"It is agreed, on all hands," says Mr Brown, "that Howard entertained the most exalted notions of the authority of the head of a family--notions derived rather from the Scriptural history of patriarchal times than from any of our modern codes of ethics, or systems of education." Accordingly, we are told that he trained up his child from earliest infancy to an implicit obedience. Without once striking the child, but by manifesting a firmness of purpose which it was hopeless to think of shaking, he established such an authority over him that Howard himself, on one occasion, said, that "if he told the boy to put his finger in the fire, he believed he would do it." When he was an infant, and cried from passion, the father took him, laid him quietly in his lap, neither spoke nor moved, but let him cry on till he was wearied. "This process, a few times repeated, had such an effect, that the child, if crying ever so violently, was rendered quiet the instant his father took him." When he grew older, the severest punishment his father inflicted was to make him sit still in his presence, without speaking, for a time proportioned to the nature of the offence. But this impassive, statue-like firmness must have precluded all approach to companionship or confidence on the part of the son. It was still the obedience only of fear. "His friends," we quote from Mr Brown, "and amongst the rest the most intimate of them, the Rev. Mr Smith, thought that in the case of his son he carried those patriarchal ideas rather too far, and that by a lad of his temper (the son is described as of a lively disposition) he would have been more respected, and would have possessed more real authority over him, had he attempted to convince him of the reasonableness of his commands, instead of always enforcing obedience to them on his parental authority." We therefore may be permitted to say, that we look upon this aspect of Howard's character as by no means estimable. As a husband he claimed an unjust prerogative, and as a parent he divorced authority from persuasion, nor allowed obedience to mingle and ally itself with filial affection. Mr Dixon does not, of course, omit his tribute of indignation against the calumny of the _Gentleman's Magazine_. We said that he had not given himself the trouble to look at the memoir itself which he denounces. Here is the proof:--