Let them, however, proceed to the study of the veritable Howard, and all the mystery clears up. The philanthropist of the orator gives place to one who, in the essential elements of his character, may be ranked with Christian missionaries and Christian martyrs. Instead of the half-pagan ideal, or personification of benevolence, there rises before them a character which a rigorous analysis might justly class with those of St Francis or Loyola, or whatever the Christian church has at any time exhibited of exalted piety and complete self-devotion. The same spirit which, in past times, has driven men into the desert, or shut them up in cells with the scourge and the crucifix; the same spirit which has impelled them to brave all the dangers of noxious climates and of savage passions, to extend the knowledge of religion amongst barbarous nations--was animating Howard when he journeyed incessantly from prison to prison, tracking human misery into all its hidden and most loathsome recesses. He who, in another century, would have been the founder of a new order of barefooted monks, became, in Protestant England, the great exemplar of philanthropic heroism. Perhaps he too, in one sense, may be said to have founded a new religious order, though it is not bound together by common rules, and each member of it follows, as he best may, the career of charitable enterprise that lies open before him. The mystery, we say, clears up. Benevolent our Howard was, undoubtedly, by nature, as by nature also he was somewhat imperious; but that which converted his benevolence into a ceaseless motive of strenuous action, of toil, and of sacrifice; that which _utilised_ his natural love of authority, transforming it into that requisite firmness and predominance over others without which no man, at least no reformer, can be rigidly just, and, face to face, admonish, threaten, and reprove; that which constituted the mainspring and vital force of his character, was intense piety, and the all-prevailing sense of duty to his God. The craving of his soul was some great task-work, to be done in the eye of Heaven. Not the love of man, nor the praise of man, but conscience, and to be a servant of the Most High, were his constant motive and desire.