The career of John Howard was throughout a striking illustration of the same power of patient purpose. His sublime life proved that even physical weakness could remove mountains in the pursuit of an end recommended by duty. The idea of ameliorating the condition of prisoners engrossed his whole thoughts and possessed him like a passion; and no toil, nor danger, nor bodily suffering could turn him from that great object of his life. Though a man of no genius and but moderate talent, his heart was pure and his will was strong. Even in his own time he achieved a remarkable degree of success; and his influence did not die with him, for it has continued powerfully to affect not only the legislation of England, but of all civilised nations, down to the present hour. Jonas Hanway was another of the many patient and persevering men who have made England what it is—content simply to do with energy the work they have been appointed to do, and go to their rest thankfully when it is done— “Leaving no memorial but a world Made better by their lives.” He was born in 1712, at Portsmouth, where his father, a storekeeper in the dockyard, being killed by an accident, he was left an orphan at an early age. His mother removed with her children to London, where she had them put to school, and struggled hard to bring them up respectably. At seventeen Jonas was sent to Lisbon to be apprenticed to a merchant, where his close attention to business, his punctuality, and his strict honour and integrity, gained for him the respect and esteem of all who knew him. Returning to London in 1743, he accepted the offer of a partnership in an English mercantile house at St. Petersburg engaged in the Caspian trade, then in its infancy. Hanway went to Russia for the purpose of extending the business; and shortly after his arrival at the capital he set out for Persia, with a caravan of English bales of cloth making twenty carriage loads. At Astracan he sailed for Astrabad, on the south-eastern shore of the Caspian; but he had scarcely landed his bales, when an insurrection broke out, his goods were seized, and though he afterwards recovered the principal part of them, the fruits of his enterprise were in a great measure lost. A plot was set on foot to seize himself and his party; so he took to sea and, after encountering great perils, reached Ghilan in safety. His escape on this occasion gave him the first idea of the words which he afterwards adopted as the motto of his life—“_Never Despair_.” He afterwards resided in St. Petersburg for five years, carrying on a prosperous business. But a relative having left him some property, and his own means being considerable, he left Russia, and arrived in his native country in 1755. His object in returning to England was, as he himself expressed it, “to consult his own health (which was extremely delicate), and do as much good to himself and others as he was able.”