xii George Bentham , F.R.S. 
for five weeks before arriving at Carlscrona ; and there were 
as many equally stormy weeks in their passage thence in an 
ill-found merchantman to Harwich, where the family arrived 
in a half-starved condition, having been reduced to picking up 
stray scraps of biscuit in out-of-the-way corners of the cabins. 
In England Sir Samuel Bentham took up his residence at 
Hampstead in the summer months, daily visiting his office 
at the Admiralty. In winter he resorted to a small house 
and property called Berry Lodge 1 , between Alverstoke and 
Gosport, which was in convenient proximity to Portsmouth 
Dockyard. The boys meanwhile pursued their studies under 
private tutors, a plan continued throughout the whole course 
of George’s education. It was a life-long source of regret with 
George that he had never been sent to school or college, 
which may account for a shyness and reserve, attributed by 
those that did not know him to a want of sympathy. 
In 1812-13, the invasion of Russia by Napoleon, and the 
burning of Moscow, naturally caused great excitement in 
the Bentham family. It led to the first appearance of 
George, then only 13, before the public; he, with his brother 
and sisters, contributing to the London Magazine a series of 
papers, gleaned from Russian sources, detailing the operations 
of the armies, and glorying in the reverses and final 
abdication of Napoleon. 
After the proclamation of peace, Sir Samuel Bentham took 
his family to France, and resided successively at Tours, 
Saumur, and Paris. During this period, which extended from 
Napoleon’s return from Russia to his final overthrow, young 
Bentham kept a full journal of all that passed, interspersed 
with anecdotes relating to the forced exile of Louis, the 
restoration of the Bourbons, the execution of Ney and 
1 It was from here that, while George was still in his teens, his father took him 
on a visit to Lady Spencer at Ryde, at whose house he met John Stuart Mill, 
a lad of six, dressed in a scarlet jacket buttoned over nankeen trousers, and con- 
sidered to be a prodigy. Bentham has described him to me as having been 
wonderfully precocious, a Greek and Latin scholar, historian and logician, whom 
he heard discussing with Lady Spencer the relative merits of her ancestor, the Duke 
of Marlborough, and of Wellington, young Mill taking the part of the latter. 
