He was the eldest of three brothers. The second was the famous Admiral, ‘Black Dick,’ the hero of ‘The Glorious First of June,’ which we recalled on the occasion of the late great sea-fight in the North Sea. The third was the general already mentioned. They were a notable trio, but the eldest, the shortest lived, the ‘unsuccessful’ one of the three, had in him the promise of greatness of the rarest kind. It would be difficult to pick out any man whose death called forth such a consensus of eulogy. Possibly he was _felix opportunitate mortis_. Possibly the same might be said of his friend Wolfe, who was killed in his thirty-third year, as Howe in his thirty-fourth. But assuredly, had these two men lived on, there would have been a different story to tell of England and America. Dean Stanley writes of Wolfe’s friendship for Lord Howe the Admiral, quoting Horace Walpole’s words, that they were ‘friends to each other as cannon to gunpowder’; but Wolfe’s friendship for the ‘unsuccessful’ brother must have been as great; his admiration for him at any rate was unbounded. Wolfe was no great respecter of persons; he was somewhat impatient and critical of other commanders, but—‘If my Lord Howe had lived, I should have been very happy to have received his orders.’ In Wolfe’s eyes Howe was ‘the very best officer in the King’s service,’ ‘the noblest Englishman that has appeared in my time.’ And so said they all: there was no dissentient voice, no whisper of criticism, no trace of jealousy. General Abercromby, to whom Howe was second in command, in reporting his death, wrote, ‘He was, very deservedly, universally beloved and respected throughout the whole army.’ Pitt’s testimony ran that ‘he was by the universal voice of army and people a character of ancient times, a complete model of military virtue in all its branches.’ Robert Rogers, the bold leader of the Rangers, in whose company Howe learnt the art of North American bush fighting, wrote of him as a ‘noble and brave officer,’ ‘universally beloved by both officers and soldiers of the army’; while the members of the Massachusetts House of Assembly, no great lovers of the redcoats from home, and close-fisted enough in ordinary dealings, voted £250 for a monument to the Englishman, whose character had impressed them all, and whose person their soldiers dearly loved.