to believe, that, during most of
the years in which he was preparing them, Mr. Mill was also a hard
worker in the India House, passing rapidly, and as the reward only of
his assiduity and talent, from the drudgery of a junior clerk to a
position involving all the responsibility, if not quite all the
dignity, of a secretary of state. One of his most intimate friends,
and the one who knew far more of him in this respect than any other,
has in another column penned some reminiscences of his official life;
but if all the state papers that he wrote, and all the correspondence
that he carried on with Indian officials and the native potentates of
the East, could be explored, more than one volume would have to be
written in supplement to his father's great "History of British
India."

Having retired from the India House in 1858, Mr. Mill went to spend
the winter in Avignon, in the hope of improving the broken health of
the wife to whom he was devotedly attached. He had not been married
many years, but Mrs. Mill, who was the widow of Mr. John Taylor, a
London merchant, had been his friend since 1835, or even earlier.
During more than twenty years he had been aided by her talents, and
encouraged by her sympathy, in all the work he had undertaken, and to
her rare merits he afterwards paid more than one tribute in terms that
have no equal for the intensity of their language, and the depth of
affection contained in them. Mrs. Mill's weak state of health seems to
have hardly repressed her powers of intellect. By her was written the
celebrated essay on "The Enfranchisement of Women" contributed to "The
Westminster Review," and afterwards reprinted in the "Dissertations
and Discussions," with a preface avowing, that by her Mr. Mill had
been greatly assisted in all that he had written for some time
previous. But the assistance was to end now. Mrs. Mill died at Avignon
on the 3d of November, 1858, and over her grave was placed one of the
most pathetic and eloquent epitaphs that have been ever penned. "Her
great and loving heart, her noble soul, her clear, powerful, original,
and comprehensive intellect," it was there written, "made her the
guide and support, the instructor in wisdom, and the example in
goodness, as she was the sole earthly delight, of those who had the
happiness to belong to her. As earnest for all public good as she was
generous and devoted to all who surrounded her, her influence has been
felt in many of the greatest