Henceforward he rapidly succeeded in practice. In 1866 he took the place vacated by the death of his valued friend Toynbee, removing to his house in Savile Row. When in full practice, and not allowing himself to write, his chief life was in conversation. A few lines may be here quoted from Miss Hopkins’ Life of Hinton. “It is difficult to give any adequate idea of the charms of Mr. Hinton’s conversation to a mind at all in harmony with his own. His most marked peculiarity was the intensely emotional character of his intellect. Nature to him was no cold abstraction, no cunningly contrived machine made up of matter and force, but a mighty spiritual presence, a living being, tenderly and passionately beloved. The laws of nature were to him the habits of a dear and intimate friend.... But keen as was his delight in purely intellectual operations, he valued everything chiefly, if not only, in its relation to the moral.... How often, from some comparatively remote region of thought, or of art, would he flash down a light upon some practical matter, showing perhaps a neglected duty in its vital relations, or revealing an order in what looked like moral waste and confusion. Owing to this strong recognition of the spiritual unity of all life, never was there a man in whom the barrier between the religious and the secular was more completely effaced.” In 1869 his success in aural surgery was so assured, that an eminent surgeon suggested to Mr. Hinton that he might justifiably resume his philosophy as an evening recreation. So after six years’ abstinence he resumed his writing. But his thoughts, allowed once more to spring into full activity, were certain to master him. “Wherever he was, at a friend’s house, in the street, at church, at a concert, he jotted down his notes on scraps of paper, backs of envelopes, bills, and programmes, writing them out in full in the evening.” Finally, these thoughts were printed for his own private use, and from them a great portion of his posthumous works is derived.