Into such questions as these the elder of the two sisters entered with scarcely less eagerness than her brothers. She had the same “hereditary detestation of tyranny and injustice,” and the same “ardent zeal in the cause of civil and religious freedom.” She was as thorough-going a reformer as any of them—“yet a Woman too.” She had her brother Rowland’s high courage and his quiet fortitude also. At the time of the fire at Hazelwood she was but a girl: yet so great were the efforts that she then made that she injured her spine. A year and a-half she was forced to spend on the couch. “Her household motions, light and free” as they had hitherto been, were suddenly checked. “Nevertheless, throughout this long period,” says one, who spent much of the time with her, “no murmur was ever heard.” We, who knew her only in her latter years, let our memory dwell, with a pleasure and a consolation that never fail, on her wonderful equanimity, her gentle disposition, and her comprehensive love. The few who can remember her girlhood say that it showed the woman “as morning shows the day.” She married early, but she married the warm friend of all her brothers—the upright son of the upright schoolmaster who, for conscience sake, had braved the violence of a furious mob.[68] Her new home was close to Hazelwood, and so by her marriage the family circle was rather widened than narrowed. The younger sister was an invalid from her infancy. Her disposition was gentle and loving, but throughout her short life she was one who was much more called upon to bear than to do.
“An awful blank” was made in the family group by the death of Howard, the youngest son. He bore the name of the great and good man whose friendship to his father’s uncle was the boast of his family. Had he been granted a long life even that high name might have received from him fresh honour. He was but five-and-twenty years old when he was cut off by consumption. Like many another who has suffered under that malady, he was happily buoyed up by hope nearly to the end. Almost up to his last day the light of a bright vision, on which he had for some time dwelt, had not faded away from his sky. “He was bent on showing the world an example of a community living together on principles strictly social.” He had saved some money, and all that he had, and himself too, he was ready to sacrifice for the good of his community. Much time he purposed to spend in travelling on foot gathering information, and still more time was to be spent in acquiring the power of enduring bodily toil. He hoped that others would contribute towards the furtherance of his scheme, but he would accept, he said, no contribution as a loan. His colony he meant to settle with foundling children of the age of two years.
“Whether I should begin with one or ten infants, or any intermediate number, would chiefly depend on the amount of contributions raised. I would not take more than ten for the first year, and should afterwards increase according to my power, aiming to about twenty-five of each sex. These children I should endeavour to instruct to maintain and enjoy life by co-operative exertions.”
His utilitarianism was of no narrow kind. His aim was the highest development of his pupils, both morally and intellectually. He was eager to begin at once, but if his brothers could for awhile but ill spare his services he was willing to wait. “It must, however, be remembered,” he wrote, “that as the success of the experiment much depends on my power of conforming to a new mode of life, every delay by which my present necessarily expensive and insincere habits are continually strengthened greatly increases the difficulty of the proposed undertaking.” He would have, he well knew, to face the judgment of the world, which is always hard on those founders of new republics or novel communities who venture to lay their foundations outside Utopia or below the sky.
“I am almost careless of the opinion of others, and am labouring to make myself quite insensible to any expression of either praise or blame. Further, I propose to seclude myself and protegés as far as is practicable for about fifteen years.”
He died at an age when the growth of the mind in all who strive after knowledge is very rapid. Had he lived a few years longer, he would have seen that the world, as a whole, is wiser than any one man in it, and that total seclusion from it is the worst of all trainings for the young. But death swept him away, and there is nothing left of him save “a fragment from his dream of human life.” The world never knew his great worth, and his brothers never forgot it. “Time, and the ordinary current of events,” wrote one of them to his father, “have had their ordinary effect of deadening the acuteness of our feelings, but at present the world wears but a dreary aspect to me.” “Believe me, my beloved son,” wrote the bereaved father a few weeks later, “that whenever troubles assail us we mechanically turn to thoughts of our children for comfort.... That you and all our offspring may be as fortunate as we respecting this first of parental rewards, the prudence and integrity of children, is our most earnest prayer. Greater good luck it were useless to hope for, almost impious to desire.”
The vision that another brother raised was of a very different kind. “He had read Adam Smith’s great work as if it had been an attractive novel.” Political economy became his favourite study. Huskisson had just entered upon his reforms of our fiscal system, and the youth longed to play his part in the great work of improvement that seemed at length to have fairly begun. For him the school was too small a stage. “He longed for a wider scope, and, above all, a greater power of doing good.” Huskisson must surely stand in need, he thought, of more enlightened assistants than he had at present. Was not his progress along the path of reform timid and slow, and was not that owing to the fact that, in the offices of Government, there were few to be found but men of routine and mummery? He asked his eldest brother whether it would not be practicable to put him under Huskisson’s wing. He was reminded of the boy who wished to go apprentice to a bishop.
Such dreams as these were not unnatural in young men who had lived so much to themselves. It was not till they were grown up that they began at all to mix in the world. When Rowland Hill was twenty, he mentions in his Journal two young men as “almost the only persons excepting our own family with whom I am in habits of intimacy. Indeed, I enjoy so much the society we have at home,” he says, “that I do not feel the want of a very extensive circle of friends.” “They had a little ideal world of their own,” said one who knew them well in those days. Such a world, however noble it may be, has its own dangers. The high purpose, the fixed mind, the unconquerable will, the courage never to submit or yield, may well be nourished there; but it is on a wider stage that a man best learns to measure life. They who do not master this lesson betimes find it a hard thing to master it at all; for soon custom lies upon them with a weight—
“Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.”