JOHN STUART MILL. 37 i 



had the happiness to belong to her. As earnest for all public good as 

 she was generous and devoted to all who surrounded her, her influence 

 has been felt in many of the greatest improvements of the age, and will 

 be in those still to come. Were there even a few hearts and intellects 

 like hers, this earth would already become the hoped-for heaven." 

 Henceforth, during the fourteen years and a half that were to elapse 

 before he should be laid in the same grave, Avignon was the chosen 

 haunt of Mr. Mill. 



Passing much of his time in the modest house that he had bought, 

 that he might be within sight of his wife's tomb, Mr. Mill was also fre- 

 quently in London, whither he came especially to facilitate the new 

 course of philosophical and political writing on which he entered. He 

 found relief also in excursions, one of which was taken nearly every 

 year, in company with his step-daughter, Miss Helen Taylor, into va- 

 rious parts of Europe. Italy, Switzerland, and many other districts 

 were explored, partly on foot with a keen eye both to the natural feat- 

 ures of the localities, especially in furtherance of those botanical 

 studies to which Mr. Mill now returned with the ardor of his youth, 

 and also to their social and j)olitical institutions. 



HIS CAREER IN THE INDIA HOUSE. 



BY W. T. THOKNTOST. 



Ik 1823 the illustrious subject of these brief memoirs, then a lad 

 of seventeen, obtained a clerkship under his father. According to the 

 ordinary course of things in those days, the newly-appointed junior 

 would have had nothing to do, except a little abstracting, indexing, 

 and searching or pretending to search into records ; but young Mill 

 was almost immediately set to indite dispatches to the governments of 

 the three Indian Presidencies, on what, in India House phraseology, 

 were distinguished as " political " subjects subjects, that is, for the 

 most part growing out of the relations of the said governments with 

 " native " states or foreign potentates. This continued to be his busi- 

 ness almost to the last. In 1828 he was promoted to be Assistant Ex- 

 aminer, and in 1856 he succeeded to the post of Chief Examiner, after 

 which his duty consisted rather in supervising what his Assistants had 

 written than in writing himself; but, for the three-and-twenty years 

 preceding, he had had immediate charge of the Political Department, 

 and had written almost every " political " dispatch of any importance 

 that conveyed the instructions of the merchant princes of Leaden- 

 hall Street to their proconsuls in Asia. Of the quality of these docu- 

 ments it is sufficient to say that they were John Mill's; but, in respect 

 to their quantity, it may be worth mentioning that a descriptive cata- 

 logue of them completely fills a small quarto volume of between 300 

 and 400 pages, in their author's handwriting, which now lies before me ; 

 also that the share of the Court of Directors in the correspondence be- 

 tween themselves and the Indian governments used to average annually 



