This worthy man, after a life of no small benevolence and usefulness, unhappily went out of his mind. A very harmless vanity that grew upon him was the first sign he gave that his reason was failing. In one of his letters to Rowland Hill, which chance has preserved, he says, “No book need be written in these times, unless it be of an original kind, and very perfect in its construction. But now my vanity urges me to say that my books _are_ of the _original_ character. Who ever published a Dictation Book before me?” The next sign that he gave of his eccentricity—and a very strong sign it was in those days—was leaving off shaving. The following story I tell as his “young friend” told it me. “One morning Mr. Beasley’s son came in late for breakfast. The father, who was very formal in his talk, said to him, ‘Well, Mr. Thomas, what piece of utility have you done this morning? _I_ have wheeled three barrows of muck from the pig-yard into the field.’ His son replied, ‘I, Sir, have shaved my chin this morning, and that’s the utility I have performed.’ His father slowly rose, and stumping out of the room (he was a fat man) exclaimed, ‘What! violate the laws of God and man, and call that utility!” However, as has been shown, he had rendered his young friend one great service, which by him was never forgotten. Still more did Rowland Hill learn how little he had already learnt, when his eldest brother and he began to give lessons in a neighbouring school. “We went,” he said, “to teach mensuration and the lower branches of mathematics. I went as my brother Matthew’s assistant. The boys were immoral, and, so far as conduct went, were very far behind our boys. But Matthew soon became aware that in instruction, especially in Latin, they were far in advance of ours. This led him to investigate the causes of this superiority. He at once began to take into his own hands the teaching of Latin in our own school.” The two lads had to go a distance of five miles to give these lessons, and Matthew at this time was not strong enough to stand the double walk.