John Stuart Mill | Page 9

one. The only things really hateful to
him were arrogance and injustice, and for these he was, to say the least,
as willing and eager to find excuse as could be the most devout utterer
of the prayer, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
We had noted many instances, coming within our own very limited
observation, of his remarkable, almost unparalleled magnanimity and
generosity; but such details would here be almost out of place, and they
who need such will doubtless before long receive much more
convincing proof of his moral excellence.

We shall not here dilate on those minor qualities of mind and heart that
made Mr. Mill's society so charming to all who were fortunate enough
to have any share in it; and these, especially in recent years, were many.
When the first burden of his grief at the loss of his wife had
passed,--perhaps partly as a relief from the solitude, save for one
devoted companion, that would otherwise have been now forced upon
him,--he mixed more freely than he had done before in the society of
all whose company could yield him any satisfaction or by whom his
friendship was really valued. His genial and graceful bearing towards
every one who came near him must be within the knowledge of very
many who will read this column; and they will remember, besides his
transparent nobility of character, and the genial ways in which it
exhibited itself, certain intellectual qualities for which he was
remarkable. We here refer, not to his higher abilities as a thinker, but to
such powers of mind as displayed themselves in conversation. Without
any pedantry,--without any sort of intentional notification to those with
whom he conversed that he was the greatest logician, metaphysician,
moralist, and economist of the day,--his speech was always, even on
the most trivial subjects, so clear and incisive, that it at once betrayed
the intellectual vigor of the speaker. Not less remarkable also than his
uniform refinement of thought, and the deftness with which he at all
times expressed it, were the grasp and keenness of his observation, and
the strength of memory with which he stored up every thing he had
ever seen, heard, or read. Nothing escaped his notice at the time of its
occurrence: nothing was forgotten by him afterwards. His friends often
found, to their astonishment, that he knew far more about any passages
in their lives that he had been made aware of than they could
themselves remember; and, whenever that disclosure was made to them,
they must have been rejoiced to think, that this memory of his, instead
of being, as it might well have been, a dangerous garner of severe
judgments and fairly-grounded prejudices, was a magic mirror, in
which their follies and foibles were hardly at all reflected, and only
kindly reminiscences and generous sympathies found full expression.
But he is dead now. Although the great fruits of his life--a life in which
mind and heart, in which senses and emotions, were singularly well
balanced--are fruits that cannot die, all the tender ties of friendship, all
the strictly personal qualities that so much aided his work as a teacher

of the world, as the foremost leader of his generation in the search after
truth and righteousness, are now snapped forever. Only four weeks ago
he left London for a three-months' stay in Avignon. Two weeks ago he
was in his customary health. On the 5th of May he was attacked by a
virulent form of erysipelas. On the 8th he died. On the 10th he was
buried in the grave to which he had, through fourteen years, looked
forward as a pleasant resting-place, because during fourteen years there
had been in it a vacant place beside the remains of the wife whom he so
fondly loved.
H. R. FOX BOURNE.

II.
HIS CAREER IN THE INDIA HOUSE
I have undertaken to prepare a sketch of Mr. Mill's official career, but
find, on inquiry, scarcely any thing to add to the few particulars on the
subject which have already found their way into print. Of his early
official associates, all have, with scarcely an exception, already passed
away; and there is no one within reach to whom I can apply for
assistance in verifying or correcting my own impressions. These are in
substance the following.
In the few last decades of its existence, the East-India Company's
establishment, in Leadenhall Street, consisted of three divisions,--the
secretary's, military secretary's, and examiners' offices,--in the last of
which most of the despatches and letters were composed which were
afterwards signed by the directors or the secretary. Into this division, in
the year 1821, the directors, perceiving an infusion of new blood to be
very urgently required, introduced, as assistant examiners, four
outsiders,--Mr.