700 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



child crying in the abbey! which had not happened for the whole time he had 

 lived here, being near tliirty years. Down a staircase from here is a long range 

 of bedrooms, generally called the Monks' Walk. From it is a staircase leading 

 into the cloisters. The rest of the house is not worth mentioning. If I was to 

 mention the whole it would tire you exceedingly, as this house is in reality so 

 large that the eight rooms on one floor of the wing which we inhabit, which 

 make not one quarter of even that floor of the whole house, are as many as all 

 the rooms in your house, and considerably larger. 



I have been to the parish church which is at Thornecomb. Mr. Hume has 

 been here a great whUe. Mr. Koe came the other day, and Admiral Ohietekoff 

 is expected. Willie and I have had rides in Mr. Hume's curricle. 



He goes on to say — " What has been omitted here will be found in 

 a journal which I am writing of this and last year's journeys." He 

 then incontinently plunges again into descriptive particulars about the 

 fish-ponds, the river Axe, the deer-parks, the walks, and Bentham's im- 

 provements. The performance is not a favorable specimen of his com- 

 position ; the handwriting is very scratchy, and barely shows what it 

 became a few years later. The reference to Joseph Hume's visit has 

 to be connected with the passage at arms between the elder Mill and 

 Benthara, which I had formerly occasion to notice (" Mind," viii., pp. 

 525, 526). 



By far the most important record of Mill's early 3'ears is his diary 

 during part of his visit to France, in his fifteenth year; and from this 

 I hope to illustrate with some precision the real character of his acqui- 

 sitions and his intellectual power at that age. A very valuable intro- 

 duction to this diary was lately brought to light by Mr. Roebuck, who 

 had fortunately preserved a letter of Mill's that he had received from 

 Jeremy Bentham's amanuensis in 1827. It was addressed to Bentham's 

 brother, Sir Samuel Bentham, and it is dated July 30, 1819, his age be- 

 ing thirteen years and two months. The letter begins thus : 



My Dear Sir : It is so long since I had the pleasure of seeing you that I 

 have almost forgotten when it was, but I believe it was in the year 1814, the 

 first year we were at Ford Abbey. I am very much obliged to you for your in- 

 quiries with respect to my progress in my studies; and as nearly as I can re- 

 member, I will endeavor to give an account of them from that year. 



He then goes on to detail his reading for the successive years from 

 1814. I do not print the details, but will compare them with the " Au- 

 tobiography," and indicate agreements and differences. In the year 

 1814 (by the letter), he read, in Greek, Thucydides and Anacreon (an 

 odd coupling), and, he believed^ the Electra of Sophocles, the Phoenissge 

 of Euripides, the Plutus and the Clouds of Aristophanes, and the Philip- 

 pics of Demosthenes ; in Latin, only the Oration of Cicero for Archias, 

 and part of the pleading against Verres. In Mathematics, he was read- 

 ing Euclid ; he began Euler's Algebra, and worked at Bonnycastle ; 

 also some of West's Geometry. In 1815, his reading was Homer's 



