It had been Rowland Hill’s hope that his countrymen would think him not unworthy to find his last resting-place in Westminster Abbey. It was, indeed, with singular agreement that the voice of the people awarded to him the last great honour which we Englishmen render to our famous dead. There, followed by his children and his children’s children, by his two aged brothers, who had shared in his struggles and his triumphs, by his brothers’ children and their children’s children, he was laid in his glorious place of rest. It was the burial of a man of the people, and the people came together to do him honour. Men came, too, who had worked under him and worked with him—men who knew well what manner of man he was who was now laid among the great ones of the land. There was but one left of the good line of Postmasters-General under whom it had been his happiness to serve. He unhappily was on the wide Atlantic the day that we were gathered round the open grave. “I can truly say,” wrote the Duke of Argyll, “that no one among his many friends and admirers would have joined more sincerely than I should in the mourning of that day. I had the highest admiration of him, and the strongest feeling of personal regard and affection towards him.” The City of London, which he had so signally served, was represented by its chief magistrate, and the great Liberal party, to which he had been so long attached, by his old friend Mr. Charles Villiers and Earl Granville. His native town sent its Mayor and a deputation of citizens, while his county was represented by its Lord-Lieutenant. The presence of the venerable Astronomer-Royal, for whom the dead man had long entertained a feeling of high regard, reminded those who had known him how he had always spoken of astronomy as “my favourite science.”
There came into my mind the words in which Edmund Burke told of the funeral of our great English painter:—“Everything, I think, was just as our deceased friend would, if living, have wished it to be; for he was, as you know, not altogether indifferent to this kind of observances.” The solemn, glorious, and beautiful scene does not easily lend itself to the poor words of mine. Yet I would willingly let those who are to come after us know something of that which was felt by more than one on this day that was so great in our house. One who was present among the mourners writes to me: “It was not a state ceremonial,—it was a people’s payment of honour. There was not grief; but there was a solemn sense of recognition of a great deed. As I saw from the window of the Jerusalem Chamber the approach of the hearse, and ‘heard,’ if one may say so, the sudden hush, the one feeling was not grief, or that the country had sustained a loss, as when Macaulay was buried with his work half done, but that the crown was being put on a noble career. Sir Rowland, in his coffin, seemed to be making a triumphal progress. What struck me most was, if you will put a kind construction on the first part of the antithesis, this absence of sorrow, this presence of reverence.” From another account that was written down at the time I take the following:
“There were few touches of solemnity or mortality till we were close on the Abbey. There we heard the great bell tolling over head. I had heard it last when it tolled for Macaulay. There a great crowd was gathered, very quiet and very orderly. It was not till the carriage turned into Dean’s Yard, that I first felt in all its force what it was that we had come to see and do. The band of the Post Office Volunteers was playing the Portuguese Hymn. The men, all in black, were drawn up on each side of the roadway with their arms reversed, and their faces resting on the stocks of their rifles. The notes of the band at once woke up the tenderest and most solemn feelings. The tears started into my eyes. On getting out of the carriage I saw, for the first time, the coffin with its beautiful shroud covered with wreaths of flowers. We marched through the cloisters with the sad music of the soldiers still in our ears. As we turned round a corner we saw the door into the Abbey open before us. . . . Here we caught the notes of the organ. Wonderful feelings swept through me—the ancient cloisters, the Abbey with its thousand memories, the dead man borne before us, we following after him who had known him and revered him, the sight of his two aged brothers waiting in front to fall in with the other mourners,—the priest in his white surplice. I remember how here it burst upon me how noble and how glorious is the thought that man has made to himself of his own immortality. . . . We entered the Abbey, and slowly moved along. If only a man could keep at their height the lofty thoughts that filled him in such a scene, who might not hope to find his last resting-place there? But, alas, the swell will soon sink. As I passed up I heard my name mentioned—I know not by whom. I recognised also an old servant of our family. I mention this to show how the swift glances of the mind never rest, even amidst the rush of feelings strong as these. . . . I saw my children, too. W—— gazed at me with wonder in his dark eyes, E—— with pleasure at discovering me. . . . At the grave, as I looked down on the coffin and read, ’ sir Rowland Hill. Born December 3rd, 1795. Died August 27, 1879,’ I thought how much there was contained within those dates. The whole life of the dead man seemed to rise before me, from his childhood at Wolverhampton, when he played with her who was one day to be his wife and was now his widow; through his hard struggles, his poverty, the neglect under which he had suffered, up to the present glorious day when his countrymen thus honoured him. . . . I found the tears rising in my eyes; but they were not so much tears for him, as tears over our common humanity and mortality. The music flooded the soul with the sense of man’s nothingness and his short stay on earth. I never once, as I looked down into the grave, thought that the dead man might now be living in some other world. Had he been a great writer, that thought would have come most naturally to me. But ‘organisation is my forte,’ he was wont to say; and what place is there for organisation in heaven? His, indeed, was a mind whose work lay in this working-day world. And yet, had I remembered his love of astronomy, I might have pictured him to myself as learning with delight the secret of the stars. ‘Organisation is some one else’s forte,’ he might now be softly whispering to himself.”
We saw him then laid to rest in the little chapel in the venerable Abbey, beneath the statue of Watt. A memorial will one day be set up in this quiet spot, to show the stranger and the passer-by where Rowland Hill lies buried. In the great city hard by his statue will, before long, stand in the very centre of the trade of the world. In the charity that so many of his countrymen have founded for the relief of the widows and orphans of the servants of the Post Office his memory will be kept alive. But so long as men keep warm feelings, and the name of home has still its charm; so long as there are sorrowful partings and hearts that need comforting; so long as our high aim is towards peace on earth, good will toward men, Rowland Hill is not likely to be forgotten. For he has done almost more than any other man to bring near those who are far off, to bind the nations together, and to make the whole world kin.