te out this strange, solemn,
emasculate proposition, "Mill's 'Autobiography' contains proof that a
soul, with an infinite craving for God, not finding Him, will worship
anything--a woman, a memory!"

This almost makes one think that the good Bishop was paraphrasing and
reversing Voltaire's remark, "When a woman no longer finds herself
acceptable to man she turns to God."

What the world thought of Mill's wife is not vital--what he thought of
her, certainly was. I quote from the "Autobiography," which Edward
Everett Hale calls "two lives in one--written by one of them":

Between the time of which I have now spoken, and the present, took
place the most important events of my life.

The first of these was my marriage to the lady whose incomparable
worth had made her friendship the greatest source to me both of
happiness and of improvement. For seven and a half years that
blessing was mine; for seven and a half only! I can say nothing
which could describe, even in the faintest manner, what that loss
was, and is. But because I know that she would have wished it, I
endeavor to make the best of what life I have left, and to work on
for her purposes with such diminished strength as can be derived
from the thoughts of her, and communion with her memory.

When two persons have thoughts and speculations completely in
common; when all subjects of intellectual and moral interests are
discussed between them in daily life, and probed to much greater
depths than are usually or conveniently sounded in writings intended
for general readers; when they set out from the same principles, and
arrive at their conclusions by processes pursued jointly, it is of
little consequence, in respect to the question of originality, which
of them holds the pen; the one who contributes the least to the
composition may contribute most of the thought; the writings which
result are the joint product of both, and it must often be
impossible to disentangle their respective parts, and affirm that
this belongs to one and that to the other. In this wide sense, not
only during the years of our married life, but during many of the
years of confidential friendship which preceded, all my published
writings were as much her work as mine, her share in them constantly
increasing as years advanced. But in certain cases, what belongs to
her can be distinguis