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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for scenery and his powers of description. He depicts climate, produc- 

 tions, villages, the habits of the people, as well as the views that were 

 encountered. The party make the ascent of Le Pic du Midi de Bigorre, 

 and he is in raptures with the prospect. " Mais jamais je n'oublierai 

 la vue du cote meridionale." In short, to describe its magnificence 

 would need a volume ! 



We may now conceive with some degree of precision the intellectual 

 caliber of this marvelous boy. In the first place we learn the number 

 of hours that he could devote to study each day. From two to three 

 hours before breakfast, about five hours between breakfast and dinner, 

 and two or three in the evening, make up a working day of nine hours 

 clear ; and while at Toulouse scarcely any portion of his reading could 

 be called recreative. His lightest literature was in French, and was in- 

 tended as practice in the language. Probably at home his reading-day 

 may have often been longer ; it would scarcely ever be shorter. For a 

 scholar in mature years eight or nine hours' reading would not be ex- 

 traordinary ; but then there is no longer the same tasking of the mem- 

 ory. Mill's power of application all through his early years was without 

 doubt amazing; and, although he suffered from it in premature ill-health, 

 it was a foretaste of what he could do throughout his whole life. It 

 attested a combination of cerebral activity and constitutional vigor 

 that is as rare as genius ; his younger brothers succumbed under a far 

 less severe discipline. 



That the application was excessive, I for one will affirm without 

 any hesitation. That his health suffered we have ample evidence, which 

 I shall afterward produce. That his mental progress might have been 

 as great with a smaller strain on his powers, I am strongly inclined to 

 believe, although the proof is not so easy. We must look a little closer 

 at the facts. 



I can not help thinking that the rapid and unbroken transitions 

 from one study to another must have been unfavorable to a due impres- 

 sion on the memory. He lost not a moment in passing from subject to 

 subject in his reading : he hurried home from his music-lesson or fenc- 

 ing-lesson to his books. Now, we know well enough that the nervous 

 currents, when strongly aroused in any direction, tend to persist for 

 some time : in the case of learning anything, this persistence will count 

 in stamping the impression ; and part of the effect of a lesson must be 

 lost in hurrying without a moment's break to something new, even al- 

 though the change of subject was of the nature of relief. By his own 

 account, his lessons at Toulouse, with the exception of French and mu- 

 * sic, took no effect upon him. Nor is this the worst feature of Mill's 

 programme. According to our present notions of physical and mental 

 training, he ought to have had a decided break in the afternoon. Con- 

 sidering that he was at work from about six in the morning, with only 

 half an hour for breakfast, he should clearly have had, between one and 

 two, a cessation of several hours, extending over dinner ; especially as 



