Early on the morning of the 20th, came to see him his most intimate friend, Admiral Priestman – a Russianized Englishman in the service of the empress. During his sojourn at Cherson, Howard had been in the habit of almost daily intercourse with his gallant ex-countryman. When taken ill, not himself considering it at first serious, no notice of it had been sent out; but not seeing his friend for several days, Priestman began to feel uneasy, and went off to his lodgings to learn the cause. He found Howard sitting at a small stove in his bedroom – the winter was excessively severe – and very weak and low. The admiral thought him merely laboring under a temporary depression of spirits, and by lively, rattling conversation endeavored to rouse him from his torpidity. But Howard was fully conscious that death was nigh. He knew now that he was not to die in Egypt; and, in spite of his friend's cheerfulness, his mind still reverted to the solemn thought of his approaching end. Priestman told him not to give way to such gloomy fancies, and they would soon leave him. "Priestman," said Howard, in his mild and serious voice, "you style this a dull conversation, and endeavor to divert my mind from dwelling on the thought of death; but I entertain very different sentiments. Death has no terrors for me; it is an event I always look to with cheerfulness, if not with pleasure; and be assured, the subject is more grateful to me than any other." And then he went on to say – "I am well aware that I have but a short time to live; my mode of life has rendered it impossible that I should get rid of this fever. If I had lived as you do, eating heartily of animal food and drinking wine, I might, perhaps, by altering my diet, have been able to subdue it. But how can such a man as I am lower his diet, who has been accustomed for years to live upon vegetables and water, a little bread and a little tea? I have no method of lowering my nourishment – and therefore I must die;" and then turning to his friend, added, smiling – "It is only such jolly fellows as you, Priestman, who get over these fevers." This melancholy pleasantry was more than the gallant sailor could bear; he turned away to conceal his emotion; his heart was full, and he remained silent, while Howard, with no despondency in his tone, but with a calm and settled serenity of manner, as if the death-pangs were already past, went on to speak of his end, and of his wishes as to his funeral. "There is a spot," said he, "near the village of Dauphiney – this would suit me nicely; you know it well, for I have often said that I should like to be buried there; and let me beg of you, as you value your old friend, not to suffer any pomp to be used at my funeral; nor let any monument nor monumental inscription whatsoever be made to mark where I am laid; but lay me quietly in the earth, place a sun-dial over my grave, and let me be forgotten."
In this strain of true Christian philosophy did Howard speak of his exit from a world in which he felt that he had done his work. The ground in which he had selected to fix his everlasting rest, situated about two miles from Cherson, on the edge of the great highway to St. Nicholas, belonged to a French gentleman who had treated him with distinguished attention and kindness during his stay in the vicinity; and, having made his choice, he was very anxious to know whether permission could be obtained for the purpose, and begged his gallant friend to set off immediately and ascertain that for him. Priestman was not very willing to leave his friend at such a time and on such a gloomy errand; he fancied people would think him crazy in asking permission to make a grave for a man still alive, and whom few as yet knew to be ill; but the earnestness of the dying martyr at length overcame his reluctance, and he set forth.
Scarcely had he departed on his strange mission, when a letter arrived from England, written by a gentleman who had just been down to Leicester to see young Howard, giving a highly favorable account of the progress of his recovery, and expressing a belief that, when the philanthropist returned to his native land, he would find his son greatly improved. This intelligence came to the deathbed of the pious Christian like a ray of light from heaven. His eye brightened; a heavy load seemed lifted from his heart; and he spoke of his child with the tenderness and affection of a mother. He called Thomasson to his bedside, and bade him tell his son, when he went home, how long and how fervently he had prayed for his recovery, and especially during this last illness.
Toward evening, Admiral Priestman returned from a successful application; with this result Howard appeared highly gratified, and soon after his arrival retired to rest. Priestman, conscious now of the imminency of the danger, would leave him alone no more, but resolutely remained, and sat at the bedside. Although still sensible, Howard had now become too weak to converse. After a long silence, during which he seemed lost in profound meditation, he recovered for a moment his presence of mind, and taking the letter which had just before come to hand – evidently the subject of his thoughts – out of his bosom, he gave it to the admiral to read; and when the latter had glanced it through, said tenderly: "Is not this comfort for a dying father?" These were almost the last words he uttered. Soon after, he fell into a state of unconsciousness, the calm of sleep, of an unbroken rest – but even then the insensibility was more apparent than real, for on Admiral Mordvinoff, who arrived just in time to see the last of his illustrious friend, asking permission to send for a certain doctor, in whom he had great faith, the patient gave a sign which implied consent; but before this person could arrive he had fallen off. Howard was dead!
This mournful event took place about eight o'clock on the morning of the 20th of January, 1790 – 1500 miles from his native land, with only strangers round about his bed; strangers, not to his heart, though their acquaintance with his virtues had been brief – but to his race, his language, and his creed. He, however, who was the friend of all – the citizen of the world, in its highest sense – found friends in all. Never perhaps had mortal man such funeral honors. Never before, perhaps, had a human being existed in whose demise so universal an interest could be felt. His death fell on the mind of Europe like an ominous shadow; the melancholy wail of grief which arose on the Dnieper, was echoed from the Thames, and soon re-echoed from the Tagus, and the Neva, and the Dardanelles. Every where Howard had friends – more than could be thought till death cut off restraint, and threw the flood-gates of sympathy wide open. Then the affluent tide rolled in like the dawn of a summer day. Cherson went into deep mourning for the illustrious stranger; and there was hardly a person in the province who was not greatly affected on learning that he had chosen to fix his final resting-place on the Russian soil. In defiance of his own wishes on the subject, the enthusiasm of the people improvised a public funeral. The Prince of Moldavia, Admirals Priestman and Mordvinoff, all the generals and staff officers of the garrison, the whole body of the magistrates and merchants of the province, and a large party of cavalry, accompanied by an immense cavalcade of private persons, formed the funeral procession. Nor was the grief by any means confined to the higher orders. In the wake of the more stately band of mourners, followed on foot a concourse of at least three thousand persons – slaves, prisoners, sailors, soldiers, peasants – men whose best and most devoted friend the hero of these martial honors had ever been; and from this after, humbler train of followers, arose the truest, tenderest expression of respect and sorrow for the dead. When the funeral pomp was over, the remains of their benefactor lowered into the earth, and the proud procession of the great had moved away, then would these simple children of the soil steal noiselessly to the edge of the deep grave, and, with their hearts full of grief, whisper in low voices to each other of all that they had seen and known of the good stranger's acts of charity and kindness. Good indeed he had been to them. Little used to acts or words of love from their own lords, they had felt the power of his mild manner, his tender devotion to them, only the more deeply from its novelty. To them, how irreparable the loss! The higher ranks had lost the grace of a benignant presence in their high circle; but they – the poor, the friendless – had lost in him their friend – almost their father. Nature is ever true; they felt how much that grave had robbed them of. Not a dry eye was seen among them; and looking sadly down into the hole where all that now remained of their physician lay, they marveled much why he, a stranger to them, had left his home, and his friends, and country, to become the unpaid servant of the poor in a land so far away; and not knowing how, in their simple hearts, to account for this, they silently dropped their tears into his grave, and slowly moved away – wondering at all that they had seen and known of him who was now dead, and thinking sadly of the long, long