sures.

"Thus neither selfish nor unselfish pleasures were pleasures to me; and there seemed no power in nature sufficient to begin the formation of my character anew, and create in a mind now irretrievably analytic, fresh associations of pleasure with any of the objects of human desire.' For about a year his mood was hopeless and gloomy; he was oppressed with the thought that all feeling was dead within him. But he had been so drilled in a certain sort of mental exercise that he could still carry it on when the spirit had gone out of it. The gloom was first dispelled by the passage in Marmontel's Memoirs which relates the sudden inspiration to do and dare which was caused by his father's death and the distress of the family. Finally, he was led to adopt or to originate the antiself-conscious theory of Carlyle. "Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so; the only chance is to treat not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life." You must inhale happiness with the air you breathe; you will put it to flight by fatal questioning. He was also led to increased regard for the internal culture of the individual. Passive susceptibilities he found require to be cultivated as well as the active capacities. He thought that analysis required to be corrected by joining other kinds of cultivation with it. Unlike his father, he now insisted upon the cultivation of the feelings, and the maintenance of a due balance among the faculties. He awoke

to the importance of poetry and art as instruments of human culture. From childhood he had taken infinite pleasure in music. The extremity of the morbid gloom into which he had been thrown is proved by nothing more thoroughly

than that even this source of pleasure was then closed to him. Reviving enjoyment in it was, after all, impeded by the circumstance that he was "seriously tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility of musical combinations."

The poetry of Wordsworth firstgave him continued mental relief. He read the whole of Byron with the hope to rouse some feeling in himself, but unsuccessfully. Byron's state of mind, he says, was too like his own. "His was the lament of a man who had worn out all pleasures, and who seemed to think that life to all who possessed the good things of it must necessarily be the vapid uninteresting thing which I found it." Mill's gloom was that of a man who felt that the idiosyncrasies of his education had done for him what satiety had done for Byron-eaten out the capacity for pleasure, or enjoyment, or happiness. Wordsworth's poems, on the contrary, "expressed not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, of thought coloured by feeling under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure." Wordsworth taught him that there was real permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation; and that with culture of the feelings, there was nothing to dread from the most confirmed habit of analysis. He accepted the comfort of Wordsworth's poetry, but he rejected the philosophy and religion from which Wordsworth drew his inspiration.

The love of rural objects and natural scenery, and the passionate fondness for poetry and music which this Autobiography reveals, forced their way to light, notwithstanding the

incubus of his extraordinary training. It was the struggle of nature and the natural tendencies of his character and disposition, rebelling against the tyrannous weight of an exclusively intellectual development, which produced the deep melancholy to which we have referred, and which, it is hinted, almost terminated in suicide. When we reflect what the development was, it shows the strength and vigour of the man that he refused to remain the mere "reasoning machine" which his father had sought to make him. He showed thus early that he had by nature strong points of contact and sympathy with the outer world, and with that life of feeling and passion from which his father had tried to exclude him. The vital power within him had not been exhausted by the elaborate process of unnatural forcing. But enough had been done to determine his general career and character.

Previous to the crisis in his life which this melancholy created, his father had secured for him, at the age of seventeen, an appointment in the India House as Examiner of Correspondence. He retained this employment, becoming eventually the head of his department, until 1858, when, on the fall of the East India Company, he retired with a liberal compensation. He had in this way a competency, thorough independence of the world, sufficient leisure to pursue his schemes of attacking and revolutionising a social system which at least had treated him with singular generosity. It completed that isolation from life, its struggles and uncertainties, its priceless discipline and invigorating influence, which his father had begun. Mr Mill regards it as having given him personal observation of the conduct of public affairs, and as having obliged him to co-operate with others. He alludes with evident

satisfaction to the leading part which he played in determining the form and spirit of the despatches which were sent from the office. He found the discipline of being obliged to put up with the smallest part of his own way at the office, where he could not get the whole of it, as of the greatest possible importance for personal happiness. He was thereby, at the very lowest estimate of his achievements, effecting "the greatest amount of good compatible with his opportunities." The singular point in reference to his official career is this: that although India was governed, as respects the English machinery of its administration, by the most astounding contrivances ever resorted to for the rule of an empire, Mill never, during his whole thirty-five years, opened his mouth against it. He clung to all its abuses and absurdities with the same desperate tenacity with which the pseudo-Tories of his youth stuck to rotten boroughs and Draconian punishments. He declared that any change from such a system "would necessarily be a change for the worse," strange sentiment for him.

a

When the Company fell, and with it the Directors, and the gov ernment of India was transferred to the Queen, he was the foremost to denounce "the folly and mischief of that ill-considered change." There was not an opinion nor an institution cherished by his countrymen which he, isolated from them by his education, his appointment, and his pursuits, did not attack with a view to its absolute extinction. But he knew no more of practical politics than he did of life and human beings; and any man or woman of competent knowledge of that world which was so strange to him and who appreciated him, and any institution like that of the India House, which used him

well, was liable to be invested with every imaginary excellence.

We pass lightly over the literary achievements of his life, as it is not within the compass of an article that the history of his mind or an account of his works can be given. In early youth he founded a sect, a debating club, and a Review, and he wrote countless articles on the subjects which fed his mind. In dealing with abstractions he was at home. His words, his theories, his phases of thought, his axioms, corollaries, and principles, we leave to others; our object is to estimate his career and education, and thence to ascertain his value as a leader of thought, the apostle of a new social condition, a new order of human duties, beliefs, and opinions.

The next subject is that large portion of his career which was illustrated and influenced by what he terms "the most valuable friendship of his life." In 1830, when he was twenty-five and Mrs Taylor was twenty-three, they became acquainted. "I very soon felt her to be the most admirable person I had ever known." The sequel shows that notwithstanding all his isolation and all his scientific training, the contempt of passionate emotion, and the desire to rebuild the world on a basis of pure reason by means of an intellect artificially forced, the human nature within him which had led him to the unhallowed delights of poetry, music, and scenery, was again at work. Incarnate analysis was in love, and, of course, with the wrong

woman.

Mr Mill's relations to Mrs Taylor are an important part of his Autobiography, to the eye of any one who approaches the subject from our point of view. Mr Mill, in his work on the 'Subjection of Women,' has expressed his view of the relations of the sexes, and in particular of husbands and wives. He avow

of

edly sought to transmute the exist ing institution of marriage, and called upon the whole female sex to revolt against it, as unworthy and to the lowest degree degrading. The Christian religion rests that institution upon the basis of the obedience of the wife, and it is perfectly consistent with that basis that the real relation should be, where circumstances permit, one of reciprocal superiority and mutual devotion. That basis must be broad enough to support indissolubility of marriage, which is the foundation of society: it does not exclude, but will, on the contrary, tend to promote, the highest development of woman. Mr Mill calls his friendship with Mrs Taylor "the honour and chief blessing of his existence," the source his efforts for human improvement. For twenty years of that friendship Mrs Taylor was the wife of another man, estimable according to Mr Mill for everything but his intellectual and artistic tastes, for whom his wife "had true esteem and the strongest affection through life, and whom she most deeply lamented when dead." With this lady, so circumstanced, Mr Mill permitted himself to form a relation which he pointedly says was "one of strong affection and confidential intimacy only." It is hard upon a husband when his wife's honour needs this posthumous testimony from another man, and is supposed to receive it without reproach and discredit. It is stated, and may readily be believed, that the intimacy which Mill regarded as the honour of his existence, embittered the husband's life. The lady occasionally lived with her husbandmostly, however, away from him in the country. Mr Mill visited them equally in both places. He was "greatly indebted to the strength of character which enabled her to

disregard the false interpretations liable to be put on the frequency of his visits to her while living generally apart from Mr Taylor, and on their occasionally travelling together." Assuming that any limit existed to this intimacy, in reference to which Mr Mill and Mrs Taylor considered that "the ordinances of society were not binding upon a subject so entirely personal," we are astonished at the leniency of reviews upon this subject. The character in which Mr Mill writes this book is that of a reformer of the world. Marriage was the institution which he especially assailed. He prides himself ostentatiously on this friendship; he expresses no word of regret for the wrong done to the unfortunate husband, and no sense whatever of having violated any right: the tone towards Mr Taylor is that of patronising pity; and we say that, under these circumstances, this prolonged episode in his life demands the severest condemnation. It is true that some sense of sympathy with the man creeps in; but this ought not to blind us to the character of the transaction which Mr Mill pointedly and ostentatiously upholds as honourable and right. Despair of being able to recognise ordinary flesh and blood in a man who attributes deep and morbid dejection caused by an overstrained mind to the doctrine of philosophic necessity or to the supposed exhaustibility of musical combinations, vanishes at the discovery that he is deeply and passionately in love. Reassured in this way, the public is inclined to forget that this passionate worship (for such it was, and it is described by himself as the honour of his existence) was in violation of duties which society still holds sacred, but which apparently Mr Mill disowned and rejected. The Platonic nature of this attach

ment in no wise affects the question. Husbands and wives who have "true esteem and strong affection," owe one another much more than mere legal loyalty. Marriage could never correspond to the high ideal which Mr Mill himself described, if avoiding the divorce court fulfilled all its conditions, and no demand were made for constancy and fidelity on the part of both husband and wife in mind, heart, and thought. We can put a guard, as a great master of human nature tells us, over our constancy as over our other treasures; and a woman who has esteem and affection for her husband has no right to sacrifice his happiness to her own intellectual improvement. Mrs Taylor claimed and exercised this right, and Mr Mill found the chief honour of his existence in enabling her to do so. The sincerity of spirit in which this Autobiography is written increases the importance of weighing carefully this portion of Mr Mill's life. He has not withheld a tribute to the worth of Mr Taylor. Nor has he condescended to disclose any extenuating circumstances. He regards the matter as purely personal to himself and Mrs Taylor. Thus a disregard of the obligations of marriage which so forcibly appears in the 'Subjection of Women was not merely with him a principle, but, so far as his temperament permitted, a practice. We protest against both, and rejoice that this Autobiography reveals to its author's blind admirers the true spirit of some of his most advanced and most outrageous social theories. We assert, in utter reprobation of these theories, that the marriage contract, which lies at the foundation of society, demands that husband and wife shall give each other the utmost of help, companionship, and sympathy of which they are capable. If that tie between them is dissolved and formed by

either with a third party, the mere legal bond, even if inviolate, is worth no more than the chain which fastens one galley-slave to another. It is a striking illustration of the views propounded by Mr Mill in his lifetime upon this subject, to find that he and Mrs Taylor really believed that their partnership of thought and feeling, their relations of strong affection and confidential intimacy, inflicted no wrong or suffering upon the husband, for whom he had the "sincerest respect," and she, the "strongest affection," but, on the contrary, was regarded by both as the honour of their lives. A leader of thought may justify anything, but it is well that the world should understand the extent of his antagonism to all that it holds sacred.

It discloses a base view of the primary obligation on which society rests, when we find Mr Mill complacently, and without the shadow of a feeling of disgrace, say that he should have ardently as pired during many years to complete union at any practicable time with the incomparable lady whose friendship was the source both of happiness and improvement, but that both would have foregone that privilege rather than owe it to Mr Taylor's premature death. Mr Taylor must have been deeply indebted for this obliging consideration for his general convenience. If this is to be justified, society must hereafter rest upon the principle of facile divorce instead of indissoluble marriage. The latter institution is altogether out of harmony with the new code of morality, the philosophic liberty" of man, the exploded "subjection" of women!

Another point in Mill's character which this celebrated friendship exhibits in a marked degree, is the total inability to appreciate character which distinguished him

own.

through life. He was prone to exaggerate the mental capacities of those whom he liked. He was apt to credit those who excelled him in knowledge of practical life with intellect and abilities equal to his He describes himself in respect of natural gifts as rather below than above par. His men of genius were, most of them, commonplace people, who probably attracted him by a display of very secondary qualities, in which he, owing to his extraordinary education, was deficient. His parliamentary career showed his singular inability to judge men. If a man indulged in blasphemy more than ordinarily scurrilous, he was immediately mistaken for a philosopher more than ordinarily courageous. If a friend thoroughly understood the practical details of sewage, he was far more eligible than Mill himself to represent Westminster; but as Mill's constituency was supposed to be unalterable in its affections, the friend was sent with high testimonials to contest the seat of one of the leaders of his party, whose views, however, were not so advanced as his own. If a colonial governor was accused of losing his presence of mind in dealing with an armed insurrection of a whole island, Mill mistook him for a murderer, and called for his blood. In fact, Mill knew very little of human beings and practical life. He never had a chance of judging them for the first fourteen years of his life. The faculty of judging character is intuitive and divine. It must grow with our earliest growth. It is incapable of being acquired, like so much mathematics, by one whose habits and training isolate him from the world, and bury him either in a cloister or under a heap of metaphysics.

With regard to Mrs Taylor, with the eyes of a lover he saw in her