“But the pursuits of Howard, though they had all that sublime energy which so often distinguished the projects of Superstition, were so far from being influenced by any superstitious propensity, that perhaps they cannot appear to more advantage than by being brought into comparison, or contrast, not with the sluggish piety of sequestered Monks, but with the bold and splendid feats of the most active and enterprising Fanaticism.  Allow me, therefore, to recall to your thoughts those distant ages, when every ardent spirit in Christendom was inflamed with a passionate desire to deliver the Christian pilgrims of Palestine from the oppression of Infidels!  Figure to yourselves the whole force of Europe collecting its violence, like a troubled sea, and preparing to pour a terrific and destructive inundation over the Holy Land!  Behold the strong and the weak, the ambitious and the humble, pursuing the same object!  Behold assembled Kings and their People, Soldiers and Priests, the servants of Earth and Heaven rushing, with equal ardour, to rescue the Sepulchre of Christ, and to drown all the innumerable enemies of their Faith in an universal deluge of blood!  In this scene we have the sublimest spectacle, perhaps, that was ever exhibited by mistaken piety and misguided valour.  The love of God, by which this heroic multitude was professedly impelled, was probably in many minds as sincere as it was ardent.  The religious spirit of their enterprize can still animate and transport us in the song of the Poet:  and in the more rational page of History, while we justly lament the errors of their devotion, we admire the force and perseverance of their courage.

“To the sublime fortitude of these collected warriors, let us compare the mild magnanimity of Howard.  Let us survey him setting forth for an expedition as perilous as theirs; not as the Soldier of Fanaticism, but as the Pilgrim of Humanity!  Attachment to god, and resolution which no hardship, no danger, no difficulty can daunt, are equally conspicuous in the sanguinary Fanatic and the compassionate Philanthropist:  but how widely different are the prime earthly objects of their pursuits!  The fierce Crusaders invaded Asia with a desire to exterminate the Infidels.  The benevolent Howard was led into the same quarter of the globe, and into perils more deadly than those of war, by a wish to exterminate, or rather to restrain, the ravages of that terrific enemy to human life, the Plague.

“He had conceived an idea, that, as this most alarming of mortal maladies has been often strangely neglected by the sluggish and superstitious inhabitants of the East, it might be possible by a calm and courageous examination of its nature and its progress, to set limits to its rage; and particularly to secure his own country from a future visitation of a calamity, against which the fearless and eager spirit of Commerce appears not to have established a sufficient precaution.