The Life of Sir Rowland Hill and the

46 LIFE OF SIR ROWLAND HILL. [1846
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and by the assurance of the latter that,
if you proved yourself an able administrator, you were to look forward
to promotion."
A few days later, having in the meantime called
on the Postmaster-General, I received my formal
appointment. As I had again cast in my lot with the
Post Office, I withdrew, of course, from my previous
employments, resigning all my directorships, already
three in number.
I was now in my fifty-second year, and in the tenth
from that in which I first took Post Office reform
seriously into my thoughts. I need not say that the
interval had been a period of very hard work, that
a decade in my life was in every sense gone ; in
short, that I was already somewhat old for the heavy
work of reform that still lay before me.