ght forward its author and his
peculiarities as subjects of general conversation. Not content with
having talked these matters pretty well over some months ago, people are
at this moment discussing them with not a whit less of interest than if
they were brand-new. But it is what Mr. Mill has omitted to tell us in
his _Autobiography_, quite as much as what he has there told us, that
excites popular curiosity about him. How came it that a man whose
admiration of his wife was hardly distinguishable from idolatry should
never once mention his mother? Thousands have asked, and have asked in
vain, who she was, and whether she could have been so entirely
insignificant as to deserve being passed over, without even so much as
an allusion to her, by her very philosophic son. These questions, and
others connected with them, I might answer at length. However, the few
facts I shall here state will perhaps be no less welcome than a long
detail. The wife of James Mill, and mother of John Mill, was a Miss
Burrows, daughter of a Dr. Burrows who superintended an asylum for the
insane at Islington. She died in London about twenty years ago, having
outlived her husband not quite that period. Her children were nine in
number, of whom four daughters are still living--two in England and two
in France. She was not what would be reckoned a conspicuously
intellectual woman, and yet she by no means deserved the heartless
slight which was put on her memory by her son. Indeed, such a slight
could have its justification in little short of utter worthlessness;
and Mrs. James Mill was not only esteemed, but beloved, by a large
circle of friends. On the appearance of the _Autobiography_ her
daughters were, naturally enough, not a little indignant at finding
their mother as much ignored in it as if she had never existed, and were
inclined, at first, to supplement, publicly, their brother's account of
himself by certain disclosures not exactly of a character to exalt him
in the estimation of the world. Suffice it to say here that for many
years before his death he had been estranged from his family; and this
estrangement was attributed, by those who had the best opportunities of
judging, to the sinister influence of his wife. This is all that I am
disposed to communicate at present, but I should not be at all surprised
if we were to know, by and by, much more of the private life of John
Mill than we as yet know.

NOTES.

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