lost her life by her devotion to the public good when the fever raged in Birmingham. In the short account that I have thus given of Rowland Hill’s kindred, there is seen much of that strong sense of duty, that integrity, that courage, and that persistency which in so high a degree distinguished him even from his very childhood. There are but few signs shown, however, of that boldness of thought and fertility of mind which were no less his mark. These he inherited from his father. Thomas Wright Hill was, indeed, as his son said of him, a man of a very unusual character. I have never come across his like, either in the world of men or books. He had a simplicity which would have made him shine even in the pages of Goldsmith. He had an inventiveness, and a disregard for everything that was conventional, that would have admirably fitted him for that country where kings were philosophers, or philosophers were kings. He had, his friends used to say, every sense but common-sense. He was the most guileless of men. He lived fourscore years and eight, and at the end of his long life he trusted his fellow-men as much as he had at the beginning. His lot had been for many years a hard one. His difficulties had been great—such as might have well-nigh broken the heart of many a man. “If ever,” he once wrote, “that happy day shall arrive when we can pay off every account as presented, we should fancy ourselves in a terrestrial Paradise.” He longs “to accelerate the arrival of that blessed hour, if that be ever to come, when I shall be able to say, ‘I owe no man anything but love.’” Yet he had always been cheerful. When death one winter came upon his household, and carried off his youngest son, he wrote, “Christmas, for the first time, as far as I can remember, comes without a smile.” He had by this time seen sixty-eight Christmases, and at one period of his life, poverty had been an unfailing guest at his board. He had inherited from his father, as he said, a buoyant spirit of optimism which carried his thoughts beyond all present mishaps. He never spoke ill of the world. Like Franklin, he said on his death-bed that he would gladly live his days over again. His relish of life had even at the last lost but little of its keenness. Yet he met his death with the most unruffled calmness, and with profound resignation. I account myself happy in that he lived to such an age, that I was able to know him well. The sitting-room in the house where he spent his last years faced, indeed, the south. The sun could not, however, every day have shone in at his window. Nevertheless in my memory it seems as if the aged man were always seated in perpetual sunshine. How much of the brightness and warmth must have come from his own cheerful temperament! [Illustration: THOMAS WRIGHT HILL. (FATHER OF SIR ROWLAND HILL.)]