“When our indefatigable Visitor of prisons was in Russia, he beheld, in public, the punishment of the knoot severely administered by a strong and stern executioner.

“On the following day he waited on this man, to request from him various information.  The executioner attended him obsequiously; but this athletic savage, though trained to acts of cruelty, and conscious he had a legal sanction for the barbarous violence he had exerted, could not behold without shuddering the meek and gentle Missionary of Compassion.

“The second and more memorable example of his singular influence occurred in a prison of his own country, and relates to an outrageous female delinquent.  A corrupt and ferocious woman is, perhaps, the most intractable fiend that human benevolence can attempt to reform; but even this difficulty the mild and powerful character of Howard accomplished.

“In one of our Western gaols, he found an unhappy female loaded with heavy irons:  on his appearance she entreated him to obtain for her the removal of these galling fetters.  Upon enquiry, he found that many endeavours had been made to keep this turbulent offender in proper subjection without the severity of chains; but, after repeated promises of amendment on milder treatment, she had obliged the keeper to have recourse to this extreme by relapsing into the most flagrant and insufferable contempt of decency and order.  Upon this information, Howard said mildly to the unhappy criminal, ’I wish to relieve you, but you put it out of my power; for I should lose all the little credit I have, if I exerted it for offenders so hardened and so turbulent.’  ’I know,’ replied the intractable delinquent, ’I know that I have a proud and rebellious spirit; but if I give a promise to so good a man as you are, I can and I will command it.’  On this firm assurance of reformation, the benevolent Howard became a kind of surety for her future peaceable conduct on the removal of her irons; and he had the inexpressible delight to find, on his next visit to the prisoners of this gaol, that the outrageous and ungovernable culprit, for whom he had ventured to answer, was become the most orderly among them.

“I could wish, for the moral interest of mankind, that it were possible to obtain a minute account of the services rendered to the calamitous spirit of many a forsaken individual by the singular charity of Howard.  What could be more instructive than to observe how his Beneficence encreased by its exertion and success; while his desire of befriending the wretched became, as it were, the vital spirit that gave strength and duration to his own existence!

“If we contemplate with pleasure the singular re-establishment of bodily health, which Howard derived from his active philanthropy; it may be still more pleasing to recollect, that it also afforded him an efficacious medicine for an afflicted mind.  Perhaps it was to shew the full efficacy of this virtue in all its lustre, that Heaven allotted to this excellent personage a domestic calamity, which appears (to borrow an expression from a great writer) ’of an unconscionable size to human strength.’