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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



and brighter than we can at present dare to hope. 

 Meantime, to economize nitrogen, phosphorus, 

 and potash, to recover these bodies from waste, 

 and to find substitutes for their present " profli- 

 gate " applications, is the most sacred task which 

 the chemist can take in hand. The reforms which 

 may shield us from occasional pestilence sink into 



insignificance compared with those required to 

 guard posterity, in a not very remote future, from 

 chronic scarcity, from recurrent famine, and from 

 a wolfish struggle for food, in which man must 

 relapse into a worse savagery than that from 

 which he has emerged. — Quarterly Journal of 

 Science. 



THE HINTONS: FATIIEE AND SON. 



By GEOKGE PEARD. 



MOST Londoners know Bartholomew Close 

 as it wa3 at about the turn of the half- 

 century, and the dark, narrow, arched passage 

 that leads into it. You could not enter the Close 

 without being struck by a certain — we were go- 

 ing to say — epiphanous brass plate, bearing the 

 name " Hinton." There is no such word as epi- 

 phanous, but there might be, and the brass plate» 

 which he who ran could read, was quite a mani- 

 festation. On a Sunday, at about half-past one, 

 you might perhaps see entering the dark arch- 

 way a tall, gaunt, absent, very serious, elderly 

 man, who wore an old-fashioned white neck-cloth, 

 and looked as if he had rather been violently 

 thrust into his clothes than had put them on him 

 in a genial spirit. The tall gentleman was usu- 

 ally accompanied by a stout lady. This was Mrs. 

 Hinton, and the gentleman was the Rev. John 

 Howard Hinton, Baptist minister of Devonshire 

 Chapel — the most thoroughly intellectual Dis- 

 senting preacher in London. He was going to 

 dine with his son, Mr. James Hinton, surgeon, in- 

 stead of going home to Dalston. 



This sounds rather like the opening of one of 

 G. P. R. James's novels, but it will serve. We 

 have introduced to the reader two most remark- 

 able men. The son, whose death two years ago 

 was so much lamented, is nearer to us, shows 

 larger, and had greatly the advantage in culture, 

 in tenderness, and in poetic impulse. Whether 

 his total power was greater it would be hard to 

 say. We should think it was ; or it might be 

 more accurate to say that his quality was finer, 

 and his range wider. Hinton pere was before his 

 time, and everybody who reads his book on " The 

 Harmony of Religious Truth and Human Reason " 

 will see at a glance that as a thinker he moved in 

 fetters. The new generation have but a poor idea 

 of the pertinacity with which orthodox thumb- 

 screws were applied in those days. Howard Hin- 



ton was considered a dangerous man because he 

 openly preached against material fire in hell, and 

 because he had invented a way of his own for 

 relaxing the pressure of the old Calvinism. He 

 was in a special sense an intellectual preacher. 

 When Nonconformist country cousins came to 

 London in those days, the question for Sunday 

 morning was, " Well, shall we go to hear Binney 

 or Hinton ? " For not a few — as for the present 

 writer — Binney was too courtly, too compliant, 

 as well as too uncertain as to the quality. He 

 would often give you as bad a sermon as you 

 could desire to hear ; but you could not tell any- 

 thing about it till he got into the pulpit. Then, 

 a quick observer could nearly always tell. The 

 penitential part of his prayers would be un- 

 usually prolonged and abject. We have said to 

 ourselves : " What ever has he been up to this 

 week ? Picking pockets, perhaps." He would 

 rub his great bald head uneasily, as if he would 

 like to disappear through a trap-door ; and the 

 sermon would come with difficulty. It is without 

 one atom of sympathy with the general thirst for 

 " good sermons " that we now write this. Bin- 

 ney was never so touching as at those times when, 

 as George Herbert puts it, God took the text 

 and preached patience — and more. We only de- 

 sire to lead up to the remark that you could al- 

 ways depend on Hinton. We never heard him 

 deliver a weak discourse — never one which did 

 not impress us with a sense of his mastery of 

 his subject. He had no manuscript before him ; 

 we never saw a note ; and yet we never heard a 

 weak-kneed or broken sentence — never noticed 

 a moment's hesitation. The time he daily spent 

 in the study must have been immense ; and, in- 

 deed, it is on record that it was so. In the morn- 

 ing he would, as he read a chapter, expound it 

 with the most minute care, taking a wide range 

 in hia topics and allusions. If the chapter was 



