Volume 1

14 LIFE OF SIR ROWLAND HILL.
happiness of others." His youngest son's death was a
dreadful blow to him. "The vacancy," he wrote,
"seems appalling." One brother was lying dead at
home, another had fallen ill in London. The old
father feared that some "inconsiderate expression of
impatience" of his, written before the news had reached
him of his son's illness, might have increased his fever.
"You must forgive one who knew not what he did."
In the midst of all his sorrow and anxiety he found
no small comfort. His beloved child had lived to see
the beginning of good times. "The French Revolution
(of 1830,) and the change of ministry to a liberal complexion,
he had to rejoice in, and this affords us great
consolation." So, too, his private troubles were at
another time overwhelmed beneath the greater troubles
of his country. "Our family trials," he writes, "merge
completely in the sad prospects for our country."
At the age of forty he had left trade, for which he
was but little fitted, and had opened a school. One of
the ablest among his pupils thus describes him :
"Old Daddy," as he was afterwards more familiarly called, was one
of the kindest and most upright men I ever knew : irascible as became
his profession
: tender-hearted :
intelligent, and reflective : imbued with
the liberalism which is now predominant: of moderate scholastic
attainments, having indeed been originally engaged in some small
business ;
but resolute in making his boys understand whatever he
taught them."*
He had, indeed, some high qualifications for the
schoolmaster's life.
His "great and pure simplicity"
I use the words of another of his pupils could not but
win the hearts and ennoble the characters of all who
were under him. He was, wrote a third, "a genuine
* "Essays of a Birmingham Manufacturer." By William Lucas Sargant. Vol. II.,
p. 186.