“When a boy, I was fond of reading books of elementary science. I occasionally met with statements which puzzled me—which appeared to me to be wrong; but assuming, as children do, the infallibility of the author—or perhaps I should say of a printed book—I naturally came to the conclusion that my own understanding was in fault, and became greatly disheartened. After awhile—I forget on what occasion—I applied for a solution of the puzzle to my father, who, possessing a large amount of general information, was well qualified to advise. To my great delight, he assured me that I was right and the author wrong. My unqualified faith in printed statements was now of course at an end; and a habit was gradually formed of mentally criticising almost everything I read—a habit which, however useful in early life, is, as I have found in old age, a cause of much waste of thinking power when the amount is so reduced as to render economy of essential importance. Still, through the greater part of my life, this habit of reading critically, combined as it was with the power of rapid calculation, has been of great use to me, especially in my contests with the Post Office, and, after I had joined the Department, in the revision of the thousands of Reports, Returns, and Minutes prepared by other officers.”
How deep were some of the problems which in his youth he tried to fathom is shown by the following extract from his paper on Astronomy:—
“Some sixty years ago, my attention having been accidentally drawn to a tide-mill for grinding corn, I began to consider what was the source of the power employed, and came to the conclusion that it was the momentum of the Earth’s revolution on its axis. The next question I asked myself was—could such power be diverted—in however slight a degree—without drawing, as it were, on the stock? Further consideration showed me that the draught required for grinding the corn was trifling in comparison with that employed in grinding the pebbles on every seashore upon the Earth’s surface; and consequently that the drain on the Earth’s momentum might suffice in the course of ages to effect an appreciable retardation in the Earth’s diurnal revolution.
“I now, as usual in case of difficulty, applied to my father. He could detect no fault in my reasoning, but informed me that Laplace had demonstrated in his great work (”La Mécanique Céleste“) that the time occupied in the Earth’s diurnal revolution is absolutely invariable. Of course both my father and I accepted the authority as unquestionable; but I never could fully satisfy my mind on the subject, and for the greater part of my life it was a standing puzzle.”
Many were the lines of thought that Thomas Hill opened out before his children. “At an early age,” said his son, “we were all fond of reading, had a strong desire for knowledge, and became studious, assisting one another, and obtaining, when required, effectual help from my father.” Though he was ready enough to help his children, yet he did not himself set them to study. “I had an excellent understanding for mathematics,” his son said, “and my father had a great liking for them, with a fair knowledge of them, yet he did not teach me them.” That is to say, he did not teach them formally and by book. When he was out walking he would work out problems in geometry for his sons, now and then stopping to describe figures with his walking-stick on the dust of the road. It was not till Rowland Hill was twenty-five years old, that he went through Euclid. He had, indeed, some slight acquaintance with the three first books, but even these he knew very imperfectly. One Christmas holidays he gave up all his spare time to Euclid, and made himself master of the whole of it before school opened. Yet five years earlier than this I find the following record in his Journal:—
“It is frequently the case that when walking by myself I make calculations, or invent demonstrations of rules in Mensuration or Trigonometry to beguile away the time, and I find nothing else so effectual. I lately made a calculation in my mind, to determine the distance of a fixed star, supposing its annual parallax to be one second; and, for the sake of round numbers, I took the diameter of the Earth’s orbit at two hundred millions of miles. I forget what was the result of the calculation, but I know that it was many billions of miles. Some time ago, as I was walking to Smethwick, I was making some calculations respecting the capacity of the boiler of a steam-engine, which it was my intention to make, and for some reason or other I wished to find the diagonal of a cube of certain dimensions. Never having seen any rule to accomplish this, I set about to find one; which I soon did.”
Earlier even than this, when he was but seventeen, his friend Mr. Beasley, the Stourbridge schoolmaster, asked him to give lessons in Navigation to a young midshipman, who had come to live with him as his pupil.
“Though I had never yet opened a book on Navigation in my life, I unhesitatingly undertook the task. Probably, in preparing my lessons I had some assistance from my father; but one way or other, I discharged the duty to the satisfaction, I believe, of all concerned, teaching my pupil not merely what might be learnt from books, but also the practical art of Navigation, so far as this could be done on land, so that he became able, by actual observation, to find latitude, longitude, and local time, the second being a matter of some difficulty. This, however, was a serious addition to my work, Mr. Beasley’s school being twelve miles distant, and my weekly journey thither and back being always performed on foot, with a Hadley’s quadrant to carry each time to and fro, though even when so encumbered I was in those days a very brisk walker. I must add that, at the time when this extra labour came upon me, my ordinary hours in school were nine and a-half per diem, in addition to which I, in common with my father and eldest brother, Matthew, had many lessons to give elsewhere.”[30]