Volume 1

12 LIFE OF SIR ROWLAND HILL.
got, no doubt, an increased relish for the study of
Natural Philosophy. When he was a child of nine,
he had been present at some of Ferguson's lectures.
Much that he had heard and seen had been beyond his
understanding, but "some parts of the lecturer's appa-
that had with
ratus were," as he said, with a memory
the flight of nearly eighty years lost none of its freshness,
He gradually acquired a
"delightfully comprehensible."
considerable knowledge of most of the branches of
and what he knew he knew
Natural Philosophy,
thoroughly. On some of these subjects he lectured at
the Birmingham Philosophical Institution, and lectured
well. He did not, however, servilely follow authority.
So early as 1807, and perhaps earlier, writes his son,
"he emphatically protested against the use of the term,
'electric fluid,' (substituting that of 'electric influence,')
and against the Franklinian theory of positive and
negative electricities."
His favourite study, next to astronomy, was the
formation of our letter-sounds, and here he was under
no obligation, either to Priestley, or, so far as I know,
to anyone
else. In a lecture that he delivered before
the Institution so early as 1821, he established the
distinction between vocal and whispered sounds. It
is to him that Dr. Guest, the learned master of Caius
College, Cambridge, refers in the following passage in
his "History of English Rhythms."* "The distinction
here taken between vocal and whisper letters appears
to me important.
I once thought
it was original
;
but
in conversing on this subject with a respected friend,
to whose instructions I owe much, I found his views so
nearly coinciding with my own, that I have now but
little doubt the hint was borrowed.'
* Vol. I., p. 9.