On the 25th of April 1758 Mr Howard contracted a second marriage with Miss Henrietta Leeds, eldest daughter of Edward Leeds, Esq. of Croxton, Cambridgeshire. The lady whom he had selected as his partner in life is described as amiable, affectionate, pious, and in everyway worthy of such a husband. Her tastes were the same as his, and she cordially seconded all his charitable plans for the assistance and relief of those who depended upon his benevolence.

For seven years Mr Howard enjoyed uninterrupted happiness in the society of his wife. During this period he resided first at Cardington, next for about three years at Watcombe in Hampshire, and latterly at Cardington again. The even tenor of his existence during these years presents few incidents worth recording. Reading, gardening, and the improvement of his grounds, occupied most of his time. His meteorological observations were likewise diligently continued; and it is mentioned, as a proof of his perseverance in whatever he undertook, that on the setting in of a frost, he used to leave his bed at two o'clock every morning while it lasted, for the purpose of looking at a thermometer which he kept in his garden. His charities, as before, were profuse and systematic. His desire, and that of his wife, was to see all around them industrious and happy. To effect this, they used all the influence which their position as persons of property and wealth gave them over the villagers and cottagers in their neighbourhood. One of their modes of dispensing charity was to employ persons out of work in making articles of furniture or ornament; and in this way, it is said, Mrs Howard soon increased her stock of table-linen to a quantity greater than would ever be required by any household.

On the 31st of March 1765 Mrs Howard died in giving birth to a son, the first and only issue of their marriage. This event was a source of poignant affliction to her husband. On the tablet which he erected to her memory in Cardington church he caused to be inscribed the following passage from the book o Proverbs:-"She opened her mouth with wisdom, and in he tongue was the law of kindness." Her miniature was ever after his constant companion by sea or land; and the day of her death was observed by him annually as a day of fasting, meditation and prayer.

From the death of his wife in 1765 to the end of the yea 1769, Mr Howard appears to have remained in England, and a Cardington as before, with the exception of a month or six week in the year 1767, which he devoted to a tour through Holland His principal occupation during these four years was the educa tion of his infant son. From the circumstance that this boy when he arrived at the years of manhood, conducted himself in a profligate manner, and at last became insane, much attention has been drawn to Mr Howard's mode of educating him in hi infancy; some insisting that his conduct as a parent was hars]

and injudicious, others going so far as to assert that this manwhom the world reveres as a philanthropist, and whose benevolent soul yearned for the whole human race-was in his domestic relations a narrow and unfeeling tyrant. This last assertionalthough, abstractly considered, there is nothing impossible or absurd in it, inasmuch as we may conceive such a thing as real philanthropy on the large scale conjoined with inattention to one's immediate duties as a husband or a father—appears to have absolutely no foundation whatever in Howard's case; and to have originated either in malice, or in that vulgar love of effect which delights in finding striking incongruities in the characters of great men. Nor does the other assertion-that Howard's mode of educating his infant son was harsh and injudiciousappear more worthy of credit. The truth seems to be, that Howard was a kind and benevolent man, of naturally strict and methodical habits, who entertained, upon principle, high ideas of the authority of the head of a family. A friend of his relates that he often heard him tell in company, as a piece of pleasantry, that before his marriage with his second wife he made an agreement with her, that in order to prevent all those little altercations about family matters which he had observed to be the principal causes of domestic discomfort, he should always decide. Mrs Howard, he said, had cheerfully agreed to this arrangement; and it was attended with the best effects. The same principle of the supremacy of the head of a family-a principle much less powerful in society now than it was a generation or two agoguided him in his behaviour to his son. "Regarding children, says Dr Aikin, "as creatures possessed of strong passions and desires, without reason and experience to control them, he thought that nature seemed, as it were, to mark them out as the subjects of absolute authority, and that the first and fundamental principle to be inculcated upon them was implicit and unlimited obedience." The plan of education here described may to some appear austere and injudicious, while others will cordially approve of it, as that recommended by experience and common sense; but at all events, the charges of harshness and cruelty which some have endeavoured to found upon it are mere calumnies, refuted by the testimony of all who knew Mr Howard, and were witnesses to his affection for his son.

Sensible of the loss which the boy had sustained by the death of his mother, Mr Howard placed him, in his fifth year, under the care of a lady in whom he had confidence, who kept a boarding-school at Cheshunt in Hertfordshire. This and other arrangements having been made, he went abroad on a fourth continental tour towards the end of 1769. Proceeding through the south of France, and spending a few weeks at Geneva, he visited most of the remarkable places in Italy, some of them for the second time; and returned home through Germany in the latter part of 1770, having been absent in all about twelve months.