Chapter II

When Rowland Hill was seven years old a great change took place in the family life. His mother had always thought very highly of her husband’s powers and learning. She knew that he was fit for some higher kind of work than any he had hitherto done. She longed, moreover, to procure for her children a better education than any that then seemed likely to be within their reach. One of their friends, Mr. Thomas Clark, kept a school in Birmingham, of which he was willing to dispose. He also had been a member of Dr. Priestley’s congregation, and in the midst of the riots had shown great courage. “Church and King” had been the cry of the mob, and “Church and King” chalked on the house-door was no small safeguard against its fury. Some friendly hand had written these words on the door of the schoolmaster’s house. As soon as he saw them he at once rubbed them out. With this brave and upright man Thomas Hill became in later years closely connected by marriage. His elder daughter married one of Mr. Clark’s sons. Mrs. Hill persuaded her husband to give up his business in Wolverhampton, and to buy the school. They removed it to a convenient house called Hill Top, on the outskirts of Birmingham. Here Rowland passed the next sixteen years of his life. Here—

“His parents, with their numerous offspring, dwelt,
A virtuous household, though exceeding poor!
Pure livers were they all, austere and grave.”

The purchase-money must have been paid off by instalments. I have before me, as I write, a card of the terms. The charges were moderate. Day-scholars paid four guineas or five pounds a year, and boarders twenty guineas or twenty-five guineas, according to age. The address that the new schoolmaster published is somewhat curious. It is as follows:—

ADDRESS.

“T. Hill, sensible of the severe responsibility attached to the
office of a public preceptor, resolves, if entrusted with that
charge, to devote himself to the duties of it with assiduity,
perseverance, and concentrated attention, as indispensable
to reputation and success. To ensure the co-operation of his
pupils, he will make it his study to excite their reasoning
powers, and to induce in them habits of voluntary application;
for this purpose, varying the ordinary course of instruction,
and, as occasion shall offer, drawing their attention to
subjects more particularly fitted to interest their feelings;
he will always endeavour, by kindness and patience, firmness
and impartiality to secure for himself their affection and
esteem. And as he aspires to exhibit models of education,
possessing higher excellencies than mechanical dexterity
or mere intellectual acuteness; his anxious aim will be to
make instruction in art and science, the culture of the
understanding, and of the physical powers, subservient to the
nobler intention of fostering and maturing the virtues of the
heart.”

Rowland was at once placed in the school, and thus at the age of seven his formal education began. His health still continued weak, and his studies were too often broken in upon by illness. He was fortunate enough, however, to find at his new home, in an outbuilding, a workshop, fitted with benches, a vice, and a blacksmith’s forge. “Here,” he said, “we spent much of our spare time, and most of our spare cash, which latter, however, was but very scanty.” The want of pence, indeed, often troubled him full sore. “Ever since I can remember,” as he wrote in a Journal which he began to keep in his eighteenth year, “I have had a taste for mechanics.... In works of the fingers I chiefly excel.” But the best mechanician wants materials, and materials cost money. One Good Friday morning he and his brother Matthew turned dealers. They had been sent with a basket to buy hot cross buns for the household. As they went along, the street-vendors were calling out, after the Birmingham fashion—

“Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns!
One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns!
Sugar ’em, and butter ’em, and clap ’em in your muns.”

The two lads, as they came home, began in jest to repeat the cry. Matthew was an admirable mimic, and had caught it exactly. To their surprise they found themselves beset with purchasers. “Not having face enough to reject demands which we had provoked, perhaps not unwilling to carry on the jest, we soon emptied our basket, and had to return for more, deeming ourselves, however, well recompensed for the additional trouble by the profits arising from the difference between the wholesale price, at which we had been allowed to purchase, and the retail price at which we had sold.” The elder of these two lads the town, as years went on, received as its Recorder; to the younger it raised a statue in his life-time.

This was not the first time that Rowland had turned dealer. Not long after his family had moved to Hill Top his mother gave him a little plot of land for his garden. It was covered with a crop of hoarhound. This he was going to clear away to make room for his flowers, but he was told that it had a money value. “I cut it properly, tied it up in bundles, and, borrowing a basket of my mother, set off one morning on a market-day—Thursday, as I remember—with my younger brother Arthur as my sole companion, for the market-place of the town; and, taking my stand like any other caterer, soon disposed of my wares, receiving eightpence in return. Fortunately I was saved the tediousness of retail dealing, the contents of my basket being purchased in the gross by a woman who had taken her stand near, and who, I hope, cleared a hundred per cent. by the transaction, though she disparaged her bargain by warning me to tell my mother, ‘She must tie up bigger bunches next time.’”

By the age of nine he had saved half-a-guinea, which he laid out on a box of colours. His first great purchase, however, was, as he told me, the volumes of Miss Edgeworth’s “Parent’s Assistant.” These cost him fifteen shillings. “Hers was a name which he could never mention but with gratitude and respect.” I once asked him what were the books that had chiefly formed his character. He answered that he thought he owed most to Miss Edgeworth’s stories. He read them first when he was about eight or nine years old, and he read them a great many times. He said, and the tears came into his eyes as he spoke, that he had resolved in these early days to be like the characters in her stories, and to do something for the world. “I had always had,” he said to me at another time, “a very strong desire to do something to make myself remembered.”

“While yet a child, and long before his time,
Had he perceived the presence and the power
Of greatness.”

Most of his spare money was laid out, however, in the purchase of tools and materials. With such old wood as they could lay hands on, and such new wood as they could afford to buy, he and his brothers set about building a flat-bottomed boat in which they meant to sail through the Birmingham and Worcester Canal into the Severn, and up the Severn to their uncle at Shrewsbury. They had no more misgivings about their scheme than Robinson Crusoe had about his escape from his island in his canoe. Yet there was certainly one great bar to their plan, of which, however, they knew nothing. The canal, at this time, had not been carried half-way to the Severn. They finished their boat, and, though it was found to be too frail for the canal, nevertheless it carried the bold voyagers across a horse-pond.

In the occupations of the workshop, and even in his regular education, Rowland suffered interruption, not only from frequent attacks of illness, but also from the need that his father was under of employing his children part of each day in household work. He could not afford to keep many servants. While Rowland all his life regretted that he had been taken away from school at an early age, yet the hours that he had passed in the discharge of domestic duties he never looked upon as time misspent.

“I was called upon at a very early age to perform many offices
which, in richer families, are discharged exclusively by
servants—to go on errands, to help in cleaning, arranging, and
even repairing, and, in short, to do any sort of work that
lay within my power. By this means I gradually acquired, as
will hereafter better appear, a feeling of responsibility, and
habits of business, dispatch, punctuality, and independence,
which have proved invaluable to me through life.”[23]

He might well have taken to himself the words of Ferdinand, and said:—

“Some kinds of baseness
Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters
Point to rich ends.”

No man, indeed, ever felt more deeply than he did the vast importance of that great part of education, which no examinations can test, and which many examiners and framers of schemes of public competition seem to treat with utter contempt.

The feeling of responsibility which he speaks of did not seem to those who knew him as a child to have been, as he himself says, gradually acquired. It grew, no doubt, with exercise, but it was a part of his inbred worth. “From a very early age,” says one of his brothers, “he felt responsibility in a way none of the others of us did. If anything went wrong it was he who felt it.” He had inherited little of his father’s “buoyant optimism,” and none of his contentedness when things were going wrong. From a very early age his mother began to share with him the troubles that well-nigh weighed her down. They had only grown by her husband’s change of occupation. Matters grew worse and worse as the French War went on. “Never surely yet,” wrote her husband, “was a time when debts were collected with more difficulty, or left uncollected with more danger.” She tried more than one plan to add to the earnings of the family, and every plan she used to talk over with Rowland when he was still a mere child. At times she was terribly straightened. Her brother-in-law, Williams, “a tradesman and a scholar,” as her husband described him, once sent them in their distress a present of five pounds. “The sight of it,” wrote my grandfather, in a letter which I have before me, “produced in both of us mingled emotions of pleasure and pain. Pleasure as a strong, too strong, testimonial of your regard and affection, and pain as it could not but remind us of the toils and privations which you are undergoing to enable you to be generous as well as just. So powerful was the latter impression that our first impulse would have urged us to beg leave to return this too serious mark of affection, adopting the ‘burning words’ of David, ‘Shall we drink the blood of these men?’ but cooler consideration led to the fear that such a measure would give more pain to you than relief to ourselves.”

Others of their friends were ready to help them. One of them, in the hearing of one of her children, said to her, “Now, Mrs. Hill, remember you are never to be in want of money to go to market with.” A strong feeling of independence led her, however, to rely on herself, on her husband, and her children. She had a hatred of debt, and in this hatred every one of her children came to share. “I early saw,” said Rowland, “the terrible inconvenience of being poor. My mother used to talk to me more than to all the others together of our difficulties, and they were very grievous. She used to burst into tears as she talked about them. One day she told me that she had not a shilling in the house, and she was afraid lest the postman might bring a letter while she had no money to pay the postage. She had always been careful to save the rags, which she kept in two bags—one for the white, and the other for the coloured. The white were worth three or four times more than the coloured. It occurred to her that she might sell them, though the bags were not full. I was always sent by her on such errands, and I got this time about three shillings for the rags.”

She persuaded her husband to buy a ruling-machine, which she and Rowland chiefly worked. “That business is not at present well performed by anybody in Birmingham, and so it would be a likely thing for some of the lads to work at,” the father wrote to his brother-in-law. She turned the handle, while her little son, a child of nine, fed the machine. “It interfered largely with my education,” he said. In time he learnt to make the brass pens that were used in ruling, and so earned a little money for himself. They next took to making the copy-books, at first with the help of a bookbinder. But the help of this man the boy before long showed was not needed. “I soon acquired, in its simpler forms, the art of bookbinding—an art which I find I have not yet quite lost, having lately, in my seventy-first year, made up a scrap-book in what is called half-binding for the use of my grandchildren.” Johnson also had learnt in his youth how to bind a book, neither did he in advanced life forget the art. “It were better,” wrote Mrs. Thrale to him, “to bind books again, as you did one year in our thatched summer-house, than weigh out doses of mercury and opium which are not wanted.” There were other plans which Mrs. Hill formed, and carried out with unwearying industry, and in all of these her little son was always ready to take his share.

At the age of eleven his education was still more broken in upon, for he was called upon to assist his father and his elder brothers in teaching. “Young and inexperienced as I was,” he wrote, “I had inferiors both in age and knowledge; some of the pupils not being more than six or seven years old.”[24] At the age of twelve his school education came almost entirely to an end. He was, it is true, somewhat longer enrolled among the boys, and he still received some instruction. But henceforth he was much more a teacher than a pupil. One day in every week, for a few years of his boyhood, his employment lay altogether outside school-work. His second brother, Edwin, had been engaged every Wednesday in the Assay Office. But he got a better appointment. “Rowland,” wrote his father, “succeeds Edwin at the Assay Office. So that you see preferment goes on among us, and I will answer we think ourselves as happy on such occasions as our virtuous Governors fancy themselves, even in their sinecures, which our posts certainly cannot be called.”

The best part of his education he got from his father, not in class-hours, but in the daily intercourse of their home life. This went on for many a year after he left off receiving from him regular instruction. “His children were,” Rowland wrote, “though in an irregular and desultory manner, his private pupils, and as a private teacher he was very successful.”[25]

In the year 1807 his father gave a series of lectures on electricity, mechanics, astronomy, pneumatics, and the gases.

“These lectures, to which I paid a fixed attention, gave me
a new impulse. I resolved to make an electrical machine for
myself, and speedily went to work. The cylinder (plate-glass
machines were yet unknown) I got blown at a glass-house in the
town, paying for it the sum of sixteen shillings. Of course,
to a child, there was much difficulty at almost every step,
but my hardest task was to make a pattern for the caps. My
first attempt was sufficiently primitive, viz., to cut one
out from a large turnip. Not succeeding in this, I resorted
to casting. Lead was the metal I naturally chose, as most
easily melted; and having, after many attempts, at length
succeeded in bringing my sand into due shape, I emptied my
ladle into the mould and brought out my pattern cap, which,
when duly smoothened in the lathe of a friendly workman in the
neighbourhood, I bore, with no small pride and satisfaction,
to the founder’s, that it might be cast in brass. One serious
difficulty in construction I avoided by carrying the axle,
which was a strong iron rod, right through the cylinder,
instead of attempting to break it off, as usual, just within
the caps. The prime conductor, too, I did not attempt to make
hollow, but satisfied myself with bringing a piece of wood into
the proper cylindrical shape, and then covering it over, first
with paper, and afterwards with tinfoil.

“While the work was in progress I was attacked with illness,
and for a time was confined to the house. It was during this
period that the new caps, in all their first brightness,
arrived from the brass-founder’s; and as soon as I was a little
better I was of course eager to attach them to the cylinder;
but the workshop being too cold for an invalid, my patience
would have been sorely tried had not my indulgent mother made
provision for me in the parlour, by substituting for the
hearthrug an old carpet folded in several doubles, so as to
prevent the droppings from my ladle from injuring the somewhat
better carpet on the floor; and here, the cement being melted
over a good fire, the cylinder was duly prepared for mounting.

“My simple apparatus was completed in about a year and a-half.
I set it to work with no small trepidation, having heard much
about the uncertainty of electrical action, and fearing lest my
limited means and powers might have left some fatal defect. So
great was my uncertainty, that even after giving the machine
three or four turns, I still hesitated to apply the decisive
test, and great indeed were my pride and joy when my knuckle
drew from the conductor its first spark.[26] Downstairs I
rushed in quest of sympathy, nor could I be satisfied until
my father and many others had witnessed the performance
with admiring eyes. A few years afterwards I added some
improvements, substituting for the deal frame one of mahogany,
procuring a hollow conductor from the tinman’s, made of course
according to my own directions, and giving also greater
neatness and efficiency to the subordinate parts of the machine
and its various adjuncts; and I may add the apparatus, though
in a somewhat imperfect state, is still extant. Meanwhile,
however, a friend of my father’s, the late Mr. Michael
Beasley, a schoolmaster of Stourbridge, who through life showed
great affection for me, and to whom I owe much in various ways,
having seen the machine in its first simple state, engaged me
to make a duplicate for himself, though on a smaller scale.
This I accomplished in about six months; and while my outlay
amounted to two pounds, I received in payment, for materials
and workmanship, the sum of three guineas, which I considered a
handsome remuneration, though I have now no doubt that my kind
friend would have given me yet more had his means been less
restricted.”[27]

It was from his father, that his son got his strong love for astronomy, and acquired, as he said, even while a boy, no inconsiderable knowledge of the subject. A few years before his death, he drew up an interesting paper on his astronomical studies.[28]

In it he says:—

“My father (like myself in youth and early manhood) was a great
walker, and we frequently journeyed together. When I was only
nine years of age I walked with him, for the most part after
dark, from Birmingham to Stourbridge, a distance of twelve
miles—with occasional lifts no doubt—according to usage—on his
back. I recollect that it was a brilliant starlight night, and
the names of the constellations, and of the brighter single
stars, their apparent motions, and the distinction between
the so-called fixed stars and planets, formed then, as on
many similar occasions, never-failing subjects of interesting
conversation, and to me of instruction. On the way we passed by
the side of a small pool, and the air being still, the surface
of the water gave a perfect reflection of the stars. I have a
vivid recollection, after an interval of nearly seventy years,
of the fear with which I looked into what appeared to me a vast
abyss, and of my clinging to my father, to protect me from
falling into it.”

His father had a reflecting telescope that showed Jupiter’s moons and Saturn’s rings, a Hadley’s quadrant, an artificial horizon, and a tolerably good clock. He took in, moreover, the “Nautical Almanac.” “By means of this simple apparatus,” wrote his son, “he not only regulated the clock, but determined the latitude, and even the longitude of our house, or rather of the playground. In these occupations I was always his assistant.” No sooner had Rowland learnt anything than he set about teaching it. In fact, as he himself stated, learning and teaching with him generally went on hand in hand. He gave lectures on astronomy to the boys of the school, and later on to a Literary and Scientific Association, of which he was one of the founders. “With a view to these lectures, I read all the contributions of Sir William Herschel to the transactions of the Royal Society. My reverence for the man led me to contrive, on the occasion of my second visit to London, to go round by Slough, in order that I might obtain a glimpse—as the coach passed—of his great telescope, which I knew could be seen over the tops of the neighbouring buildings.” Astronomy was, indeed, as he always said, his favourite science. At an early date he became a member of the Royal Astronomical Society. He kept up his interest in its proceedings till the close of his life. When he had passed the age of threescore years and ten, he discovered some important errors in the Address of one of the Presidents.[29]

All through life, whatever he read he read with an acuteness, a patience, and an earnest desire to arrive at the truth, that would have done honour to a judge.

“When a boy, I was fond of reading books of elementary science.
I occasionally met with statements which puzzled me—which
appeared to me to be wrong; but assuming, as children do, the
infallibility of the author—or perhaps I should say of a
printed book—I naturally came to the conclusion that my own
understanding was in fault, and became greatly disheartened.
After awhile—I forget on what occasion—I applied for a solution
of the puzzle to my father, who, possessing a large amount
of general information, was well qualified to advise. To my
great delight, he assured me that I was right and the author
wrong. My unqualified faith in printed statements was now of
course at an end; and a habit was gradually formed of mentally
criticising almost everything I read—a habit which, however
useful in early life, is, as I have found in old age, a cause
of much waste of thinking power when the amount is so reduced
as to render economy of essential importance. Still, through
the greater part of my life, this habit of reading critically,
combined as it was with the power of rapid calculation, has
been of great use to me, especially in my contests with the
Post Office, and, after I had joined the Department, in the
revision of the thousands of Reports, Returns, and Minutes
prepared by other officers.”

How deep were some of the problems which in his youth he tried to fathom is shown by the following extract from his paper on Astronomy:—

“Some sixty years ago, my attention having been accidentally
drawn to a tide-mill for grinding corn, I began to consider
what was the source of the power employed, and came to the
conclusion that it was the momentum of the Earth’s revolution
on its axis. The next question I asked myself was—could such
power be diverted—in however slight a degree—without drawing,
as it were, on the stock? Further consideration showed me
that the draught required for grinding the corn was trifling
in comparison with that employed in grinding the pebbles on
every seashore upon the Earth’s surface; and consequently that
the drain on the Earth’s momentum might suffice in the course
of ages to effect an appreciable retardation in the Earth’s
diurnal revolution.

“I now, as usual in case of difficulty, applied to my father.
He could detect no fault in my reasoning, but informed me that
Laplace had demonstrated in his great work (”_La Mécanique
Céleste_“) that the time occupied in the Earth’s diurnal
revolution is absolutely invariable. Of course both my father
and I accepted the authority as unquestionable; but I never
could fully satisfy my mind on the subject, and for the greater
part of my life it was a standing puzzle.”

Many were the lines of thought that Thomas Hill opened out before his children. “At an early age,” said his son, “we were all fond of reading, had a strong desire for knowledge, and became studious, assisting one another, and obtaining, when required, effectual help from my father.” Though he was ready enough to help his children, yet he did not himself set them to study. “I had an excellent understanding for mathematics,” his son said, “and my father had a great liking for them, with a fair knowledge of them, yet he did not teach me them.” That is to say, he did not teach them formally and by book. When he was out walking he would work out problems in geometry for his sons, now and then stopping to describe figures with his walking-stick on the dust of the road. It was not till Rowland Hill was twenty-five years old, that he went through Euclid. He had, indeed, some slight acquaintance with the three first books, but even these he knew very imperfectly. One Christmas holidays he gave up all his spare time to Euclid, and made himself master of the whole of it before school opened. Yet five years earlier than this I find the following record in his Journal:—

“It is frequently the case that when walking by myself I make
calculations, or invent demonstrations of rules in Mensuration
or Trigonometry to beguile away the time, and I find nothing
else so effectual. I lately made a calculation in my mind,
to determine the distance of a fixed star, supposing its
annual parallax to be one second; and, for the sake of round
numbers, I took the diameter of the Earth’s orbit at two
hundred millions of miles. I forget what was the result of the
calculation, but I know that it was many billions of miles.
Some time ago, as I was walking to Smethwick, I was making
some calculations respecting the capacity of the boiler of a
steam-engine, which it was my intention to make, and for some
reason or other I wished to find the diagonal of a cube of
certain dimensions. Never having seen any rule to accomplish
this, I set about to find one; which I soon did.”

Earlier even than this, when he was but seventeen, his friend Mr. Beasley, the Stourbridge schoolmaster, asked him to give lessons in Navigation to a young midshipman, who had come to live with him as his pupil.

“Though I had never yet opened a book on Navigation in my life,
I unhesitatingly undertook the task. Probably, in preparing my
lessons I had some assistance from my father; but one way or
other, I discharged the duty to the satisfaction, I believe,
of all concerned, teaching my pupil not merely what might be
learnt from books, but also the practical art of Navigation,
so far as this could be done on land, so that he became able,
by actual observation, to find latitude, longitude, and local
time, the second being a matter of some difficulty. This,
however, was a serious addition to my work, Mr. Beasley’s
school being twelve miles distant, and my weekly journey
thither and back being always performed on foot, with a
Hadley’s quadrant to carry each time to and fro, though even
when so encumbered I was in those days a very brisk walker. I
must add that, at the time when this extra labour came upon
me, my ordinary hours in school were nine and a-half per diem,
in addition to which I, in common with my father and eldest
brother, Matthew, had many lessons to give elsewhere.”[30]

A year later, his Journal shows that he began a new study. He had become by this time an accomplished draughtsman, and he thought perhaps to turn his powers to good account. “I this day,” he writes, “began to study Architecture. I can hardly say as yet how I shall like it. I am rather afraid that there is too much to be remembered for me, as I have but a poor memory.” He learnt enough of the Art to enable him, a few years later on, to be the sole architect of his new school-house.

His mind would at this time have puzzled an examiner—his knowledge and his ignorance were so strangely mixed. “One cause,” he said, “of our backwardness in school learning no doubt was that my father, who was proud of us, never informed us of our great deficiencies. Perhaps he was not aware of them, for though very backward we were, I think, in advance of our schoolfellows, who in those early days were drawn almost exclusively from the lower grade of the middle class.” In a passage that I have already quoted, Rowland Hill stated that he owed much in many ways to Mr. Beasley. He it was who first let him know how much there is to learn. He was, indeed, both in parts and in knowledge, far below his brother schoolmaster, Thomas Hill; yet in many ways he was a better teacher. He formed a high opinion of the lad, and as he grew older, used to be fond of talking of “my young friend Rowland Hill,” and of the great things he was to do. He would often take him to the small inn at Hagley, and give him tea. There he would at times hold forth in praise of his powers to the admiration of the small company. When the first Arctic expedition was on the point of starting, he one day said to them, in all gravity, “If the Government really wants to succeed, they will send my young friend Rowland Hill.” At this time his young friend certainly was no longer a boy. As the old man told this story of his early days, he laughed very heartily. Indeed, he had been just as much amused, he said, when he first heard himself thus praised. Nevertheless, extravagant though his good friend’s estimate of him had always been, yet it had done him good, as it had roused his ambition, and had not satisfied and soothed his vanity.

This worthy man, after a life of no small benevolence and usefulness, unhappily went out of his mind. A very harmless vanity that grew upon him was the first sign he gave that his reason was failing. In one of his letters to Rowland Hill, which chance has preserved, he says, “No book need be written in these times, unless it be of an original kind, and very perfect in its construction. But now my vanity urges me to say that my books _are_ of the _original_ character. Who ever published a Dictation Book before me?” The next sign that he gave of his eccentricity—and a very strong sign it was in those days—was leaving off shaving. The following story I tell as his “young friend” told it me. “One morning Mr. Beasley’s son came in late for breakfast. The father, who was very formal in his talk, said to him, ‘Well, Mr. Thomas, what piece of utility have you done this morning? _I_ have wheeled three barrows of muck from the pig-yard into the field.’ His son replied, ‘I, Sir, have shaved my chin this morning, and that’s the utility I have performed.’ His father slowly rose, and stumping out of the room (he was a fat man) exclaimed, ‘What! violate the laws of God and man, and call that utility!” However, as has been shown, he had rendered his young friend one great service, which by him was never forgotten.

Still more did Rowland Hill learn how little he had already learnt, when his eldest brother and he began to give lessons in a neighbouring school. “We went,” he said, “to teach mensuration and the lower branches of mathematics. I went as my brother Matthew’s assistant. The boys were immoral, and, so far as conduct went, were very far behind our boys. But Matthew soon became aware that in instruction, especially in Latin, they were far in advance of ours. This led him to investigate the causes of this superiority. He at once began to take into his own hands the teaching of Latin in our own school.” The two lads had to go a distance of five miles to give these lessons, and Matthew at this time was not strong enough to stand the double walk.

“For the first time in our household history, a horse had to be
bought. We had hitherto never dreamt of travelling by any other
means than the feet. My father and I undertook the purchase.
We had been informed that a certain butcher had a horse on
sale. We went to his house, looked as wise as we could, and
being informed that the price was twelve pounds, ventured, with
some trepidation, to bid eleven. This was refused: the butcher
declaring that he did not at all want to part with his horse,
and that ‘his missis’ had been scolding him for thinking of
such a thing. My father was no more fitted for bargain-making
than was the Vicar of Wakefield, and we agreed to pay the full
sum. The butcher clinched the matter, as soon as the terms were
settled, by taking down a leg of mutton and offering to give it
us if we would release him from his bargain. With this offer
we were of course too cunning to close. I need not add that
the beast was a sorry jade. When it made its first appearance
at Mr. ——’s school, the pupils tauntingly inquired which cost
most, the horse or the saddle, which was new. I used to ride
behind my brother till we were near the house, when I got down
and walked. In the end we resold the horse in the horse-fair
for five pounds.”

Most of all was Rowland Hill indebted for that first of all knowledge, the knowledge of self, to an eminent physician, Dr. Johnstone, who had engaged him to give lessons to his sons. It was at his table, he said, that it was first brought home to him with full force how little he as yet knew. “I heard matters talked of which I could not in the least understand. This discovery of my ignorance was at first very painful to me, and set me to work very hard—too hard, in fact, for my health.” He thus touchingly describes in his Journal his state of mind. He was twenty-four years old when he made this entry:—

“There is one regret that will force itself upon my mind
whenever I am led to contemplate the effects of the
improvements which have from time to time been made in the
proceedings of the school. I cannot help examining my own
education, and contrasting what it unfortunately is with what
it might have been had I been placed under the influence of
such a system. Except my own, I am unacquainted with any
language, whereas my youngest brother Howard, who has been
educated, I may almost say, by myself—for it has been almost
entirely according to my own plans—is familiar with Latin and
French, and has made considerable progress in Greek, and this
without neglecting anything else. When I left school—that
is, when I became a teacher—I had for about two years held
undisputed the first place in the school. It is fair, then, to
suppose that I should occupy the same place under any system of
procedure—that if I were a boy in the school at this moment,
I should be at the head of the school. Compare, then, the
acquirements of the boy who now stands in the first place in
the school, with mine at his age, and oh, what a difference
will be found! When I left school I was a proficient in no
single thing. I could not write fit to be seen; I understood
but very little of arithmetic; and was not master even of the
paltry art of spelling. Of the classics and of the higher
branches of the mathematics I was altogether ignorant. I
believe drawing was the only thing I understood even tolerably.
Every attainment I am now master of—and, God knows, they are
but few!—I have acquired since I became a teacher, and for the
most part by myself. Fortunately I have, in a tolerably high
degree, the faculty of invention (and here I ought to consider
that this may be in a great measure the effect of education,
and if I have acquired this only, much has been done for me).
Many a time have I given lessons, both at home and abroad, on
subjects which I began to study with my pupils. Frequently
have I solved a problem of which I never had heard till asked
by my pupil to explain it to him. I remember well that the
first time I ever saw the inside of a work on mensuration was
when asked by a young gentleman at a school where I assisted
Matthew in giving lessons, to explain to him one of the most
difficult problems in the book: it is to find the area of a
zone—a problem which involves many minor ones. Many of these I
had before invented for myself, ignorant of the existence of
any work on the subject. I was able to give the young man the
assistance he required, and with so little hesitation that I
believe he did not suspect my ignorance.

“Circumstances similar to this have forced me into an
acquaintance with many subjects, and I may truly say that
almost all I know has been acquired in teaching others. For
from the circumstance of my having, till within the last few
years, found among those with whom I associated, few who were
my equals, and scarcely any who were my superiors, I thought
that, except my father and one or two other individuals,
there were none whose acquirements would entitle them to a
rank higher than my own. I was, therefore, satisfied with the
progress I had made. But what was my disappointment when the
increasing character of the school and other circumstances
opened my way into a class of society among whom I found it was
taken for granted that a man should be acquainted with Latin,
and Greek, and French—languages of which I was profoundly
ignorant, and the knowledge of which I foolishly thought
was confined to a few. No one knows the pain which I have
frequently felt when, in a company where I was but slightly
known, the conversation has turned upon literary subjects,
lest it should be discovered that I was unacquainted with that
which no one seemed to take credit to himself for knowing, and
to be ignorant of which appeared, therefore, to be so much the
more disgraceful. With what shame have I sometimes declared my
ignorance, rather than appear to understand that which I did
not! What would I not give to become young again, and enter
the school in its present state! I do not blame my father; he
has been an excellent parent to us all. The difficulties he
had to contend with in early life were such as to leave him
but little time to attend to the education of his children.
His whole efforts, together with my mother’s, were necessary
to enable him to maintain us; and notwithstanding his talents
are so great, he certainly is not acquainted with the modes
of influencing others. System is what he likes as little as
he understands. We cannot blame him for this; we may with as
much justice blame a man because he is not six feet high.
And I have often thought that the education which he gave us
was more favourable to originality than if we had made great
acquirements. Perhaps if I had been a good classical scholar I
never should have invented the system of operating upon others
which I have arranged. It is impossible to say how it would
have been. I have often asked myself the question, Is it now
too late to educate myself? I am afraid it is too late to do
much. Ever since I was a child I have worked very hard; my time
has always been very closely occupied in gaining a livelihood;
and I now begin to feel the effects of so laborious a life.
My memory is less tenacious than it was; and I find great
difficulty in beginning a study to which I am not accustomed.
Besides, my time is so fully occupied in attending to the
school, and to the great mass of private teaching on which I
am engaged (altogether seldom amounting to less than thirteen
hours per day, even subtracting meal-times), that I feel I
cannot work any harder. My mind almost always feels wearied.
If I rise earlier than usual in the morning, I am no gainer,
for I fall to sleep in the middle of the day; so that the only
alternative left me is, either to be satisfied with the little
time I can now devote to my own improvement, or give up some
of my engagements, and thus lessen our income, which is not at
all superfluous. What to do I know not; and the dissatisfied,
uncertain state of mind in which I now am makes me sometimes
very miserable, and I am afraid materially injures my health.
Here I ought to say that my kind parents have frequently
expressed their wish that I should not labour so hard as I do,
but I am constantly in hopes that by so doing I may secure
future ease.”

The ease that he desired to secure was only that “independence, that first earthly blessing,” to use Gibbon’s words, which a man may enjoy to the full, and yet scorn delights and live laborious days, while he freely indulges the last infirmity of noble mind, and pursues with unrestrained course some lofty object of ambition. “So inviting are the distant prospects of ambition,” Rowland Hill wrote in his Journal only a year later, “and such is my anxiety to correct the defects of my education, that I feel it difficult to resist the temptation of sacrificing physical to mental health—future strength to future fame.... I am convinced of the necessity of making very vigorous improvements in my own mind. I hope I have already done much, and I am determined to accomplish more.” In some of his letters that have been preserved, I see that more than once he turned his mind towards Cambridge. Even at the age of seven-and-twenty he had not given up all hope of getting for himself a University education. He asked his eldest brother to ascertain the cost. On hearing from him in answer, he wrote, “I do not know how to decide respecting Cambridge. I am disappointed at finding the thing so terribly expensive.”

In more than one Literary and Scientific Society that he helped to found, he had long laboured hard to train his mind and increase his knowledge. He and his brothers, as he told me when he gave me an account of the foundation of the first of these small societies, were becoming aware of their great deficiencies in education. To cure these, some of them formed a Mutual Improvement Society. It never numbered more than five members. Their father gave them the use of a comfortable summer-house that was in the garden at Hill Top. Here they met early every Sunday morning, and set each other tasks for the coming week. They then read through, and talked over the tasks of the last week. He said, with a smile, that he could well remember strongly supporting in the summer-house the abolition of the National Debt, by the simple means of not paying it. They bought the quarto edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, and took in the “Edinburgh Review.” They paid for their own coal, and for their breakfast, which they always cooked with their own hands. “We never thought of coming upon our father for anything. We enjoyed the meal the most in the week.” From his Journal I find that it was in the year 1816 that this society was founded, and that its object was “the improvement of our literary knowledge.”

In the following year the members, while still keeping up their Sunday morning meetings, formed a second society for literary and scientific discussion. They met each Thursday evening in the summer-house. In course of time these two societies came to an end. But in 1819 a third society was formed. I extract the following entries from his Journal:—

“_December 17th, 1819._—This evening I read a lecture on the
history of Astronomy before a society of young men which
has lately been formed, and of which I am a member. We have
adopted the name of a society I have before mentioned, and
which is not now in existence. We call it ‘The Society for
Literary Improvement;’ our place of assembly is a large room
in Great Charles Street. There are at present about twenty
members, who lecture in rotation. After the lecture, which is
but short, a discussion on the subject follows.

* * * * *

“_December, 1820._—During the last half-year I have continued
the subject of Astronomy, by giving two lectures on the Solar
System. I also opened the discussion at one of our monthly
meetings by an address ‘On the nature and utility of systematic
arrangements.’” Each of these lectures was delivered from short
notes. At the first lecture on Astronomy, I was so completely
taken-up with my subject that I was not aware how fast time
was flying, till, looking at my watch, I found that I had been
speaking an hour and three-quarters.

* * * * *

“_November, 1821._—Since February, which is the date of the
last entry in this book, I have delivered two lectures before
the Society for Literary and Scientific Improvement; one on
Comets and the Asteroids, the other on the Fixed Stars.

“We have adopted a plan of electing a committee which secures
a very exact representation of the whole body. Every member
is returned by unanimous votes, and he may be recalled at any
moment by a resolution of the majority of his constituents, who
may then return another representative, but this must be done
by a unanimous vote. Very much to my surprise, I was the first
member elected.”

The plan of election had been devised by his father, who, as I have already said, was strongly in favour of the representation of minorities. I have before me a copy of the laws of this society. The tenth, in which the mode of election is described, I give below:—[31]

On a loose sheet of paper that I have found, I find the following statement:—

“The objects proposed in arranging the plan of choosing the
Committee are:—

“1st. A fair representation (as near as can be) of all the
classes of which the general body is composed.

“2nd. Responsibility on the part of the members of the
Committee.

“To obtain the first of these objects, it has been provided
that each member of the Committee shall be chosen by a _section
only_ of the society; and, as will appear upon examination,
opportunity is afforded, in forming the sections, for every
voter to class himself with those whose views most resemble his
own.

“To obtain the second object, frequent elections are
appointed, and to every section of the society is secured an
undoubted right to the services of one individual member of
the Committee. Added to this are the provisions that the
proceedings of the Committee may be attended by any member of
the society as an auditor, and that a public register is to be
kept of the attendance, or non-attendance, of each member of
the Committee.”

Some months after the Society had been founded Rowland Hill made the following entry in his Journal:—

“The Society for Scientific and Literary Improvement has
gradually increased in numbers and importance ever since its
establishment. We have had some excellent lectures, and I
always look forward to the night of meeting with pleasure. I
am still a member of the Committee. Our time has been very
much occupied in revising the Laws, which we have now printed.
At the request of the Committee I wrote the Preface which is
annexed to the Laws.[32] If the Society should ever become
numerous, which now appears probable, I am confident, from the
form of its constitution, that it will become a formidable
body.”

In the following passage in the Preface, its author was stating, no doubt, the difficulties which he had himself undergone:—

“The experience of almost every one who has passed the time
usually devoted to education, but who still feels desirous
of improvement, must have convinced him of the difficulty of
regularly devoting his leisure hours to the object he has in
view, from the want of constantly acting motives, and the
absence of regulations which can enforce the observance of
stated times. However strong the resolutions he has made, and
whatever may be his conviction of the necessity of adhering to
them, trivial engagements, which might easily be avoided, will
furnish him, from time to time, with excuses to himself for his
neglect of study. Thus may he spend year after year, constantly
wishing for improvement, but as constantly neglecting the means
of it, and old age may come upon him before he has accomplished
the object of his desires; then will he look back with regret
on the many opportunities he has lost, and acknowledge in
despair that the time is gone by.”

With much vigour does he defend the mode of election:—

“Experience,” he says, “proves that, owing to imperfect methods
of choosing those who are to direct the affairs of a society,
the whole sway sometimes gets into the hands of a small party,
and is exercised, perhaps unconsciously, in a way that renders
many persons indifferent and alienates others, until all
becomes listlessness, decay, and dissolution.”

While this Society was in full vigour, yet another was started by Rowland Hill and some of his brothers:—

“About Michaelmas, eight of us agreed to form another society,
to meet on the Sunday mornings at each others’ houses,
according to the plan of the old society, which has before
been mentioned. Since that time we have met with the greatest
regularity. When I joined each of these societies, I did it
with a view of improving myself in extemporaneous speaking:
this, at least, was one object. I then made a determination
to speak upon every subject which should come before either
society, a resolution which I have hitherto kept invariably.
Besides this practice, I give an extemporaneous lecture once
a week to the boys. At first it was a great labour to make an
address at all, but now I speak with comparative ease. It is
very seldom that I make the slightest preparation for speaking.”

The Minutes of this Society I have before me. Each member in turn “had to provide a subject for the consideration of the Society, and might propose either an extract for criticism, an outline for composition, or a question for discussion.” The subjects were, on the whole, very well chosen. They certainly would contrast favourably with those which used to be debated in the Union Society of Oxford in my undergraduate days. The following is the list of the subjects provided by Rowland Hill:—_Are Importation Duties beneficial to Society or otherwise?_ _Paper Currency_; _Instinct_; _The Fine Arts_; _The Political Effects of Machinery_; _Inductive Philosophy, as applied to the Common Affairs of Life_; _The Effects of the Extension of Education_; _Duelling_; _The Constitution of Minor Societies_; _The Qualities Necessary to Produce Success in Life_; _Rank_; _Public Opinion_; _The Economy of Time_. Among the subjects introduced by other members, I find:—_A Critical Review of Miss Edgeworth’s “Ormond”_; _The Possibility of the Introduction of a Philosophical Language_; _The Means we Possess of Judging of Others_; _The Study of Languages_; _Critical Remarks upon a portion of Kenilworth_; _Is it better to Admit or Exclude the Representation of Death on the Stage?_ _Is the Acquirement of Literary Attainments Prejudicial to Commercial Pursuits?_

In other ways, moreover, he was steadily training his mind and increasing his knowledge. Thus I find recorded in his Journal:—

“_April 20th, 1818._—This morning I began to learn French, in
company with William Matthews.[33] We are to meet at our house
every other morning at five o’clock, and study till seven. We
do not at present intend to have a teacher; perhaps when we
have gained a little knowledge of the language we may apply to
one. As my time is so valuable to me, I intend to spend one
of our vacations in France, when I have made a considerable
progress in the language, as that will be the most rapid way of
learning.

* * * * *

“_May 25th._—We have discontinued the French for the present,
as William Matthews is obliged to give his attention to some
other pursuit.”

Some two or three years later is the following entry:—

“At Christmas I had an attack of my old complaint—the
ear-ache—which confined me to the house for a fortnight.
However, I turned the time to advantage by reading French with
such industry that, although I knew but little of the language
when I began, yet at the end of the fortnight I could read it
with sufficient ease as to be amused by it. I recollect that in
one day I read a hundred pages of ‘Gil Blas,’ closely printed
in small type.”

His efforts at self-improvement were—as he recorded in his old age—to some extent at least, misdirected. When he was a boy of thirteen he won the first of three prizes for original landscape-drawings, which had been offered by the proprietor of “The School Magazine”[34] to all candidates under sixteen. In the number of the Magazine for September, 1807, appeared the following announcement:—

“We have received several beautiful drawings in different
styles, which do great credit to the talents of the young
persons by whom they are sent, and to the exertions of the
gentlemen under whom they have studied the pleasing art.

“The principal prize is awarded to Master Rowland Hill, who has
given us a view of St. Philip’s Church, Birmingham, and the
surrounding objects, as taken from the playground of Hill Top
School.

“Master Hill is thirteen years and eight months only, and his
performance is attested by his father, Mr. Thomas Wright Hill,
and his drawing-master, Mr. Samuel Lines. To him is awarded—

“‘A Drawing-Box, value Three Guineas.’”

“What,” he wrote in his Journal a few years later, “was my surprise and delight to find that I had obtained the first prize! The whole family participated in my joy, and I believe this was the happiest day of my life.” But his success, as he himself has pointed out, had its drawback:—

“This, and the _éclat_ I obtained a year or two later by
painting the scenes for our little theatre, caused my
parents and myself to assume that nature intended me for an
artist. I accordingly employed the greater part of my spare
time in practising drawing from patterns, from nature, from
plaster-casts of the human frame, and, eventually, from life.
Sketching from nature I found a most agreeable occupation,
especially as it fell in with my love of visiting ancient
ruins and fine scenery. I continued to pursue drawing with
great earnestness for several years, and some of my drawings
obtained the honour (undeserved, I fear) of appearing in the
Birmingham Exhibitions. At length, however, I discovered that I
possessed no natural aptitude for the artistic profession, and,
consequently, directed my efforts to other matters.”