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62 was ended. From heaven, "His dwelling-place," the God of goodness had seen all this, and had felt for and sympathized with the sufferer, and in His Divine wisdom was preparing the means of relief, to be carried into operation at the first possible moment. He was preparing, too, a human instrument to do the work: that instrument was John Howard.

Observe the first striking step in this preparation, namely, the circumstance of Howard's being himself made a prisoner and cast into a dungeon. Being taken by a French privateer, while on a voyage to Lisbon, he was carried to Brest and with his companions lodged in the filthy dungeon of an old castle, with nothing but a little straw to keep them from the damp floor. After being kept forty hours without food, a piece of mutton was at length thrown into them, but without a knife or any means of dividing it but their teeth. In this wretched situation they were kept nearly a week, when Howard was removed to a better prison, and afterwards let out on his parole, and at length permitted to go to England, to negotiate his release by effecting an exchange. This he at last accomplished, when he immediately employed himself with earnestness and success in effecting the release of his fellow-prisoners. This taste of the sorrows of captivity,—which Howard, in the orderings of a Providence seemingly severe, but in its purposes truly merciful, was permitted to experience,—made an impression on his mind and feelings, which was the basis of that tender commiseration which he afterwards showed for the prisoner; it was the recollection of that painful experience, doubtless, which incited him to all his great efforts in after years for the relief of that