Besides, my time is so fully occupied in attending to the school, and to the great mass of private teaching on which I am engaged (altogether seldom amounting to less than thirteen hours per day, even subtracting meal-times), that I feel I cannot work any harder. My mind almost always feels wearied. If I rise earlier than usual in the morning, I am no gainer, for I fall to sleep in the middle of the day; so that the only alternative left me is, either to be satisfied with the little time I can now devote to my own improvement, or give up some of my engagements, and thus lessen our income, which is not at all superfluous. What to do I know not; and the dissatisfied, uncertain state of mind in which I now am makes me sometimes very miserable, and I am afraid materially injures my health. Here I ought to say that my kind parents have frequently expressed their wish that I should not labour so hard as I do, but I am constantly in hopes that by so doing I may secure future ease.” The ease that he desired to secure was only that “independence, that first earthly blessing,” to use Gibbon’s words, which a man may enjoy to the full, and yet scorn delights and live laborious days, while he freely indulges the last infirmity of noble mind, and pursues with unrestrained course some lofty object of ambition. “So inviting are the distant prospects of ambition,” Rowland Hill wrote in his Journal only a year later, “and such is my anxiety to correct the defects of my education, that I feel it difficult to resist the temptation of sacrificing physical to mental health—future strength to future fame.... I am convinced of the necessity of making very vigorous improvements in my own mind. I hope I have already done much, and I am determined to accomplish more.” In some of his letters that have been preserved, I see that more than once he turned his mind towards Cambridge. Even at the age of seven-and-twenty he had not given up all hope of getting for himself a University education. He asked his eldest brother to ascertain the cost. On hearing from him in answer, he wrote, “I do not know how to decide respecting Cambridge. I am disappointed at finding the thing so terribly expensive.”