“His Excellency the Tripolitan Ambassador has informed us that he has sent to Tripoli for six young Africans, and the Algerine Ambassador, not to be outdone by his piratical brother, has sent for a dozen from Algiers. The Persian Ambassador also thinks it would be much to the advantage of the monarchy he represents to put a few persons under our guidance. If these worthies should come, we must look out for a Mosque.”
“We will rejoice over them,” wrote old Mr. Hill to his son, “when winds and seas have wafted them to port. Think not this proceeds from incredulity. So much good fortune as to be the means of sending civilization, and of darting one ray of liberty upon the wilds of Africa, seems too much to hope for.”
Wilberforce, the venerable champion of negro emancipation, and Grote, the future historian of Greece, went to Birmingham to inspect the school. Grote heard the boys construe Homer. Even at that time enough was known of his studies in Greek to make the young master who was taking the class feel not a little nervous. Two of Mrs. Grote’s nephews were removed from Eton and placed at Hazelwood. Five years later Grote, writing to Rowland Hill to introduce a friend, says, “I have taken the liberty of mentioning to him the high opinion which I entertain of the Hazelwood system.” The elder of the two nephews on leaving Cambridge went over to Stockholm as a kind of apostle of the new learning. “Public Education” had been translated into Swedish by Count Frölich, and a company was formed in Sweden to found a “Hillian School.” Professor Säve, of the University of Upsala, stayed a month at Hazelwood, carefully studying the system. But even a Professor could not master such a system in a month, and aid was called for from England. The young Cambridge man offered himself as a volunteer in the great cause. He went over to Stockholm, and for many a year helped to keep the faith pure and undefiled in the Hillska Skola.
Lord John Russell sent Dr. Maltby to inspect the school, and Dr. Maltby some years later on, when Bishop of Durham, gave out the prizes. “The number of visitors here,” wrote Mr. M. D. Hill when on a visit to his father’s house, “is immense. It is quite a nuisance. They sometimes have three or four parties at a time, and not a day passes without some.” The Marquis of Lansdowne, the Earl of Clarendon, Lord Auckland, Lord Kinnaird, Sir George Napier, Sir George Pollock, Brougham, De Quincey, Roscoe, Malthus, Joseph Hume, Nassau Senior, Robert Owen, W. J. Fox, Basil Hall, Babbage, and Lardner were all interested in Hazelwood, and not a few of them sent pupils there. Some of them even wished to reform the constitution. “We have had, on the whole,” wrote old Mr. Hill to his son, “a pleasant interview with Mr. Hume and Dr. Gilchrist. They wish to set us right in two important particulars. First—That we should compel all to remain when the Committee comes to be chosen. Second—That the votes be all secret on that and all other occasions. We are quite obstinate on both questions, and, in conformity with usage, persist in old ways. You will be most highly amused with the honourable gentleman’s penetrative inspection, when it shall become safe to tell all. He is, however, a right good fellow. The Doctor set out with a grammatical examination, but presently delapsed into an etymological disquisition and lecture, exquisitely amusing and, as I maintain, highly instructive.” In January, 1825, “Public Education” was criticised in the “Edinburgh Review,” and criticised in the most friendly spirit. The “London Magazine” followed a year later with a long, and a still more friendly, article by De Quincey. M. Jullien, the editor of the “Revue Encyclopédique,” himself inspected the school, and then published in his Review an article on the book. The ex-President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, who was at that time organising the University of Virginia, sent for the work. Mr. Bowring wrote to say that he had himself sent out a copy to the President of Haiti. Many pupils were sent to Hazelwood from abroad, chiefly from the newly-founded Republics of South America. The school almost at one bound sprang into fame. “It was a celebrity,” Rowland Hill wrote in his old age “which I now think was excessive, and which was followed in some instances by disappointment.” Yet at the time it might well have seemed to the young man that his early dreams were not the children of an idle brain. He might well have thought that he had already done much towards rendering his name illustrious in after ages.[63] In his letters, however, I find few signs of triumph. In his Journal, unfortunately, a break of many years begins about this time. He had begun to keep it for the sake of practice in composition, and his lesson was now learnt. “I can now employ my time to greater advantage, and I rather grudge the little attention which I still devote to my history.”
His health was breaking down under his heavy labour. Writing to his eldest brother a fortnight after the beginning of the summer holidays of 1822, he says:—
“You complain, and with justice, that I do not write to you. To tell the truth, since the holidays commenced I have done nothing at all. I can scarcely say how the time has passed; all I know is that it is gone. The exertions previous to the exhibition were succeeded by a languor of which I have not yet been able to rid myself. It was not my intention to have left home these holidays, for there is much that I wish to do, but every one tells me I am thin and pale.... Arthur and Frederic are much in the same predicament with myself.”
He had much wanted, he said, to go to Scotland, with letters of introduction to the officer who was conducting the trigonometrical survey. Owen’s establishment at New Lanark had also “a strong magnetic influence.” A year later (1823) he again excuses his neglect to write to his brother. “Writing a letter always costs me a headache.” He had just enjoyed a six weeks’ tour through the north of England and Scotland:—
“Through Westmoreland and Cumberland I of course walked, and never spent four days more pleasantly than in viewing the delightful scenery those counties afford. At New Lanark I was received in the most hospitable manner by the Owens. I spent two days and a-half there very pleasantly and profitably. In the management of the children neither rewards nor punishments are employed. The consequences are that the children appear very happy, very healthy, many very intelligent, and many very inattentive and disorderly; but when I consider that the children in the schools are nearly all under ten years of age, and that what they are taught is effected without any pain whatever being intentionally inflicted, I cannot be sure that theirs is not the correct mode of proceeding.”
During this tour he was free from pain nearly all the time:—
“But the very morning after my return the pain returned, and has not yet left me, though it is not so bad as at first.... I am cruelly disappointed to find that so much time and money should have been expended to so little purpose, as it at present appears.”