Accordingly he retraces his steps. He flies back to Holland. He is now at the Hague. It is Sunday evening, 11th February 1770. Here is a portion of his self-communing. Many of these quotations we will not give; we know they look out of place, and produce a strange, and not an agreeable impression, when met with in the walks of polite literature. But, without some extracts, it is impossible to form a correct idea of the character of Howard. "Oh! the wonders of redeeming love! Some faint hope, even I! through redeeming mercy in the perfect righteousness--the full atoning sacrifice shall, ere long, be made the instrument of the rich free grace and mercy of God through the divine Redeemer. Oh, shout my soul grace, grace--free, sovereign, rich, unbounded grace! Not I, not I, an ill deserving, hell deserving creature!--but where sin has abounded, I trust grace superabounds. * * * * "Let not, my soul, the interests of a moment engross thy thoughts, or be preferred to my eternal interests. Look forward to that glory which will be revealed to those who are faithful to death. My soul, walk thou with God; be faithful, hold on, hold out, and then--what words can utter!--J. H." But he could not rest in Holland. "Continuing in Holland," he writes, "or any place, lowers my spirits." He returns to Italy. He visits Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Rome, and extends his tour to Naples. It was, and may still be, a custom with a certain class of religious people, to make, in writing, a solemn covenant with God, and sign it with their own hand. It is at Naples that Howard retires into his chamber, indites and signs such a covenant. He appears, afterwards, to have carried it with him. With the same sort of formality with which a person republishes a will, he "renews the covenant, Moscow, September 27, 1789." Through the remainder of this journey we need not follow him. He returns to England, and we see what sort of man has landed on its shores. Those who are acquainted with the religious world and religious biographies, will bear us out when we say, that the language we have quoted from this journal, and the other extracts which may be read in Brown, would not, _of themselves_, manifest any extraordinary degree of piety or self-devotion. With a certain class of persons, such language has become _habitual_; with others, it really expresses nothing but a very transitory state of excitement. Solemn self-denunciations--enthusiastic raptures--we have heard them both, from the lips of the most worldly, selfish, money-loving men we have ever known. It is the after life of Howard which proves that in him such language had its first, genuine, full meaning. These passages from his diary explain his life, and his life no less explains them.