336 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



weakness of stomach. In both these organs he was subject to recur- 

 ring derangements for the rest of his life.* 



The " London Review," projected in 1834, started in April, 1835. 

 Sir William Molesworth undertook the whole risk, and Mill was to 

 be editor, although he considered it incompatible with his office to be 

 openly proclaimed in that capacity. His father lent his latest energies 

 to the scheme, and opened the first number with a political article, 

 entitled " The State of the Nation " a survey of the situation of public 

 affairs in the beginning of 1835, in his usual style. John Mill's first 

 contribution was the Sedgwick article. I have heard that Sedgwick 

 himself confessed that he had been writing about what he did not 

 understand, but my informant was not himself a Cambridge man. 

 Effective as the article was for its main purpose of defending the " Utili- 

 tarian Ethics " against a sciolist, it.always seemed to me rather weak in 

 the introduction, which consists in putting the question, " For what 

 end do endowed universities exist ? " and in answering, " To keep alive 

 philosophy." In his mind, philosophy seemed to mean chiefly advanced 

 views in politics and in ethics; which, of course, came into collision with 

 religious orthodoxy and the received commonplaces of society. Such a 

 view of the functions of a university would not be put forth by any 

 man that had ever resided in a university ; and this is not the only oc- 

 casion when Mill dogmatized on universities in total ignorance of their 

 working. 



The second number of the " Review " is chiefly notable for his fa- 

 ther's article on " Reform in the Church." It is understood that this 

 article gave a severe shock to the religious public ; it was a style of 

 reform that the ordinary churchman could not enter into. The pros- 

 jDects of the " Review " were said to be very much damaged in conse- 

 quence. John Mill wrote on Samuel Bailey's " Rationale of Political 

 Representation." Bailey's views being in close accordance with his 

 own, he chiefly uses the work as an enforcement of the radical creed. 

 After Bentham and the Mills, no man of their generation w r as better 

 grounded in logical methods, or more thorough in his method of grap- 

 pling with political and other questions, than Samuel Bailey. 



In the same number Mill reviews Tennyson's poems. He assigns 

 as his inducement that the only influential organs that had as yet 

 noticed them were " Blackwood " and the " Quarterly Review " ; on 

 which notices he pronounces a decided and not flattering opinion. He 

 is, accordingly, one of the earliest to mete out justice to Tennyson's 

 powers ; and as a critical exercise, as well as a sympathetic appreciation, 

 the article is highly meritorious. In numerous instances besides, Mill 

 was among the first, if not the very first, to welcome a rising genius. 



* He took the opportunity of studying Roman history while in Italy ; and in Rome 

 itself he read Niebuhr. It was long a design of his to write the philosophy of the rise 

 of the Roman power, but he failed to satisfy himself that he possessed an adequate clew. 

 So late as 1844, or 1845, he was brooding over a review article on this subject. 



