George Birkbeck Norman Hill

“ From the bottom of the hill “by the very Palace door,” up to the gates of the Castle the High Street, even so late as Johnson’s time, was the home of men of rank, of wealth, and of learning. It did not bear that look of sullen neglect which chills the stranger who recalls its past glories. The craftsmen and the nobles, the poor clerks and the wealthy merchants, judges, shopkeepers, labourers, authors, physicians, and lawyers, lived all side by side, so that “the tide of existence” which swept up and down was as varied as it was full. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Having satisfied our minds that our general theory was correct, by a long course of experiments, and by the acquiescence of those who are so much interested in a careful, and even rigorous, examination of our plans, we have latterly proceeded without the trepidation which at first attended us at every step, and rendered the task of reducing the convictions of our minds to practice, a tedious and painful operation. We now feel our system to be sufficiently matured for public inspection—not that it is incapable of infinite improvement. We are far from pretending to a state of perfection ”

“ The old castle, the finely wooded hills, the rocks covered with fern and heath, the clear reflections in the sea of the mountains across the loch, the island, the inlets, the white sails of the yachts, the tranquil beauty of the summer evening—all moved us deeply. One thing only was wanting. The delightful weather which the country had so long enjoyed had silenced "Rorie More's Nurse." There was not water enough in it to have caught that good knight's ear; still less to have lulled him to sleep. Johnson had seen it "in full perfection." It was "a noble cascade," he said. ”

“ From the upper windows on a clear day a delightful view must have been enjoyed of the Forth, with the little island of Inch Keith and the hills of Fife beyond. Near the house there is a row of yew-trees which could not have looked young in Johnson’s time, and holly hedges leading up to it, between which, perhaps, he walked, for they too look old. The land is in the occupation of a market-gardener, who cultivates it with a success which would have won his praise, and made him allow that something beside the sloe is brought to perfection in Scotland. ”

“ It is not in human nature that the gentlemen of the Post Office should view your plan with friendly eyes. If they are good-natured persons, as I dare say they are, they will forgive you in time; but they have much to overlook. That a stranger should attempt to understand the arcana of our system of postage better than those whose duty it was to attain to such knowledge, was bad enough; that he should succeed, was still worse; but that he should persuade the country and the Parliament that he had succeeded is an offence very difficult to pardon. ”

“ CONCLUSION.
“He that dies in an earnest pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood; who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good doth avert the dolours of death; but, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is ‘Nunc dimittis,’ when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations.”—Bacon.
[411]
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.” ”

“ The old castle, "on which the osprey built her annual nest," is so much buried in ivy that it is not easily distinguished from the surrounding woods. We hired a boat at Luss and in our turn roved upon the lake. We landed on one of the islands and lunched on the top of a rock by the ruins of a second castle. Loch Lomond, studded with islands, lay like a mirror beneath us, with the huge Ben Lomond for a noble background. From time to time a boat broke the smoothness of the water, and the cry of a gull, or the bark of a far-away dog, the stillness of the air. ”

“ The sea, with its dark waters in endless rise and fall, washes through the narrow channel, its ceaseless murmur answering to the cries of the countless water-fowl who high up on the ledges breed in safety. On one side, where there is a steep, grassy slope, Dun Buy can be scaled. I climbed up it many years ago one hot summer’s day, and thought that I had never seen so strange and wild a spot. Johnson had also visited it, but his mind was not affected as was my young imagination, for he said that “upon these rocks there was nothing that could long detain attention.” ”

“ Bad, indeed, was the general state of education when Rowland Hill set up for its reformer—so bad that it almost excuses the audacity of the young enthusiast. His audacity, certainly, was almost boundless. “We must honestly confess,” his eldest brother and he say, in the volume which they published on education, “that we retain hardly a single opinion relating to any part of our profession which we held in early life. One by one we have surrendered them all to the force of experience.” ”

“ Only let the accusation be monstrous enough, the asseveration sufficiently bold, and the invention of circumstances tolerably plausible, there is still a large fraction of the public to whom disproof is for a time impossible of reception; the mist of error so entirely blinding that the most glaring correctives passed unnoticed—nay, unseen; while there is another class, perhaps almost equally large, which hides its better knowledge, overawed by general prejudice; so that while denunciation is clamorous and confident, defence is but slow, feeble, and timorous. ”

“ There were woods and flowering shrubs, rhododendrons and the Portugal laurel, and close to the water’s edge the laburnum in full bloom. There were all the sights of peaceful country life—the cocks crowing, the sheep answering with their bleats their bleating lambs, the cows with their calves in the noonday heat seeking the shade of the tall and wide-spreading trees. The waves lapped gently on the shore, and in the distance, below the rocky coast of Skye, the waters were whitened by the countless sea-birds. ”

“ The noble drawing-room remains unchanged—the gilded ceiling, the old French tapestry covering the walls, the gilt tapestry chairs, the oaken floor, up and clown which the duke and Boswell walked conversing, while her grace made Dr. Johnson come and sit by her. All is the same, except that time has dealt kindly by the tapestry and the gilding, and refined them in their fading. ”

“ I was subjected, from an early period of my career at the Post Office, to almost constant personal attacks; many of them written with considerable plausibility, but all void of substantial truth. Every one who has well considered the subject of slander must know how great an advantage the unscrupulous journalist has over the object of his attack, in the dilemma in which he places him of either replying, at much expense of time and dignity, to unfounded charges, or of allowing to them the sanction which a very large, though somewhat thoughtless, portion of the public infers from reticence. ”

“ THE CASTLE. Over one ruin, however, a good man might have justly exulted. In the archbishops’ castle on the edge of the sea is shown the dreadful pit in which the unhappy prisoner, far below the level of the ground, spent his weary days in wretchedness and darkness, listening to the beating of the waves. Here ofttimes he waited for the hour to come when he should be raised by a rope to the surface, as if he were a bucket of water, and not a man, and dragged off to die before the people. ”

“ In the instruction that was given there had been but little general improvement. The old classical education was, no doubt, in many ways admirably well suited for boys who were quick at languages. But it made the dull ten times as dull as they came from nature, and marked down many a lad as a hopeless blockhead whose good parts were merely overwhelmed by the gross ignorance of his teachers. Pedantry, scarcely less than penury, can freeze the genial current of the soul. ”