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baleful imbroglio, as if that had been its one on the faults and defects of others, even function in life. Who, in this miserable fig- the greatest men." * These qualities ure, would recognize the brilliant, beautiful, were certainly conspicuous by their aband cheerful John Sterling, with his ever- sence in John Mill. flowing wealth of ideas, fancies, imaginations, The circumstances which led to Mill's with his frank affections, inexhaustible hopes, audacities, activities, and general radiant vivac acquaintance with the Foxes were suffiity of heart and intelligence, which made the ciently melancholy.† Late in 1839, or presence of him an illumination and inspiration early in 1840, Henry Mill, his younger wherever he went? . . . Once for all, it is un- and favorite brother, then in his ninejust, emphatically untrue, as an image of John teenth year, was far gone in consumption. Sterling. Perhaps to few men that lived along" Probably encouraged - Carlyle thinks with him could such an interpretation of their by Sterling, he came with his mother existence be more inapplicable.* and sisters to Falmouth. There also came

Caroline Fox possessed every qualification justly to criticise Carlyle's work, and thus she did so:

Sterling and Calvert; all three seeking ref-
uge of climate." To the Mills as well as
to Sterling and Calvert "the doors and
hearts of this kind family"
Carlyle's words of the Foxes
we quote
thrown wide open,"
"Memories ""
scribed in the
beautiful young creature, almost ethereal.
in the exquisite delicacy of his outline
and coloring, and with a most musical
voice." +

Henry Mill is de-
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as a most

That it is calculated to draw fresh obloquy on the subject of it, is a very secondary consideration to the fact that it is a book likely to do much harm to Carlyle's wide enthusiastic public. It is painful enough to see the memorial of his friend made the text for utterances and innuendoes from which one knows that he would now shrink even more than ever, and God alone can limit the mischief. But he can. John Mill afterwards joined the sor That the book is often brilliant and beautiful, rowing group which surrounded the dylyle's, will make it the more read, however ing bed of Henry, and became intimate little the world may care for the subject of the with the Fox family. Henry Mill, like memoir. The graphic parts and the portraiture his elder brother, delighted in a study are generally admirable, but not by any means John Mill's proficiency in which, we susalways so.t pect, is not generally known even among his admirers.

and more human-hearted than most of Car

We now turn to John Stuart Mill. These diaries not only show him in a more genial light than any previous account of him, but they also abundantly illustrate and justify Bishop Thirlwall's remark: "I always considered Mill a noble spirit, who had the misfortune of having been educated by a narrow-minded pedant, who cultivated his intellectual faculties at the expense of all the rest, yet did not succeed in stifling them."§

The elder Mill left a decidedly unpleasant impression upon some of those who knew him. Sir John Bowring, who was associated with him in the earliest years of the Westminster Review, described him to Caroline Fox as "stern, harsh, and sceptical," and added that Bentham said of him that "he rather hated the ruling few than loved the suffering many." || While another intimate associate, Grote, spoke of him as "having all that cynicism and asperity which belong to the Bentha mian School, and of the readiness and seeming preference with which he dwelt

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Botanical students, more than thirty years ago, turning over the leaves of the English Flora," encountered the frequent name of J. S. Mill, as an authority for the habitat or the varieties of flowers. Before the earliest of these papers was written, the author, stripling as he must have been, was already known to distinguished men as a faithful observer of Nature. A holiday walk through the lanes and orchards of Kent, which would have yielded to most youths a week's frolic and a bag of apples, filled his tin box with the materials of a naturalist's reputation.§

Even when Henry was "fast fading from the eyes of those who loved him,' he peculiarly enjoyed looking into flowers, and amused himself in helping his sister to press flowers she had collected, and making the foundation of an herbarium.||

Before leaving the subject of John Mill's botanical pursuits, we may mention that he gave Caroline a calendar of the odors that scent the air, arranged

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chronologically according to the months, beginning with the laurel and ending with the lime. It is addressed "To Miss Caroline Fox, from her grateful friend, J. S. Mill."* Mill continued his botanical pursuits to the very close of his life.

If James Mill, in the case of John Mill, did not entirely succeed in his endeavor to stifle all religious belief and devotional aspiration, he was even less successful with his other children. We read the following entry in Caroline's diary:

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Bain admits that Mill's opinions very fairly set forth; but the thing," he adds, "wanting to do full justice to his conversation is to present it in dialogue, so as to show how he could give and take with his fellow-talker. A well-reported colloquy between him and Sterling would be very much to the purpose." * glorious discourse on reason, self-government, and subjects collateral," of which Caroline professes herself unable to give but the barest idea, "Sterling was the chief speaker, and John Mill would occasionally throw in an idea to clarify an

"In a

Mamma had an interesting little interview with Henry Mill. . . . She led the conversation gradually into a rather more serious chan-involved theory or shed light upon a pronel, and Henry Mill told Clara † afterwards, that her kind manner, her use of the words thee and thou, and her allusions to religious subjects, quite overcame him, and he was on the point of bursting into tears. She gave him a hymn-book, and Clara marked one which she specially recommended "As thy day thy strength shall be." For the last few evenings they have read him a psalm, or some other part of Scripture.‡

Within ten days of his death he conversed tranquilly with his brother about his past life, in which he thought he might have done more and done better; but he hoped his death might be of some use to others- he felt perfect confidence in looking to the future. "We have all we could desire of comfort,' were John Mill's own words, in seeing him in this most tranquil, calm, composed, happy state." §

Caroline first heard from Sterling of Mill "as a man of extraordinary power and genius, the founder of a new school in metaphysics, and a most charming companion." From Clara Mill she learned how their father "had entirely educated John, and made him think prematurely, so that he never had the enjoyment of life peculiar to boys, which he felt to be a great disadvantage." The first impression he made on her she thus describes: "A very uncommon-looking person; such acuteness and sensibility marked in his exquisitely chiselled countenance, more resembling a portrait of Lavater than any other that I remember. His voice is refinement itself, and his mode of expressing himself tallies with voice and countenance." ||

Many and various are the conversations of Mill which these volumes record. Mr.

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found abysmal one."t Of this conversation such a report as Mr. Bain desires would have been most valuable and interesting, but it would be doing Caroline Fox great injustice to estimate her records of Sterling and Mill's conversations as of no higher value than Senior's "Conversations with Distinguished Persons"

every one of whom speaks precisely in the style of Mr. Senior himself, and not with the wit and vivacity of the original interlocutor." Those who remember Mr. Senior in the discharge of the judicial functions of his office,§ and the difficulty verging on impossibility of getting into his mind any idea not previously lodged there, will appreciate this criticism. Caroline Fox had a singularly accurate memory, and an equally singular power of giving from recollection a condensed report of what she heard, wonderfully vivid and almost literally correct," to use words applied by J. Mill to notes of a sermon taken by another of the Fox family. That they were equally applicable to Caroline's notes, may be proved by comparing her notes of Carlyle's lectures with his published volumes. Friends, it appears, cultivated talent || of this kind.¶

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In a sentence, the reconstruction of which, on grammatical principles, Mr. Bain foretells is likely to become one of the stock exercises in our manuals of English composition,** Mill tells us, "I am one of the very few examples in the country of one who has not thrown off religious belief, but never had it," and he further tells us that his father, in giving him an opinion contrary to that of the world, thought it necessary to give it as

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one which could not prudently be avowed | mon opinion, all self-interest. He had read to the world. This lesson," he adds, " of Sewell and Rutty before he was ten years old. keeping my thoughts to myself at that His father much admired Friends, thinking early age was attended with some moral they did more for their fellow-creatures than He (J. S. Mill) much addisadvantages, though my limited inter- any other body. course with strangers, especially such as and values that testimony against a priesthood mires the part Friends have taken about tithes, were likely to speak to me on religion, as at present organized.* prevented me from being placed in the alternative of avowal or hypocrisy."* The moral disadvantage he speaks of may have unconsciously affected him throughout his life.

Two days after Henry Mill's death Calvert spoke to Caroline Fox of the great humility compatible with high metaphysical research, of John Mill standing on one side, and himself on the other, of his brother's death bed, when Calvert remarked: "This sort of scene puts an end to reason, and faith begins." The other emphatically answered "Yes." The conversation which foling as, coming from the first metaphysician of lowed displaying such humility and deep feelthe age, was most edifying.t

Sterling, who in 1840 had long been intimate with Mill, told Caroline Fox: "It was a new thing for Mill to sympathize with religious characters. Some years since he had so imbibed the errors which his father instilled into him, as to be quite a bigot against religion. Sterling thinks he was never in so good a state as now." † We read also of Mill sitting for hours at Here we have only Caroline's note of the foot of Calvert's bed, "who had a Calvert's report of Mill's conversation. racking headache," expatiating on the de- Probably he meant and said only what he lights of "John Woolman " (which he is wrote to a friend under domestic sorrow: reading) and on spiritual religion, which "To my mind the only permanent value he feels to be the deepest and truest. In of religion is in lightening the feeling of this Calvert "thoroughly delights." Cal- total separation which is so dreadful in a vert, we may remark, was brought up real grief." We know, from the "Essay among Friends, but by this time had be- on Theism," that he thought "the benecome an Evangelical Churchman. Speak- ficial effect of the indulgence of hope, ing to Caroline of motives, Mill said: "It with regard to the government of the uniis not well for young people to inquire verse and the destiny of man after death, too much into them, but rather judge of is far from trifling." t actions, lest, seeing the wonderful mixture of high and low, they should be discouraged; there is, besides, an egotism in self-depreciation: the only certain mode of overcoming this and all other egotisms is to implore the grace of God." t

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We cannot but think that Caroline Fox has in her notes of this conversation mixed up her own ideas with those of Mill, and the reference to the grace of God must be her own interpretation of, or gloss on, Mill's words. Shortly after this conversation, Mill, à propos of the Falmouth quarterly meeting of the Friends, wanted to know all about the constitution and discipline of the Society, and then "dilated on the different Friends' books he was reading;" on "John Woolman " he

philosophized on the principle that was active in him-that dependence on the immediate teaching of a superior being, which gave him clear views of what was essentially consistent or inconsistent with Christianity, independent of and often opposed to all recorded or com

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Very shortly after Henry Mill's death, John Mill wrote Barclay Fox a letter of acknowledgment of the kind attentions shown by the Fox family to Henry, of "It is for Mill unwhich Mr. Bain says: usually effusive, and teems with characteristic traits. One not a Christian addressing a Christian family upon death, and wakening up the chords of our common humanity, is a spectacle worth observing."S

In the letter to which Mr. Bain refers

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Among the many serious feelings which such an event || calls forth, there is always some one which impresses us. most, some moral which each person extracts from it for his own more especial guidance; with me that moral is, "Work while it is called to-day; the night cometh in which no man can work." least we know this, that on the day when we shall be as he is, the whole of life will appear but as a day, and the only question of any moment to us will then be, Has that day been wasted? Wasted it has not been by those

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It is a really admirable specimen of popular eloquence of a rude kind. It is well calculated to go to the very core of an untaught hearer. I really believe even this does good when it really penetrates the crust of a sensual and stupid boor, who never thought or knew that be had a soul, or concerned.himself about his spiritual state. But, in allowing that this may do good, I am making a great confession; for I confess it is as revolting to me, as it was to Coleridge, to find infinite justice, or even human justice, represented as a sort of demoni acal rage that must be appeased by blood and anguish, but, provided it has that, cares not whether it is the blood or the anguish of the guilty or the innocent. It seems to me but one step farther, and a step which in spirit at least is often taken, to say of God what the Druids said of their gods that the only acceptable sacrifice to them was a victim pure and without taint. I know not how dangerous may be the ground on which I am treading, or how far the view of the atonement which is taken by this poor preacher may be recognized by your society; or by yourself, but surely a more Christian-like interpretation of that mystery that which, believing that Divine wisdom punishes the sinner for the sinner's sake, and not from an inherent necessity. more heathen than the heathen Nemesis, holds, as Coleridge did, that the sufferings of the Redeemer were (in accordance with the eternal laws on which this system of things is built) an indispensable means of bringing about that change in the hearts of sinners, the want of which is the real and sole hindrance to the universal salvation

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term the mind, as distinguished from the spirit or soul, merely that spirit looking at things, as through a glass darkly, compelled, in short, by the conditions of its terrestrial existence to see and know by means of media, just as the mind uses the bodily organs; for to suppose that the eye is necessary to sight seems to me the notion of one immersed in matter. What we call our bodily sensations are all in the mind, and would not necessarily or probably cease because the body perishes. As the eye is but which, the mind sees, so probably the underthe window through which, not the power by standing is the bodily eye of the human spirit which looks through that window, or rather which sees (as in Plato's case), the camera obscura images of things in this life, while in another it may or might be capable of seeing the things themselves. I do not give you this as my opinion, but as a speculation which you will take for what it is worth."

On the death of Barclay Fox :

It came over Caroline so strongly [to use her own words to Clara Mill] that Barclay would like Mill to be told how mercifully he had been dealt with, and how true his God and Saviour had been to all his promises, that I took cour. age and pen and wrote him a long history. I hope I have not done wrong or foolishly, but I do feel it rather a solemn trust to have such a story to tell of death robbed of its sting and the grave of its victory.*

The editor informs us that both Mill

and his wife sent replies full of tenderness and deep sympathy, but unfortunately they cannot be found.

It will be remembered that in Mill's account of his mental development, after his acquaintance with his wife, he says:

In this third period (as it may be termed) of my mental progress, which now went hand-inbreadth and depth. I understood more things, hand with hers, my opinions gained equally in and those which I had understood before I now understood more thoroughly. I had now completely turned back from what there had been of excess in my reaction against Benthamism. I had, at the height of that reac tion, certainly become much more indulgent to the common opinions of society and the world, and more willing to be content with seconding the superficial improvement which had begun to take place in those common opinions, than became one whose convictions on so many points differed fundamentally from them. was much more inclined than I can now approve to put in abeyance the more decidedly heretical part of my opinions, which I now look upon as almost the only ones, the assertion of which tends in any way to regenerate society. But, in addition to this, our opinions were far more heretical than mine had been in the days of my most extreme Benthamism.f * Ibid., p. 237;

† Autobiography, pp. 230-1.

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After an interval of many years Caroline, for the last time, saw Carlyle at Mentone, where, after his wife's death, Lady Ashburton kindly induced him to visit her. "It made me," Caroline says, "sad to think of him, his look, and most of his talk, were so dreary." And no wonder; we never read anything more melancholy than her vivid sketch. Carlyle was by nature vain and egotistic, and therefore spiteful:* he had a merely provincial

Dates are but scantily given in the Autobiography," but we know that Mill's acquaintance with Mrs. Taylor began in 1831, and so when he visited Falmouth, had already lasted nine years. We do not know at what date Mill fixed the height of his reaction against Benthamism, and of his undue conformity to the world. Nor do we know whether he refers to his intercourse with the Foxes as one of the occasions when he put in abeyance his heretical opinions, and was over-education. His life, for the greater part indulgent to society and the world.

On the whole, although there is some difficulty in reconciling these conversations and letters of Mill's with other expressions of his views, the difficulty is probably more apparent than real. In his intercourse with the Foxes he exemplified, what one who knew him well has told us, that he was "peculiarly considerate and gentle in his relations with sincere, and estimable persons, holding opinions which he believed to be errone

ous."

of it, was one of poverty, and always of physical suffering; in his earlier years he mixed little with any society. At all times he despised ordinary people, and many who were far more than ordinary. In his later years-to borrow words in which Mill was described by one who knew him from early years-he" affected something of the life of a prophet, surrounded by admiring votaries, who minis. tered to him largely that incense in which prophets delight." As portrayed by Caroline Fox in these latter days, he resembles nothing so much as Bunyan's Giant Pope, "grown so crazy and stiff in his joints, that he can now do little more than sit in his cave's mouth grinning at pilgrims as they go by, and biting his nails because he cannot come at them." At this last meeting Carlyle, after railing "at the accursed train with its devilish howls and yells, driving one distracted," went on to the state of England:

It is high time to bring this over-long paper to a close, but before doing so, we must refer to a Cornish philosopher, of whom mention is made, who thought that civilization and knowledge of the arts is rather "retro- than progressive, and was severe on all who thought otherwise. Adam and Eve, he held, were perfect in all sciences, literature, and art, and ever since their time we have been steadily forgetting." This is a new light in which to consider our first parents. It is difficult to realize Adam holding "inartic-is ulately," as Carlyle would have said, the principles of the "Novum Organum," or Eve" inarticulately anticipating Mrs. Mill in her views on "the subjection of women."

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Of Carlyle, the world has lately heard almost as much as for the present it cares to hear. But of Caroline's many recollections of him, we cannot refrain from noticing one or two. Carlyle, without doubt, aped Johnson, and not least in the habit in discussion of taking, on any subject, the opposite side to that taken by any one, with whom he might be talking. More suo, Carlyle was lecturing to the Foxes and compared Francia, the dictator of Paraguay, with Cromwell, much to the disparagement of Francia. Mrs. Carlyle broke in with "Why, a short time ago Francia was all in favor, and would be again if you had but a little contradiction." †

Vol. ii., p. 250. ↑ Ibid., p. 29.

"Oh! this cry for Liberty! Liberty! which just liberty to do the devil's work, instead of binding him with ten thousand bands-just those sort of places. Why, it is all going going the way of France and America, and down hill as fast as it can go, and of no significance to me. I have done with it. I can take no interest in it at all, nor feel any sort of hope for the country. It is not the liberty to keep the Ten Commandments that they are crying out for-that used to be enough for the genuine man— - but liberty to carry on their own prosperity, as they call it. And so, there is all shoddy. Go into any shop you will, and is no longer anything genuine to be found. It ask for any article, and ye'll find it all one enormous lie. The country is going to perdi. tion at a frightful pace. I give it about fifty years yet to accomplish its fall." Spoke of Gladstone-"Is not he a man of principle?" "Oh, Gladstone! I did hope well of him once, and so did John Sterling, though I heard he the right thing for a State to feel itself bound was a Puseyite, and so forth. Still, it seemed

See his letter to his mother, Froude's Life of Carlyle, vol. i., p. 254; and vol. ii., p. 348.

t Edinburgh Review, January, 1874, as quoted by Bain, p. 187.

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