Chapter XXXI: Conclusion

Sir Rowland Hill, at the time of his retirement, "remained," in the words of the Treasury Minute, "full as ever of ability, energy, and resources, and of disposition to expend them for the public good." He was broken down in health--broken down, not so much by the great work that he had done, as by the hindrances that, time after time, had been wantonly and cruelly piled up against him in the discharge of his duty. "Men will one day think of the force they squander in every generation, and the fatal damage they encounter by this neglect."[248] "He stands," wrote Mr. Gladstone a few months before he left the Post Office, "pre-eminent and alone among all the members of the Civil Service as a benefactor to the nation." He had not been two years in the service of his country when the Chancellor of the Exchequer of that day, "a man not of many words, or, in manner, of overflowing heart,"[249] told him that, were the Secretaryship to the Post Office vacant, he was the man whom he should recommend to fill it. In a most trying and severe apprenticeship he had proved his thorough fitness for the post, and had convinced Mr. Baring that there was, at all events, one inventor who could be a man of business.[250] But before long his force was squandered by Sir Robert Peel. For the next four years his work lay outside the Post Office. With the return of the Whigs to power, he was once more brought back to the great work of his life. Unhappily the squandering of force did not come to an end. Seven years more had to pass before he was made sole Secretary, and placed in a position of real and undoubted power. For these seven years he had been, to use his own words, "a general almost without an army." For the next six years his work went on smoothly and rapidly under a happy succession of able and high-minded Postmasters-General. But a change came all too soon. In the Post Office certainly he should have had no master over him at any time. There even the ablest of our statesmen might well have sat at his feet. "He is King of Postal Reform," wrote a Postmaster-General of a later date, "and I felt myself a very small subject in waiting upon him." But under the able chiefs under whom he served from 1854 to 1860 he worked with full contentment. This happy period came to an end, as has been seen, with the appointment of Lord Stanley of Alderley. His force was once more, and for the last time, squandered.

How strangely and how sadly was this man thwarted in the high aim of his life. He longed for power, but it was for the power to carry through his great scheme. For the mere shows--the trappings--of authority he cared but little. Such outward things dwelt not in his desires. "My plan" was often on his lips, and ever in his thoughts. His strong mind was made up that it should succeed. He looked upon it with all the fondness and the pride with which a father looks upon his only boy. Take it from him, and his life was done. There was in him a rare combination of enthusiasm and practical power--such a combination as the world has not often seen, and may not again see for many a long day. He had "the usual concomitant of great abilities, a lofty and steady confidence in himself;"[251] but together with this confidence was found a cautiousness that, for the most part, is only seen in those who are far too timid for any great undertaking. He clearly saw every difficulty that lay in his path, and yet he went on with unshaken firmness. To the simple pleasures of life he was by no means indifferent; but he had in his early years attained a thorough self-mastery. In everything but in work he was the most temperate of men. He never repined over the past, or, when once he had taken a step, fretted at the result. His health was greatly shattered by his excessive toils and his long struggles. For the last years of his life he never left his house, and never even left the floor on which his sleeping-room was. But in the midst of this confinement, in all the weakness of old age and sickness, he wrote, "I accept the evil with the good, and frankly regard the latter as by far the weightier of the two. Could I repeat my course, I should sacrifice as much as before, and regard myself as richly repaid by the result."

With these high qualities was united perfect integrity. He was the most upright and the most truthful of men. He hated By-ends and all his companions. He was often careless of any gain to himself, but the good of the state never for one moment did he disregard. He watched over the public money with a carefulness which few men show even in watching over their own private hoards. He was never even so much as tempted for a single moment to purchase popularity by swerving by a hair's breadth from the narrow path of duty. More than once a slight sacrifice of public money would have saved him from attack. To public censure he was by no means indifferent. He suffered beneath it even though he knew that it was unjust. Yet he was always ready to brave it in a good cause. One of the men who long served under him bore this high testimony to the character of his old chief:--"Sir Rowland Hill was very generous with his own money, and very close with public money. He would have been more popular had he been generous with the public money and close with his own." Of his generosity I discovered a striking instance in looking through his private Journal for his last year in office. For one of his subordinates, on whose ability and devotion to himself and zeal in the public service he set a high value, he had not been able to obtain from the Government the recompense which, in his opinion, that gentleman deserved. "I have compensated him to some extent," he records, "by a gift of £300." Beneath a manner that was cold beat one of the warmest and even tenderest of hearts. He had, in earlier life, known what it was to bear the proud man's contumely. The lesson that he had learnt in that hard school was one of forbearance. His rule was stern, yet never without consideration for the feelings of others. No one who was under him ever felt his self-respect wounded by his chief. It is not yet forgotten in the Post Office how, many years ago, one of the higher officers was summoned to the room of the Postmaster-General to give an explanation on some difficult matter. He found his Lordship and the Secretary sitting at the table, but he himself, though he was likely to be kept some time, was not invited to take a chair. Sir Rowland Hill stood up, and remained standing, till his Lordship requested both to be seated.

He had not the fault of most enthusiasts, who look in others for a zeal as ardent as that which animates themselves. He found it somewhat hard, indeed, to understand how any one could be indifferent to the statistics of Penny Postage, and help watching the rise in the number of letters and the postal revenue with as much interest as Englishmen, on a wet day, watch the rise in the weather-glass. But though he did not ask for the same enthusiasm in those who were set under him, he did look for the same carefulness, the same exactness, the same integrity, and the same constant thought for the public good. He forgot that they had not been trained in the same stern school with himself, and he failed to make due allowance for the weakness of man's nature. By asking too much from men he got from them, perhaps, less than they might otherwise have given. Yet the better natures were not a little raised by the high standard of duty that he ever set before them. He left behind him, in all ranks of the service, a strong sense of public duty, which has managed to outlive even the evil days which came after him.

The history of his declining years I shall but touch on. His work was well-nigh done on the day when he left the Post Office; yet prolonged rest gave him back some small part of his old strength. "Much improved during the winter," he noted down at the end of his first year in retirement; "rest and cool weather suit me." In his labours as a member of the Royal Commission on Railways[252] he showed that his mind, however much it had been strained, had yet lost none of its clearness. Not less did it show its power in the years when he was employed in writing "The History of Penny Postage." He managed, he could long boast, to keep himself "_au courant_ with the progress of science and mechanical invention." For a while he had strength enough from time to time to attend the meetings of the Political Economy Club. From a short paper that he drew up I extract the following passage:--

"When I became a member of the Political Economy Club, I soon
marked a questionable assumption there--viz., that whatever is in
accordance with the laws of political economy is necessarily right
and expedient, and _vice versâ_. Question on this point happened to
be raised one evening by a remark from a member that the position
maintained on one side in the debate then going on was hostile to
general happiness; the answer to which was, not that the objector
was mistaken, but that the objection was irrelative; seeing that
the aim of political economy was not the general happiness, but
the wealth of nations. I took the liberty to point out that while
political economists might, of course, define their science as
they pleased, they must remember that under such restriction its
unaided conclusions could not claim to guide legislative action;
since it was at least conceivable, and perhaps not improbable,
that in certain cases the course most tending to a nation's wealth
might differ from that most tending to its weal. I am much inclined
to think that neglect of this distinction is amongst the causes
which have at different times brought this important science into
discredit, led the world to regard its professors as hard--nay,
heartless--and in a measure invalidated their plea that they are
not inventors, but only discoverers; that they create no laws, but
merely set forth the logic of facts. So far, however, as I can
observe in my retirement, such distinction is in the way to acquire
recognition."

He took a strong interest in politics; and no long time before his death he was heard to say that he should gladly live two or three years longer, that he might see how the arrangements made under the Treaty of Berlin would work. It was, however, in watching the operations of the Post Office that his chief interest still lay. I remember how I called upon him one day about eighteen months before his death. On my coming into his room he turned with a smile of pleasure to his son, who happened to be present, and said, "Has your cousin heard of the discovery?" I pricked up my ears, and at once thought of some curious old family record that might have been found hidden away in an old chest or cupboard. "This year," he continued, with proud exultation, "the postal revenue is larger than the revenue produced by the income tax. I was quite startled to find this out." Many years earlier he had written to tell his brother how he had met Garibaldi. "On Thursday (April 21, 1864) Caroline (Lady Hill) and I dined at Fishmongers' Hall 'to meet Garibaldi.' I was a little afraid of the undertaking; but I enjoyed the meeting, and am, to say the least, none the worse for it. I had some conversation with Garibaldi about the state of the Italian Post Office; but it was evident that he felt but little interest in the matter. There is something very pleasing, not to say fascinating, in his appearance and manner." Mr. M. D. Hill replied, "I was very glad to hear you were able to go to the Fishmongers', and very much amused to find that you consulted Garibaldi on Italian Penny Postage. When you go to heaven, I foresee that you will stop at the gate to inquire of St. Peter how many deliveries they have per day, and how the expense of postal communication between heaven and the other place is defrayed."

When, by the establishment of School Boards, primary education was so widely extended, he foresaw at once the effect that would be thereby produced on the postal revenue. "Is there," he wrote, "in addition to the moral, intellectual, and commercial benefits more directly aimed at, any set-off to this increased expense? For this I naturally turn to its effect on the number of letters, which will obviously be enlarged by diffusion of the power to write and read; though the extent to which this will operate is at present matter for conjecture rather than for estimate. I hold it, however, not quite impossible that in this manner the outlay will eventually repay itself, though I am by no means so sanguine as to expect so rich a result." That knowledge might be more readily brought within the reach of all, he was eager to see a reform of what, to use his own words, "is grossly misnamed orthography." "For myself," he writes, "I frankly confess that I have always made it a practice to have a spelling dictionary at hand, and have not infrequently to turn to its pages. My education must, then, it will be said, have been defective! True enough! but of how many has the education been more defective! And even in those who have attained proficiency, how great has been the sacrifice of time else applicable to beneficial study!"

While his mind thus constantly turned to any subject that in any way bore on his great plan, he found, unhappily, much that distressed him in the government of the Post Office. He grieved over the changes that after his retirement were too often made in disregard of the great principles on which he had steadily acted.[253] More than once he addressed warnings to the government. But at the very close of his Journal he records,[254] "I have made myself seriously ill--having brought on renewed threats of apoplexy--by what I have already done." He could do no more. He had lifted up his voice, and lifted it up in vain. There was happily another side to this sad picture. Wrong-doings and blunders he could often forget, while he contemplated the perfection with which the great machine still worked, though there was no master-hand to govern it. He had the delight, too, of watching his plan as it spread from country to country. "In some respects," to quote the words that Mr. Gladstone used on his death, "his lot was one peculiarly happy even as among public benefactors; for his great plan ran like wildfire through the civilised world, and never perhaps was a local invention (for such it was) and improvement applied in the life-time of its author to the advantage of such vast multitudes of his fellow-creatures." He had aimed at doing something for the world, and he lived to know that his success had been far greater than his hopes, and that the world was not ungrateful.

In the quiet course of his private life there is but little on which I shall dwell. Each year saw his range narrowed more and more till at last he was confined to one floor. In an interesting paper, which he drew up in the summer of 1874, he thus describes the state of his health:--

"Some description of my present illness, and of the causes thereof,
may perhaps prove useful to young persons who may be inclined to
follow a career with energy beyond their strength.

"My present position is this:--The ordinary state of my health does
not prevent considerable enjoyment of life, provided that I take
certain precautions and observe certain rules which experience
has dictated, and, further, that I am not disturbed by others; but
herein lies the difficulty. To control myself is easy enough, but
effectually to control others is beyond my power.

"Under the former head, I find that any kind of locomotion, except
within certain narrow limits, invariably proves hurtful--producing
pain in the head, a feeling of incapacity for self-guidance, and,
if persisted in, downright vertigo--the most perfect rest during
some hours being necessary to restore me to the normal state. It is
more than five years since I was in a railway-carriage, and I dare
not venture on a further trial, even could I get to the stations,
which, with a few unimportant exceptions, are beyond my reach;
my drives, even under the most favourable circumstances, being
limited to twenty or, at the utmost, to twenty-five minutes. Soon
after its completion I managed to reach the Holborn Viaduct; but
the Thames Embankment and the new Post Office I have never seen.
As to walking, a few yards to and from the carriage is all that I
can attempt. In my own rooms, indeed, and in an adjoining balcony
constructed for the purpose, I am able, at certain hours, neither
long after nor shortly before a meal, to pace a little every day.
The restriction is not owing to any lack of muscular strength, but
simply to the painful effect on my head."

It was, he says, so far back as the year 1839 that he could trace the first indications of this coming inability to walk. It had grown upon him till, about the year 1868, he fell into the state which he has thus described, from which he never recovered. "This is the more remarkable," he adds, "because, when a young man, I was the best walker of the brotherhood, and could 'do' my thirty miles a day for, I believe, any number of days in succession." He managed, nevertheless, for many years to dine with the Royal Society Club.

"I cannot explain, fully at least, why I can visit one club and not
the others, the distance from home being practically the same for
all. One reason, no doubt, is the pleasure and excitement afforded
by meeting men of eminence whose conversation greatly interests me.
Another, the rest and reinvigoration resulting from the dinner; and
lastly, and perhaps chiefly, that the meetings are so frequent as
to admit of my selecting days when the weather, my health, and all
other circumstances are favourable."

He next describes the mode in which he suffered through the action of others:--

"The disturbances from which I most frequently suffer are noises,
especially when unexpected; as, for instance, the sudden opening
or closing of a door, the dropping of any article on the floor....
Some protection is afforded me by increasing deafness, whatever the
inconvenience of such infirmity. Again, I am painfully sensible to
a shake so slight as to be imperceptible to one in ordinary health;
such, for instance, as is produced by any one walking across the
room save with an almost cat-like tread, or by a touch to my
chair so slight as even the mere brush of the servant's clothes
against it as he waits at table. Further, I am annoyed by any of
those repeated movements of hands or fingers which are habitual to
some people, though against this particular annoyance I find some
protection in taking a book or newspaper and interposing it as a
screen."

I may mention here, as an instance of his delicate consideration for the feelings of others, that I had often noticed when I went to see him how he thus screened his eyes. It was not till I read this account of his health that I was in the least aware that it was against my restlessness that he was screening himself.

Beneath the balcony that he had built for himself, wherein he hoped, each year as the suns grew warm, to breathe the fresh air, the Metropolitan Asylums Board set up a Small-Pox Hospital. Within a few yards of the old man's only walk ran the road along which, day after day for many a month, passed a sad train of ambulances and a still sadder train of hearses. For the signal benefit that he had conferred not only on England, but on the whole world, he had been hitherto rewarded and honoured by a gratitude that was as strong as it was general, by the free gifts of his countrymen and the vote of Parliament. The University of Oxford had made him a Doctor of Laws, and the Queen had made him a Knight Commander of the Bath. Before many years had passed the City of London was to give him its freedom, and Westminster Abbey a grave. The Asylums Board cared for none of those things. Public benefactors and public honours did not enter into its world. It knew of nothing but ratepayers. But ratepayers, it should have remembered, are after all only men, and men, in these islands at least, are neither ungrateful nor pitiless.

There was a striking regularity in the order of his household. Everything went on almost as if by clockwork. He asked me one day whether I had ever noticed that the sound of a bell was scarcely ever heard in his house, save when someone came to the hall-door. He was, he said, strictly punctual himself, and he had trained his servants to habits of the strictest punctuality. He could afford, I knew, to take some trouble with them, for they were very slow to leave his service. His visitors saw year after year the best proof of a good master in the familiar faces of those by whom he was served. As everything was done at its appointed time, there was no need for a bell to be rung. His meals, his medicine, everything was brought to the exact minute. No one was summoned, for no one was ever late. In the days when he was still strong enough to drive out, he had been often troubled by the unpunctuality of his coachman:--

"I advised him to _aim_ at being five minutes before the appointed
time. Of course I only _advised_ this--to have ordered it would
merely have changed the appointed hour. Just as the allowance of
five minutes' grace at the Post Office simply alters the hour of
attendance from 10.0 to 10.5 a.m., and does nothing to secure
punctuality.

"Still the result was unsatisfactory, and I was irritated and
annoyed by the man's persistence. He was honest and sober, and
had a wife and several children. Dismissal, therefore, was out
of the question. I thought of fines, with rewards for continued
punctuality; but I have small faith in either fines or rewards.

"At last it occurred to me to adopt the Post Office rule, under
which any one accused of misconduct is called upon to give such
written explanation 'as he may desire.'

"The duty was entrusted to the footman, with instructions to call
for explanation in every instance of lateness, even when no more
than a fraction of a minute, the hall clock being taken as an
indisputable standard."

The result was that the man became so exact to his time that in twelve months "there were only six cases of lateness, amounting in the aggregate to eight minutes."

Confined though he so much was to one room, yet time did not hang on his hands. His eyesight happily remained strong, and he was a great reader. In the pages of a novel for many years he found pleasant repose. Few men, indeed, were more deeply read than he in fiction. Science, too, as I have shown, took up much of his time. Astronomy remained to the last his favourite study. Poetry did not throw her charm over him--at least to any great extent. Yet one day he told me that he had just finished "Paradise Lost." "Milton," he said with a smile, "does not, in my opinion, prove his case." His money accounts he kept with the utmost exactness, even to a late age. Two years before his death he told me that he could not expect to live much longer, for his mental strength was steadily failing. He had been obliged to give up even his account-keeping, which had been a pleasure to him from a very early age. A day or two before, he added with an air of great vexation, he had had to make an entry of money received, and he had entered it as money paid.

Few things pleased him more than to talk over his past life. I find the following record among the notes that I took of his talk. "As he told me this day the story of his youth, and the difficulties that he had overcome, the old man grew eloquent. If his words could have been taken down, they would have read like a chapter of De Foe. I was filled with admiration of his powers." Nothing touched him more than the memory of some kindness that had been done him. He was grateful to all who had at any time, in any way, helped him; but his gratitude overflowed towards those who had rendered him help in the struggles of his youth. A year before his death he could not be satisfied till he had put on record the names of those who, more than seventy years before, had lent his father money in the time of his greatest straits. The loans had been long since paid off--mainly by the son's efforts as I have shown--but the memory of these benefactors was not to be suffered to pass away from his father's family. At no time was his thoughtfulness for others more shown than in the winter of 1876, when he was suddenly struck down by an attack that threatened paralysis. Forgetful of himself at so awful a time, he thought only of others. It so happened that in a few weeks' time he would have had to make me a certain payment. He remembered that I had been suffering from a long illness, and he feared that I might be put to some inconvenience should payment be delayed. He sent to ask me to let him know at once the amount that would be due, so that he might sign the cheque before his hand was paralysed. During the same attack his son asked him whether he would like to consult one of his nephews--a surgeon in whose skill he had great trust. He had, indeed, he answered, wished to send for him. As, however, his own doctor had not suggested, it, he had not said anything for fear of hurting his feelings. A day or two later he begged me to go and see him. I found him in bed, and very weak. He did not think, he said, that he was dying, but it might be that he really was. It had always been his habit, he added, throughout life to prepare for every contingency, and therefore he wished to see me now. What he said could not, for the present at least, fitly be set before the reader. He showed, however, that in the blow that had thus suddenly fallen upon himself, his feelings and his fears were all for those who had so long been dear to him.

Such a life as this, secluded though it was, could not be free from the losses that are common to the race. The old family group began to grow thin before his eyes. His two elder brothers went first, to be followed before long by his only surviving sister. They, however, had all reached a ripe age. In the death of his eldest daughter, and of more than one of his grandchildren, he felt the far deeper sorrow that comes on the old when they see the young gathered to the grave before them. He would tell with sad pride how one of these little ones had once had the courage to call him to account. The child, who was but three years old, one day when playing with his elder brother, had seen his grandfather give a little dog a slight blow with a switch:--

"The hall being rather dusk, their grandfather did not perceive
that the two boys were there, or he would not, in their presence,
have struck Trottie. Later in the evening the children came to
say good-night, and were leaving the room when he noticed signs
of hesitation, followed by a whispered consultation outside the
halfclosed door. They were evidently settling which should be
spokesman. Probably F., although much the junior, volunteered
his services, as, when they re-appeared holding one another by
the hand, in a tone of deep solemnity, as befitted the occasion,
he said, 'Grandpapa, why did you beat Trottie?' The old man was
delighted with the child's courage in thus calling him to account;
and, bidding the lads come close to him, reminded them that any
noise made his head ache; that, should either of them make any
noise, he should never think of beating them, but should ask them
to be more careful for the future, well knowing that they would
attend to his wishes; but that it would be of no use to talk to
Trottie, who must either be kept out of his room altogether, which
their grandmamma would not like, or must be taught, by means of the
little switch, not to bark there. The boys retired fully satisfied
with the explanation."

Outside his own circle, Death, while it so long passed him by, was very busy. Old friends, men eminent in science or in public life, he saw pass away before him. He once spoke to me with deep feeling of certain old men who, whenever they met him, had always received him with the greatest warmth. Of his friend Colonel Torrens, whom he had known years before as the chairman of the South Australian Commission, he has left the following brief record:--"He was eminent as a writer on political economy, and was one of the founders of the Political Economy Club. He was many years in Parliament, and was chairman of the South Australian Commission when I was secretary. I had known him previously, but this made our acquaintance intimate, and led to a friendship which continued till his death. When on his death-bed, at the age of eighty-four, he wrote me a most affectionate letter, expressing his desire that a connection even then contemplated between his family and mine should be realised; and a year or two later this was done, to the great satisfaction of my wife and myself, by the marriage of my son with one of the Colonel's granddaughters." Colonel Torrens, I may add, had early in the century distinguished himself as a brave soldier. His descendants show with pride a sword of honour which was presented to him for his gallant defence of the Island of Anholt.

With all its losses, its seclusion, and its deprivations, the old man's life was far from being unhappy. He had resources in himself, and he had the never-failing past on which to dwell. His strength failed, and his mind began to lose somewhat of its old vigour. "Yet hath my night of life some memory," he might well have said. He had, moreover, a hearty love of fame, and he was doubly happy in this, that honours followed him even into his retirement. He passed away from the sight of men, but he was never made to feel that he was forgotten. Now in one grateful acknowledgment, now in another, he was shown that the world was not indifferent to the man who had conferred on it so signal a benefit. In some newspaper, or in some book, would appear from time to time a kindly and generous mention of his services which would warm up his heart even in the chill of age. I am reminded how Johnson, one day in the last summer of his life, "called out with a sudden air of exultation, as the thought started into his mind, 'O! Gentlemen, I must tell you a very great thing. The Empress of Russia has ordered the 'Rambler' to be translated into the Russian language; so I shall be read on the banks of the Wolga.' Boswell,--'You must certainly be pleased with this, Sir.' Johnson--'I am pleased, Sir, to be sure. A man is pleased to find he has succeeded in that which he has endeavoured to do.'" In like manner Sir Rowland Hill often exulted at the news that his great plan had won yet another triumph on some distant shore.

Fresh honours were done to him in his own country. Birmingham, the town in which he had spent his youth and early manhood, had already set up his statue. A short time before he died he heard that Kidderminster, his birth-place, was going to pay him a like honour. And now, at the very close of his life, the City of London granted him its Freedom. He was far too weak to attend at the Guildhall, in accordance with ancient custom, to receive this high distinction. The Court of Common Council, with a kindness that gave a double grace to the honour that they rendered, appointed a deputation to wait on him at his residence.[255] He received it in his bed-chamber. It was the 6th day of June, 1879, less than three months before his death. "I offer you," said the City Chamberlain at the conclusion of an eloquent address, "the right hand of fellowship in the name of the Corporation whom we represent, and who deeply regret that they cannot receive you in person, as is their wont on such occasions as the present. We congratulate you that, notwithstanding the 'labour and sorrow' inevitable to the weight of eighty-three years, you have been spared to witness the complete triumph of your postal principles, to receive acknowledgments from the State, and honours from your Sovereign. Detractors and obstructors you have outlived, or they only survive to swell the ranks of those who applaud. May your remaining days be consoled by the thought that your name and services can never be forgotten, and may the sunset of your life be brightened by the reflection that you have been permitted to become one of the greatest benefactors of mankind." It was a touching sight how the old man was moved by this, the last honour, that he was to receive in his life-time from his fellow-countrymen. The tears streamed down his venerable face, and he was scarcely able to utter a word. I stood close by him, and I heard him say, "I cannot listen to it as I ought." When the address was finished he could only say, "I wish it were in my power to thank you." His son had to read his answer. More than once he was distressed to see the members standing while their Chamberlain was addressing him. "It would be a relief to me," he said, "if you would sit down. I cannot bear to see you standing." This is a trifling matter in itself, but it had its rise in that tender and anxious thoughtfulness for others which I had so often marked in him. Before leaving the house I went once more up to his room, and through the open door gazed at the man whom I had so honoured. I did not venture to break on his repose by going in. He had on his face a look of great peacefulness. That which should accompany old age was indeed on that day seen to accompany him. I never saw him again.

His strength failed daily, and it was soon seen that the end was not far off. In the beginning of July death seemed close at hand, but he rallied once more. Happily his sufferings were at no time very severe. His mind often wandered, and at last he sank into a state of stupor. For hours he lay motionless, giving no signs of life but by his quiet breathing. His aged wife sat holding his beloved hand in hers. He gave one last sign that he was still of this world. He felt for her wedding-ring--that ring which he had put round her finger more than fifty years before. Finding it, he knew whose dear hand it was that he was holding, and with one gentle pressure he showed that the love that he had always borne her from the beginning he bore her to the end. He never moved again. He died on the 27th day of August, in the year 1879. Hitherto this day had always been held a festival in our family; for on it his brother Arthur had, for eighty-one years, kept his birthday.

It had been Rowland Hill's hope that his countrymen would think him not unworthy to find his last resting-place in Westminster Abbey. It was, indeed, with singular agreement that the voice of the people awarded to him the last great honour which we Englishmen render to our famous dead. There, followed by his children and his children's children, by his two aged brothers, who had shared in his struggles and his triumphs, by his brothers' children and their children's children, he was laid in his glorious place of rest. It was the burial of a man of the people, and the people came together to do him honour. Men came, too, who had worked under him and worked with him--men who knew well what manner of man he was who was now laid among the great ones of the land. There was but one left of the good line of Postmasters-General under whom it had been his happiness to serve. He unhappily was on the wide Atlantic the day that we were gathered round the open grave. "I can truly say," wrote the Duke of Argyll, "that no one among his many friends and admirers would have joined more sincerely than I should in the mourning of that day. I had the highest admiration of him, and the strongest feeling of personal regard and affection towards him." The City of London, which he had so signally served, was represented by its chief magistrate, and the great Liberal party, to which he had been so long attached, by his old friend Mr. Charles Villiers and Earl Granville. His native town sent its Mayor and a deputation of citizens, while his county was represented by its Lord-Lieutenant. The presence of the venerable Astronomer-Royal, for whom the dead man had long entertained a feeling of high regard, reminded those who had known him how he had always spoken of astronomy as "my favourite science."

There came into my mind the words in which Edmund Burke told of the funeral of our great English painter:--"Everything, I think, was just as our deceased friend would, if living, have wished it to be; for he was, as you know, not altogether indifferent to this kind of observances." The solemn, glorious, and beautiful scene does not easily lend itself to the poor words of mine. Yet I would willingly let those who are to come after us know something of that which was felt by more than one on this day that was so great in our house. One who was present among the mourners writes to me: "It was not a state ceremonial,--it was a people's payment of honour. There was not grief; but there was a solemn sense of recognition of a great deed. As I saw from the window of the Jerusalem Chamber the approach of the hearse, and 'heard,' if one may say so, the sudden hush, the one feeling was not grief, or that the country had sustained a loss, as when Macaulay was buried with his work half done, but that the crown was being put on a noble career. Sir Rowland, in his coffin, seemed to be making a triumphal progress. What struck me most was, if you will put a kind construction on the first part of the antithesis, this absence of sorrow, this presence of reverence." From another account that was written down at the time I take the following: "There were few touches of solemnity or mortality till we were close on the Abbey. There we heard the great bell tolling over head. I had heard it last when it tolled for Macaulay. There a great crowd was gathered, very quiet and very orderly. It was not till the carriage turned into Dean's Yard, that I first felt in all its force what it was that we had come to see and do. The band of the Post Office Volunteers was playing the Portuguese Hymn. The men, all in black, were drawn up on each side of the roadway with their arms reversed, and their faces resting on the stocks of their rifles. The notes of the band at once woke up the tenderest and most solemn feelings. The tears started into my eyes. On getting out of the carriage I saw, for the first time, the coffin with its beautiful shroud covered with wreaths of flowers. We marched through the cloisters with the sad music of the soldiers still in our ears. As we turned round a corner we saw the door into the Abbey open before us.... Here we caught the notes of the organ. Wonderful feelings swept through me--the ancient cloisters, the Abbey with its thousand memories, the dead man borne before us, we following after him who had known him and revered him, the sight of his two aged brothers waiting in front to fall in with the other mourners,--the priest in his white surplice. I remember how here it burst upon me how noble and how glorious is the thought that man has made to himself of his own immortality.... We entered the Abbey, and slowly moved along. If only a man could keep at their height the lofty thoughts that filled him in such a scene, who might not hope to find his last resting-place there? But, alas, the swell will soon sink. As I passed up I heard my name mentioned--I know not by whom. I recognised also an old servant of our family. I mention this to show how the swift glances of the mind never rest, even amidst the rush of feelings strong as these.... I saw my children, too. W---- gazed at me with wonder in his dark eyes, E---- with pleasure at discovering me.... At the grave, as I looked down on the coffin and read, 'Sir Rowland Hill. Born December 3rd, 1795. Died August 27, 1879,' I thought how much there was contained within those dates. The whole life of the dead man seemed to rise before me, from his childhood at Wolverhampton, when he played with her who was one day to be his wife and was now his widow; through his hard struggles, his poverty, the neglect under which he had suffered, up to the present glorious day when his countrymen thus honoured him.... I found the tears rising in my eyes; but they were not so much tears for him, as tears over our common humanity and mortality. The music flooded the soul with the sense of man's nothingness and his short stay on earth. I never once, as I looked down into the grave, thought that the dead man might now be living in some other world. Had he been a great writer, that thought would have come most naturally to me. But 'organisation is my forte,' he was wont to say; and what place is there for organisation in heaven? His, indeed, was a mind whose work lay in this working-day world. And yet, had I remembered his love of astronomy, I might have pictured him to myself as learning with delight the secret of the stars. 'Organisation is some one else's forte,' he might now be softly whispering to himself."

We saw him then laid to rest in the little chapel in the venerable Abbey, beneath the statue of Watt. A memorial will one day be set up in this quiet spot, to show the stranger and the passer-by where Rowland Hill lies buried. In the great city hard by his statue will, before long, stand in the very centre of the trade of the world. In the charity that so many of his countrymen have founded for the relief of the widows and orphans of the servants of the Post Office his memory will be kept alive. But so long as men keep warm feelings, and the name of home has still its charm; so long as there are sorrowful partings and hearts that need comforting; so long as our high aim is towards peace on earth, good will toward men, Rowland Hill is not likely to be forgotten. For he has done almost more than any other man to bring near those who are far off, to bind the nations together, and to make the whole world kin.

APPENDICES.