It is men like these, that the good Abbé St. Pierre, in works deserving well of mankind, has termed _Illustrious_, in contradistinction to _Great_. Their influence was extensive, their power mighty, their names famous; but they were barbarous, selfish, and inhuman in aim, with little of love to God and less to man. There is another and a higher company that thought little of praise or power, whose lives shine before men with those good works which glorify their authors. There is Milton, poor and blind, but "bating not a jot of heart or hope,"--in an age of ignorance the friend of education, in an age of servility and vice the pure and uncontaminated friend of freedom, tuning his harp to those magnificent melodies which angels might stoop to hear, and confessing his supreme duties to Humanity in words of simplicity and power. "I am long since persuaded," was his declaration, "that, to say or do aught worth memory and imitation, no purpose or respect should sooner move us than simply the love of God and of mankind."[231] There is Vincent de Paul, of France, once a captive in Algiers. Obtaining freedom by happy escape, this fugitive slave devoted himself with divine success to works of Christian benevolence,--the establishment of hospitals, visiting those in prison, the spread of amity and peace. Unknown, he repairs to the galleys at Marseilles, and, touched by the story of a poor convict, takes the heavy chains upon himself, that this fellow-man may leave to visit his wife and children; and then, moved by the sorrows of France bleeding with war, hurries to her powerful minister, the Cardinal Richelieu, and on his knees entreats,--"Give us peace! have pity upon us! give peace to France!"[232] There is Howard, the benefactor of those on whom the world has placed its brand,--whose charity, like that of the Frenchman, inspired by the single desire of doing good, illumined the gloom of the dungeon as with angelic presence. "A person of more ability," he says, in sweet simplicity, "with my knowledge of facts, would have written better; but the object of my ambition was not the Fame of an author. _Hearing the cry of the miserable, I devoted my time to their relief._"[233] And, lastly, there is Clarkson, who, while yet a pupil of the University, commenced those life-long labors against slavery and the slave-trade which embalm his memory. Writing an essay on the subject as a college exercise, his soul warmed with the task, and, at a period when even the horrors of "the middle passage" did not excite condemnation, he entered the lists, the stripling champion of the Right. He has left a record of the moment when this supreme duty flashed upon him. He was horseback, on his way from Cambridge to London. "Coming in sight of Wade's Mill, in Hertfordshire," he says, "I sat down disconsolate on the turf by the roadside, and held my horse. Here a thought came into my mind, that, if the contents of the Essay