Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/157

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
BARLEY WOOD.
145

able to be among her scholars again, preparing for the twentieth anniversary of the schools at Cheddar. There had been time for the effects of the work to show themselves in the characters of the people who had been brought up under the care of the ladies.

Dearer to her than all her fame must have been what she records in a letter to Wilberforce:—"Do you remember John Hill, our first scholar, whose piety and good manners you used to notice? He afterwards became a teacher, but war tore him from us. Judge of our pleasure to see him at Weymouth, in full regimentals, acting as paymaster and sergeant-major! There was a sort of review. Everybody praised the training of eight hundred men so well disciplined; the officers said they were fit for any service. One of them said to me: 'All this is owing to the great abilities and industry of Sergeant Hill. He is the greatest master of military tactics we have. At first he was so religious that we thought him a Methodist, but we find him so fine a soldier and so correct in his morals that we do not trouble ourselves about his religion. He will probably be adjutant at the next vacancy.' By the way, we never had so good a meeting as this year at Shipham. I did not dare venture. Poor Patty, though ill able, entertained near a hundred gentry at dinner, among whom were about twenty clergy. It is a fatiguing