Sir Rowland Hill

ive of Hodnet, Shropshire, who founded a Grammar School at Drayton, benefited the London Blue Coat School, was a builder of bridges, and is mentioned by

in 1828, Wellington became Prime Minister. A later common ancestor of the three, a landed proprietor, married twice, and the first wife's children were thrown upon the world to fight their way as best as they could, my paternal grandfather's great-grandfather being one of the dispossessed. But even the blackest clou

ependence. The one lived to see a hospital erected in Shrewsbury out of the large fortune for some two hundred years ago of ￡30,000 which should have come to his wife, the testator's sister; the other, a baker and corn merchant, son to "the honest juror," saw his supply of fuel required to bake his bread cut off by the local squire, a candidate for Parliament, for whom the worthy baker had dared to refuse to vote. Ovens then were heated by wood, which in this case came from the squire's estate. When next James Hill

0 the only denizen of that town who seems to have known of its existence was this second John Hill. When the seeds he sowed came up, blossomed, and turned to berries, these last were cooked and brought to table. Happily no one could eat them; and so th

isked her life while preparing for burial the pestilence-smitten neighbour whose poor remains his own craven relatives had abandoned. Though she perished untimely, recollection [Pg 4] of her married name was preserved to reappear in that of a great-grandson, Matthew Davenport Hill. The husband of Mrs Davenport's only daughter, William Lea, was a man little swayed by the superstitions of his time, as he showed when he broke through a mob of ignorant boors engaged in hounding into a pond a terrified

use both men were sturdily obstinate in the matter of political creed, was, though a layman, great at extempore prayer and sermon-making. When any young man came a-wooing to one of his bonnie daughters, the father would take the suitor to an inner sanctum, there to be tested as to his ability to ge

other sources comes a collateral descent from "Hudibras" Butler, who seems to have endowed with some of his own genuine wit certain later Hills; as also a relation

ing, but possessed of few books, one being a much-mutilated copy of "Robinson Crusoe," which tantalisingly began with the thrilling words, "more than thirty dancing round a fire." The fellow executor, knowing well the reputation for uncanny ways with which local gossip had endowed the deceased, earnestly advised his colleague to destroy the volumes, and not permit them to sully young Tom's mind. "Oh, let the boy have the

towing not Christian but Hebrew names upon the children, gives colour to the oft-made allegation that our Puritan ancestors drew their inspiration from the Old rather than from the New Testament. The only portion of these Sunday theological exercises which the poor little fellow really understood was the simple Bible teaching that the tenderly-loved mother gave to him and to his younger brother. While as a young man residing in Birmingham, however, he passed under the influence of Priestley, and became one of his most devoted disciples, several of whom, at [Pg 7] the time of the disgraceful "Church and King" riots of 1791, volunteered to defend the learned doctor's house.[1] But Priestley declined all defence, and the volunteers retired, leaving only young Tom, who would not desert his beloved master's threatened d

S BIRTHPLACE,

roprietors of the "Ill

fragile form held a dauntless little soul, and the almost abnormally large brain behind the too pallid forehead was a very active one. As he lay prone, playing with the toys his mother suspended to a cord stretched within easy reach above him; and, later, working out mental arithmetical problems, in which exercise he found delight, and to the weaving of alluring daydreams, he presentl

ndeed, was self-supporting. Like Chaucer's poor parson, the young Hill brothers learned while they taught, even sometimes while on their way to give a lesson, as did my father when on a several miles long walk to teach [Pg 9] an equally ignorant boy the art of Navigation; and perhaps because life had to be taken so seriously, they valued the hardly-acquired knowledge all the more highly. Their father early accustomed his children to discuss with him and with each other the questions of

urdered"-was burnt at the stake; and a writer in Notes and Queries, of 21st September 1851, tells its readers that he was present on the occasion. Her offence was coining, and she was mercifully strangled before being executed. Women were burnt at the stake long after that awful death penalty was abolished in the case of the more favoured [Pg 10] sex. The savage cruelty of the criminal code at this time and later is also indicated by the fact that over 150 offences were punishable by

gs of beer. Meanwhile "The Great Shadow," graphically depicted by Sir A. Conan Doyle, was an actual dread that darkened our land for years. And the shadow of press-gang raids was a yet greater dread alike to the men who encountered them, sometimes to disappear for ever, and to the women who were frequently bereft of their bread-winners. It is, however, pleasant to remember that sometimes the would-be captors became the captured. A m

horizon. And to walking tours, often of great length, they were much given in holiday time, tours which took them to distant places of historic interest, of which Rowland brought back memorials in his sketch book. Beautiful, indeed, were the then green lanes o

g been "improved off the [Pg 12] face" of the land. These uncouth beings habitually and literally went "on all fours." Whether the attitude was assumed in consequence of the low roofs of their dwellings, or the outcasts chose that mode of progression in imitation of the animals which were their ordinary companions, history does not say, but they moved with wonderful celerity both

e cannot be described in detail, was pre-eminently a success, [Pg 13] since it turned out pupils who did it and themselves credit. "All the good I ever learned was learned at Hazelwood," I once heard say a cheery old clergy-man, probably one of the last surviving "boys." The teaching was efficiently carried on, and the development of individual talent was wisely encouraged, the pupils out of school hours being allowed to exercise the vocation to which each was inclined, or which, owing to this practice, was discovered in each. Thus in boyhood Follet Osler, the inventor of the anemometer and oth

; and Captain Basil Hall, the writer of once popular books for boys, spoke of the evident existence of friendly terms between masters and pupils, declared the system to be "a cu

a son to Hazelwood. President Jefferson, when organising the University of Virginia, asked for a copy of "Public Education,"[4] the work describing the system and the joint production of Rowland, who found the ideas, Matthew, who supplied the composition, and, as regards a few suggestions, of a younger brother, Arthur. Greece, Spain, far-off Mexico even, in course of time sent pupils either to Hazelwood or to Bruce Castle, Tottenham, to which then picturesque

LE SCHOOL,

on of Messr

paratively rare, lined the walls. Drawing and mathematical instruments were provided in profusion. Etching was taught, and a copper press was there for printing the pupils' efforts in that way. A lithographic press and stones of various sizes were provided, so that the young artists might print copies of their drawings to send to their admiring relatives. Finally, a complete printing press with ample founts of type was set up to enable the boys themselves to print a monthly magazine connected with the school and its

hich he was fond, and in the course of which his walking stick was wont to serve to make rough drawings of problems, etc., in road or pathway. "His mathematical explanations," wrote another old pupil in the "Essays of a Bi

WRIGH

of Messrs. T

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ory like a landscape of Claude's." At these entertainments the old man would sit in his easy-chair, at the head of the largest table the house could boast, in a circle of small, adoring grandchildren, the intervening, severe generation being absent; and of all the joyous crowd his perhaps was the youngest heart.

cribed to present him with a large telescope, bearing on it a graven tribute of their affecti

Turner long before Ruskin "discovered" that great painter; and, as his diary shows, marvelled at the wondrous rendering of atmospheric effects exhibited in his idol's pictures. Nearly all my father's scenery and sketches perished in a fire which partially burnt down Hazelwood School; and few are now in existence. After the age of seventeen he gave up painting, being far too busy to devote time to art, but he remained a picture-lover to the end of his days. Once during the long war wit

was Colonel Torrens.[9] Another commissioner was John Shaw Lefevre, later a famous speaker of the House of Commons, who, as Lord Eversley, lived to a patriarchal age. But the prime mover in the scheme for colonising th

e survey, and the stipulated consequences enforced, an outcry arose as if the connection between promise and performance were an unheard-of and most unwarrantable innovation. After a time, however, as our practice became recognised, evasive attempts grew rare, the first expense being found to be the least." He often visited the port of departure, and witnessed the shipping off of the emigrants-always an interesting occasion, and one which gave opportunities of personal supervision of matters. Being once at Plymouth, my mother and he boarded a vessel about to sail for the new colony. Among the passengers was a bright young

g

mysteriously vanished rotatory

a century later Mr Edward Cowper applied Nicholson's idea to stereotype plates bent to a cylindrical surface. But till the advent of "Hill's machine" (described at the Patent Office as "A.D. 1835, No. 6762") all plans for fixing movable types on a cylinder had failed. It is therefore incontestable that the first practical scheme of printing on a continuous roll of paper by revolving cylinders was inv

22] that hitherto attained by any other machine. But from 1836 onwards my father's attention was almost wholly taken up with his postal reform, and it was only after his retirement from the Post Office in 1864 that his mind reverted to the subject o

Press' (entered at the Patent Office as "A.D. 1866, No. 3222") is only adapted for printing from stereotype plates, while mine would not only print from stereotype plates, but, what is more difficult, from movable types also, the two machin

arently transported from Chancery Lane to Printing House Square is a

ream, into its chosen channel on the other side the way. The boy delighted to creep within this shelter-often dry in summer-and listen to the rumbling overhead of the passing vehicles. Noisy, ponderous wains some of these were, with wheels of great width and strength, and other timbers in like proportion; but to the small listener the noisier the more enjoyable. These wains have long vanished from the roads they helped to wear out, the railway goods trains having superseded them, although of late years the hea

ar and tear of Parliamentary life, though when the General Election came on he threw himself with all his accustomed zeal into the struggle, and was, as a consequence, presently laid up with a temporary ailment, which caused one of his political foes to declare that "If Mr

g

, liberated the animal, pulled up or broke off the stake, and carried it away on his shoulder. Was it his pluck, or his widespread popularity that won the forbearance of the semi-savage by-standers? At any rate, not a hostile finger was laid upon him. Meanwhile, he remembered that if brutalising pastimes are put down, it is but right that better things

ith his Catholic neighbours-Staffordshire was a stronghold of the "Old Religion" [Pg 26]-the sturdy Nonconformist was on the happiest of terms, and to listen to the conversation of the often well-travelled, well-educated priests was to him a never-failing pleasure. For Catholic Emancipation he strove heartily and long. With all sects he was friendly, but chiefly his heart went out to those who in any way had suffere

H PEA

aph by Messrs.

last work of Si

stress of his house, and thus acquired the ease of manner and knowledge of social duties which made of her the charming hostess

fter, described him to us children-how, for instance, he would stand, silent and with folded arms, gazing long and fixedly seaward as though waiting for the rescue which never came. The lieutenant was one of the several young naval officers who worshipped at the shrine of the somewhat hoydenish Miss "Betsy" Balcombe, who comes into most stories of St. Helena of that time. Wholly unabashed by consideration of the illustrious captive's former greatness, she made of him a playmate-perhaps a willing one, for life must have been terribly dreary to one whose occupation, like that of Othello, was gone. Occasionally she shocked her hearers by addressing the ex-Emperor as "Boney," though it is possible that the appellation so frequently heard in t

earing and conversation that, whatever ignorant people may say of the science they never study, its professors are often the very reverse of dismal. If Dr Southwood Smith[12] and Mr (later Sir Edwin) Chadwick's talk at times ran gruesomely on details of "intramural interment," the former, at least, had much quaint humour, and was deservedly popular; while Dr Neil Arnott, whose chief hobbies were fabled to be t

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rth House." On this much worn, initial-carven, wooden seat used often to sit Keats listening to the nightingales, and, maybe, thinking of Fanny Brawne. At another spot the weakly-framed poet had soundly thrashed a British rough who was beating his wife. Across yonder footpath used to come from Highgate "the archangel a little damaged," as Charles Lamb called Coleridge. At that road corner, in a previous century, were wont to gather the visitors returning from the Well Walk "pump-room," chalybeate spring, and promena

ages. The two writers are often called rivals; yet novels and men were wholly unlike. Each was a peerless genius in his own line, and each adorned any company in which he moved. Yet, while Dickens was the life and soul of every circle, Thackeray-perhaps the only male novelist who could draw a woman absolutely true to life[14]-always struck us as rather silent and self-absorbed, like one who is studying the people around him with a view to their reproduction in as yet unwritten pages. His six feet of height and proportionate breadth, his wealth of grey ha

This ancient man lived in a large ancestral mansion, and literally "dined in hall" with his entire household. There was a sanded floor-formerly, no doubt, rush-strewn-and the family and their "retainers" sat down together at a very long table to the midday repast, the servants taking their place literally "below the salt," which was represented by a large bowl filled with that necessary concomitant. In how many other country ho

" and a joy for ever; himself a lawyer, the inspirer of the Limited Liability Act, and an accomplished amateur water-colour painter. His first wife was a niece of Rogers, the banker-poet, famous for his breakfast parties and table talk. At Mr Field's house we came first to know Clarkson Stanfield, R.A., the famous sea-scape painter, and his family, who were musical as well as artistic, and gave delightful parties. It was said that Stanfield was familiar with the build and rig of a ship down to it

eemed to recollect, approached a sofa on which sat three handsomely-attired ladies, whose indignant countenances were a sight for gods and men when the abruptly-mannered artist called on them to rise. He then half dived beneath the seat, drew forth a dreadfully shabby umbrella of the "Gamp" species, and, taking no more notice of the irate three than if they had been so many chairs, withdrew-this time for good. Turner had a hearty contempt for the Claude worship, and was resolve

the "Astronomical Admiral"; Wheatstone, Lyell; Graham, the Master of the Mint; Sabine, the Herschels, and others were to him the most congenial company. After them were counted in his regard the medical men, philosophers and economists, such as H

her Arthur, as young men, visited at her Irish home, making the pilgrimage thither which Scott and many other literary adorers had made or were destined to make, one of the most interesting being that of Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, of which

st End slum under the wholly erroneous impression that "enemies" were seeking to molest him-Sir John Bowring, Dr Roget, author of "The Thesaurus," and the Kinglakes. "Eothen," as the writer of that once famous book of travels and of "T

foreigner, Dr Roget had lived so long in England, and, as his book proves, knew our language so well, that he could easily have passed for a native of these isles; and thus readily fell a victim to the Corsican's [Pg 36] unjustifiable action. Happily for himself, Dr Roget remembered that Napoleon had recently annexed Geneva to Franc

Smith (Stockport); and Benjamin Smith (Norwich), at whose house we met some of the arctic explorers of the mid-nineteenth century, congenial friends of a descendant of the discoverer of Smith's Sound, and with whose clever daughters, Madame Bodichon being the eldest, we of the younger generation were intimate. At on

hen some of these gathered round "the [Pg 37] mahogany tree," for the extremely small jokes which to-day produce

espected and beloved by all who knew him. We met him oftenest at the house of Sir Joshua Walmsley, where, as Miss Walmsley was an accomplished pianist, very enjoyable musical parties were given. The Hungarian refugees, several of whom were wonderful musicians, were long with us; and some, like Dr Zerffi, remained here altogether. The Italian exiles, Mazzini, Rufini, Gallenga, Panizzi-afterwards Sir Antonio, Principal Librarian at the British Museum, and planner of the Reading Room there-and others came to speak and write English better than many English people. Poerio, Settembrini, and other victims of King "Bomba"-whose sufferings inspired Gladstone to w

th Coast Railway, and of that portion of his life which followed his r

of my father are generally omitted from the present story; though if verification of statements made be required, the ind