456 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



be seen in Mill's conduct on retiring from the India House in 1858 

 after thirty-five years of service. His friends in the Examiner's Office, 

 including every member of the force, desired to present him with a 

 suitable token of regard. In half an hour after the matter was pro- 

 posed, subscriptions were eagerly volunteered to the amount of fifty or 

 sixty pounds, while outside contributions were jealously refused, as 

 those in immediate service under the retiring examiner insisted on 

 sharing with no outsiders the pleasure and honor of making this testi- 

 monial. But before the gift, an elaborate silver inkstand, could be got 

 ready, the one for whom it was designed caught the scent and was 

 greatly displeased. Approaching the originator of the plan, W. T. 

 Thornton (as will have been surmised), he almost upbraided him, and 

 was really angry, so far as it was in him to cherish anger. He said he 

 hated all such demonstrations; was sure they were never wholly 

 genuine; there were always some who took part in them only because 

 they disliked to refuse; and, in short, he positively would have none of 

 it. With him it was a question of principle, and where a principle was 

 involved he could not give way, despite the obvious awkwardness in 

 store for Thornton and his associates. The matter had gone too far 

 to be dropped altogether, and finally the assistance of Mill's step- 

 daughter, Helen Taylor, was invoked; the inkstand was smuggled into 

 the house without Mill's knowledge, and, thanks to Miss Taylor, instead 

 of being promptly returned, it was in the end promoted to a place of 

 honor in the drawing-room. Mill's excessive devotion to his wife, a 

 devotion that manifests itself in some of his writings as idolatrous 

 worship, proves the warmth of his heart, however clearly it may betray 

 a lamentable clouding of the judgment by a passion to which he, of 

 all men, had seemed least likely to fall a victim. 



From the many who knew Mill in his lifetime, abundant testimony 

 could be quoted to prove the charm and purity of his nature, as well as 

 the intellectual and moral stimulus of his personality. " Intimacy with 

 Mr. Mill convinced me," says Henry Fawcett, " that, if he had happened 

 to live at either of the universities, his personal influence would have 

 been no less striking than his intellectual influence. Nothing, perhaps, 

 was so remarkable in his character as his tenderness to the feelings of 

 others, and the deference with which he listened to those in every respect 

 inferior to himself. There never was a man who was more entirely free 

 from that intellectual conceit which breeds disdain. Nothing is so 

 discouraging and heart-breaking to young people as the sneer of an 

 intellectual cynic. A sarcasm about an act of youthful mental en- 

 thusiasm not only often casts a fatal chill over the character, but is 

 resented as an injury never to be forgiven. The most humble youth 

 would have found in Mr. Mill the warmest and most kindly sympathv." 

 An anecdote from the same source illustrates another equally admirable 



