“Incensed at such rascally treatment,” he records in his Journal, “I told my publisher I was determined to maintain an action for damages against the man. On examining the Act respecting the copyright of engravings, my brother Matthew was fearful that we might not succeed in the event of a trial, because we had not specified on the plate the exact day on which it was published. It said ‘published,’ etc., ‘Nov., 1817,’ I immediately had the plate altered before any more impressions were taken; but as several had been sold of the first kind, my brother thought that there would be some danger in risking a trial.” The inventions and schemes that I have described were rather the occupations of Rowland Hill’s few hours of leisure than the real work of his life. It was in school-work that he was closely engaged for long hours every day during many a year. His position was not a little trying. Had it not been for one side of his father’s character, it might have become unbearable. He and his brother Matthew, as they grew older and saw more of the outside world, had become more and more dissatisfied with the state of the school. They were both ambitious youths; and up to a certain age their chief ambition—at all events, their nearest ambition—was to make Hill Top a thoroughly good school. Before many years had passed, the elder brother was bent on making his way at the bar, while Rowland was thinking how he should reform the education of England—I might almost say, of the world. As his views widened with increasing years, he recorded in his Journal:—