702 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



his stay in France, is by far the most satisfactory record that is now to 

 be had of his youthful studies.^ 



We have his reading and all his other occupations recorded day by 

 day, together with occasional reflections and discussions that attest his 

 thinking power at that age. The diary was regularly transmitted to 

 his father. At first he writes in English ; but, as one of the purposes 

 of his visiting France was to learn the language, he soon changes to 

 French. Printed in full it would be nearly as long as this article. I 

 shall endeavor -to select some of the more illustrative details. 



He left London on May 15, 1830, five days before completing 

 his fourteenth year. He traveled in company with Mr. Ensor, an Irish 

 gentleman, a friend of his father's. The diary recounts all the incidents 

 of the journey — the coach to Dover, the passage across, the thirty- 

 three hours in the diligence to Paris. He goes first to a hotel, but, on 

 presenting an introduction by his father to M. Say, he is invited to the 

 house of that distinguished political economist. The family of the 

 Says — an eldest son, Horace Say, a daughter at home, the youngest 

 son, Alfred, at school en pension, but coming home on Saturday and 

 Sunday, and their mother — devote themselves to taking him about 

 Paris. He gives his father an account of all the sights, but without 

 much criticism. His moral indignation bursts forth in his account of 

 the Palais Royal, an " immense building belonging to the profligate 

 Due d'Orleans, who, having ruined himself with debauchery, resolved 

 to let the arcades of his palace to various tradesmen." The Sunday 

 after his arrival (May 21) is so hot that he did not go out, but played 

 at battledore and shuttlecock with Alfred Say. He delivers various 

 messages from his father and Bentham, and contracts new acquaint- 

 ances, from whom he receives further attentions. The most notable 

 was the Count Berthollet, to whom he took a paper from Bentham. 

 Madame Berthollet showed him her very beautiful garden, and desired 

 him to call on his return ; he learned afterward that he was to meet 

 Laplace. On the 27th, after nine days' stay in Paris, he bids good-by 

 to Mr. Ensor and the Says, and proceeds on his way to join the Ben- 

 tham family, then at a chateau belonging to the Marquis de Pompi- 



' Sir Samuel Bentham, the brother of Jeremy Bentham, was himself a remarkable 

 man. His first service was in the Russian Army, where his soldiering was intermingled 

 with suggestions for improvements of all sorts, and especially mechanical inventions, for 

 which he had a pronounced genius. One of his proposals to the Russian government 

 was the Panopticon prison, of which he was the originator. He came over to England 

 in 1*795, and received from our Government the appointment of Superintendent of the 

 Dockyard at Portsmouth, where his talent for invention had scope in the improvement of 

 the navy. He married the daughter of an early friend of his brother. Dr. John Fordyce, 

 a physician in London, called by Bentham "one of the coldest of the cold Scotch " ; this 

 lady had the domestic supervision of Mill for more than a year. On retiring from the 

 Dockyard, Sir Samuel bought an estate in the South of France for the sake of a residence 

 there ; and this led to his inviting Mill to reside with him, first at Toulouse, and after- 

 ward at Montpellier. The family consisted of one son, Mr. George Bentham, the well- 

 known botanist, and three daughters — all older than Mill. 



