Owing to the still quieter life which, during his very latest years, he was obliged to lead through broken health, advancing age, and the partial loneliness caused by the passing hence of his two eldest brothers, one of his children, and nearly all his most intimate friends, he was nearly forgotten by the public, or at any rate by that vastly preponderating younger portion of it, which rarely studies “the history of our own times,” or is only dimly aware that Rowland Hill had “done something to the Post Office.” Many people believed him to be dead, others that he was living in a retirement not altogether voluntary. Thus one day he was greatly amused while reading his morning paper, to learn that at a spiritualist meeting his wraith had been summoned from the vasty deep, and asked to give its opinion on the then management of the Post Office. The helm at that time was in the hands of one of the bitterest of his old opponents, and sundry things had lately taken place—notably, if memory serves me aright, in the way of extravagant telegraphs purchase—of which he strongly disapproved. But that fact by no means prevented the spirit from expressing entire satisfaction with everything and everybody at St Martin's-le-Grand, or from singling out for particular commendation the then novel invention of halfpenny postcards. These the living man cordially detested as being, to his thinking, a mischievous departure from his principle of uniformity of rate.[233] Later, he so far conformed to the growing partiality for postcards as to keep a packet or two on hand, but they diminished in number very slowly, and he was ever wont to find fault with the unfastidious taste of that large portion of mankind which writes descriptions of its maladies, details of its private affairs, and moral reflections on the foibles of its family or friends, so that all who run, or, at any rate, sort and deliver, may read. During the quarter-century which elapsed between Rowland Hill's appointment to the Treasury and his resignation of the chief secretaryship to the Post Office, many generous tributes were paid him by the public in acknowledgment of the good accomplished by the postal reform. The year after the establishment of penny postage, Wolverhampton, Liverpool, and Glasgow, each sent him a handsome piece of plate, the Liverpool gift, a silver salver, being accompanied by a letter from Mr Egerton Smith, the editor of the local _Mercury_. Mr Smith told my father that the salver had been purchased with the pence contributed by several thousands of his fellow-townsmen, and that Mr Mayer, in whose works it had been made, and by whom it was delivered into the postal reformer's hands, had waived all considerations of profit, and worked out of pure gratitude. The other pieces of plate were also accompanied by addresses couched in the kindliest of terms.