“Thou faithful servant of Heaven! thy hour of recompence is come.  Justly hast thou cautioned mankind not to impute thy conduct to rashness or enthusiasm.  Weak and wavering in their own pursuits of felicity, thou wilt not wonder to see them so in their sense of thy merit, and their zeal for thy honour:  but I am commissioned to bear thee to that All-seeing Power, who can alone truly estimate, and perfectly reward thy desert.  I know that the praise of beings, inferior to thy god, never influenced thy life; but the homage of good minds is grateful to the purest inhabitants of Heaven; and in departing from a world so much indebted to thy virtue, let it gratify thy perfect spirit to foresee, that as long as the earth endures, the most enlightened of her sons will remember and revere thee as one of her sublimest benefactors.”

As soon as the divine messenger had ceased to speak, every voice in the reanimated multitude, that heard him, raised a shout of benediction on the name of Howard.  I started in transport at the sound; and the effort that I made to join the universal acclamation terminated my vision.

Pardon me, thou gentlest and most indulgent of Friends! that, conscious as I am of the sincerity with which thy pure mind ever wished to avoid all exuberance of praise, I yet presume to send into the world such a tribute to thy virtues as thy humility might reject.  Let the motives of the publication atone for all its defects!

This little work is made public, not from a vain expectation, or desire, in the Writer to obtain any degree of literary distinction; for, if his wishes and endeavours are successful, the world will not know from what hand it proceeds.

Thou most revered object of my regard, who art looking down, perhaps, with compassion on the petty labours of various mortals, now trying to commemorate thy merit, thou seest that I am influenced by no arrogant conceit of having praised with peculiar felicity the perfections that I so ardently admire.  No!  I am perfectly sensible, that the most worthy memorial of thy virtues will be found in those pure records of thy public services which thy own hand has given to the world with all the amiable and affecting simplicity that distinguished thy character, and in the more comprehensive composition of some accomplished Biographer, who may have opportunities and ability to do justice to thy life.

The chief aim of these few and hasty pages is to recall, at this particular time, to the liberal spirits of our countrymen that generous ardour with which they embraced the first idea of a public monument to Howard.  While the expence and dignity of that monument are yet unsettled, a Writer may consider himself as a friend to national honour, who endeavours to animate his country to the most extensive display of her munificence, and her gratitude towards the purest public virtue.  May she justly remember, that, to testify a fond maternal pride in such a departed son, to manifest and perpetuate esteem for such a character, is, in truth, to promote the interest of genuine Patriotism, of sublime Morality, and of perfect Religion!