aving returned to England in November. He followed
her in the spring, sailing from Bombay on April 22, 1872. To most people
a voyage following two years and a half of unremitting labour would have
been an occasion for a holiday. With him, however, to end one task was
the same thing as to begin another, and he was taking up various bits of
work before India was well out of sight. He had laid in a supply of
literature suitable both for instruction and amusement. The day after
leaving Bombay he got through the best part of a volume of Sainte-Beuve.
He had also brought a 'Faust' and Auerbach's 'Auf der Hoehe,' as he was
anxious to improve himself in German, and he filled up odd spaces of
time with the help of an Italian grammar. He was writing long letters to
friends in India, although letter-writing in the other direction would
be a waste of time. With this provision for employment he found that the
time which remained might be adequately filled by a return to his
beloved journalism. He proposes at starting to write an article a day
till he gets to Suez. He was a little put out for the first twenty-four
hours because in the place which he had selected for writing his iron
chair was too near the ship's compasses. He got a safe position
assigned to him before long and immediately set to work. He takes his
first text from the May meetings for an article which will give
everybody some of his reflections upon missionaries in India. Our true
position in India, he thinks, is that of teachers, if only we knew what
to teach. Hitherto we have not got beyond an emphatic assertion of the
necessity of law and order. He writes his article while the decks are
being washed, and afterwards writes a 'bit of a letter,' takes his
German and Italian lessons, and then turns to his travelling library.
This included Mill's 'Utilitarianism' and 'Liberty'; which presently
provide him with material not only for reflection, but for exposition.
On April 27 he reports that he has been 'firing broadsides into John
Mill for about three hours.' He is a little distracted by the heat, and
by talks with some of his fellow-travellers; but as he goes up the Red
Sea he is again assailing Mill. It has now occurred to him that the
criticisms may be formed into a series of letters to the 'Pall Mall
Gazette,' which will enable him to express a good many of his favourite
doctrines. 'It is curious,' he says, 'that after being, so to speak, a
devoted disciple and partis