PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE 
ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH. 
yol. ym. 1873-74. No. 88. 
Ninety-First Session. 
Monday, 2 d February 1874. 
Professor Sir WILLIAM THOMSON, President, 
in the Chair. 
The following Obituary Notices of Deceased Fellows of 
the Society were read : — 
1. Biographical Notice of J. S. Mill. By Professor Fraser. 
John Stuart Mill was born in London on the 20th of May 1806, 
and died at Avignon on the 8th of May 1873. He was of Scotch 
descent. He was connected with Edinburgh not only as having been 
an honorary member of this Society, but because his father, James 
Mill, the historian of British India, and author of the u Analysis of 
the Human Mind,” received his academical education here. His 
grandfather was a small farmer, at Northwater Bridge, in the 
county of Angus, of whom I find nothing more recorded. The 
father, by his extraordinary intellectual promise when a boy, drew 
the attention of Sir John Stuart, then member for Kincardine- 
shire, by whom he was sent to the University of Edinburgh, at the 
expense of a fund, established by Lady J ane Stuart and some other 
ladies, for educating young men for the Church of Scotland. 
Towards the end of last century, James Mill attended the classes 
in Arts and Divinity. He was a pupil of Dalziel, the Professor of 
G-reek, whose prelections he attended, I believe, for three sessions, 
and his philosophical powers were called forth by Dugald Stewart’s 
2 L 
VOL. vm. 
