and spirited conversation:
"I am persuaded, that every individual to whom I have now the happiness of speaking, will readily agree with me in this sentiment, that we cannot possibly do ourselves more honour as a Fraternity than by considering HOWARD as an Associate: assuredly, there is no class of men who may more justly presume to cherish his name and character with a fraternal affection. In proportion as we are accustomed to contemplate, to pity, and to counteract, the sufferings of Nature, the more are we enabled and inclined to estimate, to love, and to revere, a being so compassionate and beneficent. If Physicians are, what I once heard them called by a lively friend, the Soldiers of Humanity, engaged in a perpetual, and too often, alas! unsuccessful conflict against the enemies of life; HOWARD is not only entitled to high rank in our corps, but he is the very Caesar of this hard, this perilous, and, let me add, this most honourable warfare. Perhaps the ambition of the great Roman Commander, insatiate and sanguinary as it was, did not contribute more to the torment and destruction of the human race, than the charity of the English Philanthropist has contributed to its relief and preservation. Of this we are very certain, the splendid and indefatigable Hero of Slaughter and Vain-glory did not traverse a more extensive field, nor expose himself more courageously to personal danger, than our meek and unostentatious Hero of Medical Benevolence. In point of true magnanimity, I apprehend the spirit of Caesar would very willingly confess, that his own celebrated attempts to reduce Gaul and Britain were low and little achievements, when compared to the unexampled efforts by which Howard endeavoured to exterminate or subdue (those enemies more terrific) the Gaol Fever, and the Plague.
"But leaving it to more able and eloquent panegyrists to celebrate the originality, the boldness, and all the various merit of his philanthropic exertions, I shall confine myself to a few remarks, and chiefly professional ones, on his invaluable character. It appears to me highly worthy of observation, that Howard, before he entered on his grand projects of Public Benevolence, was subject to those little, but depressive variations of health which have betrayed many a valetudinarian into habits of inaction and inutility. Happily for himself, and for mankind, this excellent person surmounted a constitutional bias to indolence and retirement. The consequence sequence was, he became a singular example of activity and vigour. His powers, and enjoyments of bodily and mental health, augmented in proportion to the extensive utility of his pursuits.
"Beneficial as his life has been to the world, his memory may be still more so. It may prove a perpetual blessing to mankind, if it dissipates, as it ought to do, a weak and common prejudice, which often operates as a palsy upon the first idea of a great and generous undertaking. The prejudice I mean is a hasty persuasion, frequently found in the most amiable minds, that some peculiar strength of nerve, some rare mechanism of frame, and extraordinary assemblage of mental powers, are absolutely requisite for the execution of any noble design. How greatly does it redound to the true glory of Howard to have given in his successful labours the fullest refutation of a prejudice, so inimical to the interest and the honour of human-nature! a prejudice, by whose influence, to use the words of our great Poet,
"—The native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of Fear,
And enterprizes of great pith and moment,