When Mr. Young went to the village, with the exception of a Bible, a Prayer Book, a random tract or two, and a _Moore's Almanac_, there was scarcely a book to be found in it. The rector kindly allowed his clerk the run of his well-stocked library. Hinton devoured the books greedily. So receptive and imitative was his intellect that his conversation, his deportment, even his spirit, became imbued with the individuality of the author whose writings he had been studying. After reading Dr. Johnson's works his conversation became sententious and dogmatic. _Lord Chesterfield's Letters_ produced an airiness and jauntiness that were quite foreign to his nature. His favourite authors were Jeremy Taylor, Bacon, and Milton. After many months reverential communion with these Goliaths of literature he became pensive and contemplative, and his manner more chastened and severe. The secluded village in which he dwelt had been his birthplace, and there he remained to the day of his death. He knew nothing of the outer world, and the rector found his intercourse with a man so original, fresh, and untainted a real pleasure. He was physically timid, and the account of a voyage across the Channel or a journey by coach filled him with dread. One day he said to Mr. Young, "Am I, reverend sir, to understand that you voluntarily trust your perishable body to the outside of a vehicle, of the soundness of which you know nothing, and suffer yourself to be drawn to and fro by four strange animals, of whose temper you are ignorant, and are willing to be driven by a coachman of whose capacity and sobriety you are uninformed?" On being assured that such was the case, he concluded that "the love of risk and adventure must be a very widely-spread instinct, seeing that so many people are ready to expose themselves to such fearful casualties." He was grateful to think that he had never been exposed to such terrific hazards. What the worthy clerk would have said concerning the risks of motoring somewhat baffles imagination.