ker,
but to such powers of mind as displayed themselves in conversation.
Without any pedantry,--without any sort of intentional notification to
those with whom he conversed that he was the greatest logician,
metaphysician, moralist, and economist of the day,--his speech was
always, even on the most trivial subjects, so clear and incisive, that
it at once betrayed the intellectual vigor of the speaker. Not less
remarkable also than his uniform refinement of thought, and the
deftness with which he at all times expressed it, were the grasp and
keenness of his observation, and the strength of memory with which he
stored up every thing he had ever seen, heard, or read. Nothing
escaped his notice at the time of its occurrence: nothing was
forgotten by him afterwards. His friends often found, to their
astonishment, that he knew far more about any passages in their lives
that he had been made aware of than they could themselves remember;
and, whenever that disclosure was made to them, they must have been
rejoiced to think, that this memory of his, instead of being, as it
might well have been, a dangerous garner of severe judgments and
fairly-grounded prejudices, was a magic mirror, in which their follies
and foibles were hardly at all reflected, and only kindly
reminiscences and generous sympathies found full expression.
But he is dead now. Although the great fruits of his life--a life in
which mind and heart, in which senses and emotions, were singularly
well balanced--are fruits that cannot die, all the tender ties of
friendship, all the strictly personal qualities that so much aided his
work as a teacher of the world, as the foremost leader of his
generation in the search after truth and righteousness, are now
snapped forever. Only four weeks ago he left London for a
three-months' stay in Avignon. Two weeks ago he was in his customary
health. On the 5th of May he was attacked by a virulent form of
erysipelas. On the 8th he died. On the 10th he was buried in the grave
to which he had, through fourteen years, looked forward as a pleasant
resting-place, because during fourteen years there had been in it a
vacant place beside the remains of the wife whom he so fondly loved.
H. R. FOX BOURNE.
II.
HIS CAREER IN THE INDIA HOUSE
I have undertaken to prepare a sketch of Mr. Mill's official career,
but find, on inquiry, scarcely any thing to add to the few particulars
on the subject which have already found their w
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