PENNY POSTAGE.

SIR ROWLAND HILL.

WHEN once a great reform has been thoroughly achieved people are apt to think little about it, or, if they do reflect on it at all, to suppose that its achievement could not have been a matter of very great difficulty. They see only the practical result: the difficulties and vexations which beset the projector of the reform, the obstacles which harassed him, the prejudice. and ignorance with which he had to contend, are hidden behind the mist of years. Penny postage has been so long familiar to us, that the trying and arduous struggle by which it was obtained is well-nigh forgotten. Few of the present generation can recall the time when the postage of a letter was, to all except the higher orders, no trifling expense-when to the great majority of the working-classes it was a very serious matter indeed; and the few who can recall it have been for so many years accustomed to the present order of things, that it has almost escaped their memory that it ever really was otherwise. The postal facilities we at present enjoy are mainly due to the energy and perseverance of one man-Sir Rowland Hill. To him was granted a boon often denied to reformers. After bearing with undaunted courage the sneers to which his scheme was for long subjected, after hearing his conclusions ridiculed and his success denied, he had the satisfaction to live long enough to see his plan carried out with such completeness that its most bitter opponents were forced to own that it had entirely succeeded, and that, so far from be

ing wild and visionary, as they had styled it, it had been eminently sensible and practical.

Those who are fond of tracing the influence of the intellect and character of parents upon their children may find some corroboration of their theories in the case of Rowland Hill. His father was originally engaged in trade, which occupation he, at the age of forty, exchanged for the more congenial calling of a school-master. He was a man of cheerful, sanguine disposition; and, like most people of that temperament, had a calm persuasion that all his plans and projects were about as perfect as human infirmity admitted of. However thoroughly his schemes broke down in practice, he never wavered for a moment in his belief of their excellence; in this respect much resembling a certain friend of his who once took him to see a machine for producing perpetual motion. The inventor boasted of his success. "There," he said, "the machine is." "Does it go?" the visitor asked. "No, it does not go; but I will defy all the world to show why it does not go." Among his many inventions which he prided himself on was an improved system of short-hand, which he seems to have valued, not because it could be written with rapidity, but because its appearance was elegant. "Cast your eye over it," said he, "and observe the distinctness of the elementary charactersthe graceful shape of the words—the perfect continuity of every combination as to the consonants-the distinctness of the lines resulting from the lineality of the short-hand writing." As a school-master, his mode of training presented several original features. He had a passion for melodious and rhythmical sounds, and few things offended him so much as what he called a collision. There was a collision when two like sounds came together. Even in repeating the multiplication-table he demanded that his pupils should speak euphoniously. For example, they said "five sixes are thirty," but "five times five is twenty-five." The boy who said "five fives is twenty-five" would have incurred imminent risk of a flogging.

Rowland Hill's Childhood.

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If, as was said, Rowland Hill's father had every sense except common-sense, his mother, on the other hand, possessed that quality in very large measure. His faculty for devising ingenious plans Rowland derived from his father; his shrewdness in seeing what parts of them were practicable and what were not, and the undeviating perseverance with which, when he had entered on an enterprise, he carried it through to the end, he inherited from his mother. From her he also inherited a certain stiffness and coldness of manner which did not tell in his favor. Harriet Martineau says, in her "Autobiography," that when he first introduced his Penny Postage scheme "his manner-his slowness and hesitating speech-were not recommendatory of his doctrine to those who would not trouble themselves to discern its excellence and urgent need."

At the time of Rowland Hill's birth (December 3, 1795) his father was residing at Kidderminster. Work failing him there, he removed to Wolverhampton, where his salary was so small and prices were so high that it was only by the strictest economy that he could manage to keep his head above water. In his old age Rowland Hill used to recall what privations his family endured during the terrible dearth of 1800, when food was at famine prices, and the nation was engaged in what was certainly a disastrous and, as many thought, a hopeless struggle with France. When he was seven years old his father removed to Birmingham and started as a school-master. He was still a poor man, and his children had to resort to many shifts to eke out the family stock of money. "I was called upon," Rowland writes, "at a very early age to perform many offices which, in richer families, are discharged exclusively by servants to go on errands, to help in cleaning, arranging, and even repairing, and, in short, to do any sort of work that lay within my power. By this means I gradually acquired, as will hereafter better appear, a feeling of responsibility, and habits of business, despatch, punctuality, and independence, which have proved invaluable to me throughout life." To enable them to raise a little money wherewith to buy tools and machinery, he and his