344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Readers of the " Autobiography " remember the account Mill gives 

 of his two most brilliant successes achieved by the " Review " the sav- 

 ing of Lord Durham, and the rescuing of Carlyle's " French Revolu- 

 tion " from probable failure. In an interesting letter, written soon 

 after the " Review " ceased, he insists with even greater empressement 

 on these two feats, but adds, " My third success is that I have dinned 

 into people's ears that Guizot is a great thinker and writer, till they 

 are, though slowly, beginning to read him which I do not believe 

 they would be doing yet, in this country, but for me." His admira- 

 tion of Guizot persisted some time longer, and led to his most elabo- 

 rate article of all, in the " Edinburgh Review," five years later ; which 

 article he has seen fit to reprint ; but we may suppose that Guizot's 

 subsequent career and writings had a disenchanting effect on him as 

 on many others.* 



Reverting to the salient idea of his political articles for those seven 

 or eight years the fatality of there being no leader of the Radical 

 party, although it was composed of very able men I have often 

 wondered in vain what he expected a leader to do or to be. Every- 

 thing is not possible even to the greatest of chiefs ; and it is doubtful 

 whether any of the men that ever wielded the fierce democracy, from 

 Demosthenes to Gambetta, would have headed a conquering majority 

 in the last years of the Melbourne Ministry. He nearly admits as 

 much, but not without reservation. He says explicitly that his father 

 might have been such a leader ; and even implies that he himself 

 could have made the state of matters very different. We may well 

 hesitate on both heads. That his father would have made an able 

 minister or party leader, we must cheerfully allow ; but his sentiments 

 and views would have required a thick covering of disguise to allow 

 even his being elected to Parliament, and still more to qualify him for 

 meeting that most pressing want of the time Reform of the Church. 



This paper may fitly conclude with the remaining event of impor- 

 tance in the year 1840 the last illness and death of Mill's favorite 

 brother Hen~y, which took place at Falmouth, on the 4th of April, in 

 his nineteenth year. He was sent there in the beginning of the year, 

 for the relief of his complaint consumption ; and John plied him 

 with every kindness that he could devise. He went and lived at Fal- 

 mouth, during his illness, as long as he could get away from his office; 

 and had an opportunity at the same time of seeing a great deal of 



extant indications of his career, but he left few or no reminiscences of his more interest- 

 ing connections. 



* I can not identify all the signatures of the articles in the " Review" ; but, in addition 

 to the contributors incidentally brought forward in the text, I may mention the names of 

 Lytton Bulwer, Charles Buller, J. A. Roebuck, James Martineau, Harriet Martineau, 

 Blanco White, Andrew Bisset, W. J. Fox, Mazzini, George Fletcher, Henry Cole. Never 

 was so much "good blood" infused into a periodical of the same duration. Of old 

 " Reviews," I think it would be difficult to produce nine volumes possessing the same 

 amount of interest and stimulus. 



