oy with so heavy a burden of learning is very prone to an equal
amount of self-conceit. But the father tried to overcome this danger
by holding up a very high standard of comparison,--"not what other
people did, but what a man could and ought to do." He succeeded so
well that the boy was not aware that his attainments were
extraordinary. "I neither estimated myself highly nor lowly; I did not
estimate myself at all. If I thought anything about myself, it was
that I was rather backward in my studies, since I always found myself
so, in comparison of what my father expected of me." To this assertion
Mr. Mill very candidly adds: "I assert this with confidence, though it
was not the impression of various persons who saw me in my childhood.
They, as I have since found, thought me greatly and disagreeably
self-conceited; probably because I was disputatious, and did not
scruple to give direct contradictions to things which I heard said."

A boy who is kept at his studies as assiduously as was young Mill has
little time for play or association with other boys. This lack of
contact with companions is a grave defect in the education of Mill. "I
constantly remained long," writes Mill, "and in a less degree have
always remained, inexpert in anything requiring manual dexterity; my
mind, as well as my hands, did its work very lamely when it was
applied, or ought to have been applied, to the practical details
which, as they are the chief interest of life to the majority of men,
are also the things in which whatever mental capacity they have,
chiefly shows itself."

On the whole we feel that the childhood of Mill could hardly have been
a happy one. The joy of physical achievement, the free-hearted
abandonment of the young barbarian at his play, the power to do as
well as to know--these are the birthright of every child. But while we
may pity him for his lack of these joys, we dare not forget that to
have lived the life or done the work of John Stuart Mill is no small
thing. And perhaps this life could not have been lived had his
education been other than it was.

XXXIV

CARLYLE GOES TO THE UNIVERSITY

One of the most tender pictures in the history of English literature
is that of Carlyle as he starts for his University career. Just a boy,
a child not yet fourteen! It is early morning in November at
Ecclefechan--and Edinburgh with its famous University is a hundred
miles away. The father and mother have risen early to get T