great benevolence to his kind, but it ran virtually all in one direction and was concentrated upon one great evil—the terrible condition of prisons in his own and other countries. This great field of perilous labour was enough—and more than enough—for every thought and every effort he gave to the public good. No one could be so ungrateful to his memory as to inquire whether he ever said or wrote a word against war, slavery, or intemperance. Elizabeth Fry had her especial field, like Howard, and her large benevolence was concentrated in like manner upon it.
But this was the distinguishing characteristic of Good Joseph Sturge: his philanthropy was as, spherical as the sun itself, and the space it illuminated and warmed was as spherical as the sun's light on the face of the earth. His heart was so full of love to God and man that it shone out of him equidistantly in every direction. Indeed it seemed a star set alight in the firmament of human society, with beams as warm as the sun's. And well they might be, for they were the sun's, and lost but little light or heat in the reflection, he lived so near to it. What John Howard was to the prisons of Europe Joseph Sturge was to the house of African bondage. What John Howard felt and did for white men and women in the misery of their horrible cells. Joseph Sturge felt and did for the myriads of negro slaves scourged
