It not unfrequently happens that the great men of history, whom we have admired in our youth, sink grievously in our estimation, and lose their heroic port and proportions, when we survey them more nearly, and at a season of maturer judgment. They shrink into the bounds and limits of commonplace mortality. We venture even to administer reproof and castigation, where, perhaps, we had venerated almost to idolatry. Such is not the case with Howard. Poets have sung his praises, and his name has rounded many an eloquent period. Howard the philanthropist becomes very soon a name as familiar to us as those of the kings and queens who have sat upon our throne; but the vague admiration, thus early instilled into us, suffers no diminution when, at an after period, we become intimately acquainted with the character of the man. We may approach the idol here without danger to our faith. We may analyse the motive--we may "vex, probe, and criticise"--it is all sound. Take your stethoscope and listen--there is no hollow here--every pulse beats true. The Howard that poets and orators had taught us to admire loses none of its greatness on a near approach. But it undergoes a remarkable _transformation_. The real Howard, who devoted his life to the jail and the lazaretto, was a very different person from that ideal of benevolence which the verse of Darwin, or the eloquence of Burke, had called up into our minds. Instead of this faint and classic ideal, we have the intensely and somewhat sternly religious man, guided and sustained, every step of his way, not alone, nor principally, by the amiable but vacillating sentiment which passes under the name of philanthropy, but by an exalted, severe, imperative sense of duty. It is Howard the Christian, Howard the Puritan, that stands revealed before us. The form changes, but only to grow more distinct and intelligible. The features have no longer that classic outline we had attributed to them; but they bear henceforth the stamp of reality--of a man who, without doubt, had lived and moved amongst us.