JOHN, in some respects the greatest of the Puritan divines, was born at Loughborough, in Leicester-

shire, May 17, 1630. His father had been presented to the living of that parish by Archbishop Laud, but refusing to comply with the tyrannical edicts of that prelate, had been compelled to fly for safety to Ireland, along with his son, at that time hardly five years old. When the Irish Rebellion of 1641 broke out, the exiles returned to England. Fixing his abode in Lancashire, the elder Howe conducted in person the studies of his son, who in his seventeenth year entered Christ's College, Cambridge, as a sizar, and in the following year graduated as a bachelor of arts. During his residence at this university, he had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of the famous Cudworth, and the ingenious, though eccentric, Dr Henry More; from intercourse with whom, as Calamy suggests, his mind received that "Platonic tinge" which distinguishes his writings. Immediately after graduation, Howe removed to Oxford, where he took the same degree in the following year. Anthony Wood has traced his various remaining steps at Magdalen College, where he was first appointed a "deny" by the parliamentary visitors, soon afterwards raised to fellowship, and in 1652, when he was only twenty-two years of age, "proceeded" master of arts. On leaving Oxford, he returned to his father's retreat in Lancashire, and soon after received ordination at Winwick from the hands of Mr Herle, the clergyman, and the ministers of the neighbouring chapels. In a little time "an unexpected conduct of divine Providence" bore him to Great Torrington, in Devonshire, where he was engaged as pastor. It was here that he preached those discourses which at a later period took shape in his treatises on The Blessedness of the Righteous, and on Delighting in God. It was here also that he married the daughter of his "inner friend," Mr George Hughes, a minister of great name and influence at that time in Plymouth.

In the beginning of 1657, a journey to London accidentally brought Howe under the notice of Cromwell, who, struck by his appearance and preaching, made him his domestic chaplain. It was in vain that Howe pleaded the interests of his people at Great Torrington; Cromwell would take no refusal; and the result was that Howe was soon installed in Whitehall.

His conduct in this high position was such as to extort the praises of even the warmest enemies of his party. Without overlooking the due claims of the Puritans, he omitted no opportunity of advancing pious and learned men of other denominations. Ward, the future bishop of Exeter, and Thomas Fuller, were in the number of those who profited by Howe's kindness, and were not ashamed subsequently to express their gratitude for it. Cromwell's charities were for his age munificent, and Howe was his frequent adviser and almoner; but he dispensed so liberally to others, and asked so little for himself, that the Protector could not help remarking upon his self-denial: "You have obtained many favours for others," said he, "I wonder when the time is to come that you are to ask anything for yourself or your family." Howe, in common with Dr Owen, appears to have believed in Cromwell's religious sincerity, but his conscience would not allow him to be silent when he saw the Protector countenancing doctrines that seemed to savour of fanaticism. It was at one period a pet idea at Whitehall that "the particular thing asked by Christians in prayer will be granted, whatever it be." Howe, convinced of its dangerous tendency, opposed it from the pulpit. Cromwell was observed to knit his brows as his unflinching censor proceeded; and his subsequent bearing towards him was colder. At the suggestion of Baxter, he embodied, in "a number of small volumes," his notes on the leading personages and events that illustrated the Protectorate. These volumes, which must of necessity have thrown much light on many of the dark passages of that period, were unfortunately consigned to the flames by Howe's son, in compliance with strict injunctions issued by himself shortly before his death. After the Restoration, Howe returned to Great Torrington. Like all who had played a conspicuous part in the Commonwealth, he soon found himself an object of suspicion and hatred to the new government. Spies were set upon his track; his words were watched by base informers; he was even accused on one occasion of uttering seditions and treasonable language in his sermons; and tried before the quarter-sessions. His accusers, however, could prove nothing against him, and he was honourably acquitted. When the "Act of Uniformity" silenced more than two thousand of the best ministers in England, Howe was driven from his parish, and for several years led a wandering and uncertain life, preaching in secret, as occasion offered, to handfuls of faithful hearers. More than once his liberty was in imminent jeopardy, and it is understood that for some months in 1665 he was confined in the Isle of St Nicholas, in Plymouth Sound. On his liberation, he proceeded to meet the demands of pressing want by publishing his Bless-edness of the Righteous, which, among other advantages, procured him an invitation from Lord Massarene of Antrim Castle, in Ireland, to become his domestic chaplain. Ecclesiastical espionage was not so rigorous in the sister island. And Howe, accepting the invitation, returned in 1671 to that Ireland which had already afforded him an asylum when a child.

During the five years which he spent in this peaceful and safe retreat, he frequently preached in public, with the approval of the bishop of the diocese, and also found time to produce the most eloquent of his shorter treatises, The Vanity of Man as Mortal, and his Delighting in God; the latter of which he dedicated to his Torrington parishioners. Here, too, he planned his largest and greatest work, A Good Man the Living Temple of God, which, in its metaphysical speculations, anticipated the profoundest reasonings of Samuel Clarke, and in sustained sublimity of thought is not surpassed in English theology.

In 1676 Howe returned to England, and became pastor of a Nonconformist congregation in Silver Street, London. His fame had by this time increased so much that the leading men of the national church, such as Stillington, Tillotson, Kidder, and others, gladly courted his friendship. In the society of these men, and in miscellaneous literary work, Howe spent the troubled years that followed his settlement in London in tolerable peace and safety. The first part of his Living Temple appeared in 1676; the second part was delayed till 1702. In 1677 appeared his tractate On the Reconcileableness of God's Presence of the Sins of Men, with the wisdom and sincerity of His counsels, exhortations, and whatsoever means He uses to prevent them. This latter work was attacked from various quarters. In the number of those who stepped forward in its defence was Andrew Marvell. His work On Thoughtfulness for the Morrow followed in 1681; those on Self-Dedication and Union among Protestants, in 1682. The execution in 1683 of that most virtuous patriot of his times, Lord William Russel, drew forth from Howe a letter of condolence to his lordship's widow, which James Montgomery has pronounced to be "one of the noblest and most pathetic pieces of epistolary composition in the language." In 1684 he gave to the world the most pathetic of his works, The Redeemer's Tears Wept over Lost Souls. Meanwhile, anxiety and over-work had undermined his health; and in 1685 he gladly accepted the invitation of Philip Lord Wharton to travel with him on the Continent. It affords a striking picture of the times that his departure from London needed to be managed with so much secrecy and suddenness that he first announced it to his people by a letter written from the other side of the Channel.

His journey extended over the greater part of a year, during which he visited the most celebrated cities on the Continent. At the end of that period, as matters still seemed hopeless in England, he determined to settle for a time at Utrecht. He secured an honourable maintenance by keeping a boarding school, officiating in the English chapel on Sundays, and by reading privately with English students at the university. In the number of his private friends was Burnet, the future bishop of Salisbury, by whose influence he obtained access several times to William Prince of Orange. The future king of England, as Calamy assures us, "conversed with Howe with the greatest freedom." Meanwhile, as Howe was looking wistfully for tidings from England, the news reached him of James II.'s Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, and Howe took advantage of it to return to London, where his presence was keenly desired by his congregation. Another year brought William of Orange to the British throne, and placed liberty of worship on a stable basis, which was rendered still more secure by the passing of the Act of Toleration. Howe fitly headed the procession of Nonconformist divines who went to congratulate William on his accession to the English throne; nor did the monarch, amid his new cares and dignities, forget the confidential intercourse of Utrecht, but sent for Howe repeatedly to Kensington, and showed especial delight in asking questions about his "old master, Cromwell." To quell those troubles and divisions that broke out among the Nonconformists on disputed points of doctrine and church government, Howe published, in 1693, his three discourses, so full of Christian wisdom and charity, On the Carnality of Religious Contention, which, however able, as they confessedly were, remained for many years unheeded.

Some of the most acute writers of the age, such as Wallis, Sherlock, South, and Cudworth, had already given to the world dissertations on the subject of the Trinity; and in 1694 and 1695 Howe published various treatises on the same theme, the principal of which was entitled, A Calm and Solemn Inquiry concerning the Possibility of a Trinity in the Godhead. His aim in these essays is not so much to state the Scripture testimony on this doctrine, as to show what incompetent judges men must be of the nature of the Divine simplicity, and how presumptuous all a priori speculations must be on such a matter as the mode of the Divine existence. It had been Howe's aim throughout his long life to combine with the assertion of his individual convictions, a recognition of the essential unity and brotherhood of all true Christians; or, as Bacon expresses it, to see "charity moving on the poles of truth." In vindication of his right of private judgment, he had separated from the establishment; in expression of his charity, he had continued to practise occasional communion within its pale. The propriety of this conduct, in which Howe had many followers, was keenly agitated in the ecclesiastical world towards the beginning of the last century, and Howe led the van in defence of "occasional communion." Few may concur with him in every practical application which he made of his principles, but the principles themselves, which this controversy was the occasion of elucidating, are now generally admitted, and have been reproduced in some of the most splendid treatises of Robert Hall.

In his seventieth year, Howe, warned of his own approaching end by the death of his great contemporaries, Owen, Baxter, Bates, and Mead, produced one of his richest treatises, The Redeemer's Dominion over the Invisible World. As if to leave no important department of inspired theology untouched, he gave forth in 1701, Discourses on Man's Enmity against God and Reconciliation to Him. In the spring of 1705 appeared his last publication, entitled, On Patience in Expectation of Future Blessedness. The symptoms of failing strength now became apparent in "frequent languishments," aggravated by more than one painful malady. Multitudes now came to visit the death-bed of the great Puritan, and retired from the solemn interview. feeling that there was something as uncommon in his death as in his life, and that his converse was "like that of an inhabitant returned from another world." Among the number was Richard Cromwell, now an old man. "There was a great deal of serious discourse between them," says Calamy, "tears were freely shed on both sides, and the parting was very solemn and affecting." Howe did not long survive this interview. He died April 2, 1706, in the 77th year of his age.

It was the rare achievement of this great man to pass through an age of social convulsion and tempest, and to occupy positions the most perilous for the trial of character, and to emerge from the ordeal unscathed. Baxter's impetuous temperament betrayed him at times into inconsistency. Owen was more than once too diplomatic for a divine; but even detractors, in their most bitter denunciations of the Puritans, have usually excepted Howe. That must indeed have been no common moral greatness which awed Cromwell into silence, moved Tillotson to tears, overcame the constitutional reserve of William, and "smoothed the raven-down" of the monkish Anthony-à-Wood, until he smiled and praised.

Considered intellectually, he may be affirmed to have combined many great qualities, the possession of any one of which, in an equal degree, would have been sufficient to raise him to eminence and fame. Excelled by Baxter in pulpit oratory, and by Owen in theological learning and exegetical tact, he was by far the most profound and philosophical thinker of all the Puritans, and perhaps produced a greater number of original and uncommon thoughts than any other theologian of his age. Scarcely surpassed by Edwards in logical acumen, or by Butler in ingenuity and depth, how far does he transcend both in pathos and imagination. And yet his imagination does not overlay his thoughts, as is sometimes the case with Jeremy Taylor; it is a trained faculty, the beautiful handmaid of reason, bearing it up into the sunlight, "on wings of silver and feathers of yellow gold." His writings abound in sublimity, but are comparatively passionless. In this respect Baxter's style resembles the impetuous flow of the broad river, Howe's is that same river expanded into a calm lake, whose quiet depths are the mirror of innumerable stars. One characteristic effect of his writings is to tranquillize and elevate the soul. You feel yourself seated on some lofty mountain, in a serene air, and looking down upon clouds and storms far beneath your feet. As we read him, he brings up Milton's picture of contemplation to our thoughts,

"With even step, and musing gait, And looks commerceing with the skies."

Yet, as a writer, Howe is not without the characteristic faults of the Puritan divines. The tendency to dilate on what should only have been touched, and to check the continuous flow of thought and style by minute and perplexing subdivisions, has seriously diminished his popularity as a writer. Often his diction is not equal to his thoughts, and we almost wish, after he has brought out and shaped the marble, that he had invited Bates or Tillotson to add the tracery; though in some of his greatest passages, such as his immortal comparison of the soul of man to a temple in ruins, the flight is nobly sustained, and his words come with all the opulence of Jeremy Taylor's finest passages, and take their place, as if guided by a magician's wand. But when all these deductions are made, John Howe must be recognised as one of the primary stars in the firmament of English divines, shining with a serene lustre peculiarly his own; and if Jeremy Taylor has been styled the Spenser, Howe may with equal justice be styled the Milton of English theology.

Howe, Richard (Viscount Howe), the first naval officer of his day, was born in 1725. His father was Emanuel Scrope Howe, governor of Barbadoes, and his mother was a daughter of Baron Kielmansseggge, master of the horse to George I., when elector of Hanover. Leaving Eton at the age of fourteen, he entered the navy, and joined the fleet which the English were then sending out under Anson to carry on the war against Spain in the Pacific. In this expedition he distinguished himself so much that in his twentieth year he rose to the rank of lieutenant. After some minor exploits, he signalized himself by gallantly defeating, off the Scottish coast, two French vessels of greatly superior size and strength to his own which were carrying supplies and reinforcements to the Pretender. For this exploit he was made a captain on his arrival in England. The next seven years of his life were spent in miscellaneous service in the West Indies, Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Northern Atlantic. When the Seven Years' War broke out, Howe was chiefly engaged in watching the southern and western coasts of France, and besides many minor exploits, defeated the French squadron under De Conflans, and took two of the enemies' ships. His brilliant career attracted the notice of the king (George II.) himself, who expressed the sentiment of the nation when he told Howe on his return home that his life had been an unbroken series of services to his country. Shortly before the close of the war Howe had married, and on the death of his elder brother, had inherited the title and estates of the Viscounts of Howe. On the proclamation of peace, he was made treasurer of the navy, with a seat at the Admiralty Board, and afterwards sat in parliament for Dartmouth. In 1770 he was made rear-admiral of the blue, and commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet. Six years later, in the war of the American independence, he maintained his high character by the dashing success of his attack on the French fleet, which was cruising off Rhode Island under the Count d'E斯塔ing with the view of aiding the revolted colonists against the mother country. On returning home he took command of the English fleet, which sailed to relieve Gibraltar, and in the teeth of many difficulties was completely successful. The remark made upon him some eight years before, by Lord Hawke in the House of Peers, continued to the last to hold as true as when it was first uttered, "I have tried my Lord Howe on many important occasions; he never asked me how he was to execute any service, but always went and performed it." On his arrival in England after this exploit, he was created Earl Howe, and succeeded Lord Keppel as first lord of the admiralty. When the war of the French Revolution began, Howe was chosen commander of the Channel fleet, and on June 1, 1794, gained the greatest of all his victories—that in which he defeated the French fleet off the western coast of France, dismasting ten of the enemy's ships, and taking seven, of which he brought off six in safety into Portsmouth harbour. The seventh, the Vengeur—about whose glorious resistance the French, on the lying report of Bertrand Barrère, sang so many Io Panans—was so much shattered that she sank in the attempt to tow her away. (See Carlyle's Essay on the "Vengeur," in his Miscellanies.) Less brilliant, but not less useful, was the service which Lord Howe next rendered to his country,—by his suppression of the terrible mutiny of the British fleet at Portsmouth and Spithead. The means he took to recall the sailors to their duty, such as his dismissal of the obnoxious officers, &c., were a good deal canvassed at the time, but they certainly had the desired effect. Age and long service now began to make rapid inroads upon the old admiral's constitution, and he found himself compelled to retire from the service which he had graced with so many triumphs. He did not live long to enjoy the repose he had so dearly earned, dying under a violent attack of the gout, Aug. 5, 1799.

Lord Howe was the ablest British seaman of his day, and his ability and technical skill had endeared him above all his brother officers to the sailors, among whom, from the darkness of his complexion, he was familiarly known as Black Dick. He used no mean arts to gain this popularity, for he was extremely reserved in manner, and a most rigid disciplinarian. But his cool courage and presence of mind in the midst of danger, the strength and soundness of his judgment, and his strict impartiality, fully compensated the want of those graces which sometimes gain for their possessor a temporary and factious repute. In person he was tall, strong, and well-made, and capable of enduring almost any amount of fatigue. His features, until lighted up by his smile, were harsh even to grimness.