heavy headache—a pain across my forehead; but it has always quite left me in an hour after I have come from these places. As I am quite alone, I have need to summon all my courage and resolution.'
After remaining about three weeks at Malta, Mr. Howard set out for Zante. 'From thence,' he says, 'in a foreign ship I got a passage to Smyrna. Here I boldly visited the hospitals and prisons; but as some accidents happened, a few dying of the plague, several shrunk at me. I came thence to Constantinople, where I now am, about a fortnight ago. As I was in a miserable Turk's boat, I was lucky in a passage of six days and a half. I am sorry to say some die of the plague about us. One is just carried before my window; yet I visit where none of my conductors will accompany me. In some hospitals, as in the lazarettos, and yesterday among the sick slaves, I have a constant headache; but in about an hour after it always leaves me. I lodge at a physician's house, and I keep some of my visits a secret.' From Constantinople he returned to Smyrna, where the plague was also raging; his object being to obtain a passage from that port to Venice, in order that he might undergo the full rigors of the quarantine system, and be able to report, from personal observation, respecting the economy of a lazaretto. On the voyage from Smyrna to Venice, the ship in which he sailed was attacked by a Tunis privateer, and all on board ran great risks. At length, after a desperate fight, a cannon loaded with spikes, nails, and old iron, and pointed by Mr. Howard himself, was discharged with such effect upon the corsair vessel, that it was obliged to sheer off. From Venice he writes thus to his confidential servant Thomasson, at Cardington; the letter being dated Venice Lazaretto, October 12, 1786:—'I am now in an infectious lazaretto, yet my steady spirits never forsook me till yesterday, on the receipt of my letters. Accumulated misfortunes almost sink me. I am sorry, very sorry, on your account. I will hasten home; no time will I lose by night or day. But forty days I have still to be confined here, as our ship had a foul bill of health, the plague being in the place from whence we sailed. Then that very hasty and disagreeable measure that is taken in London wounds me sadly indeed. Never have I returned to my country with such a heavy heart as I now do.' The two circumstances which he alludes to in this extract as distressing him so much, and making him so anxious to leave Venice and return home, were the misconduct of his son, of which he had received further accounts, and a proposal which had just been made in London, and of which intelligence had been conveyed to him, to erect a monument to commemorate the nation's sense of his former philanthropic labors.
The term of his quarantine at Venice being finished, he proceeded to Trieste, and thence to Vienna. How the thoughts of his sad domestic affliction mingled and struggled with his daily exertions in connexion with the great object of his tour, we may learn from the following touching post-*script to a letter to Mr. Smith of Bedford, written from Vienna, and dated 17th December 1786:—'Excuse writing, etc., as wrote early by a poor lamp. What I suffered, I am persuaded I should have disregarded in the lazaretto, as I gained useful information. Venice is the mother of all lazarettos; but oh, my son, my son!' At Vienna Mr. Howard had an interview with the Austrian emperor, who entered into conversation with him on the subject of his tour, discussed with him the state of the prisons and
