The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XIV - The Later Letters 1849-1873 Part I

John Stuart Mill

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John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XIV - The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-1873 Part I [1849]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XIV - The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-1873 Part I, ed. Francis E. Mineka and Dwight N. Lindley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972).

Author: John Stuart Mill

Editor: Francis E. Mineka

Editor: Dwight N. Lindley

Vol. 14 of the 33 vol. Collected Works contains Mill’s letters written between 1849-1855.

Copyright:

The online edition of the Collected Works is published under licence from the copyright holder, The University of Toronto Press. ©2006 The University of Toronto Press. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or medium without the permission of The University of Toronto Press.

Table of Contents

Preface

Contents

Introduction

Abbreviations and Short Titles

THE LATER LETTERS OF JOHN STUART MILL 1849-1855

1849

TO GEORGE GROTE1

TO HARRIET TAYLOR1

TO GEORGE GROTE MILL1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO HARRIET TAYLOR1

TO HARRIET TAYLOR1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO HARRIET TAYLOR1

TO HARRIET TAYLOR1

TO HARRIET TAYLOR1

TO HARRIET TAYLOR1

TO LOUIS BLANC1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO WILLIAM GEORGE WARD1

TO HENRY SAMUEL CHAPMAN1

TO GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO WILLIAM CONNER1

TO WILLIAM MACCALL1

TO WILLIAM JOHNSON FOX1

1850

TO DR. JOHN FORBES ROYLE1

TO DR. JOHN FORBES ROYLE1

TO DR. JOHN FORBES ROYLE1

TO HARRIET TAYLOR1

TO EDWARD HERFORD1

TO EDWARD HERFORD1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN1

TO HARRIET TAYLOR1

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL1

TO WALTER COULSON1

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL1

1851

TO EDWIN CHADWICK1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY1

TO CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY1

TO FREDERIC LUCAS1

TO DR. JOHN FORBES ROYLE1

TO GEORGE GROTE MILL1

TO JANE MILL FERRABOSCHI1

TO WILHELMINA MILL KING1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO SIR GEORGE GREY1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO JOHN CHAPMAN1

TO JOHN CHAPMAN1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY1

TO JOHN CHAPMAN1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO GEORGE GROTE MILL1

TO ANNA BLACKWELL1

TO ALEXANDER BAIN1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO JOHN CHAPMAN1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO JOHN CHAPMAN1

1852

TO THE REV. HENRY WILLIAM CARR1

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON1

TO CLARA ESTHER MILL1

TO MRS. JAMES MILL1

TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER1

TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER1

TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER1

TO DR. ADOLF SOETBEER1

TO KARL D. HEINRICH RAU1

TO PROFESSOR [HENRY?] GREEN1

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL1

TO GEORGE F. HOLMES1

TO JOHN LALOR1

TO LORD OVERSTONE1

TO JOHN LALOR1

TO KARL D. HEINRICH RAU1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO LORD OVERSTONE1

TO [GILBERT URBAIN GUILLAUMIN?]1

TO JOHN CHAPMAN1

TO JOHN CHAPMAN1

TO LORD OVERSTONE1

TO LORD OVERSTONE1

TO GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE1

1853

TO RICHARD HUSSEY WALSH1

TO JOHN CHAPMAN1

TO LORD MONTEAGLE1

TO JOHN CHAPMAN1

TO GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS1

TO SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH1

TO GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS1

TO LORD HOBART1

TO GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS1

TO GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

1854

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO JAMES GARTH MARSHALL1

TO HENRY COLE1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, JR.1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO ARTHUR GORE1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO THE CHAIRMEN OF THE LIBRARY COMMITTEES, SOUTH CAROLINA1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO SIR CHARLES E. TREVELYAN1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO JAMES BENTHAM MILL1

TO EDWIN CHADWICK1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO MRS. JAMES MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO DR. HENRY CECIL GURNEY1

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE NEOPHYTE WRITERS’ SOCIETY1

TO SIR CHARLES E. TREVELYAN1

TO SIR CHARLES E. TREVELYAN1

TO SIR CHARLES E. TREVELYAN1

TO MRS. JAMES MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO CHARLES F. COLMAN1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO CHARLES F. COLMAN1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL1

TO WILLIAM STIGANT1

TO BARBOT DE CHÉMENT1

TO THEODOR GOMPERZ1

TO PASQUALE VILLARI1

TO JOHN RAE1

TO EDWARD HERFORD1

TO JOHN REVANS1

TO EDWARD HERFORD1

TO PASQUALE VILLARI1

TO EDWARD HERFORD1

TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, JR.1

TO JOHN REVANS1

TO WILLIAM LEY1

TO SIR JOHN McNEILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

1855

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO HARRIET MILL1

TO WENTWORTH HOLWORTHY1

TO MONTAGUE RICHARD LEVERSON1

TO BARTHÉLEMY PROSPER ENFANTIN1

TO AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN1

TO AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN1

TO JOHN CHAPMAN1

TO JOHN CHAPMAN1

TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT1

TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT1

TO AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN1

Edition: current; Page: [i]

COLLECTED WORKS OF JOHN STUART MILL

volume xiv

Edition: current; Page: [ii]

The Collected Edition of the works of John Stuart Mill has been planned and is being directed by an editorial committee appointed from the Faculty of Arts and Science of the University of Toronto, and from the University of Toronto Press. The primary aim of the edition is to present fully collated texts of those works which exist in a number of versions, both printed and manuscript, and to provide accurate texts of works previously unpublished or which have become relatively inaccessible.

Editorial Committee

j. m. robson, General Editor

v. w. bladen, alexander brady, j. b. conacher, d. p. dryer, s. hollander, clifford leech, r. f. mcrae, f. e. l. priestley, marsh jeanneret, francess halpenny, jean houston

Edition: current; Page: [iii]

The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-1873

Edited by FRANCIS E. MINEKA Cornell University and DWIGHT N. LINDLEY Hamilton College

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL

Edition: current; Page: [iv]

© University of Toronto Press 1972

Toronto and Buffalo

Printed in Canada

ISBN 0-8020-5261-4

Microfiche ISBN 0-8020-0091-6

LC 75-163833

London: Routledge & Kegan Paul

ISBN 0-7100-7292-9

This volume has been published with the assistance of a grant from the Canada Council

Edition: current; Page: [v]

TO FRIEDRICH A. VON HAYEK

Edition: current; Page: [vi] Edition: current; Page: [vii]

Preface

since the publication in 1963 of The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill, 1812-1848, ed. Francis E. Mineka (Vols. XII and XIII of the Collected Works), we have been engaged in the much larger task of collecting and editing the letters of the last twenty-five years of Mill’s life. The earlier volumes contained 537 letters, about half of which had not been previously published; the present volumes contain over 1800, more than half hitherto unpublished. Most of the collecting for the earlier volumes was the work of Professor Friedrich A. von Hayek, begun during World War II; while the present volumes contain many letters also assembled by him, some of which can no longer be found, about half have been located within the past ten years by the senior editor. We have also included in Appendix I over sixty earlier letters which have come to light since 1963.

The rationale and the method of the present volumes are essentially the same as those of the earlier volumes. We have included all the personal letters we have found, but, with one exception (Letter 1292), have excluded letters expressly written for publication, which will appear in a later volume of the Collected Works. We have included, however, private letters printed by their recipients in various papers, usually without Mill’s permission. We have excluded, because of space, letters to Mill, but have indicated their location, and on occasion quoted relevant passages from them in footnotes. A relatively small number of what may seem to some readers inconsequential or insignificant letters are included, in the interest of completeness, and in the belief that details now thought insignificant may, in the light of further research, come into more meaningful focus.

To identify the “best text” of a letter is much easier than to find it. The best text is, of course, the original autograph letter. Next best is a manuscript draft; fortunately for his editors, Mill in later years, conscious that his letters might be of interest to a wider public, preserved drafts, often labelled “For Publication.” For many letters the drafts are the only surviving versions. We have printed these as drafts, without correcting abbreviations, punctuation, or usage, and without adding signatures. In both drafts and autograph letters Mill’s spelling has been retained (e.g. shew for show, stile for style, contemporary for contemporary, recal for recall); his infrequent errors in French have not been corrected; and his punctuation has only rarely been altered, when necessary for clarity of meaning. In a few instances we have had to assemble a letter from portions now located in different places; for example, Edition: current; Page: [viii] Letter 653, to W. T. Thornton, exists in three fragments in the libraries of King’s College, Cambridge, the University of Leeds, and the London School of Economics. When both the autograph letter and the draft have been located, we have, of course, based our transcript on the letter, but on the rare occasions when there are significant differences between the two we have indicated those differences in notes. Published versions have been used only when neither letter nor draft has been located. When no published version is indicated, the letter is, to the best of our knowledge, published here for the first time.

The first footnote to each letter provides the following information in this order: the location of manuscripts when known; addresses of correspondents and postmarks when available; and the place of publication of previously published letters.

A special problem arose over the real authorship of certain of the later letters. From 1865 on, the demands of public life greatly increased the amount of Mill’s correspondence, to such an extent that he could not have carried it on without help. That help was provided by his step-daughter, Helen Taylor. A number of the extant drafts are in her hand, written from his dictation; some are in his hand, written from her dictation. Some were composed in whole or part by her and signed by him. Mill, in notes attached to the drafts, often indicated the extent of Helen’s contribution. Since the exact contribution of each to letters in which both had a part cannot be determined, we have adopted the following practice: we have included letters if they were sent in Mill’s name and, even when signed by Helen Taylor, if they are in his handwriting. We have excluded letters that she both wrote and signed. Notations on the manuscript, whether about publication or Helen’s share of a letter, are reproduced in the first footnote.

When excerpts of letters have been earlier published, for which no manuscripts have been located, we have reprinted them as separate letters, in the hope of leaving as few lacunae in Mill’s correspondence as possible, and on the chance that the excerpts may lead to the recovery of the full text. In view of the very widespread dispersal of Mill’s letters, more will undoubtedly come to light. Some that did during the course of printing this edition, too late to include in the regular order, have been placed in Appendix II. Readers who come into possession of additional letters or of information about their location will render valuable service to Mill scholarship if they will inform the Editor of the Collected Works at the University of Toronto Press.

In assembling and editing as large a collection of letters as this, the editors have inevitably been dependent upon the generous assistance of many persons. Our basic indebtedness has, of course, been to Professor F. A. von Hayek, who in the course of his project, undertaken in 1942, to collect and publish the earlier letters of Mill, also made transcripts of many later letters, Edition: current; Page: [ix] including about half of those to be found in this edition. The originals of some of these can no longer be located (for example, letters to Thomas Hare, once in the possession of Mrs. K. E. Roberts), and Professor von Hayek’s transcripts have served as the source of our text in such instances. He generously turned over to us all his files relating to Mill’s correspondence. Without his help, the work of collecting would have been greatly increased. We, and all students of Mill, must be sincerely grateful to him.

We are indebted for the grant of John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and Fulbright research fellowships in 1962-63 to the senior editor which enabled him to do much of the collecting in England. We have owed much over the past ten years to a number of assistants whose employment was made possible by funds from the endowment of the Class of 1916 Professorship at Cornell University held by the senior editor. Mrs. Emily Morrison in the early stages of the editing got the work off to a good start. In London in 1962-63 Mr. Peter M. Jackson contributed greatly in locating out-of-the-way letters and information valuable for the annotation. Mrs. Eleanor Pike in the earlier stages of the work did much of the typing. Two graduate students at Cornell, Mrs. Barbara Hutchison Groninger and Mr. Edwin J. Kenney, contributed a good deal during their summers. Mrs. Nancy C. Martin located at Colindale some published letters, and Miss Gillian Workman an unpublished letter at the Public Records Office. The mainstay of the work since 1963, however, has been Mrs. Celia Sieverts, whose knowledge of European languages, skill and persistence in tracking down often very obscure information, and passion for accuracy have made significant contributions. Without her help, this edition would have suffered greatly.

Many have aided us in the collecting of the widely scattered letters. Dr. James M. Osborn of Yale University has with unfailing generosity made available many letters from his large and ever-growing collection. Mr. Joseph H. Schaffner of New York freely gave access to his private collection. M. Pierre Sadi-Carnot arranged for the photographing of letters in his family papers, as did Mr. W. Rosenberg of the University of Canterbury, N.Z. The late Professor Delio Cantimori of Florence secured photographs for us of letters to Pasquale Villari in the library of the Vatican. Professor Eileen Curran of Colby College, in the course of her research for The Wellesley Index, turned up a good many letters, often in out-of-the-way manuscript files. Dr. William E. S. Thomas of Christ Church, Oxford, located letters to Col. William Napier and long-sought letters to Sir William Molesworth, which Sir John Molesworth-St. Aubyn has given permission to publish. Mr. G. A. Wood of Newcastle, England, sent from his family papers letters to William Wood. Mr. D. Flanagan of the Co-operative Union Ltd., Manchester, was most helpful in permitting access to that organization’s collection of George Jacob Holyoake’s papers. Mr. Dennis O’Brien of Queen’s University, Edition: current; Page: [x] Belfast, Ireland, kindly supplied photocopies of letters to Lord Overstone. A number of persons contributed over the years to the search for the copies of Mill’s letters smuggled out of Prague at the time of the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Germany: Professor Eugene Rice, now of Columbia University, searched archives in Prague, but it was Dr. Linda L. McAlister, then of Cornell, who provided the clue that led us to Professor Roderick M. Chisholm of Brown University, who was able to supply photographs from the Brentano collection. Professor Jack Stillinger of the University of Illinois, Professor Michael Wolff, then of Indiana University, now of the University of Massachusetts, Professor J. A. La Nauze and Mr. N. B. de Marchi of the Australian National University, Professor F. B. Smith of the University of Melbourne, Mr. Richard Ormond of the National Portrait Gallery in London, Mr. J. H. Prynne of the Library of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, all helped us in gaining access to letters in the possession of their respective institutions. Mrs. Evelyn Pugh of George Washington University and Mr. Russell Buchan of Vanderbilt University located for us letters published in American newspapers. Among those who supplied us with letters in their possession were Professor Joseph Hamburger of Yale University, Principal John M. Robson of the University of Toronto, the late Dr. Adelaide Weinberg of London, Professor Edward Alexander of the University of Washington, Professor Ronald H. Coase of the University of Virginia, the late Professor Jacob Viner of Princeton University, Professor Joseph Dorfman of Columbia University, Professor Leslie Marchand of Rutgers University, Professor Edward Shils of the University of Chicago, Mrs. Caroline Hughes D’Agostino and Mrs. George Hughes, Professor Iring Fetscher, Mr. Richard A. Ehrlich, Mr. E. Liggett, Mr. Michael Maurice, and Mr. L. S. Johnson. Professor Cecil Lang of the University of Virginia, Professor Walter E. Houghton of Wellesley College, and Dr. Stephen Frick of Cornell called our attention to letters in various libraries in England. The late Professor Daniel Villey of Paris provided us with information that led to the recovery of a number of letters to Charles Dupont-White. In other searches in Paris we were assisted by Professors Anne Humphreys, John Mineka, and Baxter Hathaway. Professor von Hayek graciously permitted us to reproduce the portrait of Harriet Mill in his possession, as did Dr. Graham Hutton his hitherto unreproduced portrait of Mill.

Others who aided in various ways, particularly in the annotation, included Professors Gordon Kirkwood, Harry Caplan, James Hutton, Douglas Dowd, Robert Kaske, Edward Morris, all of Cornell University; Professor Paul Parker of Hamilton College; Harold E. Dailey of Columbia University; M. J.-P. Mayer, editor of the works of De Tocqueville; Professor Henry W. Spiegel of the Catholic University of America; Professor Edward C. Mack of the City University of New York; Professor Ann Robson of the University Edition: current; Page: [xi] of Toronto. Of the many librarians to whose assistance we are indebted we can mention here only Professors Felix Reichmann, the late George H. Healey, and Donald Eddy of the Cornell University Library, Miss Judith A. Schiff of the Yale University Library, and Mr. C. G. Allen of the British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics, who have over the years been unfailingly generous. To Muriel Mineka and Janie Lindley we owe our deepest gratitude for assistance in countless ways, but most of all for their sympathetic interest which has sustained us throughout the long task. If we have overlooked some in this long catalogue of our debts, we extend our apologies. We cannot conclude, however, without acknowledging the wise supervision and counsel of the present editor of the Collected Works; from Principal John M. Robson’s comprehensive and detailed knowledge of Mill we have profited at almost every turn.

Edition: current; Page: [xii] Edition: current; Page: [xiii]

Contents

preface vii

introduction xv

abbreviations and short titles xlv

the letters, 1849-1855

1849, 3

1850, 41

1851, 55

1852, 80

1853, 101

1854, 119

1855, 275

the letters, 1856-1864

1856, 503

1857, 520

1858, 545

1859, 587

1860, 658

1861, 719

1862, 760

1863, 816

1864, 915

the letters, 1865-1868

1865, 985

1866, 1130

1867, 1226

1868, 1347

the letters, 1869-1873

1869, 1535

1870, 1676

1871, 1792

1872, 1866

1873, 1931

appendixes

I. Additional Earlier Letters 1954

II. Additional Later Letters 2009

indexes

General Index 2017

Index of Correspondents 2078

Portrait of Harriet Taylor (ca. 1834) facing page 3

Portrait of John Stuart Mill and Helen Taylor facing page 503

Portrait of John Stuart Mill facing page 985

Detail of original Watts portrait of Mill facing page 1535

Edition: current; Page: [xiv] Edition: current; Page: [xv]

Introduction

It seems to me that there is a very great significance in letter-writing, and that it differs from daily intercourse as the dramatic differs from the epic or the narrative. It is the life of man, and above all the chief part of his life, his inner life, not gradually unfolded without break or sudden transition, those changes which take place insensibly being also manifested insensibly; but exhibited in a series of detached scenes, taken at considerable intervals from one another, shewing the completed change of position or feeling, without the process by which it was effected; affording a glimpse or partial view of the mighty river of life at some few points, and leaving the imagination to trace to itself such figure or scheme as it can of the course of the stream in that far larger portion of space where it winds its way through thickets or impenetrable forests and is invisible: this alone being known to us, that whatever may have been its course through the wilderness, it has had some course, & that a continuous one, & which might by human opportunity have been watched and discovered, though to us, too probably, destined to be for ever unknown. . . .

Mill to John Sterling, May 24, 1832

the present four volumes and the two volumes of Earlier Letters, published in 1963, constitute a collected edition of all the letters of John Stuart Mill available at this time. The separate publication of earlier and later letters, instead of the more usual multi-volume single publication of a whole collection all in one sequence and provided with one index, was dictated more by circumstances than by any inherent distinction between Mill’s earlier and later letters. The whole correspondence is the life of the man, “and above all the chief part of his life, his inner life.”

When, thirty years ago, Professor Friedrich von Hayek first turned his attention to Mill’s correspondence, however, a major reason for collecting and separately publishing his earlier letters was the inadequate representation of them in the only collected edition of Mill’s correspondence—the two volumes edited and published by Hugh S. R. Elliot in 1910. That collection of 368 letters contained only 52 for the years ending with 1848, somewhat less than one in ten of those it proved possible to assemble. It seemed reasonable to infer that Mill’s later correspondence was much more adequately represented in the Elliot edition, but that inference has proved not wholly sound. It is true that Elliot includes a larger proportion of the extant later letters than of the earlier: about one in six of the more than 1800 post-1848 letters, as against one in ten of the earlier letters. That larger proportion turns out, however, to be misleading. Elliot’s collection is no more fully Edition: current; Page: [xvi] representative of the substance of the later correspondence than it is of the earlier.

That this is so is not to be charged to Elliot’s defects as an editor, but rather to be the circumstances under which he worked. Professor von Hayek in his Introduction to Earlier Letters has recounted in some detail the history of Mill’s papers after 1873, and the story need not be repeated here. Suffice it to recall that Mill had evidently intended that a selection of his letters should eventually be published; at least as early as 1849 he preserved drafts of some of them and at some point, presumably late in his life, carefully labelled a good many, “For publication.” His intention was long frustrated, not purposely it is clear, by his stepdaughter, Helen Taylor, who inherited his property, his copyrights, and his papers. She admired her stepfather deeply and sought to honour his name and extend his reputation; she promptly prepared for publication and edited his posthumously published books, the Autobiography (1873), Three Essays on Religion (1874), the fourth volume of Dissertations and Discussions (1875), and “Chapters on Socialism” (1879), and planned to edit his letters. Professor von Hayek (Earlier Letters, p. xviii) cites a passage written by Helen about three months after Mill’s death:

I have all my dear stepfather’s letters, preserved, looked through from time to time by himself, arranged in order by myself, and left by him in my hands with directions, verbal and written, to deal with them according to my judgement. When the more pressing task of the publication of his MSS. is completed, I shall, if I live, occupy myself with his correspondence, if I do not live it will be for my literary Executors to decide what to do with it.

The statement, as will presently be seen, contains at least one exaggeration: she did not have in her possession all Mill’s letters. Those she did have she guarded jealously for over thirty years; she never got around to publishing them herself, and repeatedly refused to permit others to publish even excerpts from them. At her death in 1907, her niece, Mary Taylor, younger daughter of Helen’s brother Algernon, inherited her property, including the Mill letters in her possession. Soon thereafter, Mary Taylor decided to execute the long-deferred project to publish them. She arranged for a little known writer, Hugh Elliot, to prepare the edition from the collection so long in the possession of Helen Taylor. He was not permitted to publish family papers, the most important of which were many letters to Harriet Mill and Helen Taylor; Mary Taylor proposed to publish separately a selection of these herself. Elliot apparently was under no obligation, and apparently felt none, to look farther afield for letters not in the collection turned over to him; after all, it contained some hundreds of letters, both to and by Mill. By the rather loose standards still prevailing in 1910 for the editing of letters, Elliot prepared an adequate edition that was widely and favourably reviewed.

Edition: current; Page: [xvii]

Only in recent years has it become evident how meagrely the edition represented the range and variety of Mill’s correspondence. In selecting his letters for possible publication Mill had sought to advance the spread of his opinions on a number of subjects rather than to preserve details of his personal life in his later years; the selected letters were not to serve as an autobiography but as a kind of anthology of those of his opinions that he felt might be helpful to an audience wider than that to which they had been originally addressed. A kindred motivation is noticeable in the last chapter of his Autobiography, which opens with this statement: “From this time [about 1840], what is worth relating of my life will come into very small compass; for I have no further mental changes to tell of, but only, as I hope, a continued mental progress; which does not admit of a consecutive history, and the results of which, if real, will best be found in my writings. I shall, therefore, greatly abridge the chronicle of my subsequent years.” As a result the final chapter, most readers seem to agree, is the least interesting part of the Autobiography, in that it is least self-revealing. The period of Mill’s life covered by it is also the one that stands most in need of the supplementary detail, the glimpses into his personal life, his marriage, his friendships, his enthusiasms, and his disappointments, which now, nearly one hundred years after his death, only his letters can supply.

That kind of supplementary detail, Elliot, limited as he was by Mary Taylor’s restrictions and by Mill’s selection of his own correspondence, could hardly have been expected to provide. It is even a question, working when he did, whether he could have located many of the letters of which Mill had not kept copies. Elliot had access to seven of Mill’s earlier correspondences, those with John Sterling, Thomas Carlyle, W. J. Fox, John Robertson, Gustave d’Eichthal, Robert Barclay Fox, and Auguste Comte (the latter four had each been separately published before 1910), but he presented only a small number of the letters to Sterling and Carlyle, accepting almost wholly the limits of Mill’s selection. In all likelihood, Elliot probably did not even see the long sequences of letters Mill wrote to his closest friends during his later years. The past twenty-five or thirty years have brought to light a number of extensive series of Mill’s letters that had been preserved by their recipients but either had not been written in draft or had not been kept in that form by Mill.

As a consequence, Elliot’s edition gives neither a balanced conspectus of Mill’s correspondence as a whole nor a lifelike portrait of the man. What the edition does give is a good sampling of what might be called his “public” or “non-personal” correspondence. Increasingly, after the success of his Logic (1843) and his Political Economy (1848), Mill received many letters, often from complete strangers, asking his opinion, or even advice, on a wide range of questions raised by his writings—among others, questions on religion, Edition: current; Page: [xviii] philosophy, ethics, logic, economics, political reform, labour relations, and women’s rights. The letter writers included students, clergymen, working men as well as titled lords, aspiring writers, amateur political economists, wouldbe philosophers, and practising politicians. They were not all British; letters came with increasing frequency from Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, and Americans. As early as 1850 he wrote Frederick J. Furnivall, “My whole time would hardly suffice to give satisfactory answers to all the questions I am asked by correspondents previously unknown to me” (p. 53). Nevertheless, Mill, always seeking to promote the improvement of mankind by doing what he could to advance sound thinking and opinion, felt an obligation to such earnest readers and correspondents and conscientiously tried to write them helpful answers. Of such letters he frequently kept MS drafts, but of letters to his friends and regular correspondents he seldom kept copies. As a consequence, Elliot’s edition, dependent almost wholly on Mill’s selection, has a higher proportion of such impersonal letters than is characteristic of the larger body of his correspondence. The present edition with its much larger number of personal letters should enable students of Mill to gain a clearer picture and a greater understanding of the man.

The following comparisons are not presented in a spirit of denigration; the Elliot edition has served a useful purpose for over sixty years, but in view of the increased interest in and knowledge of Mill it is no longer sufficient. The search begun by Professor von Hayek during World War II for a more adequate collection has been carried on by others and while it is likely, indeed certain, that more letters will come to light in the years that lie ahead, the present editors hope that this edition will meet the needs of students of Mill for some years to come.

To resort to a numerical comparison has its limitations but it can also be revealing. Of 124 letters located to Mill’s lifelong friend and fellow reformer, Edwin Chadwick, for instance, Elliot prints nine in whole or part. Of 92 extant letters to John Elliot Cairnes, Mill’s friend and disciple, Elliot has five. Of 60 to John Chapman, the publisher for many years of the Westminster Review, Elliot has two, and a like number to William E. Hickson, Mill’s successor as Editor of the London and Westminster, while we have been able to include 32. Elliot has five letters to Henry Fawcett, the blind politician and political economist—this edition, 43; Elliot, three to Thomas Hare, the advocate of proportional representation—this edition, 41; Elliot, five to George Grote, the historian of Greece and friend of Mill since his boyhood, and five to Sir Charles Dilke—this edition, 22 and 26, respectively. Elliot has one letter to Louis Blanc, out of 25 now available, and one to Gustave d’Eichthal (in a renewal of an earlier correspondence) as compared with 54. Elliot includes two letters to George Croom Robertson, this edition 29. Elliot has no letters to John Plummer, a working-class journalist; to George Edition: current; Page: [xix] J. Holyoake, the radical secularist and proponent of co-operatives; to Augustus De Morgan, the mathematician; to Herbert Spencer, the philosopher; or to William Dougal Christie, an active opponent of electoral corruption, who after Mill’s death rose to the defence of his reputation against the slanderous attacks of Abraham Hayward; the letters to these men now published total 162. We have been unable to improve much on Elliot’s fifteen letters to Alexander Bain, the Scottish logician and psychologist, for we have failed to locate the autograph letters to him. We have, however, succeeded in locating more originals of the letters to the Italian historian Pasquale Villari than were available to Elliot in drafts, but there are undoubtedly more yet to be found. We have been able to add only two to Elliot’s ten to T. E. Cliffe Leslie, the political economist, and only six to Elliot’s nine to William Thomas Thornton, Mill’s friend and long-time colleague at the East India House.

These additional letters have been assembled from widely separated collections: the letters to Chadwick, De Morgan, and Robertson in the library of University College, London; to Cairnes and Fawcett at the London School of Economics, as the result of the efforts of Professor von Hayek when he was on the faculty there; to John Chapman, chiefly in the libraries of the National University of Australia at Canberra, of Indiana University, and the London School of Economics; to Hickson, at the Huntington Library in California; to Louis Blanc, at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; both earlier and later letters to Gustave d’Eichthal at the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, also in Paris; and to Charles Dupont-White, in the possession of M. Pierre Sadi-Carnot of Paris; to Hare, a private collection in the possession in 1943 of Mrs. K. E. Roberts of London, and in the British Museum; to Grote and Dilke in the British Museum; to Plummer at the University of Melbourne, Australia; to Holyoake at the Manchester Co-operative Union, Ltd.; to Spencer, at Northwestern University; to Christie, at Cornell University; and to Villari, in the library of the Vatican in Rome. Both earlier and later letters to Henry S. Chapman are in the possession of W. Rosenberg of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and all the letters to Thomas Carlyle are in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. Of the series of letters to American correspondents, those to Charles Eliot Norton are at Harvard, those to Rowland G. Hazard at the Rhode Island Historical Society. Except for a small number at the London School of Economics, the many letters to Harriet are at Yale University. It should be noted that all these series, except the one to Spencer, are of the original autograph letters, not of MS drafts preserved by Mill.

Professor von Hayek, in his account of the first sale of 21 lots of Mill’s papers at Sotheby’s on March 29, 1922, notes that most of the miscellaneous letters now in various American libraries, notably those at the Johns Hopkins Edition: current; Page: [xx] University (248 letters, mostly drafts), derive from that sale. A large part of the major collection at the London School of Economics derives from the same sale, as do the 61 letters at the Brotherton Library of the University of Leeds, and the 18 letters to John Sterling in the library of King’s College, Cambridge. The 368 letters in the Elliot edition seem to have been drawn almost wholly from the collection eventually disposed of at this first sale in 1922. Elliot was denied the use of the 132 manuscript letters to Harriet included among the 14 lots disposed of at the second sale at Sotheby’s on July 27, 1927; these letters form the largest part of the 230 letters now at Yale University, which also possesses a good many from the first sale. Family letters not included in either sale were eventually given to the London School of Economics by the National Provincial Bank, Ltd., the residuary legatees and literary executors of Mary Taylor.

Many important letters have been found in published versions for which no manuscripts have apparently survived. The most important of these are 31 letters in full or in part to Theodor Gomperz, a young German scholar who translated a number of Mill’s works and edited the first collected edition of his writings. These letters were first published by Heinrich Gomperz in his biography of his father (Vienna, 1936) and then in part by Lord Stamp, who had purchased the MSS, in The Times on December 29, 1938. The manuscripts were destroyed by the bombing raid of April 16, 1941, in which Lord Stamp was killed. Other letters, usually in excerpted form, the MSS of which disappeared in less spectacular fashion, have been found in Bain’s biography of Mill and in various biographies of Mill’s friends. Many have also been located in English and American newspapers, most of them published by the recipients without Mill’s permission. His reputation and his influence in the later years of his life were so great that letters from him were rightly judged newsworthy. Mill was often annoyed by such unauthorized publication. As he explained to Duncan McLaren in a letter of January 3, 1869,

As a rule . . . I prefer that my letters should not be made public unless they were written with a view to the contingency of their being so, & I have seen with regret several recent instances in which publicity has been given to them without my consent; not that I shrink from exposure to criticism, which any public man, even any writer, ought to welcome, from however hostile a quarter; but because, when writing confidentially to friends who feel as one does oneself, one takes many things for granted which would require explanation to general readers, & one does not guard one’s expressions as prudence & courtesy would require one to do in addressing oneself to those who differ with one.

We cannot approve of the discourtesy of correspondents who published personal letters, but, since the manuscripts of most of these have disappeared, students of Mill may feel some inclination to condone the discourtesy. On at least one occasion Mill granted permission to publish his letter, but requested Edition: current; Page: [xxi] the recipient to modify some of the wording (Letter 1258). Most of such letters, of course, were on topics of public interest at the time, and most of the correspondents who made them available for publication agreed with Mill’s opinions as expressed in the letters and wished to gain for their own causes his prestigious support.

Such letters are largely impersonal in tone and provide few insights into the nature of the man who wrote them. For more such insights we are now fortunate in having available, in addition to the Autobiography, a series of letters to friends in both the earlier and the later periods of his life. Of the earlier letters, most revealing and most interesting are the series to John Sterling, Thomas Carlyle, William Johnson Fox, Robert Barclay Fox, and Gustave d’Eichthal, largely concentrated in the 1830’s and early 1840’s when Mill after his mental crisis was still in reaction against the emotionally sterile education and philosophic creed of his adolescence and was still reshaping his personal life. Most of the later series lack something of the inherent interest of letters written during a period of crucial intellectual and emotional change. The friendships of one’s youth are likely to be the warmest of one’s life and the least subject to reserve. The earlier years of most autobiographies have an appeal for many readers greater than that of the later years. Nevertheless the series of Mill’s maturity have an attraction of their own, different in quality and intensity perhaps, but nonetheless interesting because of the revelations of the variety of his friendships, the breadth of his interests, the strength of his individuality, and the modernity of his approach to those problems of his age that continue into ours.

Did any Victorian have a wider range of more or less regular correspondents both at home and abroad? At home there were fellow economists like Cairnes and Leslie, the classical scholar George Grote, the philosopher Herbert Spencer, the logician and psychologist Alexander Bain, the writers John Sterling and Thomas Carlyle, the mathematician Augustus De Morgan, political and administrative reformers like Chadwick, Charles Wentworth Dilke, and W. D. Christie, the editors John Chapman and John Morley, W. G. Ward the Roman Catholic convert and apologist, the Unitarian W. J. Fox, and the atheist G. J. Holyoake. Mill’s foreign correspondence marks him as perhaps, in his generation of Englishmen, the most nearly a citizen of the world; it seems almost as though he had chosen correspondents in the United States, the antipodes, and the major European nations so that he might be kept informed of developments in their parts of the world. The writers included: in France, Gustave d’Eichthal, an early St. Simonian, later a classicist, ethnologist, and Biblical scholar, and Charles Dupont-White, political economist and translator of several of Mill’s books; from France, though for most of the years of his friendship an exile in England, the historian, journalist, and radical politician, Louis Blanc; in Vienna, the young classical Edition: current; Page: [xxii] scholar and historian, Gomperz; in Germany, late in Mill’s life, Franz Brentano, the philosopher; in Italy, Pasquale Villari, the historian; in New Zealand, his early friend Henry Chapman, who had emigrated and become an important officer of government; in America, John Lothrop Motley, historian and diplomatist, as well as Charles Eliot Norton, editor and biographer, later a Harvard professor, and Rowland G. Hazard, business man and philosopher. One notices that while Mill’s regular correspondents shared his interests and in the main agreed with his views—most of them might have been labelled liberals or even radicals—by no means all of them came from levels of society that proper mid-Victorians would have labelled “polite”. G. J. Holyoake, ex-Chartist, radical freethinker, and publicist, when various of the journals he published fell into financial difficulties, was rescued by Mill. Louis Blanc, who according to Mill was “associated in the vulgar English mind with everything that can be made a bugbear of” (p. 999), was a frequent dinner guest at Blackheath, both before and after the death of Harriet. William Wood was a worker in the potteries of north England; and John Plummer was a factory worker turned journalist, who with his wife was invited from time to time by Mill to dinner at his home in Blackheath Park. (John Morley once remarked that working men found easier access to Mill than did royalty.) For Mill the crucial test in the choice of both friends and correspondents was whether they could contribute to the advancement of the ideas and causes in which he believed; he was always eager to learn from them and welcomed their opinions even when they differed from him in details.

Some of the correspondences, notably those with Bain, Cairnes, and Spencer, were essentially philosophic discourses conducted by mail, sifting difficult questions in logic, philosophy, science, and political economy, often with a view to the ever-continuing revision and improvement of such major works as the Logic (8 editions) and the Political Economy (7 editions). On one occasion, in thanking Cairnes for his extensive notes for the revision of the Political Economy, Mill remarked the similarity to “the philosophic correspondences in which the thinkers of the 16th and 17th centuries used to compare notes and discuss each other’s opinions before or after publication—of which we have so many interesting specimens in the published works of Descartes” (p. 975). Such letters as that to Bain on the conservation of force (Letter 1554) probably have less interest for the modern reader than the letters that discuss practical questions of political and social reform and the strategies for the attainment of such reforms; still, they do contribute to our understanding of the close reasoning and the constant striving for perfection that always characterized Mill’s philosophic work.

In the letters dealing with reform, there is always a sense of rejoicing in the fellowship of allies, a feeling “of brotherhood in arms with those who Edition: current; Page: [xxiii] are . . . fighting . . . the battles of advanced liberalism” (p. 1511).¹ Mill’s need for fellowship was a long-standing one. As early as 1829 in his first extant letter to John Sterling, describing his sense of loneliness in the years following his mental crisis, Mill wrote: “By loneliness I mean the absence of that feeling which has accompanied me through the greater part of my life, that which one fellow traveller, or one fellow soldier has towards another—the feeling of being engaged in the pursuit of a common object, and of mutually cheering one another on, and helping one another in an arduous undertaking” (Earlier Letters, p. 30).

Mill’s life-long need for emotional support is probably the explanation of the riddle of his relationship with Mrs. John Taylor, who after twenty years of close friendship became his wife. Now, with the full publication of all his known extant letters to her, by far the most voluminous of his correspondences, some further clues to the riddle may be discerned.² When his Autobiography was published within six months after his death, Mill’s extravagant tributes to his wife’s intellectual abilities and to her contributions to his thought and writing were greeted generally with amused scepticism.³ The reviewer in the British Quarterly Review remarked dryly: “Mill had no great faith in a God. He had unbounded confidence in a goddess.” Alexander Bain, reading the proofs of the Autobiography and fearful that Mill’s reputation would suffer seriously if his most extreme claims for his wife were not deleted, wrote to Helen Taylor, Mill’s literary executor, to urge that she should cancel “those sentences where he declares her to be a greater poet than Carlyle, and a greater thinker than himself—and again, a greater leader than his father (or at all events an equal).” Bain continued:

I venture to express the opinion that no such combination has ever been realised in the history of the human race, and I am sure that many will take the same view; and the whole of his statements will be treated as pure hyperbole, proving, indeed, the strength of his feelings, but not the reality of the case. I think that your mother, yourself, and Mr. Mill will all be placed in a false position before the world by such extreme statements.

(Sept. 6, 1873, MS at LSE)

Helen, whether out of loyalty to her mother or unwillingness to distort by omission Mill’s expression of his obsessive admiration of Harriet, refused to make the suggested deletions, though she did, with reluctance, remove praise of herself. Bain’s fears proved to be exaggerated, and over the years most readers of the Autobiography have been inclined to view charitably the Edition: current; Page: [xxiv] extravagant praise of Harriet as the harmless aberration of a love-blinded widower.

A somewhat different perspective on the question, however, is now necessary. Ever since the publication of Professor Jack Stillinger’s edition of The Early Draft of John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography (Urbana, Ill., 1961) it has been clear that most of the praise of Harriet in the Autobiography had been written, not after her death, but during their married life, and indeed had been submitted to her for her approval, which apparently was given without protest. From the letters in the present volumes it is further evident that the defence and justification of Mill’s and Harriet’s unconventional friendship and eventual marriage constituted one of the main original purposes of writing the Autobiography. For Harriet, who participated actively in planning the book, it was probably the major purpose. Mill wrote to her on January 23, 1854, of the desirability of completing it as soon as possible:

What there is of it is in a perfectly publishable state . . . & it contains a full writing out as far as any thing can write out, what you are, as far as I am competent to describe you & what I owe to you—but, besides that until revised by you it is little better than unwritten, it contains nothing about our private circumstances, further than shewing that there was intimate friendship for many years, & you only can decide what more it is necessary or desirable to say in order to stop the mouths of enemies hereafter

(pp. 137-38).

To his request of February 13 that she give him “a general notion of what we should say or imply respecting our private concerns” (p. 159), Harriet’s reply of February 14-15 (one of the very few of her letters to him still extant) was quite explicit:

Should there not be a summary of our relationship from its commencement in 1830—I mean given in a dozen lines—so as to preclude other and different versions of our lives at Ki[ngston] and Wal[ton]—our summer excursions, etc. This ought to be done in its genuine simplicity & truth—strong affection, intimacy of friendship, and no impropriety. It seems to me an edifying picture for those poor wretches who cannot conceive friendship but in sex—nor believe that expediency and the consideration for feelings of others can conquer sensuality. But of course this is not my reason for wishing it done. It is that every ground should be occupied by ourselves on our own subject

(p. 166 n.).

The early draft was written in 1853-54, at a time when the two were still smarting from the gossip that had pursued them for at least twenty years; it was also written at a time when Mill feared that his death was imminent. Evidently, his original intention was to divide the work into two parts, the pre- and the post-Harriet periods of his life. Such a division proved to be impracticable, partly because of the disproportionate lengths of the two periods, and a compromise revision was achieved which blurred the sharp distinction between the two sections. Nevertheless, if Mill had died in, say Edition: current; Page: [xxv] 1856, the work if published would have given the concluding emphasis to the justification and glorification of his wife. In that form it seems reasonable to doubt that it could have added as much to Mill’s reputation as did the final version achieved by the revision and extension completed about 1870.

One can understand that in the months following Harriet’s death on November 3, 1858, Mill in grief for his devastating loss should have eulogized her in his letters. The most extravagant evaluation occurs in a hitherto unpublished letter to Louis Blanc:

I do not speak from feeling but from long standing and sober conviction in saying that when she died this country lost the greatest mind it contained. You cannot know what she was privately, but you, more than most men, can sympathize in the nobleness of her public objects, which never stopped short of perfect distributive justice as the final aim, implying therefore a state of society entirely communist in practice and spirit, whether also in institutions or not. The entire faith in the ultimate possibilities of human nature was drawn from her own glorious character, while her keen perception of present difficulties and obstacles was derived from her wonderful practical discernment, and comprehension of life

(p. 601).

Although the years after 1858 did not mitigate his extravagant estimate of Harriet, they did lead him to soften or omit a number of the asperities which had been clearly inspired by his relationship with her and which she had not sought to modify when she read the draft. It was not by her advice that he eliminated the severe criticism of his mother found in the early draft, or his belittling of his one-time friend John Roebuck, or his attack upon Sarah Austin, whom in earlier years he had addressed as “Dear Mutterlein” (see Earlier Letters).

Harriet’s grudge against the society that had excluded her from polite circles is understandable. As the pretty, striking young wife of a prosperous, not unintelligent though perhaps rather unimaginative, business man, John Taylor, her circle had been limited but not without interest. Although Unitarians may still have been “a sect every where spoken against,” they were intellectually, and to some extent socially, the aristocrats among the Dissenters. The Taylors entertained generously among those whom Carlyle scornfully labelled “friends of the species,” reformers, Benthamites, yet substantial citizens withal. But there was a flaw in the outwardly happy marriage. Mr. Taylor shared too little Harriet’s aesthetic and intellectual interests. Legend has it that she turned for advice to her pastor, the liberal Unitarian preacher and writer, the Reverend William Johnson Fox, and that he was responsible for calling to her attention the twenty-four-year-old John Stuart Mill, then unknown to the general public as a writer but regarded in liberal circles as a highly promising if somewhat manufactured genius. Mill and Mrs. Taylor first met in 1830 in the Taylor home at a dinner party also attended by Harriet Martineau and John Roebuck.

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Just how rapidly the acquaintance ripened into love is not clear, but by the summer of 1832 Mill and Mrs. Taylor were exchanging agonized love letters, and by September, 1833, a crisis was reached in the Taylors’ marriage. She went off to Paris for a trial separation from her husband, and Mill soon followed. Members of her family intervened to patch up the threatened marriage and obviate scandal. Mrs. Taylor returned to her husband’s home and to a marriage henceforth only nominal. She had not, however, “renounced sight” of Mill, and their meetings were frequent, both at her home and elsewhere. From time to time they spent vacations together on the Continent, sometimes with her children and one or another of his younger brothers. Gossip thrived, of course, though the evidence seems fairly clear that there was no sexual relationship. Mrs. Taylor succeeded in holding both her husband and her lover at arm’s length. Some years after her marriage to Mill she told the young Gomperz that she was his Seelenfreundin.

Inevitably, Mill’s attachment to Mrs. Taylor restricted his contacts in English society, and for a time he worried that it would destroy his usefulness as a reformer. Some of his friends he cut because they had advised him against continuing the relationship or had participated in the gossip; others he cut because she disliked them. She herself seems to have had little capacity for friendship, especially with members of her own sex. Her only close woman friend was the somewhat elfin Eliza Flower, who herself came under a cloud because of her relationship with the Reverend W. J. Fox. Mill’s circle narrowed over the long years before the death of John Taylor in 1849 finally made possible the marriage with Harriet in 1851; thereafter the circle became even more circumscribed. He soon cut himself off from his sisters and preserved only a formal relationship with his mother, all because of fancied slights to his wife. An admittedly gauche letter by his brother George about the marriage provoked a savage, withering reply (pp. 73-75). Probably the greatest blot on Mill’s character was his treatment, apparently with Harriet’s encouragement, of his family after his marriage, as seen in other letters included in this edition. Even after his mother’s death when he proposed to Harriet that he should give up his share of his mother’s estate to his sisters, Harriet insisted that he should not yield to his generous impulse (see pp. 220 and 223). Only some years after her death did he begin to treat his sisters more kindly and even to provide financial assistance for at least one of them, Mary Colman.

As for society, Henry Reeve, acquainted with Mill since their boyhood, writer of the Edinburgh’s hostile review of the Autobiography in 1874, spoke for Mrs. Grundy: “From the moment he devoted himself exclusively to what he calls ‘the most valuable friendship of my life,’ [his ties with talented women like Mrs. Buller, Mrs. Austin, and Mrs. Grote were broken.] Whatever may have been their regard for Mill, these ladies found it impossible to countenance Edition: current; Page: [xxvii] or receive a woman who had placed herself in so equivocal a position.” (ER, CXXXIX (Jan., 1874), 122.) Enough is known of Mrs. Austin and Mrs. Grote, as well as of Mrs. Carlyle, and of their tolerance for unconventionality, to make one suspect that it was not their concern for Mrs. Grundy, but their not wholly unjustified dislike for Harriet that led them to ostracize her. She, deeply resenting her exclusion, of course attributed it to her breaking of convention in her long association with Mill during her first husband’s lifetime. And under her sway Mill made the justification of that association one of his major purposes in writing his autobiography.

Was he then simply deluded? Was he who was ordinarily so discerning in his analysis of men and motives blinded when it came to appraising her? There can be no question that from the first she filled an enormous need in his emotional life. Suffering from a too exclusively intellectual education that had starved the affections and led to his near nervous breakdown at twenty, he sought a friend with whom he could share his inmost thoughts and feelings and upon whom he could rely for comradeship in the causes he held most dear. For a time, as his letters reveal, it seemed that John Sterling might fulfil the role, and for a while, even after Mill had met Harriet, Carlyle appeared to be a possibility. But, for good or ill, the friend he found was Mrs. Taylor: for good, in that she provided a centre of stability for his emotional and, to some extent, his intellectual life; for ill, in that she fostered the isolation from his contemporaries that had characterized his earlier life. Loverlike, in his early relation with her, he engaged in lover’s flattery of her, not of her beauty but of her intellectual abilities and interests, on which she prided herself. She was intelligent, she shared his passion for social reform, and she was at times even more direct and unwavering than he in going to the heart of a social or political problem. She also had a much better sense than he did of management of everyday, practical affairs, and after their marriage he became dependent upon her judgment in such matters. She in turn seems to have become more and more dependent upon him in her need of praise. One can understand a woman’s acceptance of even extravagant flattery in a lover’s or even a husband’s letters; one finds it more difficult to comprehend a wife’s coolly approving for publication such extraordinary tributes as Mill paid Harriet in the Autobiography.

Although she seems not to have objected to overpraise of herself, on at least one occasion she objected to his too laudatory words in a review article. Mill acknowledged the fault: “I am always apt to get enthusiastic about those who do great things for progress & are immensely ahead of everybody else in their age . . . & I am not always sufficiently careful to explain that the praise is relative to the then state & not the now state of knowledge & of what ought to be improved feeling” (pp. 17-18). In this case his perhaps extravagant praise was for the ancient Athenians, but his reply gives a clue to his feelings Edition: current; Page: [xxviii] about Harriet; in his view she was always for doing “great things for progress” and was “immensely ahead of everybody else in [her] age,” in “what ought to be improved feeling.”

In his marriage the sense of communion, of sharing in the advancement of common causes, gave Mill relief from his otherwise ever-present feeling of aloneness. Sympathizing with Frederick Denison Maurice’s expression of “mental loneliness” in 1865, he wrote:

In our age & country, every person with any mental power at all, who both thinks for himself & has a conscience, must feel himself, to a very great degree, alone. I shd think you have decidedly more people who are in real communion of thoughts, feelings & purposes with you than I have. I am in this supremely happy, that I have had, & even now have [with Helen Taylor], that communion in the fullest degree where it is most valuable, in my own home. But I have it nowhere else; & if people did but know how much more precious to me is the faintest approach to it, than all the noisy eulogiums in the world!

(p. 1048.)

To the need for that continued communion through some long separations we owe the large number of Mill’s letters to Harriet. Several years after their marriage both were afflicted with critical ill health. First, in the fall of 1853, on the advice of their physicians, Mill and Harriet, accompanied by Helen, sought to restore their health by a three-month residence in the more favourable climate of Nice. There Harriet suffered a severe haemorrhage and nearly died. Mill’s own condition improved little if any, but after moving Harriet to Hyères, where she remained until spring, he returned to his work at the India House early in January. His 38 letters to her between December 28, 1853, and April 11, 1854, when she returned home, give the best picture available of their life at Blackheath Park, for in the two other series of his letters to her, he was travelling while she remained in England. Almost none of her letters to him during these separations survived, for he seems dutifully to have followed her instructions to destroy them (p. 146).

His letters to her are, of course, informal and miscellaneous, dealing more or less at random with matters of both private and public interest. The underlying concern in them all is the state of their health; he awaits eagerly her reports and gives her details of his visits to his physicians, describes sometimes almost clinically his symptoms, and specifies the medicines he is taking. Linked with the matter of their health are the questions of when to retire from the East India Company and where they should live thereafter. The prospect of reduced income in retirement was perhaps responsible for Mill’s concern about household expenses during his wife’s absence, but more likely it was his ineptitude in dealing with practical details usually attended to by Harriet. The supply of potatoes and bread seemed to diminish too rapidly, the butcher’s bills seemed too high, two tons of coals had lasted twelve weeks in the spring and summer of 1853 but a similar quantity had surprisingly Edition: current; Page: [xxix] lasted only nine weeks after November 12 (p. 136)! And then there were rats to be coped with; his neighbour at Blackheath had sent a note to the effect that rats dislodged from his own property had taken refuge in an outhouse on Mill’s side. Mill could find no key to the outhouse. What to do? Write Harriet, of course, who from France soon supplied the solution to the problem (pp. 180, 182, 188).

Mill’s dependence on her at this time extended well beyond the problems of domestic life. He seems seldom to have answered a letter without consulting her about the form of the reply. One can understand why he should have consulted her about replying to a complimentary note from Mrs. Grote about his review of her husband’s book, for Mrs. Grote was one of those they thought had gossiped about them. Harriet evidently recommended a dignified silence. Mill thought it rather strange that Grote, with whom he had been on close terms for years, did not perceive that Mill was now addressing him as Mr. Grote (pp. 123 and 133). Other replies to letters hardly requiring such delicacy of decorum nevertheless were not sent until Harriet had been consulted. When the legislature of South Carolina sent him a presentation copy of a book by John C. Calhoun (pp. 142-43), when the Christian Socialist Frederick Furnivall wanted to reprint from the Political Economy the chapter on the future of the labouring classes (p. 149), and when Sir Charles Trevelyan requested an opinion on a plan for the reform of the Civil Service (pp. 175, 178, 184), the replies all required Harriet’s advice and approval.

Harriet’s role in the early version of the Autobiography has been described; she was also consulted at almost every turn in his writings of this period. She contributed three “beautiful” sentences to the essay on Nature (p. 144). When that was completed, he asked her to tell him what to attempt next:

I will just copy the list of subjects we made out in the confused order in which we put them down. Differences of character (nation, race, age, sex, temperament). Love. Education of tastes. Religion de l’Avenir. Plato. Slander. Foundation of morals. Utility of religion. Socialism. Liberty. Doctrine that causation is will. To these I have now added from your letter: Family, & Conventional

(p. 152).

Harriet in reply recommended “The Utility of Religion” in a sentence that revealed that the subject was one close to her heart (p. 165, n. 3). He consulted her about revisions of the Political Economy for a new edition (pp. 185-87, 195). There is no evidence that he ever asked her help for more than verbal changes in revising the Logic (a very “dry” book, she wrote her brother Arthur, which to her surprise continued to sell well). Mill accepted readily her suggestion that he decline John Chapman’s invitation to review Harriet Martineau’s abridged translation of Comte’s Philosophie Positive, for he had long disliked Miss Martineau (pp. 126 and 134). His wife’s dominance in the choice of topics to write upon in this period seems clear, Edition: current; Page: [xxx] and even after her death her influence continued to guide his choice of political and social subjects; only in his writings on philosophical and psychological questions does her influence as a motivating force seem to have been minimal.

Harriet was a rebel not without cause. In Mill she found a man whose extraordinary education had shaped him also for rebellion against the social, moral, and political conventions of his time. In him she found too a man almost desperately lonely, subject to recurring periods of depression. It is perhaps small wonder that in gratitude for her braving the censure of society, for her sharing in his devotion to liberal causes, and for her strengthening of his spiritual and emotional resources, he sought to induce the world to accept his estimate of her. Neither he nor some of his recent biographers have convinced us that she was the originating mind behind his work, but no one can doubt her importance in his inner life, the well-springs of which had been threatened by drought.

The other two series of Mill’s letters to Harriet, because they are essentially travel letters, are less revealing. The travel on both trips was undertaken in the hope of recovering his health. In the last letter (Letter 154) of the earlier series to Harriet he had confessed that his doctor had at last told him that he had an advanced case of consumption. He was too ill to go to Paris to accompany Harriet and Helen when they returned to England about the middle of April, 1854. Thereafter, his health deteriorated rapidly and he lost weight at an alarming rate. Yielding to the advice of his physicians, he left England on June 9, 1854, for a trip to Brittany by way of the Channel Islands. Fifteen of his letters to Harriet during his six-week absence have survived. Although, as he admitted a year later, he thought his death was imminent, he kept up a brave front for Harriet. He focused attention upon plans for retirement to the Continent: “I suppose we shall never again live in England permanently” (p. 223). Everywhere he went he made inquiries about the cost of living and reported the prices of food in the various towns. He took his cod liver oil regularly, but his favourite remedy for his health was walking: “I am always out of doors, & walking when not travelling” (p. 218). A walk of twenty or more miles a day even in his weakened condition was not uncommon. Gradually he began to take on some weight and when he returned home in late July his condition seemed improved.

With the approach of winter, however, more travel seemed necessary. Leaving Harriet at Torquay with her mother and sister as guests, Mill left England on December 8 for a trip of over six months to southern France, Italy, Sicily, and Greece, not rejoining Harriet until he met her in Paris in mid-June. The 49 letters he wrote her during his travels can be read with interest in themselves, apart from their contributions to any further understanding of their relationship. They are the letters of a highly intelligent Edition: current; Page: [xxxi] observer, and those written from Sicily and Greece in particular are valuable for their pictures of wild country not often visited in the mid-nineteenth century by Englishmen. The railroads had not yet reached those areas, and the difficulties of travel by the public diligences, by mule, and on foot were great enough to deter many a healthier traveller than Mill, who had been almost at the point of death only six months earlier. Since the letters are written to his wife, they of course recount in some detail the progress of his health, his gains or losses in weight whenever he finds available scales, his persistent bouts with indigestion, and the gradually improving condition of his lungs. Addicted to long walks since boyhood, he now almost literally walked himself back to health, travelling often through wild country in Sicily and Greece, climbing mountains and fording streams, often in pelting rain, and always botanizing as he went along, collecting loads of specimens which he dried and sorted in the evenings. Many of the inns were primitive, and infested with fleas. Writing from Greece on May 26, he wryly described one of his bouts with the pests:

I never saw so many fleas in the whole of my precious life, as I found on my clothes & body on undressing last night. After chasing them one by one I laid the palm of my hand over six or seven at once. During the night they danced a saraband on my face, & I fancied I could hear the sounds of myriads of them jumping on the floor: but perhaps it was only the droppings of the swallows, for there are always swallows in these places; the people think them lucky; & they often fly about in the night, as these did. In the morning while I was sponging myself nearly a dozen of the enemy gathered on my legs & feet. What is worse, I have brought a colony of them with me to this comparatively clean place, & they are tormenting me worse than ever. One little rascal had the impudence to bite my hand to my very face

(p. 463).

Away from the cities he recounts the breathtaking beauty of the natural scenery: near Vaucluse in Southern France (p. 267); near Chiaramonte in Sicily (pp. 381-82), where the view from the hills and mountains is such that “one feels lifted out of all the littleness of it & conscious of a beauty which seems lent to it by something grander”; near Mount Pentelicus in Greece, where “The more than earthly beauty of this country quite takes away from me all care or feeling about the historical associations, which I had so strongly in Syracuse. That I shall have when I read Greek history again after becoming acquainted with the localities” (p. 429). Despite this statement he is almost always eager to associate literature and history with the places he visits; in Bordeaux, in preparation for Italy, he buys a volume which contains the poetry of Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso (p. 251); in Sicily he reads the native poets Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus (p. 401), as well as Goethe’s Italian travels (p. 339), and he saves Sophocles for Greece (p. 401).

In Rome and the cities of northern Italy he performs zestfully “the first Edition: current; Page: [xxxii] duty of man when in Italy, that of seeing pictures” (p. 270). He had never before been so “immersed in pictures” (p. 312). He is modest about his pretension in venturing to give his opinions on the paintings, sculpture, and architecture he sees, but “as all I say about them is the expression of real feelings which they give or which they fail to give me, what I say though superficial is genuine & may go for what it is worth—it does not come from books or from other people . . .” (p. 312). He protests against prudery: “the precious King of Naples has shut up the Venus Callipyge & the other Venuses on pretext of public decency—the Pope has done the same to the Venus of the Capitol. If these things are done in Italy what shall we come to next?” (p. 317). Although Mill’s education had been defective with respect to art (as had the education of most Englishmen of his time), he now began to gain confidence in his judgments. “I find the pleasure which pictures & statues give me increases with every new experience, & I am acquiring strong preferences & discriminations which with me I think is a sign of progress” (p. 295).

In the midst of his new-found pleasures in art and of the renewal of his joy in natural beauty, Mill nonetheless never strayed very far from the consciousness of his duty to write for the betterment of mankind. “We have got a power of which we must try to make a good use during the few years of life we have left” (p. 332). In Rome he was moved to recall a paper he had written for his volume of essays he had projected with Harriet:

I came back to an idea we have talked about & thought that the best thing to write & publish at present would be a volume on Liberty. So many things might be brought into it & nothing seems to me more needed—it is a growing need too, for opinion tends to encroach more & more on liberty, & almost all the projects of social reformers in these days are really liberticide—Comte, particularly so. I wish I had brought with me here the paper on liberty that I wrote for our volume of Essays—perhaps my dearest will kindly read it through & tell me whether it will do as the foundation of one part of the volume in question—If she thinks so I will try to write & publish it in 1856 if my health permits as I hope it will

(p. 294).

He revived also a plan he had thought of as early as 1839 (see Earlier Letters, p. 411) to publish a collection of his periodical essays.

It seems desirable to do it in our lifetime, for I fancy we cannot prevent other people from doing it when we are dead . . . : now if we do it, we can exclude what we should not choose to republish, & nobody would think of reprinting what the writer had purposely rejected. Then the chance of the name selling them is as great as it is ever likely to be—the collection would probably be a good deal reviewed, for anybody thinks he can review a miscellaneous collection but few a treatise on logic or political economy. . . . I hope to publish some volume almost annually for the next few years if I live as long—& I should like to get this reprint, if it is to be done at all, off my hands during the next few months after I return in Edition: current; Page: [xxxiii] which India House business being in arrear will prevent me from settling properly to the new book. Will my dearest one think about this & tell me what her judgment & also what her feeling is

(p. 348).

As it turned out, however, Mill did not publish another book until the year after Harriet’s death in November, 1858. It was not merely the arrears of India House business that delayed the fulfilment of his plans; on him was placed the burden of the defence of the Company against the takeover of the administration of India by the British government in 1858. After his retirement and the death of his wife, he published in close succession in 1859 the essay On Liberty, his pamphlet on Parliamentary Reform, and the first two volumes of his review articles, Dissertations and Discussions.

Again during his 1855 trip he was concerned about his approaching retirement. Almost every place he went he noted its cost of living and its suitability as a home for them. Corfu and the nearby islands, curiously enough, seemed most attractive, especially when the possibility developed that he might be able to secure an appointment as Resident of one of the Ionian islands then under British protection (p. 412).

I do not believe there is a more beautiful place in the world & few more agreeable—the burthen of it to us would be that we could not (with the Residentship) have the perfectly quiet life, with ourselves & our own thoughts, which we prefer to any other, but if we have tolerable health there is not more of societyzing than would be endurable & if we have not, that would excuse us

(p. 420).

Isolation from English society, so long as it was shared with Harriet, would be no deprivation for him. To lose her would be the unthinkable calamity. That he might do something that would alienate her from him seems to have been a deeply rooted fear, a fear that once near the end of his long absence from her gained expression in a letter.

. . . I had a horrible dream lately—I had come back to her & she was sweet & loving like herself at first, but presently she took a complete dislike to me saying that I was changed much for the worse—I am terribly afraid sometimes lest she should think so, not that I see any cause for it, but because I know how deficient I am in self consciousness & self observation, & how often when she sees me again after I have been even a short time absent she is disappointed—but she shall not be, she will not be so I think this time—bless my own darling, she has been all the while without intermission present to my thoughts & I have been all the while mentally talking with her when I have not been doing so on paper

(p. 476).

The three years following Mill’s return to Harriet in June, 1855, seem to have been happy. Their health was somewhat improved and no further prolonged separations occurred. As a result, of course, we have little record in letters of their life together for this period. Only occasionally in these years were letters necessary, ordinarily brief ones. In the summer of 1856, accompanied by Helen and Algernon Taylor, they spent much of July and August Edition: current; Page: [xxxiv] in Switzerland and were apart only for a week while Mill took a walking tour of the French Jura. In September, 1857, and July, 1858, he made several botanizing expeditions, each of about a week’s duration. The longest separation during these years occurred in February, 1857, when Harriet went to Scotland to be near her daughter Helen, who in the preceding November had won her mother’s very reluctant consent to her undertaking a career as an actress. She was permitted to do so only on the understanding that the Taylor name should be concealed; she billed herself as Miss Trevor. To conceal Helen’s whereabouts, Harriet went to great pains; for all her protests against social convention, she wanted to avoid the stigma still attached to the theatrical profession and to preserve appearances for herself and her daughter.

The last years of Mill’s marriage continued the isolation that had characterized his life with Harriet. One notices the paucity of his correspondence in these years as well as of publication. Old friends, like the Grotes, were still kept at a distance; there is no record of the Mills’ entertaining any friends except Louis Blanc, who, as a radical French journalist, was outside the pale of respectable society. It seems more than likely that if Mill’s and Harriet’s plans for their retirement had been carried out, his isolation from English life would have continued. Not that he would have minded, for to the end Harriet was the all-sufficient centre of his existence. If Harriet could have lived, he would gladly have foregone the public fame he was later to achieve.

When she died in Avignon on November 3, 1858, the blow to him was all but overwhelming. To his friend and former colleague at the India House, W. T. Thornton, he wrote:

It is doubtful if I shall ever be fit for anything public or private, again. The spring of my life is broken. But I shall best fulfil her wishes by not giving up the attempt to do something useful, and I am not quite alone. I have with me her daughter, the one person besides myself who most loved her & whom she most loved, & we help each other to bear what is inevitable

(p. 574).

By the end of the month, before he and Helen returned to England, he had purchased a cottage at St. Véran near the Avignon cemetery in which Harriet was buried. The cottage was henceforth to be his and Helen’s real home, although they usually spent about half of each year in England in the house in Blackheath Park, which they retained until 1872. The tie that bound them to Avignon was, of course, the nearby grave of Harriet, which became virtually a shrine. For the rest of his life, whenever he was at Avignon, Mill visited the site for an hour each day.

The shared loss of Harriet brought Mill and Helen into an association that was to strengthen over the remaining years of his life. In many ways he became heavily dependent upon her. She seems to have accepted the burden willingly and without regret at giving up her hoped-for career in the theatre. From the first she devoted herself to Mill’s comforts, interests, and causes.

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He soon became as dependent upon her as he had been upon Harriet. This is best seen in the series of his letters to Helen of January and February, 1860, apparently his only extended separation from her in his last fifteen years, occasioned by his return to Blackheath to consult his physicians and settle some business affairs, while she remained in Avignon. As in his letters to Harriet, he keeps Helen informed about the medical advice he has received (p. 660). He forwards certain letters to her (as formerly to Harriet) to consult her on the replies to be made (p. 661). In practical matters—for instance, when the walls in their Blackheath house begin to threaten collapse—he still depends on the woman of the house for instructions (pp. 662, 666). It is Helen who is responsible for the home at Avignon, at one point supervising the building of an addition. Under her skilful ministrations, the cottage at Avignon became not only a comfortable refuge from the society in which he had been in the past seldom at ease but also the place where he was henceforth to carry on most of his study and his writing.

In November, 1861, he wrote his friend Thornton:

Life here is uneventful, and feels like a perpetual holiday. It is one of the great privileges of advanced civilization, that while keeping out of the turmoil and depressing wear of life, one can have brought to one’s doors all that is agreeable or stimulating in the activities of the outward world, by newspapers, new books, periodicals, &c. It is, in truth, too self-indulgent a life for any one to allow himself whose duties lie among his fellow-beings, unless, as is fortunately the case with me, they are mostly such as can better be fulfilled at a distance from their society, than in the midst of it

(p. 747).

Mill was aware of the dangers to Helen in his virtual monopoly of her attention. Once when she had evidently complained of being depressed by the company of some women at Avignon, he wrote her:

It is a great happiness to me to be a support to you under depression, but it would be very painful to me to think that I should always continue to be the only one, as I must necessarily fail you some day & I can never be at ease unless, either by means of persons or of pursuits you have some other resource besides me, and I am sure my own darling [Harriet] would feel as I do

(p. 677).

Helen continued, however, to devote herself almost exclusively to Mill’s interests. By 1865, as has been pointed out in the Preface, she became so identified with him as to be able to write a good many of his letters for him. Of a letter on women’s suffrage to Mary Carpenter, he wrote:

. . . I should not like to be a party to its being printed with my name, because it was written (as is the case with no inconsiderable portion of my correspondence) by my step-daughter Miss Helen Taylor. Without this help it would be impossible for me to carry on so very voluminous a correspondence as I am at present able to do: and we are so completely one in our opinions and feelings, that it makes hardly any difference which of us puts them into words

(p. 1359).

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By her own admission, Helen was, like her mother before her, a severe critic of Mill’s writing. In turn, she reproached him for not criticizing her own writing severely enough. Mill thought her a good editor and trusted her judgment in the revision of his work. She worked zealously, “putting in words here, stops there; scratching through whole paragraphs; asking him to write whole new pages in particular places” where she thought the meaning unclear.⁴ Her relationship with Mill was such that there was “no amour propre to be hurt in his case or [hers].”

On at least one occasion she gave him a thorough dressing down for careless thinking and writing. When in a public letter to his election committee in the 1868 campaign for Parliament, Mill wrote effusively and somewhat evasively in defence of his support of the atheist Charles Bradlaugh, Helen, in a letter of November 12, 1868 (MS at LSE), sternly warned Mill that his “future power of usefulness on religious liberty” was being jeopardized by such letters, and that henceforth she would take charge of any correspondence about Bradlaugh: “Copy as literally as you can the letter I dictated (which I enclose) about Bradlaugh; and what you yourself said at the former election, about yourself.”⁵

Helen’s judgment in this instance was probably sound, but in other instances she seems to have brought Mill too much under her domination. When in 1869 the identity of the London Committee for Women’s Suffrage (originally Helen’s project) was threatened with a takeover by a Manchester group, Helen through Mill directed countermoves for the London Committee. In a series of letters to George Croom Robertson, Mill was led to advocate measures designed to eliminate dissident members from the Committee and to ensure that new members should be on the right side. This series of letters to Robertson is the only one in all his correspondence that reflects discredit upon Mill the advocate of freedom of opinion. Helen was so convinced of the rightness of her views that she became almost ruthless in her support of them.

Her evident domination of Mill in matters connected with the women’s suffrage movement did not escape the observation of one of Mill’s friends, Charles Eliot Norton, who wrote to Chauncey Wright on September 13, 1870:

I doubt whether Mill’s interest in the cause of woman is serviceable to him as a thinker. It has a tendency to develop the sentimental part of his intelligence, which is of immense force, and has only been kept in due subjection by his respect for his own reason. This respect diminishes under the powerful influence of his daughter, Miss Taylor, who is an admirable person doubtless, but is what, were Edition: current; Page: [xxxvii] she of the sex that she regards as inferior, would be called decidedly priggish. Her self-confidence, which embraces her confidence in Mill, is tremendous, and Mill is overpowered by it. Her words have an oracular value to him—something more than their just weight; and her unconscious flattery, joined with the very direct flattery of many other prominent leaders of the great female army, have a not unnatural effect on his tender, susceptible and sympathetic nature. . . .⁶

However dominant Helen may have become over Mill in his last years, her help to him in restoring his will to live and in developing new interests in the years immediately after Harriet’s death was of great importance. She encouraged him to make new friends, held frequent intimate dinner parties when they were at Blackheath, and shared his enthusiasm for new causes which he found he could advance better by ending the isolation he had enjoyed with Harriet. The first steps were taken somewhat reluctantly. He wrote to Helen in February, 1860, after meeting with Thomas Hare and Henry Fawcett:

The truth is that though I detest society for society’s sake yet when I can do anything for the public objects I care about by seeing & talking with people I do not dislike it. At the moment of going to do it, I feel it a bore, just as I do taking a walk or anything else that I must & ought to do when not wishing to do it. But I believe the little additional activity & change of excitement does me good, & that it is better for me to try to serve my opinions in other ways as well as with a pen in my hand

(p. 675).

The products of his pen, especially the shorter works published in 1859—On Liberty, Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, and the first two volumes of his Dissertations and Discussions—were beginning to have evident effect upon public opinion. He noted that an article in the conservative Quarterly Review had borrowed from his pamphlet on parliamentary reform (p. 667), and he wrote Helen in February, 1860, that his influence could be detected in the likewise conservative Saturday Review, “for besides that they are continually referring to me by name, I continually detect the influence of some idea that they have lately got from the Dissertations. They must also get me plenty of readers, for they are always treating me & my influence as something of very great importance” (pp. 673-74). Early in 1863 he corrected an American reviewer who thought that his shorter works had been neglected in England in comparison with his treatises. The more recent works “have been much more widely read than ever those were & have given me what I had not before, popular influence” (p. 843). That influence had also markedly increased in America and was reenforced by his wholehearted support of the Northern cause during the Civil War.

His active participation in political and social movements revived in the Edition: current; Page: [xxxviii] early 1860’s and is reflected both in the addition of new friendships and correspondences and in the renewing of old. Only seven letters to Edwin Chadwick, his early friend, are extant for the years between 1849 and November, 1858; there are nearly a hundred in the years to 1873. The friendship with Grote, broken off during the years of Mill’s marriage, was renewed, as well as their correspondence. The exchange of letters with Gustave d’Eichthal, interrupted in 1842, began again in 1863. Although evidence is incomplete, it seems likely that the correspondence with Alexander Bain had also been almost wholly suspended during Mill’s marriage.

Among the new correspondents, John Elliot Cairnes became perhaps the one most highly valued by Mill. In the earlier years of their correspondence, they had little opportunity for personal contact, since Cairnes resided in Ireland until 1866, when he became Professor of Political Economy at University College, London; he eventually made his home in Blackheath. Reference has been made earlier here to Mill’s awareness that their exchanges constituted a “philosophic correspondence” between two who shared a “brotherhood in arms.” Cairnes is sometimes thought of as a disciple of Mill, but while he was in basic agreement with Mill on many of their doctrines in political economy, he often disagreed with the older man in details. His criticism was often of great help to Mill in the revision of his Political Economy, and on some questions, notably on those relating to Ireland, Cairnes supplied invaluable information. Mill, in turn, was often of similar assistance to Cairnes (see, for instance, his analytical letter on the French political economists, pp. 1664-65). It was Mill who first encouraged Cairnes to expand some lectures he had delivered in Dublin into his book The Slave Power, which became perhaps the most influential force in shaping British opinion in favour of the North in the American Civil War. The letters of the two men on the course of that war reveal their mutual concern for the antislavery cause; said Mill, “the battle against the devil could not be fought on a more advantageous field than that of slavery” (p. 835). Other interests the two shared were proportional representation, women’s rights, and the reform of education and land tenure in Ireland. More than any other of Mill’s correspondence, except perhaps that with Carlyle—the other side of which is largely available—both sides of the Cairnes-Mill series deserve publication together; for reasons of space, we have been able to publish only pertinent excerpts of Cairnes’s letters in footnotes.

Of the other new friends, Thomas Hare supplied Mill with a new cause—the representation of minorities or, as we now phrase it, proportional representation. Mill responded enthusiastically when Hare sent him a copy of his book on the subject: “You appear to me to have exactly, and for the first time, solved the difficulty of popular representation; and by doing so, to have raised up the cloud of gloom and uncertainty which hung over the futurity of Edition: current; Page: [xxxix] representative government and therefore of civilization” (pp. 598-99). Mill’s long-standing fear of the tyranny of the majority in a democratic society was now allayed by the possibility of the representation of minorities set forth in Hare’s plan. It became at once a favourite cause for Mill, since he regarded the plan “as the sheet anchor of the democracy of the future” (p. 765). Within a month after studying Hare’s book he reviewed it enthusiastically in Fraser’s Magazine, and he quickly revised his pamphlet on parliamentary reform to endorse the plan. Hare became one of Mill’s valued friends and a dependable ally in another favourite cause, women’s suffrage.

It was through Hare that Mill gained another friend, disciple, and correspondent—the blind political economist and politician Henry Fawcett, who was Mill’s junior by twenty-three years. He and Mill were united in their support of Hare’s plan, co-operation, conservation, women’s suffrage, and a number of other liberal causes. When Fawcett and Mill were both elected to Parliament in 1865, they continued their relationship as political allies. As a political economist, however, Fawcett remained more orthodox than Mill, who in his later years moved nearer to socialist views.

Less close was the relationship with Herbert Spencer, the extant correspondence with whom dates from November, 1858, after Spencer had written Mill for assistance in securing a position in the India civil service. Prior to that, the two had engaged in amicable controversy in their writings on the ultimate test of truth and Spencer’s “Universal Postulate.” Mill’s answers to Spencer were largely expressed in successive revisions of the Logic, beginning with the fourth edition. Mill wrote Spencer that his First Principles was “a striking exposition of a consistent and imposing system of thought; of which though I dissent from much, I agree in more” (p. 846). Mill at times expressed regret at having to criticize so often one whom he regarded as “a friend and ally” (p. 1061). To Bain he wrote, “He is a considerable thinker though anything but a safe one” (p. 901), certainly, in psychology, less sound than Bain (p. 540). Nevertheless Mill readily supported Spencer’s plans for a periodical, The Reader (pp. 974-75), and when Spencer announced that he was planning to suspend the publication of his Principles of Biology, Mill offered to guarantee a publisher against loss in carrying on with it (p. 1145). At first, they differed in degree rather than in principle on laissez-faire: Spencer opposed town ownership of public parks, but Mill thought they should be the property of the town (p. 609). Later, Mill’s increasing sympathy with socialism must have widened the differences between the two, but their extant correspondence supplies no evidence. Spencer, though early in favour of women’s rights, changed his mind and refused to join Mill’s campaign for women’s suffrage (p. 1299). Mill protested Spencer’s view that women often tyrannize over men by remarking that here as in a great many other cases “two negatives do not make an affirmative, or at all events two Edition: current; Page: [xl] affirmatives do not make a negative and two contradictory tyrannies do not make liberty” (p. 1614). Despite their differences, however, the two philosophers remained on friendly terms, and Spencer was invited from time to time to Mill’s home for dinner. Spencer after Mill’s death wrote an appreciative memorial article for the Examiner (reprinted as an Appendix in Spencer’s Autobiography).

A rare difficulty with a friend, arising out of a misunderstanding, is illustrated in the letters to the young classical scholar Theodor Gomperz, who had corresponded with Mill since 1854 about translating his works into German. When Mill and Helen Taylor had visited Gomperz in Vienna in the summer of 1862, the young man had fallen in love with Helen. Mill’s friendly letters inviting him to visit them in England were encouraging; he came to London the following winter, intending to propose to Helen. She and Mill, apparently not aware of Gomperz’s intentions, returned to Avignon before Gomperz made his hopes clear to either one. His request to be allowed to visit them was answered by Mill, apparently unconscious of Gomperz’s real purpose, on April 26, 1863 (Letter 607), in a rather ambiguous, cool manner. Gomperz took the letter to be a rejection not only by Helen as a suitor but also by the two of them as friends. His despair set off an incipient nervous breakdown, in which he conjured up enemies who must be maligning him. In succeeding letters Mill protested the sincerity of his great esteem and respect for Gomperz, and after returning with Helen to London early in June invited him to dinner. Mill was apparently slow to understand the real desire of Gomperz; in guarded but kindly terms (Letter 618), Mill advised him that he would “never willingly be the smallest obstacle” to his wishes but clearly doubted that there was any hope.

If you think fit to carry the matter farther, either by speech or writing,—even if only for the relief of your own feelings—, you will have my truest sympathy, as you have my sincere friendship and esteem.—We hope to see you and your friend to-morrow, and I hope, nothing that has passed will make any difference in your feelings towards us, who remain unchanged to you, and that you will not allow it to affect in any degree our future intercourse

(p. 863).

Gomperz for some time after leaving England still suffered from delusions of persecution, which Mill tried to dispel (see Letter 633). By fall, Gomperz was calmer and he eventually recovered fully. The correspondence with Mill was renewed; it continued on a friendly basis until Mill’s death.

In the 1860’s with the growth of Mill’s reputation came a marked increase in his influence among young men. His treatises on logic and political economy had become textbooks in the universities, helping to shape the thought as well as the methods of thinking of the younger generation. Among his shorter works, On Liberty became, as Frederic Harrison remarked, “a sort of gospel.” On perhaps none was his influence greater than on John Edition: current; Page: [xli] Morley, whose acquaintance Mill first made in 1865, when Morley at the age of twenty-seven was a writer for various periodicals. An anonymous article of his entitled “New Ideas” in the October 21, 1865, number of the Saturday Review attracted Mill’s attention, and when a friend identified the author of the piece, Mill wrote Morley: “Wherever I might have seen that article, I should have felt a strong wish to know who was its author, as it shows an unusual amount of qualities which go towards making the most valuable kind of writer for the general public” (p. 1113). Their friendship developed quickly and by the fall of 1867 when Morley travelled to America, Mill wrote to Emerson a letter of introduction for him (Letter 1137), praising his great capacity and promise as a writer. It is not possible to gauge from the letters to Morley here published the full extent of Mill’s influence on him, for we have succeeded in locating only eleven, some of them brief extracts. Morley himself, however, in his memorial article, “The Death of Mr. Mill” (FR, June, 1873) and in his Recollections (2 vols., New York, 1917), has recorded in generous terms his indebtedness to Mill as his intellectual father. D. A. Hamer in his John Morley (Oxford, 1968, pp. 16-32) has delineated skilfully Mill’s role in winning Morley over from Positivism. What we do have of Mill’s letters to him show Mill as an adviser on questions of public policy, particularly with reference to the Fortnightly Review, of which Morley became the editor in 1867. At one point in 1870, fearful that Morley’s health was in danger from overwork, Mill offered to take over temporarily the editorship of the Review. Their personal contacts were frequent: Morley was always welcomed to Blackheath. On March 5, 1873, Mill visited Morley for a day at his home, shortly before Mill was to leave England for the last time. Morley’s description of that day, reprinted in his Recollections (I, 66-67) from his memorial article of June, 1873, is the finest account available of Mill’s wide-ranging, stimulating conversation.

Of his influence on another promising young man, Lord Amberley, son of Lord John Russell, we again have little evidence in Mill’s letters. Only seven have been located for inclusion here. Fortunately, they can be supplemented by a number of Helen’s letters to Lady Amberley, preserved at LSE and in the Russell Archive at McMaster University. Mill and Helen first met Amberley at a dinner party at the Grotes’ on March 22, 1864, and Amberley called on them at Avignon the following June. The acquaintance ripened into friendship after Amberley’s marriage to Kate Stanley in 1865. Helen and Kate Amberley became close friends. The young couple visited Mill and Helen at Avignon and at Blackheath, and they in turn visited the Amberleys at their home near Tintern Abbey in England. Mill even agreed to become godfather for their second son, Bertrand Russell. Mill served as an adviser to Amberley both on his writings and on his political activities. Amberley, who was frequently attacked in The Times and other newspapers for his extreme Edition: current; Page: [xlii] radical opinions, won Mill’s sympathetic support, as is seen in his letter of November 30, 1868 (pp. 1494-95), discussing both his and Amberley’s defeat in the 1868 elections for Parliament.

In those same elections, the third of the young men who became one of Mill’s close friends, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, won a seat for Chelsea. Mill was not then acquainted with Dilke. Their acquaintance began in 1869 with Mill’s writing Dilke a friendly but detailed criticism of his new book, Greater Britain, based on travels in many parts of the Empire (Letter 1693). Years later, Dilke himself wrote an account of their subsequent friendship and published excerpts from Mill’s letters to him.⁷ In this instance we presumably have most if not all of Mill’s letters, preserved in Dilke’s papers at the British Museum. The letters reveal Mill after his defeat in 1868 quite as deeply interested in current political questions as when he was in the House. Still a public figure, he found that his widened knowledge of the working classes contributed to his understanding of their problems. In the last four years of his life he increasingly took positions farther to the left than those he had occupied in his Parliamentary years. Long interested in land reform, he now moved to organize the Land Tenure Reform Association. His sympathies with the trades unions deepened, and his confidence in their leaders increased. He met regularly in 1869 with a committee organized to promote working-class representation in Parliament. He became an ardent advocate of universal free education, despite his earlier fears about state-maintained education. At Dilke’s invitation he and Helen became members of the Radical Club, a dining and discussion group started by Henry Fawcett, which met every other Sunday during the Parliamentary session. About half of the Club were radical or ultra-liberal members of Parliament. On occasion Mill advised Dilke on strategy to be followed in supporting the liberal causes they both advocated, including women’s rights. The two entertained each other at dinner from time to time, and it was to this intimate friendship that we owe the existence of the Watts portrait of Mill (see Letter 1780). Dilke persuaded Mill to sit for the portrait, paid the artist, and eventually bequeathed it to the City of Westminster.

Although Mill in his last years added such young men as Morley, Amberley, and Dilke to the roster of his friends and correspondents, he still maintained his correspondence with a number of his longtime friends. The oldest of these friendships was with Edwin Chadwick, dating back to their Benthamite days. Mill’s earliest extant letter to Chadwick is dated February 19, 1827; the last, December 27, 1872. Over those forty-five years the two were apparently in close touch, for many of the letters, especially in the earlier years, are brief notes concerning matters previously discussed in Edition: current; Page: [xliii] person. Chadwick relied upon Mill as a reader of his many reports as a reformer of the poor laws, sanitation, education—sometimes it seems as a reformer of almost everything. Mill always admired the matter of Chadwick’s reports and usually supported the proposed reforms; the writing of the reports, however, Mill time after time found in need of reorganization and even of grammatical correction. In the 1860’s when Chadwick published a cheap paper for the working classes, The Penny Newsman, Mill and Helen Taylor contributed articles. The best testimony to Mill’s admiration and respect for Chadwick’s abilities is to be found in the unremitting efforts he made to fulfil Chadwick’s ambition to be elected to Parliament. Mill thought him admirably equipped for service there. In 1868 he characterized Chadwick as

one of the organizing & contriving minds of the age; a class of minds of which there are very few, & still fewer who apply those qualities to the practical business of government. He is, moreover, one of the few persons who have a passion for the public good; and nearly the whole of his time is devoted to it, in one form or another

(p. 1432).

When Mill himself was being considered for the representation of Westminster, he constantly put forth the case for Chadwick, in preference to himself, and later, when in Parliament, Mill was always looking for possible openings for him. What appeared to be the best chance for Chadwick came in the 1868 campaign when it appeared possible that he might unseat Edward Bouverie, an Adullamite Liberal who for twenty-five years had represented the Scottish constituency of Kilmarnock. Because Bouverie had openly attacked Gladstone and the Liberal party the preceding spring, Mill thought him not entitled to Liberal support and instead warmly endorsed Chadwick. Bouverie charged Mill with sowing dissension in the party, and turned over to The Times for publication his exchange of letters with Mill (see Letters 1299 and 1306). In the event, Chadwick, who had campaigned vigorously and at considerable expense to himself, lost badly to Bouverie. Mill had to answer a bitter letter from Mrs. Chadwick protesting his encouraging her husband to run (Letter 1335). Neither her protest nor his own defeat deterred Mill, as his later letters to Chadwick reveal, from continuing to support his friend.

We have dwelt at some length on the foregoing correspondences with both earlier and later friends because they are among the most revealing of Mill’s character and personality. Other series, however, deserve at least brief mention here. Readers who wish to pursue any of the various series will find convenient the separate Index of Correspondents in Vol. XVII. Mill’s continuing, widely ranging interest in developments outside England is demonstrated in such series as those to his friends Gustave d’Eichthal and Charles Dupont-White on developments in France, both before and after the Franco-Prussian Edition: current; Page: [xliv] war of 1870; to Pasquale Villari, on the long struggle for Italian independence; to Henry S. Chapman in New Zealand, on affairs in that remote portion of the Empire; and to Charles Eliot Norton in America on post-Civil War problems. The two series of his letters to working-class correspondents, John Plummer and William Wood, reveal his essential kindness; without any trace of condescension he lent them books, gave them advice, and sought their support for his favourite causes, especially that of women’s rights. The letters to Alexander Bain and to Rowland G. Hazard provide valuable supplements to Mill’s philosophical and metaphysical writings. The letters to W. T. Thornton, his long-time colleague at the India House, display not only their warm friendship but also their continuing debates on such economic questions as the wage-fund doctrine and trades unions and such philosophic questions as utilitarianism. Letters to William E. Hickson and John Chapman, successively editors of the Westminster Review, reveal not only his continuing interest in the radical review with which he had been closely associated in its earlier years, but also his readiness to contribute to its financial support. Letters to his publishers, John W. Parker and his successor William Longman, show Mill the author fully aware of the value of his publications and determined to obtain a fair return for them, but also willing to sacrifice to the public good his own profits by making available inexpensive People’s editions of his works.

We have chosen in this Introduction to emphasize the value of the many series of Mill’s letters in gaining an understanding of his life and personality, rather than to attempt to provide an analysis of his views on the many questions he explored in both letters and published works. The latter have been subjected, and are still being subjected, to searching analysis in many books and articles, for Mill continues to be one of the most significant of Victorian writers for the twentieth century. Some of his letters express views not to be found in his published writings, views that often seem surprisingly modern. Well known, of course, is his dedicated support of women’s rights. Less well known are his concern for the environment (see Letter 909), his eventual acceptance of universal education provided by the State (see Letter 1534), and his foresighted opinions on the Negro problem in America (see Letter 871). For the reader who wishes to pursue these and other topics in the letters, we have provided a detailed subject index. It is our hope that readers will share the pleasure that the editors have had not only in observing Mill engage with ideas but also in obtaining new insights into the nature of the man himself. The whole correspondence is the life of the man, “and above all the chief part of his life, his inner life.”

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Abbreviations and Short Titles

Am.: American

Arsenal: Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris

Autobiog.: John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, ed. with an Introduction and Notes by Jack Stillinger (Boston, 1969)

Bain, JSM: Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill: A Criticism: With Personal Recollections, London, 1882

Bernard: Mountague Bernard, A Historical Account of the Neutrality of Great Britain during the American Civil War, London, 1870

Bibliothèque Nationale: Bibliothèque National, Paris

Bodleian: Bodleian Library, Oxford

Brit. Mus.: British Museum, London

Canberra: National Library of Australia, Canberra

Columbia: Columbia University Library

Cornell: Olin Library, Cornell University

Cosmopolis: “Letters of John Stuart Mill to Gustave d’Eichthal,” ed. Eugène d’Eichthal, in Cosmopolis, IX (March, 1898), 781-89

Dilke: Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, “John Stuart Mill, 1869-1873,” Cosmopolis, V (March, 1897), 429-41

Dissertations: John Stuart Mill, Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical, 4 vols., London, 1859-75; 5 vols., Boston, 1864-68

Duncan: David Duncan, Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer, 2 vols., New York, 1908

ER: The Edinburgh Review, 1802-1929

Earlier Letters: The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill, 1812-1848, ed. Francis E. Mineka, vols. XII and XIII of Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1963

Early Draft: The Early Draft of John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography, ed. Jack Stillinger, Urbana, 1961

D’Eichthal Corresp.: John Stuart Mill, Correspondance inédite avec Gustave d’Eichthal, 1828-1842, 1864-1871, ed. Eugène d’Eichthal, Paris, 1898

Elliot: The Letters of John Stuart Mill, ed. Hugh S. R. Elliot, 2 vols., London, 1910

FR: The Fortnightly Review, 1865-1954

Fraser’s: Fraser’s Magazine, 1830-82

Gomperz: Heinrich Gomperz, Theodor Gomperz, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, ausgewählt, erläutert und zu einer Darstellung seines Lebens verknüpft, Vol. I (all published), Vienna, 1936

Hamilton: John Stuart Mill, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, London, 1865

Edition: current; Page: [xlvi]

Hansard: Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, London, 1830-91

Harvard: Harvard College Library

Hayek: F. A. Hayek, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor: Their Friendship and Subsequent Marriage, London and Chicago, 1951

Huntington: The Huntington Library, Pasadena

I.H.: India House

Indiana: Indiana University Library

JSM: John Stuart Mill

Johns Hopkins: The Johns Hopkins University Library

King’s: Keynes Collection, King’s College Library, Cambridge University

LSE: The British Library of Political and Economic Science, at the London School of Economics and Social Science

Leeds: Brotherton Library, University of Leeds

Logic: John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive; being a connected view of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation, 2 vols., London, 1843. The references are to the 8th edition, London, 1872

LWR: London and Westminster Review, 1836-40

Macmillan’s: Macmillan’s Magazine, 1859-1907

MacMinn, Bibliog.: Bibliography of the Published Writings of John Stuart Mill, ed. Ney MacMinn, J. R. Hainds, and James McNab McCrimmon, Evanston, Ill., 1945

Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings: Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, 1859-

Melbourne: Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne

Motley: The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, ed. George William Curtis, New York, 1889

NAPSS: National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, Transactions, 1857-84, 1886

NLI: The National Library of Ireland, Dublin

NLS: The National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

NLW: The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth

NYP: New York Public Library, New York City, New York

No. Am. Rev.: The North American Review, 1815-1940

Osborn Collection, Yale: The James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Yale University Library

Packe: Michael St. John Packe, Life of John Stuart Mill, London, 1954

Parl. Papers: Sessional Papers printed by order of the House of Commons and of the House of Lords, London, 1849-

Pol. Econ.: John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, With Some of Their Application to Social Philosophy, London, 1848. The references are to the last edition revised by JSM (the 7th in 1871) available in the edition of Sir W. J. Ashley, London, 1909, and as Vols. II and III of Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J. M. Robson, Toronto, 1965

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Principles: John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, ed. J. M. Robson, Vols. II and III of Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1965. References have been made to this edition only for information not available in other editions of Pol. Econ.

QR: The Quarterly Review, 1809-

Rep. Govt.: John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, London, 1861

SR: The Saturday Review, 1855-1938

Sp.: The Spectator, 1828-

Stamp: “New Letters of John Stuart Mill. A philosopher in politics,” The Times, Dec. 29, 1938

UCL: Library of University College, the University of London

UCLA: Library, University of California at Los Angeles

Villey: Daniel Villey, “Sur la traduction par Dupont-White de ‘La Liberté’ de Stuart Mill,” Revue d’histoire économique et sociale, XXIV (1938)

Wellesley Index: The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900, ed. Walter E. Houghton, Vol. I, Toronto, 1966

WR: Westminster Review, 1824-1914

Yale: Yale University Library

Edition: current; Page: [xlviii] Edition: current; Page: [1]

THE LATER LETTERS OF JOHN STUART MILL
1849-1855

Edition: current; Page: [a] Edition: current; Page: [b] Edition: current; Page: [2]

Harriet Taylor (ca. 1834)

Portrait in the possession of Professor F. A. von Hayek

Edition: current; Page: [3]

1849

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

January 1849

George Grote

Grote, George

1.

TO GEORGE GROTE¹

January 1849

I have just finished reading the two volumes² with the greatest pleasure and admiration.

The fifth volume seems to me all that we had a right to expect, and the sixth is splendid!

I mean to read them again at leisure, and I shall then note one or two very small points to talk about, which I do not now remember.

Every great result which you have attempted to deduce seems to me most thoroughly made out.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Saturday 27 Jany [1849]

Harriet Taylor

Taylor, Harriet

2.

TO HARRIET TAYLOR¹

Saturday

27 Jany [1849]

8²

You might well feel that the handwriting would be “worth having”, but instead of there being “little said” the excessive sweetness & love in this Edition: current; Page: [4] exquisite letter makes it like something dropt from heaven. I had been literally pining for it & had got into a state of depression which I do not think I shall fall into again during this absence—When I left you my darling & during all the journey back³ I was full of life & animation & vigour of wish & purpose, because fresh from being with you, fresh from the immediate influence of your blessed presence & of that extreme happiness of that time which during this last week or fortnight I have hardly been able to conceive that I ever had—much less that I ever should have again—but this angel letter has begun to bring back happiness & spirit & I again begin to feel the holiday & journey & that blessed meeting as if they would really be—& to feel capable also of being & of doing something in the meanwhile which I had entirely ceased to feel. But I am very anxious darling to hear about the lameness⁴ & to find that it has got better. I have a very strong feeling about the obstinacy of lamenesses from the troublesome persistency of this of mine⁵—though it is certainly better—but still it does not go away, nor allow me to take more than a very little exercise & I feel the effect a little now in the general health—the sight too has not quite recovered itself yet, which is an additional teaze, but I am not uneasy about it. The only piece of news I have is that Austin⁶ called yesterday. When he came & during all the time he Edition: current; Page: [5] staid there was a Frenchman with me, a man named Guerry,⁷ a statistical man whom Col. Sykes⁸ brought to me—the man whose maps of France with the dark & light colours, shewing the state of crime, instruction &c. in each department you may remember. He was [wanting?] to shew me some other maps & tables of his & to ask me about the “logic” of his plans so he did not go away—& the talk was confined to general subjects, except that Austin said he was going to prepare a new edition of his book on jurisprudence⁹ on a much enlarged plan & should wish very much to consult me on various matters connected with the application of induction to moral science. Of course I could not refuse & indeed saw no reason for doing so—but as this will lead to his coming again, sending MSS. & so on it both gives an occasion & creates a necessity for defining the relation I am to stand in with respect to them. He said he had after much difficulty & search taken a house at Weybridge & that he liked the place, but he did not (I have no doubt purposely) say anything about wishing that I would visit him there, or anywhere. His talk was free & éclairé as it always is with me, much of it about that new publication of Guizot¹⁰ (which I have not read) of which he spoke very disparagingly & defended communists¹¹ & socialists against the attacks contained in it & said he saw no real objection to socialism except the difficulty if not impracticability of managing so great a concern as the industry of a whole country in the way of association. Nothing was said about her¹² or about the copy of the Pol. Ec.¹³ but it is necessary to prendre un parti. What should it be? I am reading Macaulay’s book:14 it is in some Edition: current; Page: [6] respects better than I expected, & in none worse. I think the best character that can be given of it is that it is a man without genius, who has observed what people of genius do when they write history, & tries his very best to do the same, without the amount of painful effort, & affectation, which you might expect, & which I did expect from such an attempt & such a man. I have no doubt like all his writings it will be & continue popular—it is exactly au niveau of the ideal of shallow people with a touch of the new ideas—& it is not sufficiently bad to induce anybody who knows better to take pains to lower people’s estimation of it. I perceive no very bad tendency in it as yet, except that it in some degree ministers to English conceit¹⁵—only in some degree, for he never “goes the whole” in anything. He is very characteristic & so is his book, of the English people & of his time. I am rather glad than not that he is writing the history of that time for it is just worth reading when made (as he does make it) readable: though in itself I think English one of the least interesting of all histories—(French perhaps the most & certainly the most instructive in so far as history is ever so).

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 31, 1849

George Grote Mill

Mill, George Grote

3.

TO GEORGE GROTE MILL¹

[

Jan. 31, 1849

]

As to Jane’s² money—there is certainly a strong inducement to transfer it to the French funds, as it would about double the income & if invested as proposed in her own name & that of the trustees it would be as exclusively in her own control as at present & she could receive the interest. It can only be done by sending out a power of attorney to be executed by you. But it seems to me that now when there seems so much chance of your not being able to live in England where alone you could act, it would be very desirable to put in a third trustee along with the present two, both for Jane’s and Mary’s³ property. I will suggest this to them & ascertain the proper way of doing it. The buying of French stock, if you determine to do it, ought not Edition: current; Page: [7] to be done through Ferraboschi,⁴ but it can be done by an agent here & this I can see to if it is ultimately decided to do it.

With love to Clara⁵ & ever afft yours

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

6th Feb. 1849

India House

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

4.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

India House

6th Feb. 1849

Dear Hickson,

Many thanks for the Guizot² which I have had read to me (for I am obliged to spare my sight which is ailing a good deal).³ I find it far inferior to what I expected—so vague and general as to be almost intangible, and it hardly comes into collision at all with what I think it necessary to say, in answer to Brougham.⁴ I do not think I can make any use of it on this occasion. The article⁵ however is in itself a complete answer to all such diatribes. It is finished, except revision, which the state of my sight alone retards. I will however, “make an effort” (vide chap.1 of Dombey)⁶ and let you have it soon.

Yours ever truly,

J. S. Mill

I should like to know who wrote the article on Channing⁷ if it is no secret.

Edition: current; Page: [8]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Monday 19 Febr [1849]

Harriet Taylor

Taylor, Harriet

5.

TO HARRIET TAYLOR¹

Monday

19 Febr [1849]

15

I received your dear letter 11 on Saturday & this morning the first instalment of the Pol. Ec.² This last I will send again (or as much of it as is necessary) when I have been able to make up my mind about it. The objections are I think very inconsiderable as to quantity—much less than I expected—but that paragraph, p. 248, in the first edit. which you object to so strongly & totally,³ is what has always seemed to me the strongest part of the argument (it is only what even Proudhon says against Communism)⁴—& as omitting it after it has once been printed would imply a change of opinion, it is necessary to see whether the opinion has changed or not—yours has, in some respects at least, for you have marked strong dissent from the passage that “the necessaries of life when secure for the whole of life are Edition: current; Page: [9] scarcely more a subject of consciousness”⁵ &c. which was inserted on your proposition & very nearly in your words. This is probably only the progress we have been always making, & by thinking sufficiently I should probably come to think the same—as is almost always the case, I believe always when we think long enough. But here the being unable to discuss verbally stands sadly in the way, & I am now almost convinced that as you said at first, we cannot settle this 2d edit. by letter. We will try, but I now feel almost certain that we must adjourn the publication of the 2d edit. to November.⁶ In the new matter one of the sentences that you have cancelled is a favorite of mine, viz “It is probable that this will finally depend upon considerations not to be measured by the coarse standard which in the present state of human improvement is the only one that can be applied to it.”⁷ What I meant was that whether individual agency or Socialism would be best ultimately—(both being necessarily very imperfect now, & both susceptible of immense improvement) will depend on the comparative attractions they will hold out to human beings with all their capacities, both individual & social, infinitely more developed than at present. I do not think it is English improvement only that is too backward to enable this point to be ascertained for if English character is starved in its social part I think Continental is as much or even more so in its individual, & Continental people incapable of entering into the feelings which make very close contact with crowds of other people both disagreeable & mentally & morally lowering. I cannot help thinking that something like what I meant by the sentence, ought to be said though I can imagine good reasons for your disliking the way in which it is put. Then again if the sentence “the majority would not exert themselves for anything beyond this & unless they did nobody else would &c”⁸ is not tenable, then all the two or three pages of argument which precede & of which this is but the summary, are false, & there is nothing to be said against Communism at all—one would only have to turn round & advocate it—which if done would be better in a separate treatise & would be a great objection to publishing a 2d edit. until after such a treatise. I think I agree in all the other remarks. Fourrier [sic]⁹ if I may judge by Considérant¹⁰ is perfectly right about women Edition: current; Page: [10] both as to equality & marriage—& I suspect that Fourier himself went further than his disciple thinks prudent in the directness of his recommendations. Considérant sometimes avails himself as Mr Fox¹¹ used, of the sentimentalities & superstitions about purity, though asserting along with it all the right principles. But C. says that the Fourrierists are the only Socialists who are not orthodox about marriage—he forgets the Owenites,¹² but I fear it is true of all the known Communist leaders in France—he says it specially of Buchez,¹³ Cabet,¹⁴ & what surprises one in Sand’s¹⁵ “guide, philosopher & friend” of Leroux.¹⁶ This strengthens one exceedingly in one’s wish to prôner the Fourrierists besides that their scheme of association seems to me much nearer to being practicable at present than Communism.—Your letter was very delightful—it was so very pleasant to know that you were still better as to general health than I knew before, & that the lameness also improves though slowly. I am very glad I did right about Herbert¹⁷—his conduct on Xmas day & his not writing even to say that he is going to America seem like ostentation of heartlessness & are only as you say to be explained by his being a very great fool (at present) & therefore influenced by some miserably petty vanities & irritabilities. Their not sending George’s¹⁸ letter directly is very strange. The pamphlet¹⁹ has gone to Hickson—I had thought of sending one of the separate copies to L. Blanc.²⁰ Whom else should it go to? To all the members of the Prov. Gov. I think, & as it will not be published till April I had better take the copies to Paris with me & send them when there as it saves so much uncertainty & delay. I did see that villainous thing in the Times²¹ & noticed that the American had used those words.

Edition: current; Page: [11]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Wednesday 21 Feb. 1849

Harriet Taylor

Taylor, Harriet

6.

TO HARRIET TAYLOR¹

Wednesday

21 Feb. 1849

16

I despatched yesterday to the dear one an attempt at a revision of the objectionable passages.² I saw on consideration that the objection to Communism on the ground of its making life a kind of dead level might admit of being weakened (though I think it never could be taken away) consistently with the principle of Communism, though the Communistic plans now before the public could not do it. The statement of objections was moreover too vague & general. I have made it more explicit as well as more moderate; you will judge whether it is now sufficiently either one or the other; & altogether whether any objection can be maintained to Communism, except the amount of objection which, in the new matter I have introduced, is made to the present applicability of Fourierism.³ I think there can—& that the objections as now stated to Communism are valid: but if you do not think so, I certainly will not print it, even if there were no other reason than the certainty I feel that I never should long continue of an opinion different from yours on a subject which you have fully considered. I am going on revising the book: not altering much, but in one of the purely political economy parts which occurs near the beginning, viz. the discussion as to whether buying goods made by labour gives the same employment to labour as hiring the labourers themselves, I have added two or three pages of new explanation & illustration which I think make the case much clearer.⁴—It is certainly an unlucky coincidence that the winter which you have gone away from should be so very mild a one here: on Sunday I found the cottage gardens &c. as far advanced as they often are only in the middle of April; mezereons, hepaticas, the white arabis, pyrus japonica &c. in the fullest flower, the snow ball plant very much in leaf, even periwinkles & red anemones fully out: daffodils I saw only in bud. If it is not checked it will be I think an even earlier spring than the very early one two or three years ago. I shall be able to benefit by Edition: current; Page: [12] it more than I expected in the way of country walks on Sundays although the dimness of sight, slight as it is, interferes not a little with the enjoyment of distant scenery—as I found in that beautiful Windsor Park last Sunday. If it is very fine I think I shall go some Sunday & wander about Combe—it is so full of association with all I wish for & care for. As I have taken care to let my ailments be generally known at the I[ndia] H[ouse] I have no doubt it will be easy to get a two or three months holiday in spring if we like: this indeed if I return quite well would make any holiday in the after part of the year impracticable, but need not prevent me from taking two or three days at a time occasionally during a séjour at Ryde or any other place & thus making it a partial holiday there—Unless, which I do not expect, a long holiday soon should be necessary for health, the question ought to depend entirely on what would best suit you—which is quite sure to be most desirable for me—I am in hopes that parties in France are taking a more republican turn than they seemed likely to do—if Napoleon Bonaparte coalesces with Lamartine’s party for election purposes there will be a much larger body of sincere republicans in the new assembly than was expected.⁵ The Roman republic & the Tuscan Provisional Govt I am afraid will end in nothing but a restoration by Austria & a putting down of the popular party throughout Italy.⁶ I was sorry to see in the feuilleton of the National⁷ a very bad article on women in the form of a review of a book by the M. Légouvé⁸ who was so praised in La Voix des Femmes.⁹ The badness consisted chiefly in laying down the doctrine very positively that women always are & must always be what men make them—just the false assumption on which the whole of the present bad constitution of the relation rests. I am convinced however that there are only two things which tend at all to shake this nonsensical prejudice: a better psychology & theory of human nature, for the few; & for the Edition: current; Page: [13] many, more & greater proofs by example of what women can do. I do not think anything that could be written would do nearly so much good on that subject the most important of all, as the finishing your pamphlet—or little book rather, for it should be that.¹⁰ I do hope you are going on with it—gone on with & finished & published it must be, & next season too.—Do you notice that Russell in bringing forward his Jew Bill,¹¹ although he is actually abolishing the old oaths & framing new, still has the meanness to reinsert the words “on the true faith of a Christian” for all persons except Jews, & justifies it by saying that the Constitution ought not avowedly to admit unbelievers into Parliament.—I have seen very little of the Chairman & Dep. Chairman¹² lately—as to avoid the long staircase I have communicated with them chiefly through others but now being released from restraint I shall take an early opportunity of speaking to Galloway about Haji.¹³ I have seen nothing more of Haji any more than of Herbert.¹⁴ [torn page]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Wed’y March, 1849

Kensington

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

7.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

Kensington

,

Wed’y evening.
[

March, 1849

]

My dear Hickson

I attach importance to most of the notes,² since when I am charging Brougham with misrepresentation of what Lamartine said,³ it will not do to Edition: current; Page: [14] bid the reader trust to my translations—and the passages from Tocqueville⁴ being cited as evidence to matters of fact, ought to be given in the original. You however must judge what is best for your review. You kindly offered me some separate copies—I should not desire more than 50, but in these I would like to have the notes preserved and it would not be necessary for that purpose to set them up in smaller type. If the types are redistributed I would willingly pay the expense of recomposing. I cannot imagine how the printer could commit the stupid blunder of putting those notes with the text. As a heading,⁵ “The Revolution of February and its assailants” would do. In the separate copies I should like to have a title page, which might run thus: “A Vindication of the French Revolution of 1848 in reply to Lord Brougham and others.”

Yours ever,

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Wednesday 14 March [1849]

Harriet Taylor

Taylor, Harriet

8.

TO HARRIET TAYLOR¹

Wednesday

14 March [1849]

22

What a nuisance it is having anything to do with printers—Though I had no reason to be particularly pleased with Harrison,² I was alarmed at finding that Parker³ had gone to another, & accordingly, though the general type of the first edition is exactly copied, yet a thing so important as the type of the headings at the top of the page cannot be got right—you know what difficulty we had before—& now the headings, & everything else which is in that type, they first gave much too close & then much too wide, & say they have not got the exact thing, unless they have the types cast on purpose. Both the things they have produced seem to me detestable & the worst is that as Parker is sole owner of this edition I suppose I have no voice in the matter at all except as a point of courtesy. I shall see Parker today & tell him that I should have Edition: current; Page: [15] much preferred waiting till another season rather than having either of these types—but I suppose it is too late now to do any good—& perhaps Parker dragged out the time in useless delays before, on purpose that all troublesome changes might be avoided by hurry now. It is as disagreeable as a thing of the sort can possibly be—because it is necessary that something should be decided immediately without waiting for the decision of my only guide & oracle. If the effect should be to make the book an unpleasant object to the only eyes I wish it to please, how excessively I shall regret not having put off the edition till next season. I have had the proof of the pamphlet,⁴ all but the last few pages. There seems very little remaining in it that could be further softened without taking the sting out entirely—which would be a pity. I am rather against giving away any copies, at least for the present, in England—except to Louis Blanc to whom I suppose I should acknowledge authorship. He has not come near me—I see he is writing in sundry Communist papers of which there are now several in London.⁵ As a heading in the review I have thought of “The Revolution of February & its assailants”—it does not seem advisable to put Brougham’s name at the top of the page—& “the Revolution of February” or anything of that kind itself would be tame, & excite no attention. There is no fresh news from George⁶ nor any incident of any kind except that Mr Fox has sent me (without any letter) four volumes of his lectures to the working classes,⁷ the last volume of which (printed this year) has a preface in which he recommends to the working classes to study Polit. Economy⁸ telling them that they will see by “the ablest book yet produced on this subject” that it is not a thing against them but for them—with some other expressions of compliment he quotes two passages, one of them the strongest there is in the book about independence of women,⁹ & tells them in another place though rather by inference than directly that women ought to have the suffrage.¹⁰ He speaks in this preface of “failing health” & as if he did not expect either to write or speak in public much more: this may mean little, or very much. I feel now as if the natural thing, the thing to be expected, was to hear of every one’s death—as if we should outlive all we have cared for, & yet die early.

Did you notice that most bête & vulgar say by Emerson in a lecture at Boston, about the English? It is hardly possible to be more stupidly wrong—& Edition: current; Page: [16] what sort of people can he have been among when here?¹¹ The Austrian octroyé federal constitution¹² seems as bad as anything pretending to be a constitution at all now dares to be—the only significant circumstance in it on the side of democracy being that there is no House of Lords nor any mention of nobility or hereditary rank. Here the sort of newspaper discussion which had begun about Sterling’s¹³ infidelity seems to have merged in a greater scandal about a book by Froude,¹⁴ a brother of the Froude who was the originator of Puseyism¹⁵—This book was reviewed in the last Spectator¹⁶ I sent to you & that review was the first I had heard & is all I have seen of the book—but the Herald & Standard¹⁷ are abusing the man in the tone of Dominican Inquisitors on account of the strong declarations against the inspiration of the Bible which he puts into the mouth of one of his characters, obviously as they say thinking the same himself—It appears the Council of University College had been asked to select a schoolmaster for Hobart Town & had chosen Froude from among a great many candidates & probably some rival defeated candidate has raised this stir.¹⁸ It all, I think, does good, but one ought to see occasionally the things that are written on Edition: current; Page: [17] such matters, in order not to forget the intensity of the vulgar bigotry, or affection of it, that is still thought to be the thing for the Christian readers of newspapers in this precious country. The Times is quite gentlemanlike in comparison with those other papers when they get on the ground of imputed infidelity or anything approaching to it. I suppose they overshoot their mark, but they would scruple nothing in any such case.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

17 March, 1849

Harriet Taylor

Taylor, Harriet

9.

TO HARRIET TAYLOR¹

[

17 March, 1849

]

[23]

[⅔ of folio 1r cut away] the old way, or [rest of line cut away] has the advantage of taking [rest of line cut away] Toulouse, but I suspect the means of conveyance by it are much slower & more precarious, till we reach Bourges or Châteauroux where we join the railway. I think from what has been in the papers that the whole or nearly the whole of the [⅔ of page cut away as above].

The bargain with Parker² is a good one & that it is so is entirely your doing—all the difference between it & the last being wholly your work, as well as all the best of the book itself so that you have a redoubled title to your joint ownership of it. While I am on the subject I will say that the difficulty with the printer is surmounted³—both he & Parker were disposed to be accommodating & he was to have the very same type from the very same foundry today—in the meantime there has been no time lost, as they have been printing very fast without the headings, & will I have no doubt keep their engagement as to time. You do not say anything this time about the bit of the P[olitical] E[conomy]—I hope you did not send it during the week, as if so it has miscarried—at the rate they are printing, both volumes at once, they will soon want it.

I was wrong to express myself that way about the Athenians,⁴ because without due explanations it would not be rightly understood. I am always apt Edition: current; Page: [18] to get enthusiastic about those who do great things for progress & are immensely ahead of everybody else in their age—especially when like the Athenians it has been the fashion to run them down for what was best in them—& I am not always sufficiently careful to explain that the praise is relative to the then state & not the now state of knowledge & of what ought to be improved feeling. I do think, however even without those allowances, that an average Athenian was a far finer specimen of humanity on the whole than an average Englishman—but then unless one says how low one estimates the latter, one gives a false notion of one’s estimate of the former. You are not quite right about the philosophers, for Plato did condemn those “barbarisms”.

I regret much that I have not put in anything about Palmerston into that pamphlet⁵—I am almost tempted to write an express article in the Westr in order to make him the amende. As you suggested I wrote an article on Russell’s piece of meanness in the Jew Bill⁶ & have sent it to Crowe⁷ from whom I have not yet any answer—there has been no time hitherto fit for its publication—the time will be when the subject is about to come on again in Parlt. But I fear the article, even as “from a correspondent” will be too strong meat for the Daily News, as it declares without mincing the matter, that infidels are perfectly proper persons to be in parliament. I like the article myself. I have carefully avoided anything disrespectful to Russell personally, or any of the marks, known to me, by which my writing can be recognized.

If I meet Fleming⁸ again or am again assaulted on any similar point I will reply in the sort of way you recommend—I dare say the meeting with F. was accidental as it was just at the door of Somerset House where he is assistant secretary to the Poor Law Board & just at the time when he would probably be coming out. Ever since I have kept the opposite side.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Wednesday 21 March [1849]

Harriet Taylor

Taylor, Harriet

10.

TO HARRIET TAYLOR¹

Wednesday

21 March [1849]

24

The Pol. Ec. packet came on Monday for which a thousand thanks. I have followed to the letter every recommendation. The sentence which you objected Edition: current; Page: [19] to in toto of course has come quite out.² In explanation however of what I meant by it—I was not thinking of any mysterious change in human nature—but chiefly of this—that the best people now are necessarily so much cut off from sympathy with the multitudes that I should think they must have difficulty in judging how they would be affected by such an immense change in their whole circumstances as would be caused by having multitudes whom they could sympathize with—or in knowing how far the social feelings might then supply the place of that large share of solitariness & individuality which they cannot now dispense with. I meant one thing more, viz. that as, hereafter, the more obvious & coarser obstacles & objections to the community system will have ceased or greatly diminished, those which are less obvious & coarse will then step forward into an importance & require an attention which does not now practically belong to them & that we can hardly tell without trial what the result of that experience will be. I do not say that you cannot realize and judge of these things—but if you, & perhaps Shelley & one or two others in a generation can, I am convinced that to do so requires both great genius & great experience & I think it quite fair to say to common readers that the present race of mankind (speaking of them collectively) are not competent to it. I cannot persuade myself that you do not greatly overrate the ease of making people unselfish. Granting that in “ten years” the children of a community might by teaching be made “perfect” it seems to me that to do so there must be perfect people to teach them. You say “if there were a desire on the part of the cleverer people to make them perfect it would be easy”—but how to produce that desire in the cleverer people? I must say I think that if we had absolute power tomorrow, though we could do much to improve people by good laws, & could even give them a very much better education than they have ever had yet, still, for effecting in our lives anything like what we aim at, all our plans would fail from the impossibility of finding fit instruments. To make people really good for much it is so necessary not merely to give them good intentions & conscientiousness but to unseal their eyes—to prevent self flattery, vanity, irritability & all that family of vices from warping their moral judgments as those of the very cleverest people are almost always warped now. But we shall have all these questions out together & they will all require to be entered into to a certain depth, at least, in the new book³ which I am so glad you look forward to as I do with so much interest.—As for news—did you see in the Times Mrs Buller’s death? I Edition: current; Page: [20] suspect it was there the very day I wrote last. I have heard nothing of the manner or occasion of it, & had not supposed from anything I had heard before, that there was any likelihood of it. So that volume is closed now, completely.⁴ I called the other day at Charles Fox’s⁵ shop to ask the meaning of Mr Fox’s illness & C.F. said he has constant pains in his side which are either heart disease or merely nervous but which are made much worse by public speaking or any other excitement & that that is the reason he so seldom speaks in the H[ouse] of C[ommons]. It is probably mere nervous pain therefore, & not dangerous, but it shews him to be out of health. There were letters from George⁶ yesterday of three weeks later date: his report is that he is neither worse nor better. He thinks that he coughs about six or seven times an hour through the 24 hours. He still writes as not at all out of spirits—one expression he uses is that he wants nothing to make him happy but to be able to go up into the mountains, & to have a better prospect of the future—I think he means a better avenir in case he ultimately recovers—but he seems persuaded that his disease is seldom cured or stopped. I shall write to encourage him, for I am convinced it is often stopped though hardly ever cured, & I do not yet despair of his case.

Crowe’s answer was “I shall be but too happy to print the article.⁷ The Jews Bill is put off till after Easter, but if you will allow me I will insert it immediately.” There is nothing like kicking people of the D[aily] N[ews] sort it appears. I answered telling him if he thought it would be of as much use now as about the time when the bill comes on by all means to print it now. It has not yet made its appearance. The printing of the 2d edit.⁸ goes on satisfactorily in all respects. Last Sunday I went by railway to Watford & walked from there to town, indeed more, for the direct road being by Stanmore I turned off before getting there, to Harrow, thus lengthening the walk 3 or 4 miles. I think I must have walked 20 miles, & almost all of it at a stretch, with occasional short resting on a stile. I confess however that the miles between Harrow & London were excessively long, but I felt no kind of inconvenience the next day or since from the walk. The lameness is now no obstacle at all—the only obstacle is general weakness, as compared with my state when in perfect health. The sight remains the same.⁹ I look forward to Saturday with immense pleasure because there is always a letter—adieu with every good wish.

Edition: current; Page: [21]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

ca. 31 March 1849

Harriet Taylor

Taylor, Harriet

11.

TO HARRIET TAYLOR¹

[

ca. 31 March 1849

]

27

[9/10 of first folio cut away] short too—as a [rest of line cut away] surprised to hear of [rest of line cut away] been some, very often for the last fortnight—but it has never lain. Today it is a sunny [9/10 of page cut away as above] The alteration I had made in that sentence of the P[olitical] E[conomy] was instead of “placard their intemperance” to say “placard their enormous families”—it does not read so well, but I think it may do, especially as the previous sentence contains the words “this sort of incontinence”—but your two sentences are so very good that as that sheet is not yet printed, get them in I must & will.²—Are you not amused with Peel about Ireland? He sneers down the waste lands plan,³ two years ago, which the timid ministers, timid because without talent, give up at a single sarcasm from him, & now he has enfanté a scheme containing that & much more than was then proposed—& the Times supports him⁴ & Ireland praises him. I am extremely glad he has done it—I can see that it is working as nothing else has yet worked to break down the superstition about property—& it is the only thing happening in England which promises a step forward—a thing which one may well welcome when things are going so badly for the popular cause in Europe—not that I am discouraged by this—progress of the right kind seems to me quite safe now that Socialism has become inextinguishable. I heartily wish Proudhon dead however—there are few men whose state of mind, taken as a whole, inspires me with so much aversion, & all his influence seems to me mischievous except as a potent dissolvent which is good so far, but every single thing which he would substitute seems to me the worst possible in practice & mostly in principle. I have been reading another volume of Considérant⁵ lately published—he has got into the details of Fourierism, with many large extracts from Fourier himself. It was perhaps necessary to enter into details in order to make the thing look practicable, but many of the details are, & all appear, passablement ridicules. As to their system, & Edition: current; Page: [22] general mode of thought there is a great question at the root of it which must be settled before one can get a step further. Admitting the omnipotence of education, is not the very pivot & turning point of that education a moral sense—a feeling of duty, or conscience, or principle, or whatever name one gives it—a feeling that one ought to do, & to wish for, what is for the greatest good of all concerned. Now Fourier, & all his followers, leave this out entirely, & rely wholly on such an arrangement of social circumstances as without any inculcation of duty or of “ought,” will make every one, by the spontaneous action of the passions, intensely zealous for all the interests of the whole. Nobody is ever to be made to do anything but act just as they like, but it is calculated that they will always, in a phalanstere, like what is best. This of course leads to the freest notions about personal relations of all sorts, but is it, in other respects, a foundation on which people would be able to live & act together. Owen keeps in generals & only says that education can make everybody perfect, but the Fourierists attempt to shew how, & exclude, as it seems to me, one of the most indispensable ingredients.

6 What a bathos to turn from these free speculations to pinched & methodistical England. It is worth while reading the articles in newspapers about Froude & Sterling⁷ to have an adequate idea what England is. The newspaper talk on the subject having the irresistible attraction of personality still continues, & I have within this week read in shop windows leading articles of two weekly newspapers, the Church & State Gazette⁸ & the English Churchman,⁹ keeping it up. They have found the splendid mare’s nest of the “Sterling Club”.¹⁰ I remember the foundation of the said club by Sterling himself, very many years before his death—soon after he began to live permanently out of London. Though called a club it had neither subscription nor organization, but consisted in an agreement of some 12 or 20 acquaintances of Sterling, the majority resident University people, that there should be one day in a month when if any of them liked to dine at a place in Lincoln’s Inn Fields he would have a chance of finding some of the others. I let them put me down as one, & went there, I think three times, with Sterling himself & at his request, in order to pass an evening in his company—the last time being, I believe, in 1838. A few weeks ago I was reminded of the existence of the thing by receiving a printed list of members, in which I was put down Edition: current; Page: [23] with many others as honorary—it has greatly increased in numbers, is composed (in more than one half) of clergymen including two bishops, Thirlwall¹¹ & Wilberforce,¹² & I suppose it has organized itself with a regular subscription, as it has removed to the Freemason’s & has begun sending circulars previous to each dinner. One of these lists fell into the hands of the “Record”¹³ newspaper & combining this with Hare’s Life of Sterling it charges Hare, Maurice,¹⁴ Trench,¹⁵ these bishops, & innumerable others with founding a society to honour & commemorate an infidel, & joining for that purpose with persons strongly suspected of being no better than infidels themselves, such as Carlyle & me. It is very amusing that those people who take such care to guard their orthodoxy get nothing by it but to be more bitterly attacked. However it shews what I did not suppose, that it required some courage in a church dignitary to write about a heretic even in the guarded way that Hare did.—

Yesterday Nichol¹⁶ called on me—whom I had not seen since 1840—he is in town for some days or probably weeks & is about to publish a book on America where he has been travelling.¹⁷ As he is a walking man I am going to have a country walk with him tomorrow—my other Sunday walks have been alone. I have always thought him a man of whom something might be made if one could see enough of him—I shall perhaps be able to judge now if my opinion was right, but at all events his book will shew. He has this in his favour at least which is the grand distinction now that he is intensely forward-looking—not at all conservative in feeling but willing to be very destructive & now adieu with every possible wish.

On Monday no doubt I shall hear again

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April, 1849

Louis Blanc

Blanc, Louis

12.

TO LOUIS BLANC¹

[

April, 1849

]

Mon cher Monsieur Louis Blanc,

permettez-moi de vous faire l’hommage d’un petit écrit² destiné à servir de protestation contre les calomnies odieuses dont on cherche à flétrir votre Edition: current; Page: [24] noble révolution de février,³ et ceux qui l’ont dirigée pendant les premiers jours.

J’ai tâché de rendre justice à la part que vous avez prise personnellement dans le grand événement, et vous verrez que j’y parle du socialisme avec une sympathie plus ouverte que celle que j’ai manifestée dans la première édition de mon Econ. politique. Je crois que vous serez plus satisfait de la seconde.⁴

votre dévoué

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

May 16, 1849

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

13.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

[

May 16, 1849

]

My dear Hickson—

I send you Mr Lombe’s² letter as you desire. Who can he be that pays for articles at £100 each & talks so confidently of sending one or two members to Parliament? I, at least, can take no part in what he proposes, for I do not agree with him. I do not think the coast blockade³ so ineffectual as it is represented, & at all events, to abandon it would be understood throughout the world as the abandonment of our anti-slavery policy & by its moral effect would I believe increase the amount of slavery tenfold. I do not mean that it should be persevered in for ever, but I would not give it up until something more effectual for the purpose is actually in operation.—I hope you are in better health & that your excursion to Paris will set you up. My ramble⁴ has done me good but has not cured my principal ailment.⁵

Yours

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [25]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Spring of 1849

William George Ward

Ward, William George

14.

TO WILLIAM GEORGE WARD¹

[

Spring of 1849

]

Dear Sir—

You have given me six months² to answer all your questions. I think you ought to allow me six volumes too; for if the questions occupy so many pages, what must the answers? I could give, no doubt, some sort of replies to most of your queries in a few sentences, but they would not be such as could be satisfactory either to you or to myself. However your letter is a sort of challenge which I am unwilling to refuse, though aware that what I say will give scarcely the faintest idea of how much there is to say & though I do not undertake to carry on the discussion any further. If I did, each answer would suggest further questions & these would require longer answers, till I would be led into writing a treatise on each point—which though if I live I may probably do—at any rate, I had rather defer until I can do it thoroughly & in a shape for permanent use.

1st. Your explanations do not at all clear up, to my apprehension, what I think the inconsistency of blending high moral praise with the strongest language of moral reprobation.³ You say that certain states of mind are sinful in the greatest degree, yet that for those states the individual may possibly be not at all responsible. I can understand that persons may hold false & pernicious opinions conscientiously & may have defects or peculiarities of character which both in themselves and in their consequences are extremely undesirable, yet to which their own wishes or voluntary conduct having in no way contributed, they are not morally accountable for them. But to call anything a sin & yet say that the sinner is not accountable for it seems to me if the word sin means anything, a direct contradiction. It is you who appear to be chargeable with what my opinions are usually charged with, viz. confounding the distinction between moral badness & mere aberration in a person or thing from the ideal perfection of the kind of being it belongs to. Edition: current; Page: [26] I recognise two kinds of imperfections: those which come independently of our will & which our will could not prevent, & for these we are not accountable; & those which our will has either positively or negatively assisted in producing & for which we are accountable. The former may be very hurtful to ourselves & offensive to others but in us they are not morally culpable. The latter are. You ride over this (as it seems to me) perfectly definite distinction by the ambiguous word sin, under which a third class of defects of character finds entrance which is supposed to unite both attributes—to be culpable & ultra-culpable although the person thus morally guilty cannot help it. This seems to me to exemplify the unmeaningness of the word sin which if it is anything other than the theological synonym of “morally wrong” is a name for something which I do not admit to exist.

2d. On the subject out of which this discussion grew, population, marriage, &c.⁴ we differ so utterly that there seems not even a chance of our doing ourselves or each other any good by discussing it. Our ideas of moral obligation on the subject are completely incompatible, the repugnancy goes down to the very root of the subject & I entertain quite as uncomplimentary an opinion of your mode of regarding these questions as you can possibly do of mine. Two sentences will give some little notion of the wideness of our divergence. You think that the legality or illegality of an act makes a difference (not in its being right or wrong, socially speaking—but) in its purity or impurity—& you think that a man can without forfeiting his title to respect, live in the habitual practice of that which he feels to be degrading to him. I, on the contrary, cannot conceive anything more gross & grovelling than the conceptions involved in the first supposition & the conduct described in the second. They appear to me the extreme of animalism & sensuality in the fullest sense of the bad meaning of those terms.

I will say nothing more on this subject except to correct a mistake you have made about my opinions on population. I do not know where you find that on my shewing the evils of over-population are in some distant future. On the contrary, I hold with Malthus that they are, & have been throughout history, almost everywhere present, & often in great intensity.

3d. You ask what are the natural instincts that civilisation has strikingly & memorably conquered. I answer, nearly all. E.g. the instinct of taking a thing which we very much wish for, wherever we find it—food, for instance, when we are hungry. The instinct of knocking down a person who offends us if we are the strongest. As a rather different example take the eminently artificial virtue of cleanliness—think what savages are, & what violence must be done to the natural man to produce the feelings which civilised people Edition: current; Page: [27] have on this point—take again all the delicacies respecting bodily physicalities which savages have not a vestige of but which in the artificialised human being often equal in intensity any human feelings, natural or artificial.

4th. As to the opinion expressed in the Logic,⁵ that miracles are evidence of a revelation only to those who already believe in a God or at least in supernatural beings. What I meant is this. We can never know that what is presented to us as a miracle, is so. The proof can only be negative, viz. that we do not know any mode in which the thing can have been produced by natural means; & what is this worth when we are so ignorant of nature? Two years ago a man who by passing a handkerchief across a person’s face could plunge him into a sort of extasy during which a limb could be cut off without pain would have given apparent evidence of miraculous powers equal to any saint in the calendar. You ask, but what if the man himself, being morally trustworthy, affirms that it is a miracle? I answer, this would in many cases convince me that he himself believed it to be one; but that would weigh for absolutely nothing with me, as it is the easiest & commonest fact in the world, especially in an unscientific state of the human mind, that people should sincerely ascribe any peculiar & remarkable power in themselves to divine gift, & any unexpected prompting of their own minds to a divine communication. If the spectator did not previously believe in supernatural powers an apparent miracle will never give him, I conceive, any reason for believing in them, while he is aware that there are natural powers unknown to him; but if he does already believe in supernatural powers he has the choice between two agencies both of which he feels assured really exist & he therefore may & ought to consider which of the two is the most probable in the individual instance.

Next as to Xtianity. You need not have supposed any inclination in me to speak with irreverence of J[esus] C[hrist]. He is one of the very few historical characters for whom I have a real & high respect. But there is not, to me, the smallest proof of his having ever said that he worked miracles—nor if he did, should I feel obliged either to believe the fact or to disbelieve his veracity. Respecting St Paul I have a very different feeling. I hold him to have been the first great corrupter of Xtianity. He never saw Christ, never was under his personal influence, hardly ever alludes to any of his deeds or sayings, seems to have kept aloof from all who had known him & in short, made up a religion which is Paulism but not, me judice, Xtianity. Even St Paul however, though I would by no means answer for his sincerity, never that I know of speaks of any particular miracle as having been wrought by him—he only speaks generally of signs & wonders which may mean anything. The author of the “Acts” does speak of particular miracles, & those like the miracles of the Gospel I no more believe than I do the miraculous cure mentioned by Edition: current; Page: [28] Tacitus as wrought by Vespasian.⁶ I regard them simply as part of the halo which popular enthusiasm throws round its heroes. The argument of the Horae Paulinae⁷ scarcely aims at proving more than that St Paul really wrote the epistles ascribed to him, which in respect to all but one or two of them, no competent enquirer, I believe, seriously doubts (the case is very different from that of the Gospels), & that the Acts are in part an authentic record of St. Paul’s life, which I see no reason to disbelieve, no more than that Livy is in part a true history of Rome & Herodotus of the countries of which he treats. Since I am on the subject I will add that I cannot conceive how, except from deeprooted impressions of education, any reasonable person can attach value to any attestations of a miracle in an age when everybody was ready to believe miracles the moment they were attested, & even enemies instead of denying the facts, ascribed them to diabolical agency. I would say to such a person, only read any book which gives a really living picture of, let us say, the Oriental mind of the present day. You there see hundreds of millions of people to whose habits of thought supernatural agency is of such everyday familiarity that if you tell them any strange fact & say it is miraculous, they believe you at once, but if you give them a physical explanation of it, they think you a juggler & an imposter. Add to this that until long after the time Xtianity began you hardly find a trace even in the best minds of any regard for abstract veracity—any feeling which should prevent a teacher from deceiving the people for their good. Plato, the highest expression probably of the ethical philosophy of the ancient world & the elevated nature of whose purposes it is impossible to doubt, thought it the duty of legislators to pretend a supernatural origin for their precepts,⁸ as all very early legislators seem to have done.

These are I think the more important topics of your letter. As to the condition of the labouring people as compared with former times, I incline to think them worse off as to quantity tho’ not quality of food than three centuries ago, and better off as to clothing & lodging—but there is a sad dearth of facts that can be relied on. You speak of Macaulay⁹ and D’Israeli¹⁰ Edition: current; Page: [29] as authorities—anything that Macaulay says, is not matter of observation but of inference & argument of which one must judge for oneself. As for D’Israeli & his Sibyl [sic], I cannot imagine its being received as testimony, or supposed to be anything but a commonplace story.

I am afraid I cannot be of any use to you in recommending treatises on astronomy as it is many years since I read any of the more deeply mathematical sort. The most recent that I have read is that of Biot,¹¹ which is probably by this time superseded. I have never read Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste,¹² but have understood that it is the most obscure, & by no means the best, of the treatises on the subject. Most probably Pontécoulant¹³ will answer your purpose. Nobody I believe ever hazarded a conjecture when the supposed condensation of the sun’s atmosphere began nor whether it is indefinitely progressive or forms part of a cycle including periods of expansion as well as of contraction. I believe it is thought, though I know not on what grounds, that the throwing off of new planets has ceased. It is, I believe, mathematically demonstrable that the supposed changes could not alter the centre of gravity of the solar system & therefore (as it cannot alter the total mass of matter) would make no difference in the orbits of the planets or in any of the other effects of gravitation.

The opinion that all axioms are founded on the evidence of experience, rests to my own mind on the most complete proof but I always knew it would be very difficult to bring home that evidence to those trained in a different school of psychology from mine. Accordingly I have failed to make you see (I do not mean admit) the main & characteristic points of my doctrine on the subject, viz. that our not being able to conceive a thing is no evidence of the thing’s being in itself impossible. You understand me correctly to say that the absence of any law of causation in some distant star, not only is, for anything we know, perfectly possible but is even conceivable—but you ask, is it conceivable that in such a star two straight lines may inclose a space? I say, certainly it is not conceivable, but that does not prove to me that the thing is impossible, since the limitation may be in our faculties, & in the all-pervadingness, to us, of a contrary experience. Again, “the possibility of proving geometrical first principles by merely mental experimentation”¹⁴ seems to me to arise from previous experience that in this particular department what is true of our mental images is true also of their originals, which I illustrated in the Logic by the case of a daguerreotype.¹⁵

Edition: current; Page: [30]

I agree with you that ratiocinative logic may usefully be taught separately from inductive & belongs indeed to an earlier stage in mental instruction.

It is so long since I read Butler¹⁶ & I have so little faith in opinions the grounds of which we are not constantly revising, that I will not venture to express an opinion of him. I know that my father thought the argument of the “Analogy” conclusive against deists with whom alone Butler professes to argue & I have heard my father say that it kept him for some time a believer in Xtianity. I was not prepared by what I had heard from him for so contemptuous an opinion as is indicated in some passages of the “Fragment”¹⁷ though he never can have thought highly of Butler except by comparison with other writers of the same general tendency in opinion.

I am convinced that competent judges who have sufficient experience of children will not agree in the opinion you express that they have a natural idea of right or duty. I am satisfied that all such ideas in children are the result of inculcation & that were it not for inculcation they would not exist at all except probably in a few persons of pre-eminent genius & feeling.

I have followed your example in expressing my meaning without polite circumlocutions, as I believe you really wish that I should—& any appearance of egotism or dogmatism in what I have said, you will, I hope, not attribute to my thinking an opinion important because it is mine, but will remember that what you asked me to do was to tell you as a matter of fact, what my opinions are, & that too on subjects on which they are strong, & have been much & long considered. I am dear Sir, very truly yours

J. S. Mill

I should have answered your letter weeks ago had I not been out of town on account of health.¹⁸

Rev. W. G. Ward, Old Hall Green, Ware

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

28th May 1849

India House

Henry Samuel Chapman

Chapman, Henry Samuel

15.

TO HENRY SAMUEL CHAPMAN¹

India House

28th May 1849

My dear Chapman

You must have been expecting to hear from me long before this, on the Edition: current; Page: [31] subject of your article² for the Edinburgh & indeed I have delayed writing much too long, although the reason of the delay was the hope of being able to write something more certain about the article than I am even yet able to do. I must mention to you in the first place that I am not on terms of direct communication with the Edinburgh since the death of Napier³ & the accession of the present editor Empson.⁴ I was therefore obliged to have recourse to an indirect channel & I thought Buller⁵ the best as it enabled me at the same time to say a word in the hope of forwarding your views with respect to V[an] D[iemen’s] L[and]. But when I called at Buller’s with the article he was at Paris & when he returned he fell ill & you know the catastrophe. As soon as I could get back the article from among his papers I applied to Senior⁶ who sent it to Empson; I having first, under the power you gave me, made the few alterations & omissions which seemed to me desirable. Empson wrote to Senior saying that the article was interesting & he should like to insert it, but could not do so before the July number & then must make some alterations & suppressions; this I ventured, in your name, to express assent to. Two or three weeks ago, however, (I being at the time out of town) Empson returned the article to Senior saying that he had tried to alter the article as he had proposed doing, but had not been able to satisfy himself, & added a question, Would Senior’s unknown friend (meaning me, for I had not authorized S. to mention me in connexion with the article) try to set the article in order for the October number. This is the state which the thing is now in. I shall try to do what he says, but I am so little aware of what his objections are to the article as it stands, that it is very probable I may not be able to remove them. When I am able to tell you more I will. As to your claims to promotion,⁷ I can contribute nothing but good wishes—my interest Edition: current; Page: [32] with Lord Grey⁸ or any other members of the government is less than none, it is negative, & is never likely to be otherwise.—Thanks for your full particulars about New Zealand affairs in all departments & for your last letter about the earthquake.⁹ I hope it will not turn out that such serious natural convulsions are to be of common occurrence—as it is I fear even what you have had will be likely to check the recourse of capital & even of labour to the colony. In Europe we are as thickly as ever in the midst of another sort of convulsions—in which the despots¹⁰ for the present appear to be getting the best of it & will probably succeed by the aid of Russian troops in putting down democracy for a time everywhere but in France,—the democratic spirit in Germany¹¹ & even in Italy,¹² seems quite too strong to be put down & it is sure to resume its ascendancy even but it is terrible to think of a noble people like the Hungarians being cut to pieces¹³ & their country made another Poland of.¹⁴ The whole problem of modern society however will be worked out, as I have long thought it would, in France & nowhere else. I do not know if I have written to you or not since the extraordinary election of Louis Bonaparte as President of the Republic by six or seven millions of votes against a million & a half,¹⁵ an election the more remarkable as the million & a half included not only all the intelligence of France but most of what is called the property, a large proportion both of the bourgeoisie & of the grands propriétaires having voted for Cavaignac.¹⁶ The election was carried by the vast mass of the peasantry, & it is one of the most striking instances in history of the power of a name—though no doubt dislike of the republic helped the effect, the peasantry being too ignorant to care much about forms of government & being irritated by the temporary increase of taxation which the revolution¹⁷ rendered necessary & terrified by the anti-property doctrines of Edition: current; Page: [33] Proudhon & the Socialists—I may say of Proudhon only, for the Socialists, even the Communists, do not propose to take away any property from any one, any more than Owen does. The result is that France having had the rare good fortune of finding two men in succession of perfectly upright intentions, enlightened principles & good sense, Lamartine & Cavaignac, has chosen to reject both & be governed by a stupid, ignorant adventurer who has thrown himself entirely into the hands of the reactionary party,¹⁸ &, but that he is too great a fool, would have some chance by these means of making himself emperor.¹⁹ But the elections just ended have much disappointed that party, for though they will have a majority²⁰ in the new assembly, the number of the Montagne or red republican party (who are now all socialists) have increased fourfold, while the moderate republican party also musters a considerable number, though many of its chiefs have been turned out. There will probably be no outbreak like that of June²¹ (unless to repel some attempt at a coup d’état) for the democrats & even the socialists will now think they have a better chance of gaining their objects by the peaceable influence of discussion on the minds of the electors—but what turn things will take it is hard to say, the French people being divided into two violent parties, the furious friends of “order” & the Socialists, who have generally very wild & silly notions & little that one can sympathize with except the spirit & feelings which actuate them. The party who attempt to mediate between these two extremes as the Provisional Government strove to do, is weak, & is disliked by both parties, though there are some signs that all sections of republicans intend to pull together now that they are all in opposition. The chance for France & Europe entirely depends now on the respite which has been obtained & on the possibility of the maturing by this middle party, of rational principles on which to construct an order of society which, retaining the institution of private property (but facilitating all possible experiments for dispensing with it by means of association) shall studiously hurl all inequalities out necessarily inherent in that institution. As an example I may mention the grand idea of the Provisional Government, that of making all education, even professional, gratuitous,²² which as they proposed it, is liable to the grave objection of throwing all education virtually into the hands of the government, but means might I think be found to purge the scheme of this most serious fault. A great source of hope for France lies in the fact that the most Edition: current; Page: [34] powerful & active section of the Socialists are the Fourierists headed by Considérant, who are much the most sensible & enlightened both in the destructive, & in the constructive parts of their system, & are eminently pacific. On the other hand there is the great danger of having a firebrand like Proudhon, the most mischievous man in Europe, & who has nothing whatever of all that I like & respect in the Socialists to whom he in no way belongs.—We certainly live in a most interesting period of history. As for England, it is dead, vapid, left quite behind by all the questions now rising. From the Dukes to the Chartists, including all intermediate stages, people have neither heads nor hearts, & yet they all hug themselves & think they are the only people who are good for anything, & all their public men, even Roebuck,²³ have the sentiment.

Ever yours truly,

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

13 June 1849

India House

George Cornewall Lewis

Lewis, George Cornewall

16.

TO GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS¹

India House

13 June 1849

My dear Sir

As I understand from my friend Mr Bisset² that Charles Villiers³ has been interesting himself to obtain some government employment for him in the way of his profession & has spoken or is likely to speak to you on the subject, I think it but justice to Bisset to add any testimony which I can give in his favour, to that which you will have received from Villiers. I have known Bisset for many years during which he has struggled hard and meritoriously to make his way in his profession (as a conveyancer) supporting himself meanwhile as a writer, & though he has had little success I believe it to be neither from want of ability nor of legal learning. Coulson,⁴ whose pupil he Edition: current; Page: [35] was, can speak to both points & it is much in his favour that he was selected to edit the recent edition of Jarman on Wills⁵ (not the right technical title I am afraid) which I understand he did very creditably. Coulson feels I know considerable interest in him & thinks him competent for many useful public duties & in particular “an excellent person to collect digest & judge of information on any legal subject.” Coulson thinks him not a likely person to succeed in the captation of attornies, & advises him, I believe, rather to look for some permanent appointment than to professional work to which his own wishes at present seem to point. There are many situations which he would be very fit for but he has no means of knowing when any are vacant or in what quarter an application would have any chance. He has the feelings and habits of a gentleman & may be depended on for conscientious care & pains taking in all he undertakes.

He was for a short time employed under the original Poor Law Commission & Senior probably could say something about him though he came very little into direct contact with him.

Believe me
yours faithfully

J. S. Mill

G. C. Lewis Esq. M.P. &c &c &c

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Monday July 9, 1849

I[ndia] H[ouse]

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

17.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Monday
[

July 9, 1849

]

Dear Hickson

I have no wish to enter into any discussion with Mr. Lombe.² It is useless discussing any such point with a man who thinks it is the intention of nature that one race of mankind should be helots working for another. Besides, I am certain he is an interested party. No one, who was not, would select this question of all others as the one to spend considerable sums of money in agitating about.

Edition: current; Page: [36]

I do not sympathize in the sentimental pity for the officers and sailors. It is their own choice. They are not, like poor conscripts, compelled to serve. In time of war indeed it is different as long as impressment lasts.

What a droll mistake Adams³ has made about the Palace of Art—mistaking the poet’s “soul” for a flesh and blood heroine.

Ever yours truly,

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Sept. 26th 1849.

William Conner

Conner, William

18.

TO WILLIAM CONNER¹

Sept. 26th 1849.

Sir—

Your letter dated two months ago has from various causes remained too long unanswered, & your present of the volume of your collected writings,² unacknowledged. I was already acquainted with some though not all of your pamphlets,³ & had seen enough in them to convince me that you had found the true explanation of the poverty & non improvement of the Irish tenantry.⁴ The letting of the land, by a virtual auction, to competitors much more numerous than the farms to be disposed of, whose numbers are constantly increasing, & who have no means of subsistence but by obtaining land on whatever terms, ensures their giving up to the landlord the whole produce of the land minus a bare subsistence, & putting themselves completely in his power by promising even more than that. And as you have so Edition: current; Page: [37] well pointed out it is impossible while this system lasts that the people can derive benefit from anything which would otherwise tend to improve their condition—the tenant being a mere channel through which the benefit, whatever it may be, is diverted into the pocket of the landlord. Your proposal of a valuation & a perpetuity is the only one that I am aware of which goes to the root of the mischief. When I published the treatise⁵ of which you make such flattering mention, I thought that a perpetual tenure, either rentfree, or at a fixed low rent, conferred on those who would occupy & reclaim waste lands, would be sufficient to meet the evil. I thought that the distribution of the waste lands in permanent property among the class of small farmers would draft off so many of the competitors for the other lands, as to render the competition innocuous, the rents moderate, the country tranquil, & by removing the obstacle to the introduction of English capital enable the peasantry to earn at least English wages.⁶ And I still believe that the plan might have produced these effects if tried before the enactment of the present Poor Law.⁷ That law however has commenced a train of events which must terminate, I think, in the adoption of something equivalent to your plan. Men who could not learn from reason, are learning from experiment, that neither English buyers nor English farmers will take land in Munster or Connaught subject to the liabilities of the poor law. If therefore the land is to be cultivated at all, it must be by the Irish peasantry; & as these, whether ejected or not, cannot now be starved while the landlord has anything to give them, he will probably in the end be obliged to bribe them to work by giving them an interest in the land.

I lament that exertions so promising as those in which you were engaged have been cut short by personal misfortunes. I trust there is yet a chance of your being one day in a condition to renew those exertions, in which I believe you would now find many more coadjutors than before. The progress of events & of opinion has left such political economists as those whose dicta you relate, very far behind, & their authority will soon stand as low as it deserves. My object in writing a treatise on Pol. Economy was to rescue from the hands of such people the truths they misapply, & by combining these with other truths to which they are strangers, to deduce conclusions capable of being of some use to the progress of mankind. The sympathy you express in Edition: current; Page: [38] this attempt induces me to request your acceptance of a copy of the book, which I hope will reach you shortly after you receive this letter.

I am Sir
very sincerely yours

J. S. M.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

11th November 1849

William Maccall

Maccall, William

19.

TO WILLIAM MACCALL¹

11th November 1849

I hope you have better health than you had some time ago. I wish I could see you in a way of life more congenial. But there never was, except during the middle half of the eighteenth century, a time so unpropitious for one of your opinions, feelings, and temperament. One cannot help often—though convinced that those were on the whole worse times than these—wishing for the age of Savonarola.²

Ever yours truly,

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

End of 1849

William Johnson Fox

Fox, William Johnson

20.

TO WILLIAM JOHNSON FOX¹

End of 1849

My dear Sir—

I return the Resolutions² with some notes on two or three of them. You will see that with the exception of the 8th Res. which seems to me objectionable in toto, the fault I find with the plan is that it is a kind of compromise—since it admits as much religious instruction as is given in the Irish Edition: current; Page: [39] National Schools³ & not only admits, but demands what is called moral instruction.

The stupid doctrines which alone the plan excludes generally lie dead in the minds of children having hardly any effect, good or bad—the real harm being done by the inculcation of the common moralities. I know that compromises are often inevitable in practice, but I think they should be left to the enemy to propose—reformers should assert principles & only accept compromises.

I am very glad to see you active, & on so important a subject. There is something like a stir beginning again among the liberal members of parliament which will give a chance of a good following to whoever takes the lead in anything useful.

[Notes appended to the above letter]

3rd Resolution. I would omit the words including moral instruction. What the sort of people who will have the management of any such schools, mean by moral instruction, is much the same thing as what they mean by religious instruction, only lowered to the world’s practice. It means cramming the children directly with all the common professions about what is right & wrong & about the worth of different objects in life, and filling them indirectly with the spirit of all the notions on such matters which vulgar-minded people are in the habit of acting on without consciously professing. I know it is impossible to prevent much of this from being done—but the less of it there is the better, & I would not set people upon doing more of it than they might otherwise do, by insisting expressly on giving moral instruction.

If it were possible to provide for giving real moral instruction it would be worth more than all else that schools can do. But no programme of moral instruction which would be really good, would have a chance of being assented to or followed by the manager of a general scheme of public instruction in the present state of people’s minds.

5th Res. The National Schools of Ireland are, I believe, the best among existing models; but they are unsectarian only in a narrow sense. They are not unsectarian as between Christian & non-Christian. They are not purely for secular instruction. They use selections from the Bible & therefore teach the general recognition of that book as containing the system & history of creation & the commands of an allwise & good being. Any system of instruction which does this contains I conceive a great part of all the mischief done by a purely Church or purely Dissenting Education. Is it not better even in Edition: current; Page: [40] policy to make the omission altogether of religion from State Schools the avowed object.

8th Res. This seems to be very objectionable. If any public body were empowered to prevent a person from practising as a teacher without a certificate of competency, no person believed to think or act in opposition to any of the ordinary standards, or who is supposed to be an “unbeliever,” would ever be allowed to teach. No Socialist or even Chartist would have (especially in times of political alarm) the smallest chance. No such person could keep even a private school, much less be a teacher in a public one. I have never seen the body that I would trust with the power of pronouncing persons incompetent for this or any other profession. Neither do I see what purpose this resolution is intended to answer. No doubt, persons grossly incompetent do try to get a living as schoolmasters, but the remedy for this is to provide better ones, & the other resolutions ensure this in every district. Besides this evil would soon take care of itself, if the mass of people had even a little education.

Edition: current; Page: [41]

1850

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Friday [1850?]

Ex[aminer’s] Off[ice]

Dr. John Forbes Royle

Forbes, Dr. John Royle

21.

TO DR. JOHN FORBES ROYLE¹

Ex[aminer’s] Off[ice]

Friday [1850?]

Dear Dr Royle—

I am very sorry to hear of your feverish attack. I suspect there is something in the state of the air very favorable to such attacks where other causes cooperate such as those which have been affecting you. Many thanks for the trouble you have taken about Webb.² It will be fortunate for me if Mr Wilson Saunders³ has soon done with it.

I have made a few pencil marks on this (rather important) sheet but they are of a very trifling character.

yours ever

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Thursday [1850?]

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Dr. John Forbes Royle

Forbes, Dr. John Royle

21A.

TO DR. JOHN FORBES ROYLE¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Thursday [1850?]

Dear Dr Royle—

on arriving this morning I found quite unexpectedly the volume of Webb²—for which I am extremely obliged to you. It will be of great use to me & I only wish there were more of it. I am on the whole glad Edition: current; Page: [42] that I have not had it until I had gone through the families contained in it, as one ought to use such books to verify rather than to supersede the regular mode of determining plants.

I hope you continue improving & that you will soon be about again. The interruption to all that you were engaged in was most vexatious—but this illness, brought on by overwork, must be used as an additional reason for making a stand against your present position

ever truly yours

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Thursday [1850]

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Dr. John Forbes Royle

Forbes, Dr. John Royle

22.

TO DR. JOHN FORBES ROYLE¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Thursday [1850]

Dear Dr Royle—

I am very sorry that you are not yet recovered from your attack. You will see on this sheet some queries of mine in pencil & some alterations by Prideaux² in ink—but as I have told him, I think his alteration in p. 450 proceeds on a misconception of your meaning—which however will be of use as shewing some want of clearness in the expression.³ What he has inserted, too, is very much to the purpose, though what I think you meant, is still more so.

Yours (in haste)

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

1850

Harriet Taylor

Taylor, Harriet

23.

TO HARRIET TAYLOR¹

[

1850

?]

Thanks dearest dearest angel for the note—what it contained was a really important addition to the letter² & I have put it in nearly in your words, which as your impromptu words almost always are, were a hundred times better Edition: current; Page: [43] than any I could find by study. What a perfect orator you would make—& what changes might be made in the world by such a one, with such opportunities as thousands of male dunces have. But you are to me, & would be to any one who knew you, the type of Intellect—because you have all the faculties in equal perfection—you can both think, & impress the thought on others—& can both judge what ought to be done, & do it. As for me, nothing but the division of labour could make me useful—if there were not others with the capacities of intellect which I have not, where would be the use of them I have—I am but fit to be one wheel in an engine not to be the self moving engine itself—a real majestic intellect, not to say moral nature, like yours, I can only look up to & admire—but while you can love me as you so sweetly & so beautifully shewed in that hour yesterday, I have all I care for or desire for myself—& wish for nothing except not to disappoint you—& to be so happy as to be some good to you (who are all good to me) before I die. This is a graver note than I thought it would be when I began it—for the influence of that dear little hour has kept me in spirits ever since—thanks to my one only source of good.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

22d January 1850.

India House

Edward Herford

Herford, Edward

24.

TO EDWARD HERFORD¹

India House

22d January

1850

.

Sir—

I have to acknowledge your communication of January 9th inclosing a statement of the principles & objects of a proposed Association, which you do me the honour of wishing that I should join, & inviting me to communicate any observations which the paper suggests to me.

In some of the objects of the Address, & in some of the doctrines laid down in it, there is much that I agree with. But the question is, I think, more complicated than the writer seems to consider it. The present mode of legal relief to the destitute² was not adopted on any such absurd ground as that “it is Edition: current; Page: [44] better that the unemployed should be idle than usefully employed,” or better that the funds expended in supporting them should be consumed without a return, than with a return. The “principle” acted on was that by selecting employment for paupers with reference to its suitableness as a test for destitution, rather than to its productiveness, it was possible to make the conditions of relief sufficiently undesirable, to prevent its acceptance by any who could find private employment. But if the state, or the parish, provides ordinary work at ordinary wages for all the unemployed, the work so provided cannot be made less desirable, & can scarcely be prevented from being more desirable, than any other employment. It would therefore become necessary either that the state should arbitrarily limit its operations (in which case no material advantage would arise from their having been commenced) or that it should be willing to take the whole productive industry of the country under the direction of its own officers.

You will perhaps say that these consequences could only arise if the work required in exchange for public pay were (as it usually has been) merely nominal; & that you rely, for preventing such a consummation, on the principle on which you justly lay so much stress, that of payment proportionate to the work done. I confess I have no confidence that this principle could be so applied as to have the effect intended. It was tried (as I have understood) in the Irish Relief Works³ & in the Ateliers Nationaux⁴ at Paris, & with the result which might be expected—viz. that if the rate of payment by the piece was sufficiently liberal not to overtask the feeble and unskilful, it enabled the strong & experienced workman to earn so much with perfect ease, that all other employment was rapidly deserted for that held out by the public.

My own opinion is that when productive employment can be claimed by every one from the public as a right, it can only be rendered undesirable by being made virtually slave labour; & I therefore deprecate the enforcement of such a right, until society is prepared to adopt the other side of the alternative, that of making the production & distribution of wealth a public concern. I think it probable that to this, in some form (though I would not undertake to say in what) the world will come, but not without other great changes—certainly not in a society composed like the present, of rich & poor; in which the direction of industry by a public authority would be only substituting a combination of rich men, armed with coercive power, for the competition of individual capitalists.

Edition: current; Page: [45]

At present I expect very little from any plans which aim at improving even the economical state of the people by purely economical or political means. We have come, I think, to a period, when progress, even of a political kind, is coming to a halt, by reason of the low intellectual & moral state of all classes: of the rich as much as of the poorer classes. Great improvements in Education (among the first of which I reckon, dissevering it from bad religion) are the only thing to which I should look for permanent good. For example, the objects of your Association, & those of the promoters of Emigration, even if they could be successful in putting an end to indigence, would do no more than push off to another generation the necessity of adopting a sounder morality on the subject of overpopulation—which sounder morality, even if it were not necessary to prevent the evils of poverty, would equally be requisite in order to put an end to the slavery to which the existing state of things condemns women; a greater object, in my estimation, both in itself & in its tendencies, than the mere physical existence either of women or men. I am sorry to see in your Circular the ignorant & immoral doctrine that the “separation”⁵ enforced in the workhouse is among the sources of “degradation” & diminished “self-respect” for the pauper. I consider it an essential part of the moral training, which, in many ways (but in none more important) the reception of public relief affords an opportunity of administering: & the improvement of which would be a reform in Poor Law management, better worth aiming at, I think, than that which you propose.

I am Sir yr obt Servt

J. S. Mill

Edw. Herford Esq

Town Hall

Manchester

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

1st Feby 1850

India House

Edward Herford

Herford, Edward

25.

TO EDWARD HERFORD¹

India House

1st Feby 1850

Sir—

I am sensible of the compliment paid to me by the promoters of the “Poor Law Reform Association” in their willingness to make some modifications in the terms of their Address if I should thus be enabled to concur in it. But my differences from them are too wide to admit of cooperation. My objection is not founded on any mischief which I expect from the practical Edition: current; Page: [46] recommendations in the Address, but on what seems to me the merely superficial character of everything that it professes or contemplates. The plan will, I conceive, have no effect at all on the permanent & hereditary paupers, who form the great mass of the pauperism of the country. Manufacturing operatives are, as you say, often thrown out of employment in great numbers at once, by the vicissitudes of trade, & to find the means during such intervals, of employing them so as to reproduce their subsistence, would be a useful thing doubtless, but I cannot think that it would amount to any social reform; it seems to me more the concern of the ratepayers than of any one else. Of course I make no objection to considering & discussing the means of doing this, but it is not a thing in which I feel called upon to take a part.

It is not necessary that I should comment on the many things in your letter with which I entirely disagree; I will merely observe on a matter of fact, that though I am aware that piece work was not the original principle either of the Irish relief works or of the ateliers nationaux,² I have a most distinct recollection that in one or other, & I believe in both, it was had recourse to on failure of the original plans, & with the effects which I mentioned.

I am Sir
yours truly

J. S. Mill

Edward Herford Esq.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Tuesday [Feb. 12, 1850]

India House

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

26.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

India House

Tuesday [Feb. 12, 1850]

My dear Hickson

By an odd coincidence I have no sooner sent you Thornton’s article² than I have to send you another proposition from another new contributor. Stephen Spring Rice³ (the eldest son of Lord Monteagle) has written a paper Edition: current; Page: [47] “On the study of Irish History” which he would like to publish in the Westminster⁴ and has requested me to ask you to write a line to him saying whether you are willing to take it into consideration. He is a practical & lively writer & has a great deal to say, worth attending to, on Irish subjects. His address is the Custom House (he being a Commissioner). He does not know where to send the article, but this he will probably learn from yourself.

Yours faithfully

J. S. Mill.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Thursday [February 14, 1850]

India House

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

27.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

India House

Thursday [February 14, 1850]

My dear Hickson

I cannot say what the opinions in the article on Ireland² are, as I have not seen it—I know however that Mr. Spring Rice is of the same opinion with me about the Irish Poor Law³ and not disinclined to peasant properties.

Thornton’s address is:

W. T. Thornton Esq

India House

Yours faithfully

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

19th March 1850

India House

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

28.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

India House

19th March

1850

Dear Hickson

I did not intend absolutely to pledge myself to an article for the Westr on the subject you proposed. I should not be disposed to undertake an article Edition: current; Page: [48] limited to the question of divorce. I should treat that as only one point in a much more extensive subject—the entire position which present laws & customs have made for women. My opinions on the whole subject are so totally opposed to the reigning notions, that it would probably be inexpedient to express all of them & I must consider whether the portion of them which the state of existing opinion would make it advisable to express, would be sufficient to make the undertaking a suitable or satisfactory one to me. To decide this I must turn over the subject in my mind for some little time.²

When I have made up my mind I will write again—in the meantime you must not count on me for the July number.

If I decide to undertake it I shall either not accept the pay, or employ it in some mode which will further the objects of the article.

Yours faithfully

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

21 July 1850

India House

Augustus de Morgan

Morgan, Augustus de

29.

TO AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN¹

India House

21 July 1850

Dear Sir—

Many thanks for your paper,² which I shall read with the same care as I have read your larger treatise.³ If you will send here the copy which Edition: current; Page: [49] you destine for Mr Ballantyne⁴ I think I can get it put into the Company’s packet.

Very truly yours

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Oct. 29, 1850

Harriet Taylor

Taylor, Harriet

30.

TO HARRIET TAYLOR¹

[After

Oct. 29, 1850

]

You will tell me my own dearest dearest love, what has made you out of spirits. I have been put in spirits by what I think will put you in spirits too—you know some time ago there was a Convention of Women in Ohio to claim equal rights²—(& there is to be another in May)³ well, there has just been a Convention for the same purpose in Massachusetts⁴—chiefly of women, but with a great number of men, including the chief slavery abolitionists Garrison,⁵ Wendell Phillips,⁶ the negro Douglas⁷ &c. The New York Tribune contains a long report⁸—most of the speakers are women—& I never remember any public meetings or agitation comparable to it in the proportion which good sense bears to nonsense—while as to tone it is almost like ourselves speaking—outspoken like America, not frightened & servile like England—not the least iota of compromise—asserting the whole of the principle & claiming the whole of the consequences, without any of the little feminine concessions and reserves—the thing will evidently not drop, but will go on till it succeeds, & I really do now think that we have a good chance of living to see something decisive really accomplished on that of all practical subjects the most important—to see that will be really looking down from Pisgah on the promised land—how little I thought we should ever see it.

The days seem always short to me as they pass. The time that seems long, the time that I am often impatient of the length of, is the time till spring⁹—the Edition: current; Page: [50] time till we have a home, till we are together in our life instead of this unsatisfactory this depressing coming and going, in which all disagreeables have so much more power than belongs to them, & the atmosphere of happiness has not time to penetrate & pervade in the way I know so well even by the most imperfect experience & which then it will always—

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

19th November 1850

India House

Frederick J. Furnivall

Furnivall, Frederick J.

31.

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL¹

India House

19th November 1850

Sir—

I am not sure that I perceive precisely what is the point on which you ask for a more distinct statement of my opinion.² If it be this—whether the social arrangements by which the possessors of capital are able to appropriate to themselves the whole excess of the production above the outlay, are good arrangements & such as it is desirable should continue—I answer, no. But if the question be whether, those social arrangements remaining as they are, a capitalist is morally bound to give up to the workpeople whom he employs, all the profits of his capital, after deducting interest at the market rate, & the day-wages of his own labour (if any) my answer is, that I do not consider him to be under this obligation.

The economics of society may be grounded either on the principle of property or on that of community. The principle of property I understand to be, that what any individuals have earned by their own labour, and what the law permits them to be given to them by others, they are allowed to dispose of at pleasure, for their own use, & are not, as you seem to think, bound to hold it in trust for the public or for the poor. This is a great advance, both in justice & in utility, above the mere law of force, but far inferior to the law of community; & there is not & cannot be any reason against the immediate adoption of some form of this last, unless it be that mankind are not yet prepared for it.

But I do not therefore think it is the duty (though it may sometimes be praiseworthy) of conscientious persons who have earned or acquired property Edition: current; Page: [51] in the present imperfect social scheme, to distribute their surplus among the poor. To attempt to give all the reasons for this opinion would require a long ethical discussion: but to consider it only economically:—The rule of private property has at least the advantage, that it stimulates individuals to thrive by their own energies: under communism there would be a just division of exertion & of its fruits: but there is a tertium quid which would be worse than either—namely that those who had failed to exert themselves to thrive, should rely on having the difference made up to them, either in the form of gifts or of a tax, by those who have so thriven.

When you suggest the enforcement by law, if possible, on all capitalists, of this proposed abnegation of any profit beyond a moderate interest, you in fact propose to abolish the law of property “in its present form” (to repeat the words I used). I have no objection to that, but it has to be shewn if there is any halting place, short of communism. I am open to any lights on the subject; but the occasion was not suitable for entering into it before the Committee.³

I am sir
yours very truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

22d Nov. 1850

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Walter Coulson

Coulson, Walter

32.

TO WALTER COULSON¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

.

22d Nov. 1850

Dear Coulson

Since receiving your note I have read Mr Kingsley’s article.² I think it an effective piece of controversial writing; & as against the Edinburgh Professor³ whom he attacks, he has the best of the argument. I agree with him that if farmers cannot cultivate with a profit under free trade the fault is in their own ignorance & indolence or the greediness of their landlords—& also that if farmers cannot or will not do it, peasant proprietors Edition: current; Page: [52] or cooperative villages can. If I could really think that free trade would break up the present system of landlords farmers & labourers for hire, I should think the repeal of the corn laws⁴ a far greater & more beneficial event than I have hitherto believed it.

In the imaginary dialogue between Common Sense & a Protectionist,⁵ there are several propositions of political economy which I think erroneous, 1st, Corn laws make food dearer, but I do not agree in the proposition that they make it less plentiful. If, notwithstanding the higher price, the consumers are willing to buy the same quantity, the same quantity will be produced. 2nd, I do not admit that cheap food makes other things cheap, since it does not diminish the cost of producing or importing other things. 3rd. Neither do I think that the cheapening of food necessarily lowers wages. When it does so, it is only gradually, by giving a stimulus to population, unless there is already a surplus of unemployed labourers supported by charity. 4thly. When the fall of wages comes (if it does come) I agree with the writer, that wages do not fall in proportion to the fall in the price of food; for the reason he gives, viz. that wages are not wholly spent on food, but partly on things which have not fallen; & for example if half the labourer’s expenditure consists of food, & food falls ten per cent, the utmost fall of wages which would ensue would be five per cent. But the writer seems to forget that by the hypothesis, a fall of five per cent in wages would be sufficient to deprive the labourer of all advantage from the fall of ten per cent in food; so that his argument proves nothing for his purpose.

On a subject which has been so much & so well discussed as the free trade question one has no right to require new ideas. There is an original idea in the article, but I am afraid it is an erroneous one. The writer says, that animals give back to the soil (when there is no waste of manure) all the material which they take from it in nutriment, & he thinks this proves that however much population might increase production would increase in the same ratio. I apprehend it only proves that the power of production needs never be exhausted, but not that it admits of indefinite increase. To make out his point he must maintain that the soil will yield a double produce on the application of a double quantity of manure. So far from this, it is well known that manuring beyond a certain amount injures the crop.

The remainder of the political economy of the article I agreed with, to the best of my remembrance—but much of the incidental matter I totally dissent from. It is not Mr K’s socialism⁶ that stands in the way of our agreement; Edition: current; Page: [53] I am far more a Socialist than he is. It is the old, not the new part of his opinions which forms the gulph between us. This very article talks of “the righteous judgments of one who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children.” To such a degree does religion or what is so called, pervert morality. How can morality be anything but the chaos it now is, when the ideas of right & wrong, just & unjust, must be wrenched into accordance either with the notions of a tribe of barbarians in a corner of Syria three thousand years ago, or with what is called the order of Providence; in other words, the course of nature, of which so great a part is tyranny & iniquity—all the things which are punished as the most atrocious crimes when done by human creatures, being the daily doings of nature through the whole range of organic life.

Mr K’s notions must be little less vague about my political economy than about my socialism when he couples my name⁷ with that of a mere tyro like H. Martineau.⁸

I am dear Coulson yours very truly

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

27th November 1850

India House

Frederick J. Furnivall

Furnivall, Frederick J.

33.

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL¹

India House

27th November 1850

Sir,

To answer the questions² you put to me, even in their principal bearings, would be to write an Essay—& my whole time would hardly suffice to give satisfactory answers to all the questions I am asked by correspondents previously unknown to me. I may say briefly, that if an employer of labour felt bound to divide his profits justly, that is, on some principle of equality among all persons concerned, it is by no means certain that he would in the present state of society & education do a benefit to the individuals equivalent to his sacrifice—& still less certain that he could not, in some other manner, make the same amount of sacrifices instrumental to some greater good. These conditions at least seem to be necessary to make such conduct obligatory. I do not give this as a complete but only as an obvious answer.

Edition: current; Page: [54]

With regard to the last point in your letter,³ I should be glad to see Leclaire’s system⁴ generally adopted, and should not object to it being made compulsory by law if I thought such a law could be executed: but the execution of it would require that the state should fix, not only the interest of capital (which it might do), but the wages of the labourers, the salary for superintendence, & the remuneration for risk of capital: & as these are variable elements, they could not be determined by law, but only by some officer pro hac vice. If the state is to exercise this power, it would be better in many respects, & probably not worse in any, that the state should take all the capital of the country, paying interest for it, & become itself the sole employer of labour, which would be communism.

I am Sir
Yours truly

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [55]

1851

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Thursday [after Jan. 22, 1851]

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Edwin Chadwick

Chadwick, Edwin

34.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Thursday [after Jan. 22, 1851]

Dear Chadwick—

I ought to have written to you yesterday morning to prevent your coming round in the evening—I intended, but I am ashamed to say I forgot—I have read the Water Report² & a great deal of the Appx. It is all very interesting but on the main question you had said all it contains, & more too—

I shall not give the Assn a long answer.³ If they want me as an authority against the nonsense of the Economist⁴ &c. they will get what they want—

ever yrs

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

3rd March 1851

India House

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

35.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

India House

3rd March

1851

Dear Hickson

If you are inclined for an article on the Emanicipation of Women,² a Edition: current; Page: [56] propos of the Convention³ in Massachusetts which I mentioned to you the last time I saw you, I have one nearly ready, which can be finished & sent to you within a week, which, I suppose, is in time for your April number.

Very truly yours

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

10th March 1851

India House

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

36.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

India House

10th March

1851

Dear Hickson

I am sorry that there is not likely to be room for the article² in the next number of the Westr. If not, I will take care to send it in time for the July number.

I shall regret much if the review passes out of your hands³ into those of anyone who would have no object but to endeavour to make it profitable. It is the only organ through which really advanced opinions can get access to the public & it is very honourable to you that you have kept that organ in life & at work for ten years past and have made it so good a thing, under difficult circumstances, as you have. It has improved too in its late numbers.

Yours very truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

19th March 1851

India House

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

37.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

India House

19th March

1851

Dear Hickson

After your former note, & as I did not hear from you for some days, subsequently I concluded that the article could not be printed in this number of the Edition: current; Page: [57] review.² It is therefore not in a state to be got ready by Friday. It must therefore wait till July. I hope you will not be put to any inconvenience for want of it.

I shall very much regret if the review should pass out of your control. I am very glad that the arrangement you speak of is not final.³

in haste
Yours truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Thursday [March 27, 1851]

India House

Charles Gavan Duffy

Duffy, Charles Gavan

38.

TO CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY¹

India House

Thursday [March 27, 1851]

Sir—

I shall be happy to see you at the India House tomorrow at one—but if the weather & the state of your health, which I regret to hear is unsatisfactory should again interfere with your intention, any other day except Saturday or Sunday will suit me equally well—

I am Sir

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Friday March 28, 1851

India House

Charles Gavan Duffy

Duffy, Charles Gavan

39.

TO CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY¹

India House

Friday
[

March 28, 1851

]

Dear Sir—

As you suggested, I have put my reply to the very flattering proposal of the League, into the form of an answer² to Mr Lucas’ letter, which I now send to you.

Edition: current; Page: [58]

I shall continue to watch the progress of the League with great interest & the best wishes for its success.

I hope your health is improving—though this weather is most unpropitious for an invalid.

I am Dear Sir
Yours faithfully

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

28th March 1851

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Frederic Lucas

Lucas, Frederic

40.

TO FREDERIC LUCAS¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

28th March 1851

Dear Sir—

I beg that you will make my respectful acknowledgments to the Council of the Tenant League² for the great honour they have done me by their proposal, communicated through you & Mr Duffy & by the very flattering terms of their Resolution. If it were in my power to go into parliament at present I should be highly gratified by being returned for a purpose so congenial to my principles & convictions³ as the reform of the pernicious system of landed tenure which more than any other cause keeps the great body of the agricultural population of Ireland always on the verge of starvation. You are aware however that I hold an office under the E[ast] I[ndia] C[ompany] which of necessity occupies a large portion of my time: & I have reason to believe that the C[ourt] of D[irectors] would consider a seat in parliament as incompatible with it. Whatever therefore I might have done under other circumstances, I am compelled to decline the offered honour—& I feel it right to do so at once, rather than (as you suggest) to leave the question in any degree open, since I could not in fairness allow any trouble to be taken for a purpose which would merely give greater publicity to the honour intended me, while I could not hold out the prospect of its leading to any practical result.

Edition: current; Page: [59]

With regard to the wish entertained by the Council to reprint in a separate form such passages of my Pol. Ec. as they may think likely to be useful to their cause, any such proposal can only be made to my publisher Mr Parker to whom I have parted with the property of the present edition. Should he give his consent I shall most willingly give mine; but the application could not with any propriety be made to him by myself. In any future edition of the book there will doubtless, as you observe, be much to alter & improve in the parts relating to Ireland, but it would not be fair to Mr Parker that I should publish these improvements before the present edition is exhausted.

—I am Dear Sir very faithfully yours

F. Lucas Esq

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Friday April 4, 1851

India House

Dr. John Forbes Royle

Forbes, Dr. John Royle

41.

TO DR. JOHN FORBES ROYLE¹

India House

Friday
[Before

April 4, 1851

]²

Dear Dr. Royle

Are you disengaged on Sunday, & will it suit you to have another matinée botanique?

If you are not likely to be at the I.H. tomorrow will you kindly write a line to 18 Kensington Square.

Very truly yours

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April 8, 1851

George Grote Mill

Mill, George Grote

42.

TO GEORGE GROTE MILL¹

April 8, 1851

Lord J. Russell has been justly punished for his truckling to the Times, the parsons and the bigots.² He has disgusted all real liberals without satisfying Edition: current; Page: [60] or pleasing any one else. He has left to such men as Sir J. Graham³ and Lord Aberdeen⁴ the whole credit of standing up for religious liberty and for justice to Ireland, and he is now a minister by sufferance, until it suits any one of the factions of the H. of C. to turn him out: continually beaten and unable to count on a single vote except those of the office holders and their family connexions.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

11th April 1851.

India House

Jane Mill Ferraboschi

Ferraboschi, Jane Mill

43.

TO JANE MILL FERRABOSCHI¹

India House

11th April 1851.

Dear Jane

Thanks for the congratulations & good wishes in your letter,² which I found waiting for me on returning from the country.³ No one ever was more to be congratulated than I am. As to your questions—I shall take a fortnight at Easter, when we shall be married in Dorsetshire⁴ where Mrs Taylor & her family are staying—We intend to live a little way out of London if we find a house that suits us—the particular place therefore is as yet quite uncertain.

About the money matters you mention—Crompton⁵ certainly ought to give a power of attorney for your dividends if he cannot be in town to receive them. Those for last July I remitted because he told me he should not be in town then, or for some time after. He appears never to have been in town since. When he receives them he will of course repay me & that will be soon enough—

In future please to send all your letters direct to Kensington⁶ except when intended for me only—

yrs afy

J.S.M.

Edition: current; Page: [61]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

11 April 1851

Wilhelmina Mill King

King, Wilhelmina Mill

44.

TO WILHELMINA MILL KING¹

11 April 1851

Dear W.

I thank you for your congratulations & good wishes. I am indeed very much to be congratulated. I have just returned from Dorsetshire where we shall be married about the end of this month,² but I do not think we shall make any tour before autumn.

About your own affairs I cannot judge of the furniture question. You must decide. I suppose you will not sell it if you can either let your apartment furnished or find a boarder. I wonder you do not persuade my mother³ to live with you—She likes housekeeping, & to keep house for you seems to me the most sensible & suitable thing she could do. With her income⁴ in Germany she would be almost rich & I am convinced the climate would exactly suit her—you know cold never disagrees with her but damp warm weather does.

About all the other circumstances & people mentioned in your letter you will no doubt hear from them at K[ensington] & in future send all yr letters direct to K except when you write specially to me.

Yrs affy

J.S.M.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

14th April 1851

I[ndia] H[ouse]

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

45.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

14th April

1851

Dear Hickson

The new number of the Westr is a woful specimen of the new editorship²—the general character of the writing is verbose emptiness—feebleness of stile, & total absence of thought or of any decided opinion on any subject. In the midst of the vapid want of meaning, only two things stand out prominently: one of these is a very vulgar attack³ on H. Martineau’s book for Edition: current; Page: [62] irreligion—the other, in the small print at the end, is a denunciation of the author of “Social Statics”⁴ for “pushing his conclusions too far” on the “rights of women and children” “from not perceiving with sufficient clearness that no one can have a valid claim to a right without the capacity for performing its correlative duty”—the article I proposed to you on the rights of women⁵ narrowly missed being bound up with this despicable trash! It is hard to see a review that so many have worked in for advanced opinions, thus sunk in the mud—to see it converted into an organ against its former opinions.

Is it not possible that Mr. Lombe,⁶ being so zealous & liberal, would as soon spend the money he now gives for single articles in being proprietor of the review? If a paid manager were provided for the business department, perhaps the literary editorship, without the pecuniary responsibility, would not be more than you might be willing to retain, for the sake of preserving an organ of really free opinions? I feel so strongly on the subject that if you would not like to make the suggestion yourself, I should have no objection to write to Mr Lombe proposing it, & offering to give you & him all the help that my other occupations admit of. Do tell me what you think of the whole matter.

Yrs very truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Monday [April (28?) 1851]

I[ndia] H[ouse]

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

46.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Monday [April (28?) 1851]

Dear Hickson

Having received your two notes only this morning, I must take a day for consideration before I can make any answer to your proposal.² I earnestly hope the review may be kept out of the hands of merely pecuniary speculators & of the present editor³ and may remain what it has always been till now, an organ for the most advanced opinions.

Thanks for your congratulations.⁴

Yours truly

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [63]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

29 April 1851

India House

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

47.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

India House

29 April 1851

Dear Hickson

I am afraid, all that I could engage to do towards carrying on the Westr would be to write for it often, & to give the best of my judgment on the choice of subjects & articles. If I were to undertake the editorship, though without the mere business department, so much time & exertion would be required, that I could not write anything else of importance,—& I think I can now do more for my opinions by writing books than by the best I could hope to make of the review. While I should be glad to second any plan for preserving the review, I cannot be the pivot on which the plan turns. If I thought that £500 expended on the review would have the effect you seem to think it would—if it would enable the Westr to take the place of the Edinburgh—I would gladly help to raise it—but I do not think there is any probability of much. . . .²

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

May 5. 1851

India House

Sir George Grey

Grey, Sir George

48.

TO SIR GEORGE GREY¹

India House

May 5. 1851

Sir—

I hope I may be pardoned for addressing to you in this form rather than through the newspapers, a remonstrance against the gross insult to every woman in the country, which has found its way into the Govt bill now passing through the H. of C. for regulating the sale of arsenic.² The clause, which did not form part of the bill as it came from the hands of its framers, but was added in the H. of L. at the suggestion of some unknown person, is that which forbids arsenic to be sold in less quantity than ten pounds to any person “other than a male person of full age”—all women, from the highest to the lowest, being declared unfit to have poison in their possession, lest Edition: current; Page: [64] they shall commit murder. It is impossible to believe that so monstrous a proposition could have obtained the assent of Govt except through inadvertence—& an individual, though personally unknown to you, may hope to be excused if at the hazard of being thought intrusive, he takes such means as are in his power of soliciting from you that attention to the subject which he is persuaded cannot yet have been given to it.

If the bill passes with this clause, it is a retrograde step in legislation, a return to the ideas and practices of barbarous ages. One of the characteristics of the improved spirit of the present time is the growing tendency to the elevation of women—towards their relief from disabilities, their increased estimation, the assignment to them of a higher position, both social & domestic. But this clause is a blind step in the reverse direction. It singles out women for the purpose of degrading them. It establishes a special restriction, a peculiar disqualification against them alone. It assumes that women are more addicted than men to committing murder! Does the criminal calendar, or the proceedings of the police courts, shew a preponderance of women among the most atrocious criminals? Everybody knows that the direct contrary is the truth, & that men outnumber women in the records of crime, in the ratio of four to one. On what supposition are men to be trusted with poisons & women not, unless that of their peculiar wickedness? While the spirit of the age & the tendency of all improvement is to make women the equals of men, this bill puts on them the stamp of the most degrading inferiority, precisely where the common voice of mankind proclaims them superior—in moral goodness.

If all the restrictions imposed by this bill were common to men & women, it would be giving up pro tanto the peculiar, & one of the most valuable characteristics of English freedom; it would be treating all mankind, except the government & its agents, as children; but it would be giving an equal measure of justice to all, & would be no insult or disparagement peculiarly to any. The legislature will not declare that Englishmen cannot be trusted with poisons, but it is not ashamed to assert that Englishwomen cannot. A law which if common to both would be merely a specimen of timidity & over caution, is when limited to women, a legislative declaration that Englishwomen are poisoners—Englishwomen as a class—as distinguished from Englishmen. And for what reason, or under what incitement is this insult passed upon them? Because among the last dozen murders there were two or three cases, which attracted some public attention, of poisoning by women. Is it the part of a legislature to shape its laws to the accidental peculiarities of the latest crime reported in the newspapers? If the last two or three murderers had been men with red hair, as well might Parliament have rushed to pass an Act restricting all red haired men from buying or possessing deadly weapons.

Edition: current; Page: [65]

The silence of all who from their position could have made their voice heard, will I hope be my excuse for addressing to you, even at so late a period, this appeal.

I have the honor to be Sir
Your obedt Servt

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

6th May [1851]

I[ndia] H[ouse]

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

49.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

6th May [1851]

Dear Hickson

You have, I doubt not, chosen the best of the offers made to you for the review²—but it is a great burthen on you to spend the whole summer in labouring for it only to give it up to Chapman³ six months hence. How is it that since you have decided to let Chapman have the review, he does not take it at once? Is it necessary that you should carry it on as a mere locum tenens for him? For my own part I am not sure nor do I think it likely, that I should be disposed to work for Chapman & though I am anxious to do all I can to help you in your difficulty about the numbers to be brought out by you I shall grudge both your time & trouble & my own for a mere interim arrangement.

If you go on with your present plan,⁴ I will endeavour to write something besides the article on the women’s subject. A review of the session would perhaps be as suitable as anything else I could do.⁵

Yours truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

May 13, 1851.

India House

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

50.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

India House

May 13, 1851.

Dear Hickson

At whatever cost, I am very glad that you have taken the review out Edition: current; Page: [66] of such entirely unsuitable hands.² As for this man’s threat³ of associating his name with those of his betters by publishing all that you have written or said to him about contributors and others, it appears to be one of the manoeuvres of the day, by which obscure literary people thrust themselves into some sort of notice. A man who fights with such weapons cannot be treated with. You are quite right to leave him to do his worst.

What are your prospects as to articles? Shall you have Roebuck’s⁴ for this number? I will do all I can to help you until you are able to make some permanent arrangement. I will send you the article I have in hand as soon as I can⁵—after which, though very busy at present, I will set about writing something else, probably on taxation.⁶ If you think of any subject you should like better, pray suggest it.

Yours truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Wednesday [May 1851]

I[ndia] H[ouse]

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

51.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Wednesday [May 1851]

Dear Hickson

The printer has only this morning sent the proof. I should wish to keep it as long as you can conveniently let me. It is necessary on such a subject to be as far as possible invulnerable. I have not quite fixed on a heading. The best I have thought of is “Enfranchisement of Women.” The one you propose with the word “sex” in it would never do. That word is enough to vulgarize a whole review. It is almost as bad as “female.”

A young friend² of mine is writing an article on a new Life of Gregory Nazianzus³ intending to offer it to you for this number: would the subject suit you? It is on the tapis just now.

Edition: current; Page: [67]

Perhaps Burton’s Political and Social Economy,⁴ or Spencer’s Social Statics,⁵ might furnish me with matter for a few pages.⁶ I have not read either book and should like to see them—but if you have not them already, it is not worth while to get them for a mere possibility. I have not been able to get them from any Library.

Yours truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

May 23. 1851

India House

John Chapman

Chapman, John

52.

TO JOHN CHAPMAN¹

India House

May 23. 1851

Sir

I shall be happy to give an opinion, to the best of my judgment, on any matter upon which you may wish to consult me respecting the Westminster Review,² in which I have always taken & still take much interest—but it must be by correspondence. I am much engaged at present, & living out of town, & in any case I could answer, much more satisfactorily to myself, a written, than a verbal communication.

I am
yr obt Servt

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 9. 1851.

India House

John Chapman

Chapman, John

53.

TO JOHN CHAPMAN¹

India House

June 9. 1851.

Sir—

I have read the Prospectus² on which you ask my opinion, & I now put down some of the remarks which occur to me on the subject. The Prospectus Edition: current; Page: [68] is addressed to “the friends of philosophic Reform”; I think this a bad phrase. “Philosophic Reformers” is a worn-out & gone by expression; it had a meaning twenty years ago.³ “Philosophic reform” does not, to my mind, carry any meaning at all—unless to signify a reform in philosophy.

The Prospectus says, that the Review is to be distinctly characterised by “certain definite but broad principles”: but instead of laying down any such principles it contains little else than details of the measures which the review will advocate on the principal political questions just now discussed in the newspapers. The only sentence which seems intended for a declaration of principles is that forming the third paragraph—& this, so far from “distinctly characterising” any set of opinions or course of conduct, contains nothing to distinguish the review from any liberal or semi liberal newspaper or periodical, or from anybody who says he is for reform but not for revolution. The doctrine stated, such as it is, I do not agree in. Instead of thinking that “strength & durability are the result only of a slow & peaceful development,” I think that changes effected rapidly & by force are often the only ones which in given circumstances would be permanent: & by the statement that “reforms to be salutary must be graduated to the average moral & intellectual growth of society” I presume is meant (though I am by no means sure about the meaning if any) that the measures of a government ought never to be in advance of the average intellect & virtue of the people—according to which doctrine there would neither have been the Reformation, the Commonwealth, nor the Revolution of 1688, & the stupidity & habitual indifference of the mass of mankind would bear down by its dead weight all the efforts of the more intelligent & active minded few.

The Prospectus says “the review will not neglect that important range of subjects which are related to Politics as an inner concentric circle, & which have been included under the term Sociology.” I understand by Sociology not a particular class of subjects included within Politics, but a vast field including it—the whole field of enquiry & speculation respecting human society & its arrangements, of which the forms of government, & the principles of the conduct of governments are but a part. And it seems to me impossible that even the politics of the day can be discussed on principle, or with a view to anything but the exigencies of the moment, unless by setting out from definite opinions respecting social questions more fundamental than what is commonly called politics. I cannot, therefore, understand how a review making the professions which the Prospectus does, can treat such questions as a particular “range of subjects” which will merely not be neglected, & on which “diverse theories” will be considered with a Edition: current; Page: [69] view chiefly to ascertain “how far our efforts after a more perfect social state must be restrained” by certain conditions mentioned. I confess it seems to me, the only worthy object of a Review of Progress is to consider how far & in what manner such objects may be promoted, & how the obstacles, whether arising from the cause mentioned or from any other, may most effectually be overcome.

In conclusion, I think it right to say that if your wish to consult me respecting the Westminster Review arises from any belief that I am likely to be a contributor to it, I can hold out no prospect that the expectation will be realized. My willingness to contribute even occasionally to the Westr under any new management⁴ would entirely depend on the opinion I form of it after seeing it in operation.

I am Sir
yr obt sert

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Monday [June 9, 1851]

I[ndia] H[ouse]

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

54.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Monday [June 9, 1851]

Dear Hickson

I am surprised to see by the revise of my article² that you have made two verbal alterations. I gave you the article on an understood consideration, the only one on which I ever write, that no alterations should be made by anyone but myself, & from this condition I cannot depart. I have returned the corrected revise to the printer. I should be obliged by your letting me have (if possible before the review is out) twenty-five separate copies, at my expense. I wish for no title page, but in place of it a page with only the words “Reprinted from the Westminster Review for July 1851.” I should like to see a proof of the reprint.

I send the short article³ I mentioned to you. The subject may make an agreeable variety.

Yours truly,

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [70]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

9th June 1851

India House

55.

TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT¹

India House

9th June 1851

Dear Sir

From what I have read of the writings of the Christian Socialists, & from the communications which I have had with some of them,² I have found their principles & mine to be too radically opposed for any verbal explanation or discussion between us to be of advantage. I think quite as unfavourably of the present constitution of society as they do—probably much more so; & I look forward to alterations extending to many more, & more important points than the relation between masters & workmen: I should not expect much practical benefit from a modification of that single relation, without changes fully as great in existing opinions & institutions on religious moral & domestic subjects, all of which the Christian Socialists desire to preserve,—or without accepting & acting upon principles of political & social economy which they reject. So far as they promote experiments on the association of workpeople,³ & so far as they cultivate, in any workpeople under their influence the dispositions & habits which tend to make association practicable & beneficial, I approve their intention & applaud their efforts: but even where my objects are the same with theirs, my premises are mostly so different, that my path & theirs must lie separate, & I must beg you to excuse me from joining in your proposed conferences with them

I am Dear Sir
yours truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 16 [1851]

I[ndia] H[ouse]

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

56.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

June 16 [1851]

Dear Hickson

The article on Gregory² must wait if necessary, till the October number,—but I should like it to be in that number as it is written by a young man of promise, who it is desirable should be encouraged to write. If not used at present you will perhaps send it back, as it was written hastily in the expectation of being wanted for the July number, & if time were taken for its revision it could probably be improved.

Edition: current; Page: [71]

Chapman wrote asking to see me on the subject of the Westr. I answered that I would willingly give my opinion but only in writing.³ He afterwards sent me the Prospectus & I wrote to him my opinion of it.⁴

If Newman’s book⁵ is worth reviewing, it will be best I think, to take it by itself. Spencer or Burton⁶ I thought of only as a pis aller. If the book has been sent to you I should be glad to see it & I can then decide whether to write about it or not.

Yours truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 17. 1851

India House

Charles Gavan Duffy

Duffy, Charles Gavan

57.

TO CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY¹

India House

June 17. 1851

Dear Sir

I have to apologize for the delay in answering your note of April 23. I was out of town when it arrived. When I returned it was hastily looked at & thrown aside with other papers, & though I read & was much interested by the pamphlet which accompanied it, I had forgotten until the note accidentally turned up the other day, that you had ever written asking my opinion of the plan: especially as you were already aware from our conversation when you were in London, that I thought very favourably of it. This favourable opinion has been confirmed by reading the pamphlet.² The machinery of the scheme seems unobjectionable—the success of the Land Societies in England demonstrates its feasibility: & it is open to none of the objections which old prejudice urges against any more summary mode of creating a body of small landholders owning the land they cultivate.

I am Dear Sir
yours very truly

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [72]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 20. 1851

India House

John Chapman

Chapman, John

58.

TO JOHN CHAPMAN¹

India House

June 20. 1851

Sir

I fully understood that the Prospectus you sent me was not finally determined on.² As you asked for my opinion, I gave it freely—& I can have no objection, if desired, to tell you with the same freedom what I think of any future one³—but to give positive suggestions, only belongs to those whose organ the work is to be. Those only can prepare the programme who are to conduct the review—since they best know what they intend, & what they have the power to accomplish.

The reason you give for what you very truly call the air of conservatism in the Prospectus, is intelligible; but does not seem to me to render advisable the use of expressions giving the idea that the Westr no longer wishes to be considered as professing extreme opinions. The review was founded by people who held what were then thought extreme opinions,⁴ & it is only needed as an organ of opinions as much in advance of the present state of the public mind as those were in advance of its then state. Anything less is but child’s play after the events of the last three years in Europe & besides, every intermediate position is fully occupied by other periodicals.

I am Sir
yr obt sert

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 28th [1851]

India House

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

59.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

India House

July 28th [1851]

Dear Hickson

I cannot think of any subject of an article for your October number more suitable than Newman’s book²—so I will write on that—& you may depend on having the article, but I cannot yet judge what will be its length.

Edition: current; Page: [73]

The paper on Gregory Nazianzus³ shall be sent in two or three days. I enclose the extract from the Times.⁴

Yours truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

August 4, 1851

India House

George Grote Mill

Mill, George Grote

60.

TO GEORGE GROTE MILL¹

India House

August 4, 1851

I have long ceased to be surprised at any want of good sense or good manners in what proceeds from you—you appear to be too thoughtless or too ignorant to be capable of either—but such want of good feeling, together with such arrogant assumption, as are shown in your letters to my wife & to Haji I was not prepared for.² The best construction that can be put upon them is that you really do not know what insolence and presumption are: Edition: current; Page: [74] or you would not write such letters & seem to expect to be as well liked as before by those to whom & of whom they are written. You were “surprised,” truly, at our marriage & do not “know enough of the circumstances to be able to form an opinion on the subject.” Who asks you to form an opinion? An opinion on what? Do men usually when they marry consult the opinion of a brother twenty years younger than themselves? or at my age of any brother or person at all? But though you form no “opinion” you presume to catechize Haji respecting his mother, & call her to account before your tribunal for the conformity between her conduct & her principles—being at the same time, as you say yourself, totally ignorant what her principles are. On the part of any one who avowedly does not know what her principles are, the surmise that she may have acted contrary to them is a gratuitous impertinence. To every one who knows her it would be unnecessary to say that she has, in this as in all things, acted according to her principles. What imaginary principles are they which should prevent people who have known each other the greater part of their lives, during which her & Mr. Taylor’s house has been more a home to me than any other, and who agree perfectly in all their opinions, from marrying?

You profess to have taken great offence because you knew of our intended marriage “only at second hand.” People generally hear of marriages at “second hand”, I believe. If you mean that I did not write to you on the subject, I do not know any reason you had to expect that I should. I informed your mother & sisters who I knew would inform you—& I did not tell them of it on account of any right they had to be informed, for my relations with any of them have been always of too cool & distant a kind to give them the slightest right or reason to expect anything more than ordinary civility from me—& when I did tell them I did not receive ordinary civility in return. In the dissertation on my character with which you favour Haji, you shew yourself quite aware that it has never been my habit to talk to them about my concerns—& assuredly the feelings you have shown to me in the last two or three years have not been so friendly as to give me any cause for making you an exception. As for the “mystery” which on my father’s authority you Edition: current; Page: [75] charge me with, if we are to bandy my father’s sayings I could cite plenty of them about all his family except the younger ones, compared with which this is very innocent. It could be said at all but as a half joke—& every one has a right to be mysterious if they like. But I have not been mysterious, for I had never anything to be mysterious about. I have not been in the habit of talking unasked about my friends, or indeed about any other subject.³

J.S.M.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

August 16 [1851]

India House

Anna Blackwell

Blackwell, Anna

61.

TO ANNA BLACKWELL¹

India House

August 16 [1851]

Madam—

The article you mention is anonymous & I beg to decline your attributing it to me.

I am yr obt Servt

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [76]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Summer 1851

Alexander Bain

Bain, Alexander

62.

TO ALEXANDER BAIN¹

[

Summer 1851

]

I am for the first time downhearted about French affairs.² The party in possession of power is evidently determined to go to all lengths, and I fear both events are favourable to them. If they succeed in provoking an emeute, they will put it down and then execute all their designs at once; if there is no emeute, they will go from one step to another till they have effected all they want.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Sept. 9 [1851]

Rouen

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

63.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

Rouen

2

Sept. 9 [1851]

Dear Hickson

If you could conveniently send a proof of the article on Newman³ addressed to me Poste Restante at Brussels so as to arrive there on the 15th or 16th I would return it to you the next day, which I suppose would not be so late as to cause inconvenience. I congratulate you on being so near to the termination of your labours.⁴

Yours truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Sept. 29. [1851]

India House

John Chapman

Chapman, John

64.

TO JOHN CHAPMAN¹

India House

Sept. 29. [1851]

Sir

Having been out of town when your note dated the 10th was sent to the India House, I have only just received it. Mr. Place,² whom I have not seen Edition: current; Page: [77] for very many years, knows nothing whatever of me or of my literary engagements. I have never had any intention of writing on Comte’s book,³ nor do I think that a translation or an abridgement of it is likely to be either useful or successful.

I am quite unable to point out any one whom I think in any degree competent to write an article on Asiatic life, of the comprehensive kind which you appear to desire. Writers capable of treating any large subject in a large & free manner, along with precision & definiteness of meaning, seem to be rarer than ever in this country. The vast subject you indicate is one of the many on which nothing has yet been written, nor do I believe there is any person in this country competent to attempt it.

I will very willingly give you my opinion on your new Prospectus.⁴

I am Sir
yr obt Sert

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Oct. 15, 1851

India House

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

65.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

India House

Oct. 15, 1851

Dear Hickson

You cannot expect me to like an article² of which the conclusions are so opposite to mine; & as I do not think that they admit of being supported by good arguments, this implies that I think yours fallacious. The strong points seem to me some of your replies to other people’s arguments, but your own appear to me no better than those you reply to. To mention minor matters—there are two mistakes in the Greek which it would be well to correct. Pyrrho (the sceptic) is printed Pyrrhus (king of Epirus), & Academus, a man’s name, is printed instead of the Academy or the Academics. It is impossible Edition: current; Page: [78] to say The Academus. (A propos the Greek in the article on Gregory³ is very incorrectly printed).

If I should criticize on a matter of taste, I should say that your article loses altogether in appearance of strength by the capitals and italics. Italics are bad enough but Capitals make anything look weak.

The article on Newman⁴ is spoilt by printer’s punctuation & typographical errors.

I wonder that you as the representative of the old sterling Westminster Review opinions, should have allowed to be printed in it vulgar misrepresentation of Bentham, its founder;⁵ vilifying a man who has done more for the world than any man of modern times, by talking about “the Gospel according to Jeremy Bentham” as synonymous with the most grovelling selfishness. (There is no selfishness in Bentham’s doctrines). I think you should have struck out both that expression and also the “godless Benthamism” because intended for abuse.

It is a pity that a man of Mr. Lombe’s public spirit has not made a better use of £500 than giving it for a translation of Comte⁶—whose book can be read in French by anybody likely to read it at all, or who could derive any benefit from the only good part of it, the scientific, for his opinions on social matters are very bad. H. Martineau besides cannot translate the mathematics which is the principal thing in the book.

The article in the Globe⁷ is evidently by Newman. He is in a furious rage, & means to be as offensive as he knows how to be, but he is such a poor creature, so terrified at anything like really free opinions & so in awe of the gone-by phrases about them, that he thinks the severest thing he can say of the writer of the article is to charge him, in those gone-by phrases, with the very opinions which the article itself professes.

Yours truly

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [79]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Oct. 17. [1851]

India House

John Chapman

Chapman, John

66.

TO JOHN CHAPMAN¹

India House

Oct. 17. [1851]

Sir

I like the altered Prospectus² better than the first; but I should have greatly preferred a simple & plain expression of the plan & principles intended to be followed. The Prospectus still seems to me to rely on sound rather than on sense; the only distinct statement of opinion being on the mere newspaper topics of the day. Some expressions seem to me more than questionable: for instance “free trade in every department of commerce”—this must mean “free trade in every department of trade.”

The first number³ will shew what meaning the writers attach to the word Progress, & how far the review will be an organ of it.

I am Sir
yr obt Sert

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [80]

1852

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

7th January 1852.

Rev. Henry William Carr

Carr, Rev. Henry William

67.

TO THE REV. HENRY WILLIAM CARR¹

7th January 1852.

Sir—

Want of time has prevented me from returning an earlier answer to your letter of 31st December. The question you ask me is one of the most difficult which any one can put either to others or to himself, namely, how to teach social science to the uneducated, when those who are called the educated have not learnt it; and nearly all the teaching given from authority is opposed to genuine morality.

What the poor as well as the rich require is not to be indoctrinated, is not to be taught other people’s opinions, but to be induced and enabled to think for themselves. It is not physical science that will do this, even if they could learn it much more thoroughly than they are able to do. After reading, writing, and arithmetic (the last a most important discipline in habits of accuracy and precision, in which they are extremely deficient), the desirable thing for them seems to be the most miscellaneous information, and the most varied exercise of their faculties. They cannot read too much. Quantity is of more importance than quality, especially all reading which relates to human life and the ways of mankind; geography, voyages and travels, manners and customs, and romances, which must tend to awaken their imagination and give them some of the meaning of self-devotion and heroism, in short, to unbrutalise them. By such reading they would become, to a certain extent, cultivated beings, which they would not become by following out, even to the greatest length, physical science. As for education in the best sense of the term, I fear they have a long time to wait for it. The higher and middle classes cannot educate the working classes unless they are first educated themselves. The miserable pretence of education, which those classes now receive, does not form minds fit to undertake the guidance of other minds, or to exercise a beneficient influence over them by personal contact. Still, any person who sincerely desires whatever is for the good of all, however it may affect himself or his own class, and who regards the great social questions as matters of reason and discussion and not as settled long ago, may, I believe, do a certain Edition: current; Page: [81] amount of good by merely saying to the working classes whatever he sincerely thinks on the subjects on which they are interested. Free discussion with them as equals, in speech and in writing, seems the best instruction that can be given them, specially on social subjects.

With regard to the social questions now before the public, and in which, as I gather from your letter, the working classes of your town have begun to take an interest, it seems to me chiefly important to impress on them—first, that they are quite right in aiming at a more equal distribution of wealth and social advantages; secondly, that this more equal distribution can only be permanently affected (for merely taking from Peter to give to Paul would leave things worse than even at present) by means of their own public spirit and self-devotion as regards others, and prudence and self-restraint in relation to themselves. At present their idea of social reform appears to be simply higher wages, and less work, for the sake of more sensual indulgence. To be independent of master manufacturers, to work for themselves and divide the whole produce of their labour is a worthy object of ambition, but it is only fit for, and can only succeed with people who can labour for the community of which they are a part with the same energy and zeal as if labouring for their own private and separate interest (the opposite is now the case), and who, instead of expecting immediately more pay and less work, are willing to submit to any privation until they have effected their emancipation. The French working men and women contended for a principle, for an idea of justice, and they lived on bread and water till they gained their purpose. It was not more and costlier eating and drinking that was their object, as it seems to be the sole object of most of the well-paid English artisans.

If in applying to me you hoped that I might be able to offer you any suggestions of more specific character, I hope you will attribute my not doing so to the difficulty of the subject and not to any want of will on my part.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 17. [1852?]

Blackheath

William E. Hickson

Hickson, William E.

68.

TO WILLIAM E. HICKSON¹

Blackheath

2

Jan. 17. [1852?]

3

Dear Hickson

Dies Solis and Die Solis have totally different meanings, being different cases. Dies Solis is the nominative case & signifies “the day of the Sun” Edition: current; Page: [82] or Sunday. Die Solis is the ablative case, & means “on” Sunday, as parliamentary papers are headed Die Lunae, Sabbati &c. to signify on that particular day: but Dies is what I suppose will suit your purpose.⁴

I am not aware of anything among the Greeks corresponding to the Nundinae,⁵ nor of any Greek holidays except the very numerous festivals.

I hope you are enjoying the free disposal of your time, released from the cares & burthens of a review.⁶

I am yrs very truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 5, 1852

Clara Esther Mill

Mill, Clara Esther

69.

TO CLARA ESTHER MILL¹

[

March 5, 1852

]

You are certainly mistaken if you suppose that I said you had been uncivil to my wife. I said you had been wanting in all good feeling and even common civility to us. My wife and I are one.

You flatter yourself very undeservedly if you think that either my wife, or I for her, seek your acquaintance. You had an opportunity of seeking hers if you chose and you shewed in every negative way in which it is possible to shew a thing that you did not choose. My wife is accustomed not to seek but to be sought, neither she nor I desire the acquaintance of anybody who does not wish for ours.

Edition: current; Page: [83]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 5. 1852

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Mrs. James Mill

Mill, Mrs. James

70.

TO MRS. JAMES MILL¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

March 5. 1852

My dear Mother,

I received yesterday two most silly notes from Clara & Harriet filled with vague accusations. They say that when you called at the I.H. on Monday, I “complained to you of their incivility to my wife” [& . . . no such things]² Another charge is that I repeated idle gossip in a note to you last summer—this is untrue. George Fletcher³ called at the I.H. a day or two before I wrote that note to you & asked after my wife saying he was very sorry to hear she was not well. I asked where he heard that; he said he was told so at Kensington, & this I mentioned in my note to you: no one else had anything to do with it. This was not “gossip.”

I hope you were not the worse for your journey to the I.H.

Yrs affy

J.S.M.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 8. 1852.

India House

John William Parker

Parker, John William

71.

TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER¹

India House

March 8. 1852.

Dear Sir

You do not state on what terms you propose to take a new edition of my Political Economy?² I am quite ready to begin printing the edition when we have agreed on the terms.

I am
yours truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 15, 1852

India House

John William Parker

Parker, John William

72.

TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER¹

India House

March 15, 1852

Dear Sir

I think that for a book so decidedly successful as the Pol. Ec. I may reasonably hope for more than £300 for the next edition,² considering that I have Edition: current; Page: [84] made great additions & improvements in it. I do not think my share of the profit of the last edition was nearly what I should have obtained had I published it on my own account. Will you turn the matter over in your mind & tell me what you think of it.

I am Dear Sir
yours truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 18. 1852

India House

John William Parker

Parker, John William

73.

TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER¹

India House

March 18. 1852

Dear Sir

I accept your proposal² for the new edition of the Political Economy.

M. Guillaumin³ the bookseller of Paris intends to publish a translation of the book,⁴ and I have promised that the sheets shall be sent to him as they come from the press. I have also promised them to Dr. Soetbeer of Hamburg,⁵ who has already published the first volume of a German translation.

I wish to have a copy sent to Professor Ferrari [sic] of Turin⁶ who has translated the book into Italian, & I should be glad to have three copies for myself.

Some of the first part is ready.

I am Dear Sir
Yours very truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 18, 1852

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse].

Dr. Adolf Soetbeer

Soetbeer, Dr. Adolf

74.

TO DR. ADOLF SOETBEER¹

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse].

March 18, 1852

Dear Sir—

The pressure of my occupations has left me no leisure until now to answer your letter & to thank you for the volume of your translation of Edition: current; Page: [85] my Pol. Ec. which you were so good as to send me. As far as I have had time to examine it the translation seems extremely well executed: the sense appears to be very faithfully & clearly rendered. I only regret that your time & pains were not bestowed on the edition which is now about to go to press & which I have not only revised throughout but have entirely recast several important chapters; in particular the two most important, those on Property & on the Futurity of the Labouring Classes.² The progress of discussion & of European events has entirely altered the aspect of the questions treated in those chapters; the present time admits of a much more free & full enunciation of my opinions on those subjects than would have had any chance of an impartial hearing when the book was first written; & some change has also taken place in the opinions themselves. I observe that in your preface you recommend the book to your readers as a refutation of Socialism: I certainly was far from intending that the statement it contained of the objections to the best known Socialist schemes should be understood as a condemnation of Socialism regarded as an ultimate result of human improvement, & further consideration has led me to attach much less weight than I then did even to those objections, with one single exception—the unprepared state of the labouring classes & their extreme moral unfitness at present for the rights which Socialism would confer & the duties it would impose. This is the only objection to which you will find any great importance attached in the new edition; & I am sorry that your translation should place before German readers as a current statement of my opinions what has ceased to be so. You propose to give in the 2d vol. an account of the alterations in the new edition: as far as concerns the points which I have mentioned nothing less than a retranslation of the two chapters as they now stand, would enable your work to represent my opinions correctly. I shall be happy to send the sheets of the new edition in the manner pointed out by you, & the first parcel shall be made up as soon as I am able to include in it the chapter which contains the discussion of Socialism.

I am dear Sir yours very truly

Edition: current; Page: [86]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 20. 1852

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]

Karl D. Heinrich Rau

Rau, Karl D. Heinrich

75.

TO KARL D. HEINRICH RAU¹

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]

March 20. 1852

Dear Sir—

My occupations have prevented me until now from acknowledging the letter with which you favoured me as long ago as the 6th of February. It is not wonderful that staying but a short time in London² & occupied as you were during that stay you had not time for the somewhat idle and generally very useless task of paying visits.

Though my references³ to your systematic work⁴ were confined to the Brussels translation,⁵ I am glad to say that I am able to read it in the original. Your writings⁶ indeed are the part with which I am best acquainted, of the German writers on pol. economy, in which as you justly surmise, I am not by any means well read. What you say of McCulloch⁷ does not surprise me. He is both prejudiced & inaccurate. I never place any confidence in the first edition of any of his books: but as the plan of most of them is good, people generally supply him with information which enables him to improve them very much in the second. His “Literature of Pol. Ec.”⁸ has however I shd think, but a small chance of making a second edition. Your plan of separating the scientific inquiry into the production & distribution of wealth, as a branch of social science, from the consideration of the economic policy of governments, appears to me both logically & didactically the best, & I have made the same separation in my own treatise. Of this I am just about to print a new edition in which among various other improvements I have entirely rewritten the chapter which contains the discussion of Socialism, & the Edition: current; Page: [87] greater part of that on the futurity of the labouring classes.⁹ I regret that the German translation of which one volume was lately published at Hamburg,¹⁰ was made from the previous edit., as it gives in many respects an erroneous idea of my opinions on Socialism. Even in the former editions though I stated a number of objections to the best known Socialist theories, I never represented those objections as final & conclusive & I think them of very little weight so far as regards the ultimate prospects of humanity. It is true that the low moral state of mankind generally and of the labouring classes in particular, renders them at present unfit for any order of things which would presuppose as its necessary condition a certain measure of conscience & of intellect. But it appears to me that the great end of social improvement should be to fit them by cultivation for a state of society combining the greatest personal freedom with that just distribution of the fruits of labour which the present laws of property do not even profess to aim at. To explain what I mean by a just distribution & to what extent I think it could be approximated to a practice would require more space than that of a letter. I confess that I regard the purely abstract investigations of pol. economy (beyond those elementary ones which are necessary for the correction of mischievous prejudices) as of very minor importance compared with the great practical questions which the progress of democracy & the spread of Socialist opinions are pressing on, & for which both the governing and the governed classes are very far from being in a fit state of mental preparation. It is to be decided whether Europe shall enter peacefully & prosperously into a better order of things or whether the new ideas will be inaugurated by a century of war & violence like that which followed the Reformation of Luther: and this alternative probably depends on the moral & intellectual movement of the next ten or twenty years. There is therefore abundance of occupation for moral & political teachers such as we aspire to be.

I am dear Sir
very truly yours

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April 8, 1852

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Professor Henry Green

Green, Professor Henry

76.

TO PROFESSOR [HENRY?] GREEN¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

.

April 8, 1852

Dear Sir—

I have delayed too long to acknowledge your two letters & the remittance of £120. Wishing to do the best I could for forwarding your objects in connexion with the Poona Useful Knowledge Society but knowing Edition: current; Page: [88] little about tools or the best mode of procuring them I put your letters into the hands of Mr Cowper,² Professor of Manufacturing Art at King’s College, London, who was the most likely person I could think of to be able & willing to do what you wished to be done. Mr Cowper undertook to make the necessary enquiries & gave hopes that he would procure the articles themselves & in the expectation of hearing from him I continually put off writing to you. When at last I wrote to remind him I received an answer which I inclose³ & in which you will find the reasons he gives why more has not yet been done. I have not received the further letter which he promises but I do not like to keep you any longer without a reply. You do not I suppose wish to view some of the things until all are ready & if you have any instructions to give about the mode of sending they may very likely arrive in time to be of use.

I am much interested by what I know both from yourself & otherwise of your exertions to instruct & improve the natives. Everything shews them to be eminently improvable & your Society at Poona seems to be a striking example of the spirit which is abroad among a portion of them, & of the great effect which may be produced even in a short time, by well directed efforts for their improvement. I am glad that you have found my writings useful to your pupils. I have to thank you for the Bombay papers containing your series of articles on Newman’s Pol Ec. lectures.⁴ It is but a poor book as you appear to think though you treat him very civilly. I agree in most of your remarks as well as in your just appreciation of the great teachers of political economy, particularly Ricardo.⁵ Of what you say about my own book I should be happy to think that it is not too complimentary. The edition which I have just begun to print will be, I hope, a great improvement on the first & second, the chapters on Socialism & on the Future of the Labouring Classes having been so much altered as to be almost entirely new.⁶ In your review of Newman the remarks on population are the only part which I must express dissent from, for though you agree in the main with Malthus you appear to think that no one ought to be blamed for having an inordinately large family if he produces, & brings them up to produce, enough for their support: now this with me is only a part & even a small part of the question: a much more important consideration still, is the perpetuation of the previous degradation & slavery of women, no alteration in which can be hoped for while their whole lives are devoted to the function of producing & rearing children. That degradation & slavery is in itself so enormous an evil, & contributes Edition: current; Page: [89] so much to the perpetuation of all other evils by keeping down the moral & intellectual condition of both men & women that the limitation of the number of children would be in my opinion absolutely necessary to place human life on its proper footing, even if there were subsistence for any number that could be produced. I think if you had been alive to this aspect of the question you would not have used such expressions as “your wife has made you a happy father rather more frequently than you are pleased to remember.” Such phrases are an attempt to laugh off the fact that the wife is in every sense the victim of the man’s animal instinct & not the less so because she is brought up to think that she has no right of refusal or even of complaint.

I am dear Sir yrs very truly.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April 19. [1852]

East India House

Frederick J. Furnivall

Furnivall, Frederick J.

77.

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL¹

East India House

April 19. [1852]

Dear Sir

In reply to your note dated the 14th I beg to say that I am unwilling to be examined before a Committee on the case of the ballast heavers,² because I have not studied it, and have not formed any opinion on it. As far as I am able to judge, I should think that a registry office or general house of call for ballast heavers would be useful, by taking them out of the hands of the public house keepers, but I should not be disposed to make it compulsory on employers to apply in the first instance to the registry office. The best conducted workmen would be to be heard of there, & I would trust to that inducement. I say this however without knowing anything of the Coalwhippers Act³ or its effects. I am

Yours very truly

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [90]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April 29, 1852.

East India House

George F. Holmes

Holmes, George F.

78.

TO GEORGE F. HOLMES¹

East India House

April 29, 1852.

Sir,

Owing to the absence of the late Editor of the Westminster Review from England, your letter of March 22. only reached me by post yesterday. I lose no time in writing to say that I am not Editor of the Westminster Review and have no connection whatever with it. I saw for the first time two days ago the present proprietor, Mr. John Chapman, bookseller and publisher 142 Strand, who bought the review last year, and who has the entire control of it. The mode in which I thought I could best promote your wishes was by sending your letter to Mr. Chapman, which I have accordingly done. The article² to which you refer as a specimen has not reached me: if it does, I will send that also to Mr. Chapman.

With many acknowledgments for the polite expressions in your letter

I am, Sir
Yours faithfully

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 27, [1852]

Blackheath

John Lalor

Lalor, John

79.

TO JOHN LALOR¹

Blackheath

June 27, [1852]

Dear Sir

I have been so much more even than usually occupied since your letter and its inclosures reached me that I have put off acknowledging them from day to day & am now obliged to be more concise in my acknowledgments than I should like to be. Let me first express my sincere regret at the cause Edition: current; Page: [91] of your long abstinence from writing which however great a private evil is a greater public loss.²

With regard to the manner in which I am spoken of in the Preface³ I could not possibly have any other objection to it than that it is far too complimentary, except indeed that it is not agreeable to me to be praised in the words of a man whom I so wholly disrespect as Milton,⁴ who with all his republicanism had the soul of a fanatic a despot & a tyrant. With respect to the difference of opinion between us on the point of political economy discussed in your book you do me no more than justice in believing that I am open to evidence & argument on that & on all subjects. But your argument turning on the annual exchange of the capital of a country against the sum of its money incomes, is not new to me: I am familiar with it in Chalmers⁵ & Sismondi⁶ & though you have commented on it & popularized it I do not think you have added anything to its substance. The only new point you have made against me is in p. 57⁷ where you say that the fall of profits cannot arise from the increasing pressure on the fertility of the land inasmuch as that pressure has for some years been more than counteracted by agricultural improvements while yet there have been all the signs of diminution of profits. To this I should answer that I do not think there has in the last dozen years been any diminution of profits, but only of interest. If I had had your book some weeks sooner I should probably have added a few pages to the corresponding chapter of the new edition of mine:8 It is now too late to do so in this edition.

I could mention several serious differences between us on incidental points—as where you speak of Malthus’ population theory as “tottering”,⁹ where you express your fears of some great moral change for the worse in the English character from the gold discoveries¹⁰ as though it were now something Edition: current; Page: [92] worthy & respectable, noble & elevated, while to me it seems that almost any change would be for the better, & especially where you say that pol. ec. unless baptized into Xtianity is a child of the devil¹¹ which is quite inconsistent with any good opinion of me & my writings for in my opinion what is called Xtianity is as thoroughly a child of the devil as any extant—but I have no time to enter into these things nor would there be room for them in a letter. I am heartily glad that you have recommenced writing & I hope to see you again rendering that important service in the diffusion of valuable thoughts & sentiments which no one now writing for the periodical press is so much disposed or so well qualified to render.

I am Dear Sir
yours very truly

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 30. 1852

Lord Overstone

Overstone, Lord

80.

TO LORD OVERSTONE¹

June 30. 1852

Dear Sir

Many thanks for your note. My young relation’s² health remains the same as it has been for many years—that is, practically strong enough for work, but not apparently so, and as he was not considered fit by the medical officer last year I fear it is not likely he would be so now. It is a very considerable disappointment, and I shall be greatly obliged to you if it suits you to give us another chance at a future time.

I am Dear Sir
yrs very truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 3. 1852

John Lalor

Lalor, John

81.

TO JOHN LALOR¹

July 3. 1852

Dear Sir—

My objection to the passage relating to Chalmers² did not turn as you seem to suppose, on the word “baptism”. My remarks did not apply Edition: current; Page: [93] to the phraseology, but to the meaning of the sentence—to the assertion that pol. ec. unless connected with Xtianity is “a true child of the devil.” Any reader would suppose that by Xtianity was here meant belief in the Bible and on your own interpretation I must still protest against the statement that Chalmers “began” the baptism in question. I do not know any pol. economist except perhaps M’Culloch³ to whom the accusation you bring against all who preceded Chalmers can be attributed even by the license of caricature—& I especially reject it with respect to A. Smith, Turgot, Say, Ricardo⁴ & my father not one of whom was a believer in Xtianity & none of whom regarded pol. ec. as anything but a subordinate though necessary branch of utility or as you prefer to term it “the doctrine of human welfare.”⁵

No men ever wrote to whom the charge of seeking in pol. ec. or in anything else a “justification of universal selfishness” or of any selfishness at all could be applied with less justice, & I cannot, on this point, accept any compliment at their expense. I confess I do not see the good that is to be done by swelling the outcry against pol. economists—or why they should be blamed because people do unjust or selfish things for the sake of money. I do not know what authority you have for saying that the clearing of Irish estates was “perpetrated in the name of pol. economy”⁶ any more than the clearing of English estates from the same motives in the time of the Tudors. But I do know that nearly all the pol. economists supported a poor law in Ireland⁷ in order to give the landlords an interest in fighting against the causes of poverty.

No doubt the opinion you have adopted respecting excess of capital must lead you to some moral (or immoral) conclusions very much opposed to those of pol. economists generally, especially the opinion that it is a virtue instead of a vice to be lavish in public & private expenditures. In this I can by no means agree with you as I think that some of the principal causes of the degraded moral state of the middle classes in this country is their absorption in the effort to make the greatest possible shew at needless & useless expense.

Respecting the point of pol. economy I do not see how Mr. Tooke’s doctrine,⁸ that prices depend on the aggregate of money incomes, at all helps to prove that increase of capital by saving lowers general prices. Whether £100 is employed in business or in personal expenditure it equally becomes part of somebody’s money income. Increase of production will not, I conceive, lower prices unless the production of money is an exception to Edition: current; Page: [94] the general increase. If it is so prices will fall, no doubt, but even then the fall of prices or what is the same thing, the increased value of money does not lower profits or incumber the markets with unsold goods: it only increases the burthen of all fixed money engagements. Neither do I believe that the time immediately preceding the fits of speculation which leads to a commercial crisis, is distinguished as on your theory it should be by a general fall of prices.

I will only add that the essay to which you make a complimentary allusion in p. 129 though written in 1830 was not published till 1836⁹ so that your speaking of it as if it had been known & accessible in 1829 or 1830 gives an erroneous impression which I should much like to see corrected.

I am yours very truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 7. 1852.

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]

Karl D. Heinrich Rau

Rau, Karl D. Heinrich

82.

TO KARL D. HEINRICH RAU¹

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]

July 7. 1852.

Dear Sir—

Your letter of 5th April has remained very long unanswered, but you are too well acquainted with the inevitable demands on time produced by the combination of literary & official employment, to need any other explanation of my silence. I regret that I am not able to give you the information you desire respecting cooperative associations in England.² You appear however to be in communication with some of those who have taken part in the very insignificant attempts of the kind as yet made in this country, & they can doubtless tell you all that is to be told. Much could not be done while the law of partnership³ remained what it was up to a few days Edition: current; Page: [95] ago.⁴ According to that absurd law, the managing members of an association being joint owners of its funds could not steal or embezzle what was partly their own, & could not be made criminally responsible for any malversation; & the only civil tribunal which could determine disputes among partners was the Court of Chancery. You doubtless know enough of England to understand that the word Chancery is a name for litigation without end & expense without limits. In the Session of Parliament just closed an act has been passed, called the Industrial & Provident Partnerships Act,⁵ by which cooperative associations will in future be able to obtain a comparatively cheap & easy decision of differences & this removes a great obstacle to their formation & success. It will now be seen whether any considerable number of the English working people have the intellect and the love of independence to desire to be their own masters, and the sense of justice & honor which will fit them for being so. I am sorry to say my expectations at present are not sanguine. I do not believe that England is nearly as ripe as most of the Continental countries for this great improvement. The ownership of the instruments of labour by the labourers, can only be introduced by people who will make great temporary sacrifices such as can only be inspired by a generous feeling for the public good, or a disinterested devotion to an idea, not by the mere desire of more pay & less work. And the English of all classes are far less accessible to any large idea or generous sentiment than either Germans, French or Italians. They are so ignorant too as to pride themselves on their defect as if it were a virtue, & give it complimentary names, such as good sense, sobriety, practicalness, which are common synonyms for selfishness, shortsightedness, & contented acquiescence in commonplace. In France the success of the associations has been remarkable,⁶ & held out the brightest prospect for the emancipation of the working classes; but these societies are likely to share the fate of all other freedom & progress under the present military despotism.⁷ Many of the associations Edition: current; Page: [96] have already been suppressed & the remainder, it is said, are preparing to emigrate.

My wife & I regretted that we were absent from home when your daughter was staying in the neighbourhood of London, & were therefore unable to have the pleasure of calling on her. There are two or three subjects touched on in your letter on which I should be glad to say something if time permitted. But I have so much to do & so many letters to write that I must beg you to excuse me for stopping short. I am Dear Sir

yrs very truly

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 13, 1852

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

83.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

July 13, 1852

My dearest Wife

Though I am persuaded it is unnecessary for any practical purpose, it will be satisfactory to me to put into writing the explanation of an accidental circumstance connected with the registry of our marriage at the Superintendant Registrar’s Office at Weymouth on the 21st of April 1851.—Our marriage by the Registrar Mr Richards was perfectly regular, and was attested as such by Mr Richards and by the Superintendant Registrar Mr Dodson, in the presence of both of whom, as well as of the two witnesses, we signed the register. But I was not aware that it was necessary to sign my name at full length, thinking that as in most other legal documents, the proper signature was the ordinary one of the person signing; and my ordinary signature being J. S. Mill, I at first signed in that manner; but on being told by the Registrar that the name must be written at full length, I did the only thing which occurred to me and what I believe the Registrar suggested, that is, I filled in the remaining letters of my name. As there was not sufficient space for them, they were not only written very small and close, but not exactly in a line with the initials and surname, and the signature consequently has an unusual appearance. The reason must be at once apparent to any one who sees it, as it is obvious that J. S. Mill was written first, and the remainder filled in afterwards. It is almost superfluous to say that this is not stated for your information—you being as well aware of it as myself, but in order that there may be a statement in existence of the manner in which the signature came to present this unusual appearance. It cannot possibly affect the legality of our marriage, which I have not the smallest doubt is as regular and valid as any marriage can be: but so long as it is possible that any doubt could for a moment suggest itself either to our own or to any other minds, I cannot feel at ease, and therefore, unpleasant as I know it must be to you, Edition: current; Page: [97] I do beg you to let us even now be married again,² and this time at church, so that hereafter no shadow of a doubt on the subject can ever arise. The process is no doubt disagreeable, but I have thought much and anxiously about it, and I have quite made up my mind that however annoying the fact, it is better to undergo the annoyance than to let the matter remain as it is. Therefore I hope you will comply with my earnest wish—and the sooner it is done the better.

Your

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Aug. 19. 1852

Blackheath Park

Lord Overstone

Overstone, Lord

84.

TO LORD OVERSTONE¹

Blackheath Park

Aug. 19. 1852

Dear Sir

On my return from a month’s excursion in North Wales I find your note and card. Pray accept our best thanks for your and Mrs Norman’s² kind invitation to Bromley, but which we could not have had the pleasure to accept. We find it impossible to give up the time required by general society and therefore are obliged to decline many invitations which would otherwise be very agreeable and to limit ourselves to a small circle of the same opinions and pursuits with our own.

I am Dear Sir
yours very truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

le 16 Sept. 1852

East India House

Gilbert Urbain Guillaumin

Guillaumin, Gilbert Urbain

85.

TO [GILBERT URBAIN GUILLAUMIN?]¹

East India House

le 16 Sept. 1852

Monsieur

J’ai averti l’éditeur des Principes d’Economie Politique que les deux feuilles dont il est question dans votre lettre ne vous avaient pas été remises, Edition: current; Page: [98] et j’espère que maintenant elles sont entre vos mains. Je vous remercie de l’envoi que vous voulez bien m’annoncer de la 4me partie du Dictionnaire² dont je suis déjà redevable de la 1re et de la 2me partie.

Quant aux renseignements biographiques³ que vous me demandez, je suis né à Londres, le 20 mai 1806. J’ai été reçu dans les bureaux de la Compagnie des Indes en mai 1823. Voici la liste des livres que j’ai publiés:

A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. 2 vols 8vo. 1843 (3me éd. 1851).

Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy. 1 vol. 8vo. 1844.

Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy. 2 vols. 8vo. 1848. (3me éd. 1852).

Sans compter de nombreux articles de revues, de journaux etc. dont je présume que vous ne désirez pas l’indication.

Agréez, Monsieur, l’expression de ma considération amicale.

J. S. Mill
(John Stuart Mill)

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Oct. 7. [1852]

East India House

John Chapman

Chapman, John

86.

TO JOHN CHAPMAN¹

East India House

Oct. 7. [1852]

Dear Sir

The sheets² you sent are of no use for my purpose, which was to give away, as they are not separate copies but contain part of another article—& being useless I return them, with the exception of one copy; but I do not think it worth the expense of reprinting.

I am yrs very truly

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [99]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Oct. 9. [1852]

East India House

John Chapman

Chapman, John

87.

TO JOHN CHAPMAN¹

East India House

Oct. 9. [1852]

Dear Sir

I am much obliged by your note and offer of fresh copies,² but it being now late to send them away, I prefer to dispense with copies altogether.

I am yrs very truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Nov. 23 [1852]

India House

Lord Overstone

Overstone, Lord

88.

TO LORD OVERSTONE¹

India House

Nov. 23 [1852]

2

Dear Lord Overstone

The tables appended to the inclosed official memorandum from the Statistical Department of the India House contain the best information we can give on the three points on which you made inquiries. As I expected the balance of trade against India is much greater than the million & a half you mentioned—but the explanation is, the remittances for the £800,000 dividends on India stock, the expense of the home establishments, furlough allowances, pensions, stores sent from this country &c. You will see that this “tribute” paid by India does not drain India of the precious metals, as the imports of them into India vastly exceed the exports. About the trade with Persia we know nothing except so far as it passes through Bombay—as probably most of it does.

The inclosed explanatory note is from the chief of the Statistical Dept.³ I am

Dear Ld Overstone
yrs very truly

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [100]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Nov. 29 [1852]

India House

Lord Overstone

Overstone, Lord

89.

TO LORD OVERSTONE¹

India House

Nov. 29 [1852]

Dear Lord Overstone

Having shewn your note to Mr Thornton² I have since received a letter from him which I inclose. The circuitous mode of remittance through China seems to explain the anomalies. India does not export to England more merchandise than she receives, but she exports to China several millions worth of opium without return.

All the facts in the tables are at the service of any one to whom you may wish to communicate them.

Ever yours truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Dec. 21. [1852?]

Blackheath

George Jacob Holyoake

Holyoake, George Jacob

90.

TO GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE¹

Blackheath

Dec. 21. [1852?]

Dear Sir

I shall be very happy to see M. Vauthier,² and to further his objects in any way I am able—though as to the Political Economy I shall be obliged to dissuade him, a publisher at Paris having a translation nearly ready with my authorisation.³

I am Dear Sir
yours faithfully

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [101]

1853

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

1853

Richard Hussey Walsh

Walsh, Richard Hussey

91.

TO RICHARD HUSSEY WALSH¹

[

1853

]

I can sincerely say that it is a clear, full, and, in my judgment, accurate exposition of the principles of the subject,² and if you are as successful in treating all the other branches of political economy, as you have been in this important branch, your qualifications for teaching it are of a high order.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 17. [1853]

East India House

John Chapman

Chapman, John

92.

TO JOHN CHAPMAN¹

East India House

Jan. 17. [1853]

Dear Sir

There is no subject on which I wish to write in the next number of the Westr. If I write anything on the present aspect of politics I am disposed rather to do so in the form of a pamphlet.

I am Dear Sir
yrs truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

20 March 1853

Lord Monteagle

Monteagle, Lord

93.

TO LORD MONTEAGLE¹

20 March 1853

Dear Lord Monteagle—

The suggestion in the paper² you sent me is intended to meet a difficulty which has always appeared to me one of the Edition: current; Page: [102] chief stumbling blocks of representative government.³ Whoever could devise a means of preventing minorities from being, as they now are, swamped, and enabling them to obtain a share of the representation proportional to their numbers and not more than proportional, would render a great service.⁴ Whether the plan proposed would do this, and to what objections it may be liable, I should be sorry to be obliged to say without more consideration than I have yet given to it. One thing seems to me evident: that if this plan were adopted, no constituency ought to elect fewer than three members. For if the number be two, as the proposed plan would enable a minority to count for double its number, any minority exceeding one third could ensure half the representation; which, unless the minority can be presumed to consist of wiser or better persons than the majority, would be contrary to all principle.

One very strong recommendation of the plan of cumulative votes⁵ occurs to me, which is not mentioned in the Memorandum. If we suppose a voter to determine his vote by the personal merits of the candidates, and not solely by their being on the same side with himself in the common party divisions, it will frequently happen that he greatly prefers one of the candidates, and is comparatively indifferent to all the others, so that he would, if he could, give all his votes to that one. This wish is most likely to be felt by the best voters, and in favour of the best candidates, and it seems to me right that strength of preference should have some influence as well as the mere number of persons preferring. To allow the cumulative vote would be one of the best ways which occur to me of enabling quality of support to count as well as quantity. The candidates most likely to benefit by it would be those who were too good for the mass of the constituency; those for example, whose election was endangered by some honest but unpopular vote or opinion, and who for that very reason would probably be supported with redoubled zeal by the better minority, and their election made the first object.

I do not see the force of your objection respecting bribery. No doubt if a candidate depended solely on bribed votes, he would find it easier to succeed Edition: current; Page: [103] if every bribed voter could give two or three votes for him instead of one. But to carry an election by bribing everybody is only possible with smaller constituencies than ought to exist. In large or even moderate constituencies, the bribed are only the two or three hundred who in a nearly balanced state of parties turn the scale. Now in this case the minority can get no corrupt advantage from the cumulative vote unless they limit their aim to a part of the representation; and if they do this, the cumulative vote may probably enable them to attain their object without bribing. Thus, if there are two members to be returned, and the minority will be content with returning one, a minority exceeding a third would have no inducement to bribe, but only a minority of less than a third. At present the reverse is the case: a minority of less than a third has no chance of succeeding by bribery, while a minority of more than a third has. The cumulative vote therefore displaces, but does not seem to me to increase, the inducement to bribe.

The point is well worth consideration in framing a new Reform Bill,⁶ which, to be any real improvement, ought not to be a mere imitation and extension of the Reform Bill of 1832. There are, as it seems to me, three great and perfectly safe improvements, which could hardly be successfully resisted if a Government proposed them. One is to have no small constituencies: this might be done by grouping the small towns into districts. Another is to let in the principle of an educational qualification, by requiring from all voters, in addition to any property or ratepaying conditions that may be imposed, at least reading, writing, and arithmetic. The third is to open the franchise to women who fulfil the same conditions on which it is granted to men; in the same manner as they already vote for boards of guardians. They have as much interest in good laws as men have, and would vote at least as well. Electoral districts seem to me needless, and ballot would now be a step backward instead of forward.⁷

I beg to apologise for not having answered sooner, but I did not like to give an opinion without consideration, and being pressed for time I was not able before to give the subject even the degree of consideration which I have now done.—I am, dear Lord Monteagle, very truly yours,

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [104]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April 25. [1853]

East India House

John Chapman

Chapman, John

94.

TO JOHN CHAPMAN¹

East India House

April 25. [1853]

Dear Sir

I am obliged to you for your propositions with respect to publishing either notes to the Analysis, or my contributions to reviews,² but in the first place I am engaged on a new work of my own,³ so that I have not time to spare, and if I had, I should hardly like to publish anything without first offering it to Mr Parker with whom I have been so many years connected as publisher.

I do not think it will be worth while to write anything on the politics of the day at the end of the session. The doings of the session, though useful, have been on too small a scale to afford subjects, and the two principal topics, the financial measures and the India question, will be decided and the interest gone, before the next publication of the review. For large views on any subject there is daily less and less public in this country.

I am yrs very truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

May 4. [1853]

Blackheath

George Cornewall Lewis

Lewis, George Cornewall

95.

TO GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS¹

Blackheath

May 4. [1853]

Dear Lewis

I shall be happy to review the last three volumes of Mr Grote’s History.² I had engaged to review the 9th and 10th volumes for Mr Empson but finding that they hardly afforded sufficient material, I had agreed with him to put off writing until the volume now published could be included. I think with you that there is now matter enough for an article, though more might have been made of the subject if there had been a greater amount of dissertation and discussion in the volumes. I am glad you will not want the article for the July number.

yrs very truly

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [105]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

15 May [1853]

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Sir William Molesworth

Molesworth, Sir William

96.

TO SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

15 May [1853]

Dear Molesworth—

My opinions on these subjects are very much the same with yours except where they are mixed up with other subjects. I conceive that in the present state of the distribution of wealth in this country any additional land brought into the market is likely to be bought by rich people & not by poor. The present question however does not turn upon whether partition is an evil or a good²—but upon whether to save the owner of a landed estate from the necessity of selling part of it (in this case a very small part) he ought to be exempted from paying his fair share of the taxes.³ This is so impudent a pretension that it hardly admits of any more complete exposure than is made by the simplest statement. The reason would seem just as well for dispensing them from paying any taxes whatever, or from paying their debts, for they may be unable to do either of these without selling their land. If the inheritors of land wish to keep it entire let them save the tax out of their income. Gladstone allows them several years to do it in.⁴ No large proprietor ought to have any difficulty in this, except those who are deeply mortgaged, & the sooner they can be induced to sell, the better. That is a proposition which may be very safely assumed in these days.

I do not know any writers who have discussed taxes on succession at much length, except some of the French Socialists,⁵ & they (besides that they are bad political economists) derive their arguments from premises not suited to the atmosphere of the H. o. C.

I am yrs vry truly

Edition: current; Page: [106]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 10 [1853]

Blackheath

George Cornewall Lewis

Lewis, George Cornewall

97.

TO GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS¹

Blackheath

July 10 [1853]

My dear Lewis

I think that when the India Bill² has passed which it virtually has already, the time will be gone by for an article on the form of government. All questions respecting the form of government will be closed for some years to come & it seems to me that nothing practical can come of any writing on the subject—& there are very few readers who would be interested in the mere theory. What I should write on India at present would be only, or chiefly, on the administrative part of the subject. I should try to correct the ignorant and dishonest misrepresentations of the present mode of governing India, & at the same time to point out how it may be improved. I could write such an article for the Edinburgh if you would like to have it—but not in time for the January number.

yrs very truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Aug. 7 [1853]

Blackheath

Lord Hobart

Hobart, Lord

98.

TO LORD HOBART¹

Blackheath

Aug. 7 [1853]

My Lord—

Allow me to thank you for a copy of your pamphlet on the Law of Partnership.² Such subjects are not often discussed with so much closeness of reasoning & precision of expression; & it is still more rare to find the question of justice separated from that of expediency & made paramount Edition: current; Page: [107] to it. I prefer to say “justice” rather than, in your words “natural justice”, both because Nature is often grossly unjust & because I do not think that the first spontaneous sentiment of justice always agrees with that which is the result of enlightened reflexion.

As you do me the honor to ask my opinion of your argument, I think that as much of it as is in defence of the commandite principle is sound, & conclusively stated. But you have not convinced me that either justice or expediency requires the unlimited liability of all who take part in the management, or in other words that there ought to be no compagnies anonymes.³ Justice, it appears to me, is fully satisfied if those who become creditors of the partnership know beforehand that they will have no claim beyond the amount of the subscribed capital. The points of additional information mentioned in pages 5 & 7 & which you say cannot be possessed by the public, do not seem to me required in justice, even if they were in point of expediency. Volenti non fit injuria: if a person chooses to lend either to an individual or a company knowing that the borrowers only pledge a certain sum & not their whole property for the debt, I cannot see that there is any injustice done merely because the lender cannot watch that certain sum & know at all times where it is & what is being done with it. I differ from you also though with somewhat less confidence on the question of expending. I do not doubt that the unlimited liability of railway directors would be some additional security for prudent management, but the additional security would I think be too dearly purchased by the renunciation of all power in the shareholders to control the directors or to change them. The publicity afforded by the periodical meetings of shareholders, by the necessity of laying before them the entire state of the concern & their power of verifying the statements, seems to me a far greater protection to the public as well as to shareholders than the liability of the directors to the full extent of their property especially considering how imperfect a check to rash speculation this is in private transactions.

Yr obt Servt

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Aug. 24 [1853]

Blackheath

George Cornewall Lewis

Lewis, George Cornewall

99.

TO GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS¹

Blackheath

Aug. 24 [1853]

My dear Lewis

I send what I have to say on Mr Grote’s History.² It is as much a review of the book generally as of the last three volumes, but it gives a tolerably Edition: current; Page: [108] full account of their contents; and as the history of Athenian greatness is concluded in them, the occasion is a natural one for surveying the whole history.

If you print the article in the October number, I am very desirous to have a proof early if possible, as I shall be away from home in three or four weeks time.

Yrs very truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Aug. 24. 1853

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

100.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

[

Aug. 24. 1853

]

My own dearest one! how cold the old place looked & felt when I returned to it²—I sat in the room usually warmed by her presence, & in the usual place, & looked at her vacant chair, wishing for the time when it will be again filled, & for the time, much sooner than that, when I shall see her dear handwriting—which is the pleasure of absence. I went to bed very early, after studying the big Physiology³ nearly all the evening.

It rained torrents in the night & in the morning Kate⁴ knocked at the door & said that the water had come in again—it had indeed, in at least a dozen places, reaching as far as the beau milieu of the room, so there is another plastering job inevitable—& it was every way unlucky as there was no getting at the place to bale out the water, which lay apparently so deep that no doubt the pipe was stopt up. There was nothing to be done but to go again to Smith’s & say that the place he had mended was worse than before—Again unluckily the old fellow was out, & not expected for a day or two but his son promised to go immediately, & take a ladder. It is very disagreeable having any workman there with nobody in the house, but it could not be helped.

I sent the article to Lewis⁵ today after revising it on all points. I have cut the knot of “the grandest passage” by making it “the most celebrated” & have altered the two “greatests” to greatest commonwealth & most distinguished citizen—in the other. The “political education” place which I said I Edition: current; Page: [109] would try to strengthen in ideas instead of in words, I have done so—I hope the proof will come in time for full consideration—& now dearest dearest angel adieu till tomorrow when I shall write again & perhaps shall have had the happiness of a word, though I will not let myself count upon it.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Aug. 27, 1853

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

101.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

[

Aug. 27, 1853

?]

Ah my own dearest, if you knew the pleasure your precious letter would give, you would not think there needed a “better” tomorrow. How sweet of her in all the bustle & fatigue of arriving & the bother of not finding lodgings to write such a darling letter. I almost hope you have gone on to Teignmouth as there was nothing to be had facing the sea. As for me the whole time seems passed in waiting for her—but it will not be so during the longer absence for I shall have some steady job of writing to begin & finish which will prevent the time from seeming long & for amusement I have a scheme for looking over the plants.² I shall look for some tomorrow if the weather lets me go out. It rained very much last night but it has not yet rained today. The time does not hang heavy darling, for I have always her to think of, & our nice home has now begun to recall her presence instead of only her absence. As for health I was not quite so well the last day or two as the three or four days before, but I have been better again this morning. Like all my former little ailments this sticks very close & varies very much from day to day.³ I shall be quite content if it goes off within a year. Meanwhile your dear love & kindness would make it quite a pleasure being unwell if only you would not be anxious my dearest dearest angel. I have seen nobody except Grote who called yesterday but have had a note from Adderley⁴ which I inclose with the answer I propose sending when dearest one has made it right. The men came yesterday but, Kate⁵ says, only staid about 10 minutes during which they cleared the pipe & “hammered down something.” The water has not come in since.⁶ Adieu with a thousand loves. If it is fine tomorrow & she gets this in time she can think of him somewhere about Reigate & Dorking.⁷

Edition: current; Page: [110]

[On a separate small piece of paper]

Druce⁸ has sent merely the inclosed. She will no doubt have said everything suitable from me to the madre & C.⁹

adieu once more my own precious.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Monday [Aug. 29, 1853]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

102.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Monday [Aug. 29, 1853]

My own precious darling wife what sweet words! what good it did & does me to read that one word—she knows which—the sweetest word she can say—when she can say or write that, I know how she must be loving me & feeling all that it is happiest to think of & all that I most wish for. I needed it too, for words of love in absence are as they always were, what keeps the blood going in the veins—but for them whenever I am not anxious & triste à mourir for fear she should not be loving me, I should have only a sort of hybernating existence like those animals found in the inside of a rock. But her dear darling letters are only a less good than her still sweeter presence & voice & looks & spoken words. The time does not seem long & is now very nearly half over.

I wrote on Saturday & directed exactly as before—it is vexatious that she should not have received it on Sunday morning—I hope the reason was some of their Sunday nonsense & that she did not suppose I had not written.

I had a good walk yesterday—it was a fine bright day with a few short showers only two of which were at all heavy & an umbrella & a hedge sheltered me completely from those. I went to Reigate by the railway, then walked six hours with a good deal of climbing & after having tea & a leg & wing of cold chicken at Dorking felt quite able & inclined to walk to Betchworth between four & five miles more. There I took the railway, & walking across our heath home was hardly more tired than I often am in coming home from the office. I feel no worse for it as to the ailment & much the better for it otherwise. I saw the country well & it looked very beautiful but somehow our daily view seemed much pleasanter. I saw the comet too²—it was like a reddish streak, much brightest at the lower end, as bright as Edition: current; Page: [111] a large star but without so definite an outline—the redness I suppose was because it was in twilight & near the horizon, like the red colour of the moon when newly risen! I hope you have seen or will see it, but it must be looked for much earlier than we did. I saw it before half past eight & it was then near setting. As it is going towards the sun, it sets every evening earlier after sunset & at last will be quite lost in the sun’s rays.

The note inclosed came on Saturday evening. The other from Henry Solly³ seems to me very impudent, putting together what it does not contain with what it does.

Mille amours e soavi pensieri—

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Aug. [30] 1853

India House

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

103.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

India House

Aug. [30] 1853

2

This is the first time since we were married my darling wife that we have been separated & I do not like it at all—but your letters are the greatest delight & as soon as I have done reading one I begin thinking how soon I shall have another. Next to her letters the greatest pleasure I have is writing to her. I have written every day since Friday except the day there was no post—I am glad the cause of your not getting Saturday’s letter was the one I guessed & that you did get it at last. This time I have absolutely nothing to tell except my thoughts, & those are wholly of you—As for occupation, after I get home I read as long as I can at the thick book³—yesterday evening I fairly fell asleep over it, but I shall read it to the end, for I always like to get at the latest generalizations on any scientific subject & that in particular is a most rapidly progressive subject just at present & is so closely connected with the subjects of mind & feeling that there is always a chance of something practically useful turning up. I am very much inclined to take the Essay on Nature⁴ again in hand & rewrite it as thoroughly as I did the review of Grote⁵—that is what it wants—it is my old way of working & I do not think I have ever done anything well which was not done in that way. I am almost sorry for the Edition: current; Page: [112] engagement with Lewis about India⁶ as I think it would have been a much better employment of the time to have gone on with some more of our Essays. We must finish the best we have got to say, & not only that, but publish it while we are alive—I do not see what living depositary there is likely to be of our thoughts, or who in this weak generation that is growing up will even be capable of thoroughly mastering & assimilating your ideas, much less of reoriginating them—so we must write them & print them, & then they can wait till there are again thinkers. But I shall never be satisfied unless you allow our best book,⁷ the book which is to come, to have our two names in the title page. It ought to be so with everything I publish, for the better half of it all is yours, but the book which will contain our best thoughts, if it has only one name to it, that should be yours. I should like every one to know that I am the Dumont⁸ & you the originating mind, the Bentham, bless her!

I hope the weather has improved as much with you as it has here—but it does not look settled yet. With all loving thoughts & wishes

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Wednesday [Aug. 31. 1853]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

104.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Wednesday
[

Aug. 31. 1853

]

My dearest angel! she will have got this morning the letter I wrote yesterday after receiving hers. I am so sorry she should have had the teaze she mentions—it would have been so much better—knowing ce que c’est que ce monde-là & having forgotten to ask you the question, to have done exactly as usual.

Dieu merci the time of absence is nearly over now. The only new thing here is that on Monday evening, (the first time I went into the back garden,) I found the ground strewed with a good deal more than half of all the pears in the garden. Next morning I told Kate to pick them up but she said she had already done it. In the case of the only two trees where the pears were nearly or quite ripe, they were most of them half eaten, I suppose by birds. It is seldom such stormy weather in the fruit time as this year—but it has been tolerably fine for some days now—I have been hoping that you had the same benefit.

Edition: current; Page: [113]

I went to Coulson² this morning who finding me no better for the colchicum (though no worse) & not thinking that the symptoms are those of congestion or anything of that sort, was fairly puzzled & proposed to me to go with him tomorrow afternoon to Dr Golding Bird,³ as he did before to Prout⁴—or rather I should say proposed to me to meet him there. I hope the result will be as successful as it was with Prout—at all events we shall have two opinions.

Adieu dearest dearest love. I shall hear tomorrow perhaps.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Sept. 19. 1853

Blackheath

George Cornewall Lewis

Lewis, George Cornewall

105.

TO GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS¹

Blackheath

Sept. 19. 1853

My dear Lewis

I am glad that you are so well pleased with the article on Grote.² More might certainly have been said about the Sicilian history, & the Anabasis, but as those parts of the history do not illustrate anything very important, I proposed passing rapidly to those which did. I would however have given the quintessence of the chapter on Dion if it had been possible to do it in any moderate space.

You will see what I have done in consequence of your various suggestions. As you say, the tendency of [the] Athenian alliance must have been to favor democracy, but Grote has pointed out several instances in which one is surprised to find important members of the alliance under the government of oligarchies.³ I have made a little alteration in the paragraph about Greek slavery,⁴ but it might look too much like an apology for slavery.

I shall be very happy to look at the article⁵ you mention if you are able to send it at latest on Thursday, as we are going to the Continent on Saturday.⁶

Very truly yours

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [114]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Sept. 23. [1853]

East India House

George Cornewall Lewis

Lewis, George Cornewall

106.

TO GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS¹

East India House

Sept. 23. [1853]

My dear Lewis

The article² you sent seems to me very good. The writer evidently knows his subject, has taken pains to be right, & his praise & blame are in the right places. If it is read as I hope it may be by those who can influence matters at Madras, it is likely to do much good. As to its interfering with what I may write, there are only about two pages which could possibly do so, those in which the writer comments on the ryotwar system,³ in a manner from which I partly dissent but I do not think this any reason for omitting them as some difference of opinion between different articles seems to me to be even desirable.

very truly yrs

J. S. Mill

I have returned the article to Kent House.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Wedy [28 December 1853]

Arles

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

107.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

[

Arles

]

Wedy evg
[

28 December 1853

]

My darling love

I am writing this in the warm salle à manger of the Hotel Bristol after a northern wintry day, not par façon de parler but literally, for the ponds were frozen hard all the way, & the little waterfalls by the road side not only hung with icicles but were encrusted with ice so as to seem frozen bodily—However I did not suffer from cold thanks to the wrapper & your dear kindness. Edition: current; Page: [115] As far as Toulon I did very well, I had the coupé & an educated Frenchman in it though looking below the gentleman class as so many of them do—he was d’un certain âge—we talked history, literature & at last politics, ending with the present state of things about which we perfectly agreed—he had some sense & some liberality. We got to Toulon about 10 & I had two hours to walk about—it is a cheerful rather busy town but was soon seen & the keen wind drove me at last into a café for the sake of fire. The two inns praised by Plana² & Murray, the Croix d’or & de Malte,³ are close together in the little Place des [Foires²] which like all the other Places is planted with plane trees, which must be very agreeable in summer. From Toulon to Marseille there was no coupé to be had & I was in a full interior with four women superabounding in clothes which & the smallness of the diligence made me excessively cramped & uncomfortable during the seven hours we passed on the road of which however half an hour was spent in stopping to help another diligence which had broken a spring—a private carriage also stopped & parted with its fresh horses taking tired ones to help the carriage on. I was struck as one often is with the really fraternal & Christian feeling of the French on such occasions. The four women looked about the class of Mme Goutant⁴ but two of them had pillows edged with lace & all took immense pains to be comfortable—Happily they had talk enough with one another so that my silence did not look like the ill manners of ces anglais. You see dear I am writing like a dull & tired person but it is convenient to begin my letter now & I shall finish it & put it in the post at Arles where I shall have a pretty long stay—I shall go by the train which leaves here at 9 & gets to Arles at 11 & shall leave again at ½ past 3 to arrive at Avignon at 5. This seems a good inn as far as I can judge—I shall be able to say more tomorrow. I sat in the cramped diligence thinking of every ill that could happen to my precious one, but I have got over the black vision now. I saw Lily⁵ at the window & hope she saw me shake about a handkerchief. Mme Suzanne tried to make me pay 3 f. a night but when I objected gave it up readily saying I had parfaitement raison—this seems her way—to try it on & take it off quick if it does not fit. I remembered in the carriage that I had not asked a very essential question about Kate⁶ viz. how she has been provided with money hitherto whether by money left with her (& if so, how much) or given by Haji. Did you ever read a letter so unlike me, but you will be glad to have any news of me & you will like me to write feeling comfortable, alone by a good fire. The pen & ink do credit to the name of Bristol. I have just been reading Edition: current; Page: [116] Galignani⁷ which talks of excessively cold weather in England—Palmerston’s successor⁸ is not appointed but it is said that Graham is to succeed him & Fox Maule⁹ to take the Admiralty in the room of Graham. The papers are attacking Ld Aberdeen¹⁰ for want of spirit about Turkey¹¹ & it is reported that Louis Napoleon has called on the English Govt to know its mind & say what that mind is.

Thursday 1 oclock. I am now writing in a much queerer place, the salle à manger of the Hotel du Forum at Arles with people dining all round me—I shall imitate them presently. The Bristol is dear—including service I paid 10 fr for bed, supper (tea, bifteck & potatoes) & breakfast. It is a very quiet place & the people civil, prompt & unobtrusive but the apartments begin up two flights of stairs, the entresol being wholly occupied by the salle à manger & the people who keep the house. This would be fatal if it were not very likely that the case is the same at the other inns. The stairs however are very easy. I came here by railway in two hours & have just done seeing this strange old place with its curious old cathedral & its ugly Roman amphitheatre—curious because so very perfect & making one see so exactly how those old rascals managed their savage exhibitions. It is still bitterly cold & the people here & at Marseilles seem to feel it as much as I do. One said “Il ne fera pas plus froid au Nord”. It is one satisfaction that I now know the winter travelling will not hurt me. My cough is if anything better. I think the chief thing which is amiss with me is what Gurney¹² said, the action of the heart—it goes gallop, gallop, & flutter, flutter, especially in bed, though I have been only one day without taking the digitalis which was intended expressly against that. I have not cared much about the scenery as I came along—when at its best it is much like what we have seen & I feel sated with it. I think I never wrote her so long a letter so little worth reading but I write what comes first & what I have to tell. She knows under it all there is the deepest & strongest & truest love. Bless her, only good of my life.

Edition: current; Page: [117]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Friday Dec. 30. 1853

Avignon

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

108.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Friday afternoon
Avignon
[

Dec. 30. 1853

]

2

I owe the having time to write today to my dearest one, to not having been able to get a place—You know how often in France one has to pass the day at an inn & travel at night—it is so with me now. When I got here at 7 yesterday (the train having kept me waiting at Arles an hour & a half beyond its time) I found no possibility of getting on this morning & the only certain place at all a coupé place at 5 this evening. I am promised to get to Lyons in 24 hours—I do not know by how many hours the promise will be broken—those who arrived from Lyons this morning had snow almost all the way & were many hours behind time. A traveller who arrived from Montpellier last evg says the thermometer there is 7 degrees (16 of Fahrenheit) below freezing & that snow is a foot deep in the streets of Beziers. There cannot be more wintry weather for travelling & all my wish is to get through it as fast as possible. I have given up the Meulins project unless I find when at Lyons that it is the shortest way, which may well be as the steamboats on the Saône are stopped by the ice & there is therefore little likelihood of a place by the diligence to Chàlon for some days—you see I may be detained a long while at Lyons. I have performed the painful duty of seeing this town in a really terrible north wind which roared all night most tempestuously. I was surprised at the great size of the place. The cathedral & still more its position, the buildings adjoining &c are well worth seeing—I had another motive for going out which was to buy something to put on my head at night for the hat is terribly in the way. I bought a decent cloth travelling cap. This inn (l’Europe) seems good, it has plenty of rooms au premier & an easy staircase, of the eating I only know a very good sweet omlet & excellent tea (as at Marseilles) besides good coffee & excellent butter which was the only thing bad at Marseilles the people saying in excuse that there is no good butter in the place. My occupation here is reading newspapers, especially Galignani of which the last received announces Palmerston’s reacceptance of office²—of course he has been bought by the sacrifice of whatever in the reform bill he objected to. The bill is sure to be something poor & insignificant. The Edition: current; Page: [118] Daily News³ & Examiner⁴ are attacking Albert for interfering in politics. He seems to be generally blamed for the temporizing inefficient conduct of the ministry about Turkey⁵ & is supposed to be Austrian in disposition since the Belgian marriage⁶—probably mere gossip & scandal of which there is always as much going in courts as elsewhere. How I long to know how my darling is—how delighted I shall be to get to Boulogne—but how long it may be first it is difficult to tell. I owe an apology to Hyères for they say this cold has lasted 8 or 10 days so that Hyères is really, comparatively, mild. If I am detained at Lyons I will write from there. Adieu my perfect one. A thousand loves & blessings & kisses—How I long for the first sight of that dear handwriting. What a pleasure to think she is not cold. But for the wrapper her kindness provided I should have been frozen & now my darling life, adieu with a myriad of blessings.

[P.S.] I hope the Spectator which I sent yesterday will arrive.

I forgot to mention before, that Notes & Queries⁷ are all complete.

Edition: current; Page: [119]

1854

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 2. [1854]

Châlon

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

109.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Châlon

—

Jan. 2. [1854]

3

I fill my letters with nothing but the chances & mischances of this journey—but I know they are interesting to my dearest one & I shall write better letters when I am quiet at home. Home! how completely home it is even in her absence—but how completely also the place where she is & which I am so happy to have seen & to know, is home too—I am looking with the mind’s eye across that Place des Palmiers which cold as I used to think it, seems almost summer to me now—& seeing that beautiful prospect instead of these tame snowcovered fields. But I will take up the history where I left it—The diligence by which I took my place from Avignon & which was called Messageries Françaises des maîtres de poste, left a little after five, & after four changes of carriage, at Montelimart,² Valence, Vienne & Givors (the last piece was part of the St. Etienne railway) brought me to Lyons almost frozen at ten on Saturday. I was in despair about getting on, as it was so late to go about finding offices in that large place & I had heard all the way of the impossibility of getting places to Châlon & the fabulous prices paid for them, so I thought myself lucky in being offered a place for 7h the next morning—I made it secure & then went to the Univers & on New Year’s morning made my way in the dark to the office just opposite the place where we landed—They promised I should arrive in 12 hours, or as there was snow perhaps in 14. The carriage turned out to be an omnibus with 8 places which generally goes between Lyons & Villefranche a place about a quarter of the way but which since the steamboats have been stopped, takes passengers to Châlon. It made me pay 25 fr. though others I found were only charged 18 & 20 fr. At the time at which we ought to have been at Châlon we were only at Mâcon where we were kept 3 hours on pretext of waiting for another carriage. I had promised myself a night’s sleep at Châlon, & to leave this morning by the first train & go on by a night train to Boulogne, so saving a day: but we arrived here at 7 this morning when the train was gone & there is no other but the express at 1¾ so I must pass a useless night at Paris. This delay was only Edition: current; Page: [120] partly owing to the snow of which up to Mâcon there was not very much & only a little of the delay was owing to the driver’s knocking against a stone hidden as he said by the snow & breaking the pole of the carriage (at 11 at night): for this only caused about 1½ hour of the twelve hours’ delay. The whole concern is a piece of knavery as those small diligence concerns are apt to be. There were one or two agreeable men especially one Frenchman & a young Savoyard in the crowded little omnibus which made the whole affair a little less tiresome & provoking. I am now at the trois faisans & shall make them shew me their bed rooms in case you like to come there in spring. The inn at Avignon, l’Europe, was cheap as well as good—only the table d’hôte is dear, having an inscription that on account of the énorme increase of the price of wine & of la plupart des vivres the table d’hôte must be raised to 3½ f. except for diligence travellers who have never time to do more than diner à la hôte (considerate).

Adieu till Boulogne darling.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Thursday Jan. 5. 1854

Boulogne

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

110.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Boulogne

Thursday
[

Jan. 5. 1854

]

4

My adored one will know without my telling her, how the very instant after I arrived here I rushed through the sloppy melting snow to the post office tormenting myself all the way lest the man should pretend there was no letter. When I got the darling word how I devoured it & how happy & in spirits I was made by the good news of her health & the exquisite proofs of her love that its most precious words contained. But it disappointed me that she had not yet received my first letter, which I put into the post at Arles on Thursday afternoon: which would reach Marseille that evening & I hoped would go to Hyères that night so that she would get it before she wrote—I pleased myself with the thought that she would have a letter sooner than she expected & that her first would tell me she had received it. However no doubt it came right; as it was independent of the man at the post office, having been directed in the same manner as this, which has also been the case with the two I have since written, from Avignon & Châlon; & will be the case with all I write. To go on with my adventures: the Trois Faisans is a second rate inn apparently but has one very large & good salon au premier & plenty of tolerable though not very large bedrooms. I did not go to bed but went on by the train at ½ past 1 & got to Paris very nicely & Edition: current; Page: [121] comfortably the carriages being warmed. I arrived at past 12 at Lawson’s Bedford Hotel, which is close to the Victoria & can almost be seen from it, being the fourth or fifth house in the Rue de l’Arcade, the street which turns off at the fruitshop. It seems a good inn & not dear, & at least to voyageurs who sit in what the waiter called le coffee room. I saw a very nice set of rooms au second & was told they were the like au troisième, those on the premier which must have been if anything better were let avec cuisine which the landlady said she only does in winter. The house looks about as large outwardly as the Victoria, not larger. One recommendation is that it has an omnibus of its own to the northern railroad. As I arrived so late & had not had the night I expected at Châlon, I thought I would give myself a long night at Paris, & not attempt to go by the 9 o’clock train, but wait till the next at one o’clock which I found would do very well as the steamboat next day (Wednesday) did not go till half past one—& I thought now my troubles were over, but the worst was to come & my experience of winter travelling was to be completed by being snowed up for near 24 hours on a railway. We got in pretty good time to Amiens but came to a halt between it & Abbeville—Seven hours we remained on the line while messages were sent to Abbeville & Amiens for another engine—but none came, from the first because there were none there, from the second for some reason I could get no explanation of. At last they got up the steam again & took on the train by half at a time to Abbeville where it was declared we must halt till the road was cleared. I & a few others got into an omnibus & went to the town & I sat by the kitchen fire of the hotel du Commerce from ½ past 3 till daylight when we were sent for by a blunder of the railway people who first told us we could now go, & then when we were seated in the carriages, that we could not, so there all the passengers remained unable to leave the waiting room because told that we might go at any minute till half past two yesterday afternoon. The bore was immense, the passengers being more than half of them English & Americans, the most vulgar & illiterate—& the one or two English & French that were better kept aloof like me & we did not find each other out. I found two of them at this inn at Boulogne, an Englishman who it appeared was a coachmaker & a Frenchman settled in England in some business whose English was quite undistinguishable from an Englishman’s, & found them rather sensible people. To the bore of the detention was added another, viz that somebody went off with my umbrella from the salle d’attente, & I shall have to buy one here. The lost one was luckily old, having been several times covered, but I regret it as you darling liked the stick. I came here to the Hotel Folkestone, one of those on the quai opposite the landing place, thinking I would try it as it was recommended in Galignani² & it seems a very tolerable place, having both salons & bedrooms Edition: current; Page: [122] on the ground floor & good ones too though not very large. As for my health which she writes so sweetly about, I could not expect not to catch fresh cold now & then. I have been better one day & worse another & am on the whole much the same as at Hyères. I am still of the same opinion about the chief mischief being overaction of the heart which is checked but not conquered by the digitalis I have been taking ever since Avignon—& now heaven bless my own dearest angel.

[P.S.] I hate this nasty blue ink but can get no other.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 6. [1854]

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

111.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Jan. 6. [1854]

5

How sweetest sweet of the darling to write a second time on Friday after she received the letter—& how happy it made me to see her letter here on arriving, among the heap of trumpery [words obliterated] reports &c that the post had brought here in the 3 months—along with a few letters that required attending to about which [words obliterated] tomorrow or next day when I have had more time to look at them. I now write, among what bustle you can imagine, only to say by the very first post what she was anxious to know—how I got here. I had a very smooth passage of only two hours & succeeded in not being sick at all. I got home between 10 & 11 & had a warm reception from Kate & (for him) from Haji. The ground here is covered with snow, & where the snow (at Blackheath) has been partly scraped off or beaten down it is frozen again & very slippery so that getting to town was some trouble & the streets are sloppy with the half melted snow so that London looks its ugliest & feels its most disagreeable. I had not been in my room ten minutes when Hill,² Thornton³ & various others poured in one after another with their congratulations & enquiries. There seems to have been a general impression that I was so ill that there was no knowing when I might come back (or perhaps if I shd ever come back at all) so that they generally said I looked better than they expected. Several asked if it was not imprudent to return at this season & in this weather. Ellice⁴ received me with the cordial manner which imposed on me before & which his note so belied, said he had been Edition: current; Page: [123] uneasy about me, having heard from Sykes,⁵ it did not clearly appear what, but he said he had feared I was worse. I said I had not written again after my second letter because I hoped every week to be able to come. When I said I had been harassed by the thought that I was wanted here he said he would not tell me how much I had been wanted—but I could gather nothing of whether he had really felt the want of me or not. He as well as Hill, Thornton & others asked the questions that might be expected about your health & in a manner which shewed interest. Peacock⁶ alone asked not a single question about your health & hardly about mine but struck into India house subjects & a visit he has had from James.⁷ Grote & Prescott⁸ called together today, as they said to enquire if I was returned & were very warm, especially Grote, in their expressions of sympathy & interest about your illness. It is odd to see the sort of fragmentary manner in which news gets about—Grote had heard of you as dangerously ill but not of my being ill at all, & of your illness as a fever but not of the rupture of a bloodvessel. Grote is vastly pleased with the article in the Edinburgh⁹— & a propos I found here a letter from Mrs Grote, of complimentation on the article, which though little worthy of the honour of being sent to you I may as well inclose. The impudence of writing to me at all & of writing in such a manner is only matched by the excessive conceit of the letter. Grote alluded to it saying Mrs Grote had written to me after reading the article—I merely answered that I had found a note from her on arriving. There is a friendly note from Sykes written after we left which I will inclose tomorrow when I can send with it a sketched answer to it—Adieu my most beloved & I shall write soon again.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 7. 1854

East India House

James Garth Marshall

Marshall, James Garth

112.

TO JAMES GARTH MARSHALL¹

East India House

Jan. 7. 1854

Dear Sir

I am very sorry that my absence from England prevented me until yesterday from receiving your two notes, as I fear that by waiting for an answer to Edition: current; Page: [124] them, the publication of your pamphlet² (the proof of which I have read with great pleasure) may have been delayed. No doubt, however, it has now long been published³ & I hope, much read. If I had received your note in time I should have requested you to make use of any part of my letter to Ld Monteagle⁴ in any manner which you might think useful, with no other reservation than that of not implying that I am a positive supporter of your plan—for though it is very likely I may become so, I have not yet seen it sufficiently discussed, to be aware of all the objections to which it may possibly be liable. I am Dr Sir

yrs very truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 9. 1854

East India House

Henry Cole

Cole, Henry

113.

TO HENRY COLE¹

East India House

Jan. 9. 1854

Dear Cole

I found your note² on arriving in town two days ago. I am sorry that I cannot give you any of the information you require as I am very little acquainted with recent writings on Jurisprudence & especially with those relating to special departments such as that you refer to.

I have to thank you for your pamphlet.³ I entirely agree in your conclusion—& your description of the mode of action of public boards ought to carry weight, as it is so evidently derived from actual experience.

Very truly yours,

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [125]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 9. 1854

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

114.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

.

Jan. 9. 1854

7

No letter today darling—but I did not count upon it—& Lily’s to Haji which arrived on Saty evening gave news of my darling one up to Monday. I wonder when I shall be able to write her a letter not filled with petty details. However as the details must be written about, the best plan is to knock them off as quickly as possible & get rid of them. I looked over the bills yesterday & found that the quantity of bread which we thought would be sufficient now, viz a 2 lb loaf every day from Monday to Friday & a 4 lb on Saty, is exactly what has been taken all along, including even the time when Haji was away. I asked Kate the meaning of this & she said she didn’t have potatoes for herself & that she could not take less than a 2 lb loaf—evidently unsatisfactory—but I find from Haji that she has had her aunt staying with her the greater part of the whole time including his absence, which leaves less to be accounted for. Haji says he told you of this (the aunt) at Nice—perhaps it is a good thing by preventing the worse things which you feared. The butter has been pretty regularly a pound of fresh & half pound of salt each week. My return can hardly increase the pound to 1½ lb. Nothing else struck me as noticeable but Parsons² has not sent any bills for a month owing it is said to Mrs P. having had an accident on the ice—but I shall make him send them. Should the bills be now paid? The birds are in fine feather, & Kate says, sing much more & better than at first & eat immensely. I have answered Marshall³ & Urquhart.⁴ To M. I said that if it were still in time which of course it is not, I would have bid him do with my letter anything he thought useful, only not to imply that I was a positive supporter of his plan, as it had not yet been sufficiently discussed to bring out all the objections &c. Urquhart I advised to publish his paper⁵ (a very good one) as a pamphlet but offered if he liked to recommend it to Fraser.⁶ There was also an application from the Soc. of Arts⁷ saying that they have to adjudicate a prize to some work on jurisprudence & asking me to send them a list of the three best recently published, in order of merit. I answered acknowledging the honor Edition: current; Page: [126] but saying I was not sufficiently acquainted with recent writings on jurisprudence to be a qualified witness as to their claims to the prize. The Kensington letters⁸ I inclose, as it is best you should see all that comes from that quarter—& along with them, a note I have just written to my mother. I have looked through the Edinburgh for October—the article on Grote⁹ reads, to my mind, slighter & flimsier than I thought it would. There is another article by Greg¹⁰ on Parly reform shewing that he had seen our letter to Ld Monteagle¹¹ (the one Marshall¹² writes about) for he has adopted nearly every idea in the letter almost in the very words, & has also said speaking of the ballot, that it is within his knowledge that some to whom ballot was once a sine qua non, now think it would be “a step backward” the very phrase of the letter. He goes on to attack the ballot with arguments some of them so exactly the same as those in our unpublished pamphlet¹³ (even to the illustrations) that one would think he had seen that too if it had been physically possible. Though there are some bad arguments mixed yet on the whole this diminishes my regret that ours was not published. It is satisfactory that those letters we take so much trouble to write for some apparently small purpose, so often turn out more useful than we expected. Now about reviewing Comte:14 the reasons pro are evident. Those con are 1st I don’t like to have anything to do with the name or with any publication of H. Martineau. 2dly. The Westr though it will allow I dare say anything else, could not allow me to speak freely about Comte’s atheism & I do not see how it is possible to be just to him, when there is so much to attack, without giving him praise on that point of the subject. 3dly, as Chapman is the publisher he doubtless wishes, & expects, an article more laudatory on the whole, than I shd be willing to write. You dearest one will tell me what your perfect judgment & your feeling decide.—My cough varies from day to day but I have certainly rather more than when I left Hyères, still however the irritation does not feel as if it came from the chest. I do not know what to make of the great derangement of the circulation. My pulse which when I am well is not above 60, is now fully 90, & without any apparent cause, for I have now no signs of the Edition: current; Page: [127] low fever to which Gurney attributed it—my stomach & bowels are in good order, my appetite excellent (during the journey it was immense). I have sent for digitalis from Allen¹⁵ but it is impossible to go on taking that indefinitely & it has only a temporary effect when any at all. That & the obstinacy of the cough seem to imply something that keeps up irritation in the system, requiring to be removed but I don’t know whom to consult—I must see Coulson¹⁶ I suppose, if only because I have not yet paid him, but this is not I fancy in his line & he would probably refer me to Bird¹⁷ who he says has much practice in chest complaints. Tell me dearest what you think. Au reste I feel quite well & strong. Several times every day I have longed to be with her in those little rooms under that light sky instead of this dismal congregation of vapours—though the snow now is nearly gone—adieu my own darling for this time. Love to Lily.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 11. [1854]

Blackheath

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

115.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Blackheath

Jan. 11. [1854]

8

No letter yet! The two letters dated on the Friday after I left are all I have yet had. Surely one must have miscarried, for she cannot have been eight days without either she or Lily writing even a line—& it does not seem half so unlikely that a letter from Hyères, as it did that one from Sidmouth should go astray. I have enquired everywhere at the I.H. It is of no use writing to Maberly² till I can tell him on what day the letter was sent. But indeed I shall care comparatively little about a former letter when I shall have received any. Not to have heard for so long fills me with all sorts of anxious misgivings about her health—not to say that my own spirits are apt to flag without the support of her & hearing from her—a letter is a support in the same way though it cannot be in the same degree, as her presence. Did she not see the precious, the dearly beloved one, during those two or nearer three months, that it is impossible for me to be really out of spirits when I am seeing her, living with her? Next to that is the joy & support of a few words of her handwriting—I am writing this in our pleasant room—pleasant even in her Edition: current; Page: [128] absence—indeed her presence always seems to hover over it. My first care after returning was to have everything in it about which she had spoken, arranged in the manner she wished—my second look, & almost my first, on the evening of my arrival, was to see if the chair with its back to the fire was the one that should be—it was so, & has been ever since, & Haji says, always before. The two chairs which should be at the ends of the sideboard are there, with the things tied round them, unchanged. We have moved the table nearer the window, as she wished; the edge at which I sit at meals is opposite the middle of the fire. The little book was procured³—I wrote in it for the first time on Sunday & have written something each evening since—whether what I have written was much worth writing is another question. Ever since Sunday I have had meat with tea instead of dining out. It is pleasanter & subtracts so much from the being out after dark. I was almost forgetting to say a thing of much more importance, viz. that I today wrote out and signed that codicil⁴—the signature is attested by Napier & Bourdillon.⁵ Touching my health—the digitalis which I have taken for the last three days has I think done the cough some little good but has not reduced the pulse perceptibly. I have pretty well made up my mind to see Clark⁶ tomorrow or the day after, as the more I think about it the less I rely on any of the opinions given by Gurney on the subject, & besides when an ailment of this sort sticks to one, one should not be too long without consulting somebody. The most unpleasant thing as to present comfort, & a thing I never have been used to formerly, is the great portion of the middle of each night that I lie awake. I do not know the cause—it does not arise from any painful sensation, nor from coughing. The snow is mostly melted & the country looks green from our windows but there has been a north east wind these two days which though not so cold as one would expect is raw & unpleasant.

I.H. Thursday. Heaven be thanked, here is her Thursday’s letter. It has not really taken seven days coming as it did not go till Friday, & they tell me here that it arrived yesterday evening—we may call it 5½ days which is Edition: current; Page: [129] still very long. Her not writing sooner is but too well accounted for by her having been unwell & in bed but now when it has come what an angel of a letter! How loving & how lovely like everything that its perfect writer writes, says, does or feels; but it makes me feel very anxious about that cough—I so hope to hear that it gets better by not catching fresh cold. I am glad she is taking again to the quinine. If the cough does not improve will she not send for one of those physicians? At the hotel at Paris I found a book like the Post office Directory & took down the names of the medical men at Hyères: they are Allègre, Benet, Brunel, Chassinat, Honoraty, Verignon. It struck me that Benet (an odd name if French, meaning stupid ass)⁷ is perhaps Bennet & that that is the name of the English physician. By the way, how can you ask such a question darling about Gurney’s letter—as if there needed any asking for her to open & read anything addressed to me. Do darling & then inclose it or tell me the contents whichever is least trouble. I went to Clark this morning: he examined my chest &c thoroughly & reports favorably so far that he says there is no organic disease—at the same time he quite justifies my having gone to him by the very strong impression he has given me that he thinks me in some degree threatened. In fact when I said “then you find nothing the matter with my lungs beyond catarrh” he qualified his answer by saying “not at present”. He prescribed hemlock pills, & mustard poultices, which I am sure I do not know how Kate will make or I apply: & recommended my coming again in two or three weeks if not quite well by that time, that he may examine me again—meanwhile he will look back to the notes he made formerly—& he let out that he had some “suspicion” then. However I don’t think he thinks there is much to be afraid of, as he said nothing about not going out, or about respirators or anything of that sort—but contented himself with recommending warmer flannels than those I wear. How very much I enjoy those little details about herself. I fancy myself looking at that beautiful view with her—which I am so glad she enjoys—when darling is beginning tea, at half past six, I am always making it, & then beginning my supper. H[aji] always comes in before I have done. He behaves very well & his being in the room is agreeable rather than the contrary. When she wrote this precious letter on Thursday evening I was probably in the act of arriving at our home.

I think it is best to write Angleterre. A thousand loves & best wishes for this & all other years.

[P.S.] I meant to have inclosed a note⁸ this time but have not been able to get them in time.

Edition: current; Page: [130]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 11. 1854

India House

John William Parker, Jr.

Parker, John William, Jr.

116.

TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, JR.¹

India House

Jan. 11. 1854

Dear Sir

On my arrival I found that Prescott² had not given you a receipt for the £250. I shall have much pleasure in giving you one the first time I come your way.

Mr Pollard Urquhart,³ the member for Westmeath and author of a “Life of Francesco Sforza”⁴ & of some ingenious Essays on Political Economy,⁵ has written the inclosed paper⁶ on the Irish Tenant Right question. I think it quite the best thing I have seen on the subject; moderate, conclusive, & very judiciously put for English readers. Mr Urquhart is desirous of offering it to Fraser’s. I therefore send it for the consideration of the authorities.

very faithfully yrs

J. S. Mill

Mr Urquhart’s address is Castle

Pollard—Westmeath.

J. W. Parker Junr Esq

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 14. [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

117.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Jan. 14. [1854]

9

The good which that precious letter did me, has not yet left me & will last a long while. I long however to hear more about her dear health. The coughing after talking is not an alarming symptom. It is just the same with me on Edition: current; Page: [131] the bad days of my cough & yet Clark could not find any organic disease—at least “at present”. By the way (as I am on the subject) though I see he has suspicions which he expects to be able to test by reexamination a few weeks hence, I do not at all regard them 1st, because he had similar suspicions, as it now appears, five years ago. 2nd, I can see that the side he a little suspects is the left side: now I have long felt perfectly sure that if my lungs are ever attacked it will be first & worst on the right side, as all my ailments without exception always are—& now all my sensations of uneasiness in the chest back shoulder & side are on the right side chiefly & almost exclusively. So do not be uneasy darling on account of what he said. At present my pulse is better but the appearance of improvement in the cough has ceased—apparently caused by the digitalis & going off whenever I cease taking that. Chronic catarrh is a very common old man’s disorder, but I am hardly old enough for it yet—it seems however that is what I have. I am working hard at getting up the arrear of India house business & have taken some of it home to work at tomorrow (Sunday). I hardly feel well or vigorous enough to set about any work of our own yet on Sundays & in the evenings—when I do the first thing shall be to finish the rewriting of the paper on Nature,² which I began before we left. It is now (yesterday & today) beautiful weather here, that is for England—mild and clear—but what a difference between this clearness & that, which my darling is now looking on & which do I not wish I was looking on along with her. How I rejoice every day in knowing exactly her whereabout—all the objects about her both indoors & out. I have seen & heard from or of nobody & have no news to tell. I hope the Spectator arrived safe. This morning Kate announced that she had no kitchen candles or soap; the last owing to her having washed things for Haji. I said you expected her stores of all sorts would last till March. I said I would write to you about it & in the meantime to order 1 lb of each from Dalton.³ She also said that there were only potatoes for two or three days. The last had were a bushel on the 3rd of November; have they not gone very fast, considering Haji’s three weeks absence & that when he was here (until the last week) they were only wanted one day in the week? What does the tax gatherer mean by charging us 12/for “armorial bearings”? Can he mean the crest on your dear little seal? Webster’s bill is “Examining correcting & cleaning foreign marble clock 15/, new winder 2/6. Cleaning & repairing carriage clock (which he spoiled) 12/6d.” Roberts sends a bill of £6/5 for things supplied Feb. 26. Ap. 23 & Sept. 14. I think he was paid the two first & shall look into it. Chapman (Cooper) sends a bill for 1s3d for “hoop to washing tub.” Todman a bill Edition: current; Page: [132] for 17/ which it will be very troublesome to pay. I think we settled that Prescott’s⁴ clerks were not to have the Xmas money this year? I find an unexpected difficulty in getting small notes of the Bank of France. The man I usually employ, Massey,⁴ in Leadenhall St. says he has not been able to get any, & I have tried two other places with no better success—I could get a note for 500 fr. but that seems too much to risk without first putting forth a feeler—but if I cannot get soon what I want, I must send that. I have been nowhere west of Bucklersbury⁵ where I went to get tea from Mansell’s.⁶ Thornton during our absence has published a volume of poems⁷ in which he has taken the liberty of addressing one to me by name⁸—it is an imitation of an epistle of Horace. He apologized for doing it without leave on account of my absence—a very insufficient apology—in the thing itself there is little about me, & that little neither good nor harm. Though the verses in the volume are better than common, he has not raised my opinion of his good sense by publishing them. I send this letter unpaid dear as being one that I am sure is not overweight, that you may see if they do not charge 16 sous, instead of the 10 pence which must be paid to frank it here. There seems no use in paying an extra twopence on every letter for the sake of paying here instead of there. Does there? & now adieu my own precious love. I wait for the next letter as the greatest & chief pleasure I can have during this absence. A thousand thousand loves.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 16 [1854]

Blackheath

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

118.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Blackheath

—

Jan. 16 [1854]

10

I received this morning my precious one’s letter written on the 11th & 12th—how delightfully quick it has come this time. I hope this quickness will be the general rule. To speak first of the most important thing that exists, to me, or ever can exist, your health—I do not think there is anything alarming in those sudden & violent coughs such as this seems to have been—it is not in that way that organic disease gets on. Such coughs come & go even where there is already pulmonary disease, & are not only got rid of, but do not leave Edition: current; Page: [133] what was already wrong, worse than they found it. As an instance, Sinnett,² soon after he was pronounced consumptive by Clark, had a most violent, almost terrible cough, & I happening to see him at the time, thought he must be in a very bad way—but the next thing I heard about him was that it was quite gone, & I never heard that he was at all worse after it. On the whole it is a considerable comfort that you should have had so bad a cough without any hemorrhage—but that trial having been now made, I am very happy that it seemed to be going away & I hope in going it will carry off with it the cough you had before, but if it does not, you are probably only in the same case with me, whose cough, now three months old, nothing seems to touch—Clark’s hemlock pills & mustard poultices appear to have no more effect than Gurney’s remedies. I never knew that a mere cough, not consumptive, could be as obstinate as this is, but I believe those influenza coughs last longer than any others. About Mrs Grote’s letter,³ my darling is I dare say right. It did not escape me that there was that amende, & I should have felt much more indignant if there had not. But what was to my feelings like impudent, though impudent is not exactly the right word, was, that after the things she has said & done respecting us,⁴ she should imagine that a tardy sort of recognition of you, & flattery to me, would serve to establish some sort of relation between us & her. It strikes me as déplacé to answer the letter, especially so long after it was written—but her having made this amende might make the difference of my asking how she is, at least when he mentions her. That is about as much, I think, as her good intentions deserve.—I will, dear, say to Grote what she wishes & the best opportunity will be the first time he writes a note to me in that form. I do not, & have not for years, addressed him as Mr—& it is very dull of him not to have taken the hint. I am getting on with India house work but the arrear will take me a long time—I worked at it at home all yesterday (Sunday) & got through a good deal. Sunday, alas, is not so different from other days as when she is here—though more so than when I am quite with her. I am reading in the evenings, as I said I would do, Sismondi’s Italian Republics⁵ which I read last in 1838, before going to Italy. Having seen so many of the places since makes it very interesting.

I.H. 17th. This morning I watched the loveliest dawn & sunrise & felt that I was looking directly to where she is & that that sun came straight Edition: current; Page: [134] from her. And now here is the Friday’s letter which comes from her in a still more literal sense. I am so happy that the cough is better & that she is in better spirits. How kindly she writes about the keys, never mind darling. I have bought one set of flannels since. I am glad she likes the note to Sykes. As for Chapman’s request,⁶ the pro was the great desire I feel to atone for the overpraise I have given Comte⁷ & to let it be generally known to those who know me what I think on the unfavourable side about him. The reason that the objection which you feel so strongly & which my next letter afterwards will have shewn that I felt too, did not completely decide the matter with me, was that Chapman did not want a review of this particular book, but of Comte, & I could have got rid of H.M.’s part⁸ in a sentence, perhaps without even naming her—I shd certainly have put Comte’s own book at the head along with hers & made all the references to it. But malgré cela I disliked the connexion & now I dislike it still more, & shall at once write to C. to refuse—putting the delay of an answer upon my long absence so that he may not think I hesitated. It is lucky he has not called. A propos he has not sent the January number of the Westr. I will lend the £10 to Holyoake⁹ as she says darling. I did not propose the Edinburgh to Urquhart¹⁰ because he wanted to publish in time for the beginning of the session & could not wait till April—so nothing but a magazine would do. Besides the Ed. would not have taken it. I have an answer from him, thanking me & accepting my offer to send it to Parker which I have done. I have no answer from Marshall¹¹—I have not been able to get a 100 f. note of the B. of F. but I have at last got the one which I inclose (200 f.). If it goes safe I will send a larger one next. Now that the snow is melted I must have the gardener to clear up the place—& I shall be able to pay the bills & taxes. I paid Kate’s wages. She is exactly all you said—very pleasant to speak to & be served by—but her excuses are like a person with no sense or head at all & she requires much looking after. She says Parsons’ bill is wrong because it charges, during all Haji’s absence about twice the quantity of meat she professes to have had, & she has twice taken the bill to make him alter it, but of course she has had the meat, & last Sunday the fact that a large piece of the roast beef had been cut off was as palpable as in the worst case I remember with the former cook. I shewed it to her of course, not charging her with anything but that she might know I had noticed it.

Edition: current; Page: [135]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

19 Jan [1854]

Blackheath

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

119.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Blackheath

19 Jan [1854]

11

Another dear letter came today—& did me good not only as they always do, by the love & sweetness & by the sight of the precious handwriting (she asked me in one of her letters if I could read the pencil! bless her!) but also by the pleasant picture of bright sunshine & pure air with June temperature—which is made so much more pleasant by having seen & knowing that beautiful view & all that she looked on when she stood on the balcony that evening. It is delightful to think of her with such weather—here the weather is not now cold nor very disagreeable, there is only the total absence of agreeableness, characteristic of English winter. She says nothing of her health this time—I hope the better news of the last letter continues. As for my own health she will have seen in my subsequent letters nearly all there is to tell. I am so glad she wished me to see Clark. I should not like to go to any one who had not known my constitution before, therefore certainly not to Gurney’s doctor. How excessively cool of G.² to make that very modest request to Lily! but you judged him right from the first—you always said he was presuming to the verge of impertinence. It is quite pleasant however to read about ferns growing in immense abundance. How I wish we could see them together. The Comte question is decided—Chapman shall have a most positive negative.³ I sent the £10 to Holyoake⁴ who has written back a letter of thanks. I am so glad that my answer to Westbourne⁵ was right. A propos the insolence which I think you mean was in Clara’s letter⁶—I do not think Harriet was insolent or at least intended to be so—I think her words have always been much less bad than Clara’s though her conduct has been much the same—The mistake I made about the bread was very stupid—I found it out soon after but forgot to say so to her (my dearest one) & if I had she would have got it too late to save her the trouble of writing about it. Perhaps too the potatoes have lasted as long as could be expected. Kate did make Parsons strike out 1¼ lb of beef from his bill so there was I suppose some truth in what she said.⁷ She now declares that there are only Edition: current; Page: [136] coals to last till Saturday. The two tons which Haji ordered were had on the 12th November, so they have lasted just nine weeks. I find that the same quantity had on the 23d May lasted till the 15th August being twelve weeks: we had not left off fires in the sitting rooms in May, but perhaps the difference is as little as we could expect. When we had all the fires in full play two tons only lasted a month. I am sorry to say darling I have paid most of the bills to the end of the year but I will get Haji to pay the current ones in future—perhaps once a month will be sufficient? I took what she said in her last letter about letting bills & taxes wait till I had less to do, as implying they might be paid when I had time so I have paid those which lay convenient—even now I think I must myself pay those at Lee, viz. Upton & Stevens.⁸ Marshall has just sent his bill “repairing tea urn cover 9d. new heater 2/. repairing dish cover 6d. garden fork 3/6. Roberts I see had not been paid at all in the course of the year. Did the 200 fr. note inclosed in my last arrive safe? When I hear that it did I will send another—probably a larger. I inclose a note from M. Laing,⁹ received today—none of the news seems to have reached her. You do not say (but I forget in what letter I mentioned it) whether to send the Adelaide letter.¹⁰ Is it not wonderful, the stand which the Turks are making?¹¹ this last four days battle, they being the assailants, & completely victorious, seems to me one of the most remarkable feats of arms in recent history—they must be not only most determinedly brave but (what nobody expected) excellently led. Selim Pasha¹² one of those who commanded is I believe a Pole—what a pity Bem¹³ did not live to see & take part in it. In the last few days the papers have been full of the Prince Albert political scandal,¹⁴ mostly complaining of the public gullibility, but all saying that these reports were very widely spread over the country & largely believed—the worth of popularity! Adieu darling for tonight, for I must make & apply my mustard poultice—you should see me doing it every Edition: current; Page: [137] evening—not that it or the hemlock pills seem to do any good, for the cough if better at all is so little so as to leave the matter doubtful & I am not quite so well otherwise as I was—feverish I suppose for my face is always flushed & burning & my hands generally. I shall see Clark soon again therefore. & now my precious more than life, good night.

I.H. Jan. 20. I am better, darling, than yesterday—I was less feverish in the night, & my stomach which was somewhat disordered yesterday is less so today owing to attention to diet. I sleep considerably better than I did. There is however evidently a good deal wrong about my state, but whether it is something great or something comparatively small we cannot at present know. This is, for London, a really bright sunny day with a mild south wind, & even here such a day is inspiriting. I write every evening in the little book.¹⁵ I have been reading the Essay on Nature¹⁶ as I rewrote the first part of it before we left & I think it very much improved & altogether very passable. I think I could soon finish it equally well. Did I not darling some time before leaving, give you the will? The last one I mean, the one prepared by Gregson.¹⁷ I think I did & I certainly cannot find it, but only all the old wills—& now again a thousand loves & blessings.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 23 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

120.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Jan. 23 [1854]

12

How very happy my beloved one your letter makes me by saying that the cough is so much better. I longed so for that news & now it has come I feel quite lighthearted. I have made a copy of Bird’s prescription & inclose it but I am rather afraid the pharmaciens will not know anything about Syrup of Iron & Iodide of Quinine. I will when I see Coulson which I have not done yet, but which I will do immediately, ask him to make an equivalent prescription which they will understand. Meanwhile luckily you have some—it is to be taken a teaspoonful thrice a day & Bird prefers that it should be at or immediately after meals. I too have thought very often lately about the life² & am most anxious that we should complete it the soonest possible. What there is of it is in a perfectly publishable state—as far as writing goes it could be printed tomorrow—& it contains a full writing out as far as anything can write out, what you are, as far as I am competent to describe you, Edition: current; Page: [138] & what I owe to you—but, besides that until revised by you it is little better than unwritten, it contains nothing about our private circumstances, further than shewing that there was intimate friendship for many years, & you only can decide what more it is necessary or desirable to say in order to stop the mouths of enemies hereafter. The fact is there is about as much written as I can write without your help & we must go through this together & add the rest to it at the very first opportunity—I have not forgotten what she said about bringing it with me to Paris.—Now dear about myself, I went again to Clark on Saturday being thereunto determined by feeling myself worse in several ways & especially by having had the aguish chill very much the evening before & a great deal of fever in the night after it. Clark examined my chest &c carefully again & said there is some congestion of the lungs, on the right side, but that he does not believe there is any commencement of organic disease & from the way in which he said it I feel much more sure than I did before both that he did not keep back anything, & also that he does not think the cough a really serious matter. He found some congestion of the liver which he thought was probably the cause of the fever & other symptoms, & for this he prescribed acids (nitric & muriatic) & mustard poultices in the region of the liver. Since that the fever I have had for nearly a fortnight has very much gone off & I feel better altogether—with regard to the cough he advised me to do nothing, but leave off the hemlock pills to see what cough there would be if no sedative were taken. Accordingly it is somewhat worse, especially at night—but since there seems to be nothing dangerous about it we must have patience & it will I suppose go off some time. Thanks darling for the directions about the mustard, but I have till now applied it without any intervening muslin, direct to the skin (by advice of one of the partners at Allen’s)³ & as it is, by Clark’s directions, mixed with an equal quantity of linseed meal, it is not too strong. In fact I cannot get it strong enough though I keep it on much longer than the half hour Clark recommended. My having tea at half past six is by choice—I manage so as to have done my supper & have the tea ready to pour out when Haji comes in—but the last four days I have dined in town at a very good & cheap place which Haji told me of, the place where the French restaurant formerly was, in Gracechurch St. My own angel Haji is not to blame about the place at table. That where I sit is now directly opposite the very middle of the fire, & is I think the warmest—in any case I prefer it to the other. H. does not even always sit there, but sometimes on the contrary side of the table. He behaves very well & is even empressé to do things for me as well as give things up to me—he is altogether much more amiable than I ever knew him, which is probably to be partly ascribed to his being, as he evidently is, in very much better health. He does not mope nor sit with Edition: current; Page: [139] his head on his hand (except a very little occasionally) can, & does, read nearly all the evening, & is not now at all like an invalid. I waited for one more letter before writing to Chapman but as that contained no suggestion about the reply I wrote merely that for various reasons it was impossible for me to do it⁴ & that I hoped the delay of answering had not caused him inconvenience. The first time he calls however I will say to him what you now suggest. Yesterday was the loveliest day possible in an English winter—I went out for a little in the mild & warm sun & enjoyed the beautiful view towards Shooter’s Hill—what & whom I thought of you do not need that I shd tell. I worked again all day & part of the evening at India house work. I do not however think I shall need to do this again, as I have already made a very perceptible impression on the arrears. Today though it began gloomy has turned out at last equally fine. The stocks & wallflowers in Lily’s garden are beginning to flower, & I hope the bitterness of winter is past. It seems the 26th of Decr was the coldest day; the thermr in London at zero of Fahrenheit, at Nottingham 4 degrees lower, or 36 below freezing!

Adieu my perfect—& bless her a million of times.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 26 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

121.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Jan. 26 [1854]

13

I got her letter yesterday & though she says it is not a letter I was delighted to have it, as well as with the promise of another in a day or two. To take the subjects in their order: the word “threatened” was not used by Clark but was my own expression of the impression he gave me as to his opinion, by his guarded phrase ‘at present’ & other signs. You will have seen since the more decidedly favorable opinion he afterwards gave—but I agree in all she says about it—no doubt we both are always threatened with consumption when we are long out of health & we must endeavour not to be so. I have continued better as to general health, & the cough after being for two days as I said in my last, rather worse, became & has been since considerably better, in fact more like a gradual going off than I have yet thought it—the diminution being both in cough & expectoration & what I think an improvement in the quality of both. This is the more encouraging as I am doing absolutely nothing against the cough. With regard to Thornton I do not think what you say too severe—he has suddenly plumped down to the place of a quite common person in my estimation, when I thought he was a good deal better. Edition: current; Page: [140] There are in the book² itself many proofs of excessive, even ridiculous vanity, not much the better for being, as in his case it is, disappointed vanity. He is far from the first instance I have known of inordinate vanity under very modest externals. His misjudgment of me is so far less than you supposed, as he has not put in any flattery proprement dit, but the fact itself is a piece of flattery which he must have thought would be agreeable or he would not have taken so impertinent a liberty. There are so few people of whom one can think even as well as I did of him, that I feel this a loss, & am like you angry with him for it.—I will of course resist the charge for armorial bearings³ but I really do not know whom to call on, for even the name of the Collector is not given & the only one I can hear of lives at Charlton. I have paid Webster⁴—he says he will find & send back the packing case. About the clock he offered to send his man again, which I of course declined. Roberts cannot have been paid for I find no entry this year of his name in the monthly account, so I shall pay him the first opportunity. I will try to find out why they charge four sous for the newspaper. At the post office in Leadenhall St, I was told it would go free. Shall I send the Examiner instead? I had not burned her notes, dear things as they were, but I have since burnt them all except the two last (which I shall burn presently) & a bit of one former one containing what is to be said to Grote, which I wish to have to refer to now & then until it has been said. I have not yet written to James,⁵ but will do so. I have not seen my mother, but have this morning received from her the inclosed note to which I have answered as inclosed. You will see I have adopted your idea of what is the matter with Mrs King⁶ but I rather suspect the stomach—some chronic inflammation of its coats. I have seen Coulson, & paid him (£10) as I do not expect to have to consult him again. He thought that day of great pain in the leg very singular but gave no other opinion on it. I send a prescription which he wrote for me, equivalent as he said to that of Bird—it is impossible that Bird’s could be made up at Hyères, as C. says the syrup in question is peculiar to one particular chemist (Davenport in G. Russell St) but Coulson’s seems very clear & the handwriting very distinct & no doubt they can manage it. If not however, he says it could be (or rather the equivalent of Bird’s could be) sent by post, in the form of a powder. About the bills—there seems not much amiss in Kate’s goings on. She takes a second half quartern on Tuesday as well as Saty & that suffices. The last week I have caused the extra Saty loaf, for Sunday, to be brown, as I find the underbaked bread (so much the opposite of Continental) disagrees with me at present & obliges me to eat it (unless with meat) chiefly in the Edition: current; Page: [141] form of toast. As to meat we had on Sunday a leg of mutton said in the bill to be 7 lbs 6 oz, which has served me cold the three days following & will serve me hashed today, H[aji] also having it at breakfast. That is about a pound a day allowing for bone, or probably a little less. I had quite a country walk towards Upton’s⁷ which appears to be about two miles off on the other side of the Eltham road, however he overtook me in his cart before I got there; but as it is impossible for either me or Haji to go all that way to pay the bills weekly or even monthly, I shall henceforth pay them to the man when he comes in the morning. Milk is about the only thing not dearer: bread has long been 5½d the half quartern. The weather here is still very mild & tolerably bright. I enjoy excessively the thought of the brighter, the really bright sky & pure air & June temperature she has. Think of me darling as always enjoying it with you, which I do in the most literal sense—those few bright days with you there have made that place feel completely my home & will till she returns.

Adieu my own most precious delight.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 29 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

122.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Jan. 29 [1854]

14

I am now writing on the fourth Sunday that I have spent here—it is positively only three weeks last Thursday evening since I arrived—though more than a calendar month since I left home, for home to me is those two rooms. If I were setting out now to go there I should feel it in the full meaning of the term going home. It is not that the time here is unpleasant, though, contrary to custom, a time passed entirely in routine every day similar, has seemed very long: or rather each day has seemed extremely short, but the whole time wonderfully long. However the first month in such cases is always the longest, the others pass quickly enough: I have been feeling much (I must have been incapable of feeling anything if I had not) about the shortness & uncertainty of life & the wrongness of having so much of the best of what we have to say, so long unwritten & in the power of chance—& I am determined to make a better use of what time we have. Two years, well employed, would enable us I think to get the most of it into a state fit for printing—if not in the best form for popular effect, yet in the state of concentrated thought—a sort of mental pemican, which thinkers, when there are any after us, may nourish Edition: current; Page: [142] themselves with & then dilute for other people. The Logic & Pol. Ec. may perhaps keep their buoyancy long enough to hold these other things above water till there are people capable of taking up the thread of thought & continuing it. I fancy I see one large or two small posthumous volumes of Essays, with the Life² at their head, & my heart is set on having these in a state fit for publication quelconque, if we live so long, by Christmas 1855; though not then to be published if we are still alive to improve & enlarge them. The first thing to be done & which I can do immediately towards it is to finish the paper on Nature,³ & this I mean to set about today, after finishing this letter—being the first Sunday that I have not thought it best to employ in I.H. work. That paper, I mean the part of it rewritten, seems to me on reading it to contain a great deal which we want said, said quite well enough for the volume though not so well as we shall make it when we have time. I hope to be able in two or three weeks to finish it equally well & then to begin something else—but all the other subjects in our list will be much more difficult for me even to begin upon without you to prompt me. All this however is entirely dependent on your health continuing to go on well; for these are not things that can be done in a state of real anxiety. In bodily ill health they might be. I have nothing particular to tell about my health—The cough has been so variable that I can hardly say how it is, or whether the improvement I mentioned in my last has been any of it permanent or not. However there certainly is not a great deal of cough. I live the most regular of lives, &, fortunately, hardly anybody comes to interrupt me, so that I get through a great deal of work quietly at the I.H. & generally rather overstay the hours in order to do more. Ellice has been away for a fortnight on account of gout. Parker⁴ called yesterday with the accounts of last year. The Logic has sold 260 copies in 1853—in 1852 it only sold 206. This steady sale must proceed I think from a regular annual demand from colleges & other places of education. What is strange is that the Pol. Ec. Essays sell from 20 to 50 copies each year & bring in three or four pounds annually. This is encouraging, since if that sells, I should think anything we put our name to would sell. P. brought a cheque for £102..2..5 which with the £250, & £25 which Lewis has sent for the Grote,⁵ is pretty well to have come in one year from writings of which money was not at all the object. I have never yet told you of the books which had been sent during our absence: the chief were, a large octavo volume in black imitation of thick old binding, with the arms of the State of S. Carolina stamped on it, consisting of a treatise on Government & on the Constitution of the U. States by Calhoun,⁶ with a printed Edition: current; Page: [143] paper bound into it saying that it was presented by the Legislature of S. Carolina under whose direction it had been published & who had passed a resolution authorizing the Library Committees to present it “to such individuals distinguished for science learning & public service, & to such libraries as they may select.” This signed by the Chairmen of the two Comees, of Senate & of H. of Representatives. I give you this at so much length that you may be able to judge, whether a letter ought to be written in acknowledgment.⁷ There is next a treatise on banking by Courcelle Seneuil,⁸ who is advertised as one of the translators of thePol. Econ.⁹ that is, I suppose, who took it in hand because Dussard¹⁰ failed to get through it. He was one of the best writers in La République¹¹ & has written a rather nice letter with the book. He must be written to some time—I should suppose from the advertisement that the translation is published—but if so I suppose Guillaumin¹² would have sent it.—Helps¹³ has also sent the thing which you will see mentioned in today’s Spectator,¹⁴ & there are one or two smaller things not worth mentioning. Parliament meets on Tuesday when we shall perhaps know a little more about the intentions of the Government both as to things foreign & domestic. The best thing stirring at present (save the unexpected eagerness of public opinion to act vigorously against Russia)¹⁵ is, that there is an evident movement for secularizing education. The Times for weeks past has been writing with considerable energy on that side of the question,¹⁶ & yesterday’s papers contained a great meeting at Edinburgh,¹⁷ Edition: current; Page: [144] of the Free Church leaders as well as Liberals, for abolishing all religious tests for schoolmasters in the Scotch parish schools & taking them entirely out of the control of the clergy. These are signs—

Jan. 30

And now here is her darling letter of the 26th which has been longer than usual in coming. Thank heaven it was not owing to her being ill. All she says about my health is most sweet & loving, but indeed dearest you misunderstand the cough, as I have before thought you did. Nothing could give, to my sensations, a falser idea to the medical men than to tell them I had had a cough for ten years. I had, as three quarters of all men have, an occasional need to clear my throat, without the slightest irritation or titillation or any sensation the least resembling that of cough, & my present state is totally & generically different from that habitual one. My real coughs which have been occasional but very slight, & yet very long in going off entirely, have always begun as this did with catching cold as indicated by sore throat at waking in the morning. As you wish dearest, I am not now taking medicine as the acids which C[lark] prescribed soon disagreed with my stomach, so I left them off—I shall go to him again in a few days, as though I am much less feverish I have still a bad tongue at getting up & I wish to know what he thinks of the difference in the expectoration—besides as long as the cough persists, it is right to have a medical opinion pretty often. But I am not in the least out of spirits & am quite disposed to “put will into resistance” if she will only tell me what will can do. It is a pleasant coincidence that I should receive her nice say about the “Nature” just after I have resumed it. I shall put those three beautiful sentences about “disorder” verbatim into the essay.¹⁸ I wrote a large piece yesterday at intervals (reading a bit of Sismondi¹⁹ whenever I was tired) & am well pleased with it. I don’t think we should make these essays very long, though the subjects are inexhaustible. We want a compact argument first, & if we live to expand it & add a larger dissertation, tant mieux: there is need of both. How very delightful it is to read her account of that drive to the seaside. How I should have liked to be there—& how I enjoy her having such nice summer weather & being able to enjoy it. With regard to the will, darling, I feel all but certain of having given it to you, & if I did not, as I do, remember it, I could not doubt it, since it was Edition: current; Page: [145] locked up in my bedroom drawer for long before & is not there now. My recollection is of having given it to you in your bedroom. As for the codicil²⁰ it is not at all needful that it should be on the same paper. To reexecute the will (useless says Gregson) will be useless, since I can not remember Gregson’s exact words, & for everything else the will immediately preceding (which I have safe) will serve. & now my beloved with a thousand loves & blessings from my deepest heart farewell.

[P.S.] I inclose a 500 fr. note as the other came safe.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

February 1854

Arthur Gore

Gore, Arthur

123.

TO ARTHUR GORE¹

[

February 1854

]

Sir—

I am glad that my book should have afforded you any of the pleasure or benefit which you do me the honor to tell me you have derived from it.

I have received many letters which, like yours, ask me to explain or defend particular passages of the Logic. I am not sorry to receive them as they are a sign that the book has been read in the manner which all thinkers must desire for their writings—that it has stirred up thought in the mind of the reader. But my occupations compel me to beg my correspondents to be satisfied with a more summary explanation of the opinions they dissent from, than I can generally venture to hope will remove their difficulties.

It seems to me that there is a fundamental difference between the case of the rust & that of the motion of a projectile.² In the case of the rust the original cause of its existence, were it 1000 years ago, may be said to be the proximate cause, since, as there has been no intermediate change of any sort, there is no cause more proximate than it. You may say, there is the existence of the rust itself during the intermediate time. I answer, the rust all through the 1000 years is one & the same fact, therefore we do not say that it causes itself: but the motion in successive instants (though, as you say, it may be the same qua motion) is, taken in its ensemble, a different fact, since it is essentially constituted by a different phenomenon, viz. the body in one place instead of the same body in another place. The argument is still stronger when the motion is not even the same qua motion—when besides the difference in the fact itself, there has also intervened the action Edition: current; Page: [146] of a new cause, a deflecting force or a resisting medium. The concurrence of forces at each successive instant is then a cause evidently more proximate to the effect of the next instant than the original impulse, which, therefore, can only be called the remote cause.

Our difference is more one of expression than of fact. It seems to me that when there is a change of any sort at that precise point we ought to say that a fresh causation commences. It is only while things remain exactly as the original cause left them, that the original can be also termed the proximate cause of their state.

I am Sir
yrs very truly

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 2 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

124.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Feb. 2 [1854]

15

I have just received your Sunday’s letter my own darling love. What you say of your weakness & want of appetite makes me very uneasy—the first however would alarm me more if it were not accompanied with the second, for want of appetite is not I believe an ordinary effect of consumption—it rather seems to indicate something else amiss, which therefore may be the cause also of the weakness. I wish you had Gurney or somebody as good to ask about it, for if it is as I hope, it is very likely that some simple remedy would cure it as Clark’s did (or I suppose did) my liver ailment which disturbed the general system much more than the cough. Respecting living on the Continent we have always said that that question must be decided this coming summer—As far as climate is concerned Blackheath in summer is as good as any place & better than any which is very hot—but of course only with a minimization of housekeeping, which must be reduced as nearly as possible to what it was at Nice. Whether we hold on to the I.H.² I think should depend on where you are able to live during the winter, for example if the I[sle] of W[ight] would be suitable, I could come so often that it would not amount to a separation. These things however I hope we shall talk about many times fully before it is necessary to decide them. Meanwhile if the strength & appetite do not return with the quinine, will you not see Alègre? Very probably he could at once correct the cause of those symptoms—A Edition: current; Page: [147] minor reason for seeing him would be that as they say he has lived some years in England, he would understand prescriptions & could make the chemists make them up right. If they cannot be trusted with Coulson’s prescription shall I adopt his suggestion & send the iodine &c in powder inclosed in a letter?—As for myself I am in statu quo, putting off from day to day another visit to Clark—the cough sometimes seeming to get worse, then better again—today it is better after being considerably worse for two days before. I have written at the Nature³ every evening since Sunday & am getting on pretty well with it. I shall not know what to attempt when that is done. I do not expect there will be a good opportunity or a necessity to write about the ballot—that opinion of Montesquieu & of Cicero⁴ has often been quoted in opposition to it before. I will send the Examiner hereafter instead of the Spectator. You ought to see a newspaper now that Parliament has met. The Queen’s speech⁵ has rather disappointed people by its mild tone on the Russian question but I am myself convinced by all that was said in the debates in both houses that the Govt are expecting war & mean to carry it on vigorously by sea at all events. In other respects it is the best programme there has been for years: Parliamentary reform⁶ which I thought would be shelved on account of the war—more law reform,⁷ including the taking away will & marriage causes from the ecclesiastical courts—reform of the Universities by Act of Parlt⁸—reform of the law of settlement,⁹ now a great evil—what most surprises me, a plan to be brought forward for regulating the admission to public offices,¹⁰ which is fully understood to be the extension to all of them of the competition plan adopted last year for the civil service in India.¹¹ It was plain enough that when once introduced anywhere it would spread, but I little thought the very next session would see Edition: current; Page: [148] it adopted in the Govt offices. The mere attempt to make patronage go by merit & not by favour seems to me to be a revolution in English society & likely to produce greater effects than any reforms in the laws which we can expect for a long time. This Govt also, determined to get through work & be thought men of business, have already named early days for bringing in nearly all their bills, even Parl. reform in less than a fortnight. I am really curious to see what it will be like.—I have paid most of the bills, including Roberts, & got their receipts. Winter it has only quite lately occurred to me that I could have paid when I went to Clark, quite close by.¹² I shall do so the next time. Kate has been moderate with her candles & soap, for a pound of each was had in the middle of last month & she has not yet asked for any more. I sent a 500 fr. note in my last, dated the 30th. You will surely want more dearest. It is best to have a margin. By the bye my travelling expenses were much within the margin, for when I left Boulogne I had after giving 17 fr. for an umbrella, 86 fr. left out of 300 and odd. I inclose a letter from Sykes. With the deepest and entirest love

your own

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 4. [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

125.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Feb. 4. [1854]

16

I cannot think or care about anything my own beloved one except your precious health. It is such a comfort to me that you felt better the day you sent your letter. Though that does not prove much, still the better of one day is something to set against the worse of another. About our plans, dearest, they should all be made on the supposition of living. We should do what will be best on the supposition that we live. At all events it is of little use considering what would be desirable in the hypothesis of my outliving you, for if I wished it ever so much—which I never could do for any other reason than because you wish it—I do not see how it would be possible for me to escape being made consumptive by real long continued fear of the worst, even before the worst has time to happen. But do not let this alarm you about me my darling, for I am neither feeling worse physically nor more anxious than I have felt ever since that first attack at Nice. I think we have a good Edition: current; Page: [149] chance of living a few years at least & that it is worth while to make plans on that probability. I did not understand what you meant dearest in your last by saying that in that case you are wanted here—I am sure you need not in the smallest degree consider anyone who would or could want you here—Lily and I as you know only want to be with you wherever you are.—I have little to tell of any kind. I have not been to Clark yet which you may know is a sign that I do not think myself worse. By working an hour or two every evening at the Nature² I have very nearly finished it: tonight or tomorrow will I believe do everything to it that I am at present capable of doing. There is a pleasure in seeing any fresh thing finished at least so far as to be presentable. I shall then look again through the Life.³ I have got through at least three fourths of the I.H. arrears, as fortunately the two mails which have come in since my return have brought little or nothing—I never remember such small mails. That would have been the time to be away! I have read through another new volume of Comte;⁴ there is no fresh bad in it. It is quite curious the completeness and compactness of his theory of everything—& the perfectness, without flaw, of his self-satisfaction. A number of the N. American review has been sent with an article headed “J. S. Mill on Causation”⁵ forming the rejoinder of Bowen⁶ (the editor) to the reply to him in the third ed.⁷ of the Logic. It is remarkably feeble & poor & a couple of lines in another edition⁸ would dispose of it—but it is good to see the subject stirred up & that book taking its place as the standard philosophical representative in English (unhappily now the only one) of the anti-innate principle & anti-natural-theology doctrines. While I write, in comes a note from one of the Kingsley set⁹ who has written before, as you probably remember. I send his affected note which asks leave to reprint the chapter on the Future of the Labouring Classes.¹⁰ Of course I must tell him that he must ask leave of Parker, but I should perhaps tell him also, & certainly should be prepared to tell Parker, whether I have any objection myself.¹¹ I should think I have not: what does my angel think? I did not expect the Xtian Socialists Edition: current; Page: [150] would wish to circulate the chapter as it is in the 3d edit. since it stands up for Competition against their one-eyed attacks & denunciations of it. You will I am afraid have the Spectator once more, as I was too late, for this week, in countermanding it, at least Wray¹² said so, though I cannot conceive how, even for a Saturday paper as it professes to be, Friday morning can be too late. But it did not seem worth making him send an express to town as he said he must do. Public events seem to be going as we wish. Clarendon’s¹³ last letter to Russia is unexpectedly firm & high handed¹⁴—the ambassadors you see are going away;¹⁵ the Post today says,¹⁶ professedly from authority, that Nicholas¹⁷ will now be called on to evacuate the principalities¹⁸ & that on his refusal England & France will declare war.¹⁹ The Times says nothing of this but (for the first time) says today²⁰ that Prussia & Austria²¹ have decided to stand by the other two even to the length of fighting. This seems too good news to be all of it true: but for some time England has been in every quarter making preparations for war in good earnest & the despatch is now printed²² in which the fleets in the Black Sea²³ were ordered to require & if needful compel all Russian ships of war to retire to Sebastopol & remain there. Nicholas I think is in a scrape, & will hardly get out of it without serious loss of at least prestige, which is the main source of his power.—Sharpers²⁴ has sent a bill of £6.8 or rather a memorandum “To Bill delivered”. Was any bill delivered? As you said dearest it shall wait.

Edition: current; Page: [151]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 7 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

126.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Feb. 7 [1854]

17.

Your Thursday’s letter, my perfect one, did not arrive till this morning (Tuesday). I trembled in opening it for fear lest it should say you were less well, & you may conceive the joy it gave me to read that for so many days you had been better than at any time since we arrived—that delightful news makes everything seem bright & cheerful. I had asked myself that question about the books. It would be a great privation, in living abroad, to be without books of our own, dependent entirely on public libraries which, except at Paris, are almost always limited to particular classes of books, but as we should doubtless end by fixing ourselves in some place I thought we should leave our books somewhere for a year or two & send for them afterwards. Our decision may be affected by the question of health in another way which we have not yet considered, depending on my health, for if that should get worse I should be able to leave the I.H. with two thirds of my salary,² which would make a very great difference in the aspect of matters. I went to Clark yesterday; he found the congestion in one part of the right lung not worse, but not better either, & recommended a blister or rather a substitute in the form of a blistering fluid, applied just over that place; which I have done but with no good effect apparent as yet, for the cough & irritation in the night & today are greater than they have been lately. He found the liver still congested, which he says tends to keep up the pulmonary congestion, & he gave me an alterative aperient, the mercurial chalk & rhubarb, but to be taken only when required. When I left him I paid Mrs Winter’s³ bill, but not to herself, for she has left the business & there is a plate on the door Mrs Cresswell successor to Mrs Winter. The young woman there gave me however as she said she could do, a receipt in behalf of Mrs Winter. I will tell my mother the first time I have occasion to write, all you mention. She is very familiar with gallstones as one of her sisters has been several times at death’s door with them. That perhaps confirms your conjecture as I believe all diseases are apt to go in families since constitutions & temperaments do so. About the pensions,⁴ it occurred to me just after I had sent the note to Edition: current; Page: [152] my mother & written about it to you, that the meaning of the difference of amount must be that since last summer the two smaller pensions are subject to income tax, which of course has been deducted at the I.H. though when the warrants merely passed through my hands I did not notice it. So I wrote a single sentence to my mother explaining it, since which I have heard nothing more from her. I finished the “Nature”⁵ on Sunday as I expected. I am quite puzzled what to attempt next—I will just copy the list of subjects we made out in the confused order in which we put them down. Differences of character (nation, race, age, sex, temperament). Love. Education of tastes. Religion de l’Avenir. Plato. Slander. Foundation of morals. Utility of religion. Socialism. Liberty. Doctrine that causation is will. To these I have now added from your letter: Family, & Conventional. It will be a tolerable two years work to finish all that? Perhaps the first of them is the one I could do most to by myself, at least of those equally important.⁶ I do not the least remember what you say I said darling one of those rather pleasant days, but I have no doubt it was not half of what I thought. I shall make a point of saying something emphatic to Haji to remind him of what he must very well know I think or rather know. It is so very pleasant to read of that splendid weather, knowing that you are really having it. Here we had for two or three days a return of frost & one day of dense fog, but it has gone away again & is now quite mild, & yesterday was very fine & sunny but most days are dull & cloudy though it seldom rains. The dear place looks very well and I have had the gardener to make it tidy, but I shall not have him any more till you tell me. I am glad you will have had the Examiner yesterday instead of the Spectator; the characteristic of which seems to me to be tame commonplace, which in England always means vulgar. The Examiner is certainly better, though ridiculously weak sometimes—for example how ludicrous that deification of Lady Russell’s letters,⁷ & done in such good faith too, for he quotes the things he admires—he is evidently so overpowered with the fact of a man’s wife being in love with him that he thinks any even the most house-maidlike expression of that fact quite superhuman. Then what can be in a worse spirit than the remarks on the conference at the Socy of Arts.⁸ It is the driest & narrowest of the old political economy, utterly unconscious of the existence of a newer & better. Still I greatly prefer the Ex. to the Spectator.—The letters darling are charged double here, the same as there, that is as many times 10d as the French post charges 8d. I once had to pay 2/1 for a Edition: current; Page: [153] letter, being 2½ times the single postage. We seem to be really now at war,⁹ & with general approval. The English have shown pluck in spite of all the Times could do.¹⁰

Adieu my darling with every possible blessing.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 10 [1854] Friday

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

127.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Feb. 10 [1854]

Friday

18

My precious one I hoped, though I did not venture to expect, a letter today, but I am not disappointed, for such good news as the last contained will hold out for a good while. Still I long for another to confirm it. You will be surprised when I tell you that I went again to Clark this morning—& I am afraid you will think I am fidgety about my ailments, but the reverse is the case, for I never was so much the opposite of nervous about my own health, & I believe whatever were to happen I should look it in the face quite calmly. But my reason for going today was one which I think would have made you wish me to go—namely the decided & unmistakeable appearance of blood in the expectoration. Clark however on my describing it to him, does not think it of any importance, but thinks it is very likely not from the lungs, & even if it does come from them, thinks it is from local & very circumscribed congestion not from a generally congested state. Very glad was I to hear anything which diminishes the importance of bleeding in a chest case. I knew before that it is not at all a sure sign of consumption, as it often accompanies bronchitis—which is the real technical name of my cough, though it sounds too large & formidable for it. I am very well convinced, since Clark thinks so, that I am not in a consumption at present, however likely this cough is to end in that—for it seems to resist all the usual remedies. The favourable circumstance is that none of my ailments ever seem to yield to remedies, but after teazing on for an unconscionable time, go away or abate of themselves—as perhaps this will if all goes well with my dearest one. Indeed, if I had belief in presentiments I should feel quite assured on that point, for it appears to me so completely natural that while my darling lives I should Edition: current; Page: [154] live to keep her company. I have not begun another Essay yet, but have read through all that is written of the Life²—I find it wants revision, which I shall give it—but I do not well know what to do with some of the passages which we marked for alteration in the early part of it which we read together. They were mostly passages in which I had written, you thought, too much of the truth or what I believe to be the truth about my own defects. I certainly do not desire to say more about them than integrity requires, but the difficult matter is to decide how much that is. Of course one does not, in writing a life, either one’s own or another’s, undertake to tell everything—& it will be right to put something into this which shall prevent any one from being able to suppose or to pretend, that we undertake to keep nothing back. Still it va sans dire that it ought to be on the whole a fair representation. Some things appear to me on looking at them now to be said very crudely, which does not surprise me in a first draft, in which the essential was to say everything, somehow, sauf to omit or revise afterwards. As to matters of opinion & feeling on general subjects, I find there is a great deal of good matter written down in the Life which we have not written anywhere else, & which will make it as valuable in that respect (apart from its main object) as the best things we have published. But of what particularly concerns our life there is nothing yet written, except the descriptions of you, & of your effect on me; which are at all events a permanent memorial of what I know you to be, & (so far as it can be shewn by generalities) of what I owe to you intellectually. That, though it is the smallest part of what you are to me, is the most important to commemorate, as people are comparatively willing to suppose all the rest. But we have to consider, which we can only do together, how much of our story it is advisable to tell, in order to make head against the representations of enemies when we shall not be alive to add anything to it. If it was not to be published for 100 years I should say, tell all, simply & without reserve. As it is there must be care taken not to put arms into the hands of the enemy.—I think dear you should have another 500 f. note. The posting to Chalon will cost with three horses about £18, with two £14: the railway from Chalon to Paris £3/4 without reckoning baggage for which there will be a high charge. The inns with slow travelling will cost a good deal & you ought not to arrive at Paris³ without something in hand—so you will not have margin enough. Perhaps less than 500 f. might do, but since it goes safe, & is easier to get than a smaller note, it is better. But I shall hear more about it in your next letter⁴ my beloved.

With a thousand thousand blessings.

Edition: current; Page: [155]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 12 [1854] Sunday

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

128.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Feb. 12 [1854]

Sunday

19

I got your darling letter of the 6th yesterday, my adored one. Touching our difference about the cough—I dare say I was wrong, my beautiful one since you say so, about most men having a habit of occasionally clearing the throat. However the habit I had was not what I mean by a cough; since it was not excited by any irritation, or any sensation except of huskiness—was always voluntary—& in fact consisted only in a little more than the average secretion of mucus from a membrane which is one of those called mucous because its universal function is always to secrete some. Then there never was enough to cause expectoration, but when from sneezing or any other accident a little was brought up, it was pure, transparent & colourless—the appearance of health—while this from the beginning has been of the kind I know so well, the greenish yellow mixed with transparent, which belongs to bronchitis & consumption, for in this respect both are alike until tuberculous deposits begin to be coughed up. Latterly too the transparent part has in great measure become white, opaque & dense enough to sink in water which however Clark agrees with me in thinking nothing of. Then you know even that clearing the throat (for so I must call it & not cough, since it is a quite different action of the throat, & one which I can do now, & quite distinguish from cough) went quite away, & staid away for a year or more—it only came back a year ago, certainly as a legacy left behind by a cough I then had. I did not mean to write so prolixly on this very idle subject—but granting it was a cough, if this one can be brought back to what that was, I shall think it cured. Clark does not think the liver the cause or main seat of my ailments, though congestion there in his opinion tends to keep up the other disorder—but he decidedly says there is congestion in one place of the lungs. As to care about my appointments in going to Clark, I have been attentive to them. I always wore one of my best shirts, those with the invisible buttons, not the linen because they were so much older—but if you think it desirable I will buy some linen. The braces I will attend to—hitherto those I bought at Nice have seemed good enough. The criticisability of the flannels was not as to their quality, for they were very good, & quite new—but he thought them not thick enough & recommended wearing another sort (with short sleeves) over them which I have done ever since. I got a new hat the other day in honor of him (& Mrs Winter)² & on the whole have behaved very well in the Edition: current; Page: [156] matter, though I say it that shouldn’t. The Americans³ & the Frenchman⁴ shall be written to, though I regret the necessity as it obliges me to read or at least look through the Frenchman’s large book on banking,⁵ which yesterday & today I have begun doing. After so long a delay I must if possible say to him something complimentary about it. His letter is dated in October & directed Monsieur John Stuart Mill, économiste, à Londres. I wonder if a letter similarly directed would reach a Frenchman. This was sent to the “Economist” office & “returned not known.” How they found out or what good genius suggested to the P. office to try the India house I don’t know. The book was sent to Delizy’s⁶ & therefore came easily, as his place is frequented by Frenchmen who know me. Your programme of a letter to him is not an easy one to execute, but as I can speak well of his articles in La République,⁷ I can no doubt make the letter flattering & thence (if he is unlike me) agreeable. Helps⁸ is a very poor creature but quite made to be the triton of such minnows as the literary lions of this day, & like all of them he is made worse than he would be by self conceit. He is after all rather better than Henry Taylor.⁹ How true all you say of Sykes’ letter & of Emilia.¹⁰ We see however how right it was to make a point of calling on her & that it has answered its purpose. One never repents of having followed your judgment. As for the rascal Verignon¹¹ I read about him with compunction thinking how near the same thing was to happening before through my fault. Have you, darling, demanded a copy of the prescription? for he will perhaps admit having copied it (as they all do) into his book. If it is one of Gurney’s shall I write to him, if you have not, asking for it again? The loss of appetite especially as you are better in other respects, puzzles me. Your being better is I should think very much owing to the fine weather, & it makes me anxious that you should not be in haste to set out for Paris, since you will find very different weather as soon as you get out of Provence if not even before. Here it is now cold March weather with northerly winds & hardly ever a really bright day. The Govt plan for appointments to public offices seems thorough & admirable if I can judge from the Times¹² which has had some excellent articles, quite above the Times, in praise of it, but it is not appreciated. The Edition: current; Page: [157] Post¹³ is furious against it & there is much opposition brewing. As for parl. reform all sides in the two houses are bawling out “this is not the time, in war we must have no apple of discord” in which trash the Times has now joined.¹⁴

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 13. 1854

East India House

Frederick J. Furnivall

Furnivall, Frederick J.

129.

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL¹

East India House

Feb. 13. 1854

Dear Sir

I owe an apology for not having given an earlier answer to a proposal which does me so much honour as that made in your letter of the 3d respecting the chapter of my Pol. Econ. on the Future of the Labouring Classes.² I am glad that you think its circulation among the working people likely to be useful; and I am sure that whatever helps to make them connect their hopes with cooperation, and with the moral qualities necessary to make cooperation succeed, rather than with strikes to impose bad restrictions on employers, or simply to extort more money, will do for them what they are greatly in need of. I therefore so far as depends upon me, give my full consent and approbation to your public spirited project—but I should like first to make some little additions to the chapter, tending to increase its usefulness. I must add also that the consent of Mr Parker is necessary, the edition of the P.E. now on sale being his property.³

I am dr Sir
yrs very truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 13 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

130.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Feb. 13 [1854]

Here is your letter of the 9th my darling darling love. It quite settles the matter against your coming, & only leaves the question open whether I should Edition: current; Page: [158] not at once go to you. I was in hopes, before, that you could cross the Channel without return of hemorrhage, as that very violent cough (continued for some days) had not produced it. When I said, our plans should be formed on the supposition of living, I meant that they should not be formed (as I was afraid yours were) in the supposition that it was not worth giving up the I.H. unless with a more sure prospect of life than there is. It is worth giving it up for any prospect of life & not worth keeping it for anything that life deprived of you could give me if I survived your loss. Do not think however my own love that I am as you say ennuyé in your absence. I am not & never should be ennuyé, & I have on the contrary very much excitement, the expectation, namely, & reading of your letters. It is the delight of being with you, & all the delight you give me when I am with you, that is my loss. But to think for an instant of that as a reason for your coming, would be monstrous, though it is a very strong reason for my going. In fact the thing which goes farthest with me on the side of not giving up the I.H. at once is, the extreme probability of my having a strong medical recommendation to pass the next winter abroad,² which would enable me, while holding on here for the present, to pass six months with you in the climate we might think most suitable. I call this an extreme probability because even if my cough goes away in spring, the obstinacy of it proves such a decided predisposition that I am very likely to have it again next winter, & to diminish the chance of that, passing the winter abroad in hopes of breaking the habit would probably be the recommendation of any medical man. As to our meeting—if it is not for the purpose of crossing, why should you go through the immense fatigue & danger of that journey to Paris? It is true that Hyères would be too hot to be a fit place for remaining in during the summer & I wish I knew the place fittest for that, & at the same time not so far as Paris from any place which would be suitable for next winter—but it would be as difficult for you to get to Geneva or Bordeaux as to Paris. This requires a great deal of consideration & perhaps a medical opinion—but whether for Paris or anywhere else you should not think of leaving Hyères till it is quite spring—you will see by what I wrote yesterday that even before this last letter I was anxious that you should not leave soon. I do not think there is any real difference in the facility of my getting away at or after Easter—that sort of notion is becoming more & more gone-by and disregarded. Much more will depend on what happens to be doing here at the time, & whether Oliphant³ or the Chairman whoever he is, feels embarrassed or not. On the whole that is not worth considering. I hope darling that the spitting of blood is like mine, immaterial, & will not continue. Mine has not returned. Increase Edition: current; Page: [159] of cough I every now & then have, & pains in the chest so much & often that I have got utterly to despise them. How much cough have you my dearest life? I have not forgotten that I am to bring the biography⁴ with me. It is mentioned in the codicil, & placed at your absolute disposal to publish or not. But if we are not to be together this summer it is doubly important to have as much of the life written as can be written before we meet—therefore will you my own love in one of your sweetest letters give me your general notion of what we should say or imply respecting our private concerns. As it is, it shews confidential friendship & strong attachment ending in marriage when you were free & ignores there having ever been any scandalous suspicions about us. I will answer Furnivall⁵ as you say. I do not know what alterations the chapter⁶ requires & cannot get at it as the last edition is locked up in the plant room. I can of course get from Parker another copy, or even those particular sheets from the “waste”. I imagine that if I tell Furnivall of making alterations he will be willing to give me time enough—besides I could send you the chapter by post. I send the Examiner again today & am very glad it is so much better than the Spectator. Tonight Lord John Russell is to introduce his Reform Bill,⁷ so we shall see what the aggregate wisdom of this ministry can do in that respect.

Adieu with all possible love.

[P.S.] This time it is the large note I cannot get, & I can get small ones, so I will send them by instalments.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 15 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

131.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Feb. 15 [1854]

20

Sweetest & kindest—to write so soon to give him the comfort of knowing that she was better—& indeed darling the good it does him is worth the trouble. If the improvement is owing to the weather being cooler, it is curious—though it seems likely enough that heat should cause weakness & loss of appetite, but strange that the heat of January should do so; even in Provence. There seems more coincidence in the changes of weather there & here than Edition: current; Page: [160] I shd have expected. Here too it has been much colder for several days, & even a good deal of ice, but the frost went away last night. I am never without thinking on what is best to be done—When I said that our plans should be on the supposition of living, I meant that they should be on the supposition that we could live by doing every thing that could most help towards living, not by doing anything contrary to it—that therefore the uncertainty of life should not prevent our giving up England if that is the best thing to do on the supposition of life. When I thought of your passing the summer here it was under the idea that in summer England is as good a place for weak lungs as any that we could fix upon—but this of course assumed that you would be able to bear the coming (& also the crossing again for the next winter in the very probable case of its being necessary) & that, I now see, is much too formidable a risk to be run, at all events unless you get very much better first, if even then. Is it your idea to stay the summer at Paris? If so & if we determine not to give up the I.H. directly, I must come over as often as I can if only for a day or two, & hope for a six months absence on medical certificate next winter.² I am anxious to know how much cough you have—how often in the day you cough, & whether in the night & at getting up. Is there any expectoration? have you spit blood again? what was the blood like—florid red like arterial blood therefore quite fresh, or dark blue venous blood? If the former, Clark thinks nothing of it. I see no reason against asking Clark who is the best English physician at Paris. His information is probably fresher than about Nice where he knew nothing about Gurney but only Travis.³—The ministry have produced their Parl. Reform bill⁴ & I must say it does more than I expected from them—I say more, not better, as it is very doubtful if lowering the franchise will not do more harm than good. It is to be lowered in boroughs from £10 to £6 houses, but with a provision requiring two years & a half residence—which is like giving with one hand to take back with the other. How far this provision will go to neutralize the concession or how the thing will work practically, nobody I suppose knows. Besides this, the county franchise is given to all £10 householders who have not votes for towns—which will take away many counties from the landed influence altogether. Also all graduates of any university are to have votes; all who pay £2 income tax or assessed taxes, or have £10 a year in the funds or Bank or India stock, or who receive £100 a year salary public or private (but not including weekly wages) or have had for three years, £50 in the savings bank. You see there is no new principle & some, but very little practical improvement in the conditions of the franchise. 19 small boroughs are to be disfranchised, & 33 which return two Edition: current; Page: [161] members each are to be reduced to one. Every town or county of more than 100,000 inhabitants is to elect three members instead of two, the metropolitan districts however (except Southwark) being excepted. A new district returning two members is to be made of Kensington & Chelsea, & three more manufacturing towns are to elect one member each. The inns of court! are to elect two members (as if there were not lawyers enough in the house) & the London University one. They have also adopted the idea that universities ought to be represented in proportion to their numbers—but instead of Marshall’s⁵ & Grey’s⁶ good plan of doing this by allowing voters to give all their votes to one person, they propose that where there are three to be elected, each elector shall only be allowed to vote for two. This insures its rejection, for John Bull will never see reason why when three members are to be elected he should only be able to give two votes. You will see it all in next week’s Examiner⁷ & probably some both good & bad remarks on it. The Exr seems to me much better than the Spec[tator]—not such a dry dead level—much higher generally, & sometimes sinking lower. I think it has more & better aperçus than the Specr. I shd like the Specr better if I thought it purposely kept back opinions, but it always seems to me as if its system & preference was for saying something against whatever looks like a principle. The trash talked about Albert⁸ disgusted me as it did you. That Campbell⁹ is an odious animal—It was so like him to make the Marriage Commission¹⁰ recommend that men shd be able to get divorce in the one case & women not. The Post,¹¹ always right feeling on such subjects, speaks of this as monstrous, & says, make it easy & cheap to both; of course however only meaning I am afraid, in the one permitted case.

Edition: current; Page: [162]

I did not mention you, dear, at Winter’s except saying I called to pay a little bill of my wife’s. I will make Sharpers give a bill & then pay it.

I inclosed 200 fr. in my last & now inclose the remainder of the 500.

Bless you my own—& love me as you do.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 18. 1854

East India House

Frederick J. Furnivall

Furnivall, Frederick J.

132.

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL¹

East India House

Feb. 18. 1854

My dear Sir

I will take the chapter² in hand without loss of time. You will I dare say allow me a few days to consider in what manner I can improve it. yrs very faithfully.

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 18 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

133.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Feb. 18 [1854]

21

I am writing dearest with snow again on the ground (though it seems to be melting) & very cold windy weather. I hope it continues cooler there too, since the cooler weather seems to agree best with you. I did not much expect a letter today as the last came sooner than usual—but on Monday perhaps—& happy shall I be if it says you continue better. As for me I continue much the same, except that the digestion, somehow, is decidedly worse than it was at Nice & on the way here. I wrote to Furnivall² in the manner you wished, & have had two notes from him since. The first short “I am very much obliged to you for your kind letter of yesterday, & will communicate forthwith with Messrs Parker & Son, & then again with you as to the additions to the chapter.” The other which came this morning “Messrs P. & Son have given me their consent to your chapter on” &c “being reprinted. If you will be kind enough to send me the additions you said you would be so good as to make, as soon as is convenient to you, I will have the chapter as revised set Edition: current; Page: [163] up immediately on receipt of them, & send you a proof.” I wrote a short answer³ asking for a few days time to consider how I could improve it, & wrote to Parker for the sheets⁴—they will come I suppose on Monday & I will send them to my precious guide philosopher & friend by that day’s post. I have not the least idea at present what additions they require, but between us we shall I am sure manage to improve them very much. I have also finished reading the Frenchman’s book,⁵ & as a week’s addition to the months he has waited for a reply can make no difference, I send her his note & a draft of a reply⁶—It has given me a good deal of trouble & I have not made a good thing of it at last, but my dearest one will. Shall I date it India House or Blackheath? I am reading the American book,⁷ a Treatise on Government generally & on the institutions of the U. States in particular—it is considerably more philosophical than I expected, at least in the sense of being grounded on principles—& the stile, except in being rather diffuse, may be called severe—the writing of a logician not an American rhetorician. But there is not a word to take the writer out of the category of hewers of wood & drawers of water. He is in some points a very inferior likeness of my father. One did not expect that in an American, but if in any, in this particular man. I will send you the draft of a letter in acknowledgment of the gift when I have written one.⁸—I want to consult you about writing to Lewis to ask a release from my promise of an article on India.⁹ He reminded me of it in a short note inclosing payment for the article on Grote,¹⁰ & I said in reply that I could not at all say when it would be ready—but I think I ought to give it up wholly. It would take very great trouble & much time to do it well, & so as to be unimpeachable in all matters of fact—& I do not think I ought to spare so much time for so secondary a matter when there is so much of the first importance to be written—I never should have undertaken it had I not thought that most part of the labour it would require must be undergone at all events for the sake of the I.H., & my remaining in the I.H. long enough to make the labour of much use there is now so very problematical that it would be almost a waste of time that may be so much better employed. I am most anxious at present about the Life,¹¹ but I can do little in the way of addition to it till I hear from her. In my last letter but one I inclosed a 200 fr. note, & in the last a 200 & a 100. We are now all but actually at war, & shall probably be in the thick of it in a few weeks¹²—the sending troops to Turkey & and that vast fleet to the Baltic are like serious work. There is perfect Edition: current; Page: [164] unanimity among all parties here & the war feeling seems to pervade everybody in a manner which nobody thought would ever happen again. I am glad of it, but there is one great evil which is happening from all this—the complete rehabilitation of Louis Napoleon.¹³ Nothing could possibly have been more opportune for him—Instead of being stigmatized as an usurper even by two cabinet ministers,¹⁴ as he was just before this, he is now the champion of freedom & justice, receiving the highest compliments from Tory, Whig & Radical—the friend of England, the honest straightforward politician & diplomatist whom ministers, members of parliament & newspapers are never tired of praising. I do not think he will ever now be unpopular in this country unless he does something grossly iniquitous which he now has no motive to do. To destroy the power & prestige of Russia is a great thing, but it is dearly bought at that price. Then I do not at all believe that while the war lasts there will be a sufficient popular feeling to carry this or any other Reform Bill¹⁵ against the H. of Lords. Perhaps that is not of much consequence however.—I have seen nobody this long while, enjoying a happy immunity from calls—except now & then some bore of an old Indian. & now adieu with the utmost possible love.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb 18 [1854]

East India House

John William Parker

Parker, John William

134.

TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER¹

East India House

Feb 18 [1854]

Dear Sir

As I understand from Mr Furnivall that he has obtained your consent to his reprinting the chapter of the Pol. Econ. on the Future of the Labouring Classes,² & as I should like to make some little improvements first, I should be obliged by your sending me the sheets of the chapter, if possible, from the waste.

I should think the separate circulation of the chapter as he proposes would promote rather than affect injuriously the sale of the entire work.

ever yrs truly

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [165]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Monday Feb. 20 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

135.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Monday evg

Feb. 20 [1854]

22

Your letter of the 14th and 15th my own love arrived about the middle of today.² Thank heaven it says you continue better, if only a little. How is it my darling that you say you have broken the habit of expectoration? When you cough are you not obliged to swallow something if you do not spit it up? I seldom expectorate now except in the morning while dressing—but the secretion is still there though I do not throw it out. However it is, I really think, less in quantity than it used to be, & if as you advise I exert myself to the utmost to check coughing perhaps it will diminish still more. I think darling if you now have no expectoration at all after having had some, you cannot have consumption: dry cough I have always understood is only in the very earliest stage of the disease, & expectoration when it does begin always increases—How are you now as to appetite? & strength? I have a return this evening of aching in the right thigh—I hope it is not to be like that day at the Hotel des Ambassadeurs.

How strange, that snow & intense cold after a month of summer heat. Certainly going from a London to a Hyères winter would not be avoiding great & abrupt changes of temperature. The snow here has melted again—it is still cold, but not intensely so. Your programme of an essay on the utility of religion³ is beautiful, but it requires you to fill it up—I can try, but a few paragraphs will bring me to the end of all I have got to say on the subject. What would be the use of my outliving you! I could write nothing worth keeping alive for except with your prompting. As to the Life⁴—which I have been revising & correcting—the greater part, in bulk, of what is written consists of the history of my mind up to the time when your influence over it Edition: current; Page: [166] began—& I do not think there can be much objectionable in that part, even including as it does, sketches of the character of most of the people I was intimate with—if I could be said to be so with any one. I quite agree in the sort of résumé of our relationship which you suggest⁵—but if it is to be only as you say a dozen lines, or even three or four dozen, could you not my own love write it out your darling self & send it in one of your precious letters—It is one of the many things of which the fond would be much better laid by you & we can add to it afterwards if we see occasion. I sent the Examiner today. I am so sorry & ashamed of the spots of grease on it. The chapter of the P.E.⁶ I shall send by the post which takes this letter. If the post office tells me right, a penny stamp will cover it & you will have nothing to pay. I do not know where to begin or where to stop in attempting to improve it. One would like to write a treatise instead. As for minor additions, I wish I could get some more recent facts as to the French Associations Ouvrières.⁷ I must also say something about the English ones (though a very little will suffice) as Furnivall suggests in another note he has written to me which I inclose. The note at p. 331 now requires modification, so far as concerns the first half of it. I shall not attempt any alterations till I hear from you. I will give your “happy returns” to Haji tomorrow.⁸ The last Sunday but one I took occasion in talking with him to say you were the profoundest thinker & most consummate reasoner I had ever known—he made no remark to the point but ejaculated a strong wish that you were back here. He is intensely taken up with the Russian affair—he always knows the minutest circumstances about the military operations, or the preparations for war here & in France—& is continually saying how much he should like to be going to the Black Sea, to make a naval campaign against Russia &c. He has none of the feelings now apparently either physical or moral, of an invalid—& I often wonder what has become of his ailments. The invalid bay, darling, is in perfect health & looks as well as its opposite neighbour. I hope the dear palms will not permanently suffer, or the olives either. I have made Sharpers send a bill of which this is a copy:

Edition: current; Page: [167]

12 | china tea cups & saucers } | 3 — 18 — |
8 | coffee cups 1 slop basin } |
2 | bread & butter plates } |
12 | breakfast plates 3/ |  | 1 — 16 —
1 | cream ewer |  | 4 6
1 | slop basin |  | 4 6
12 | cut champagne glasses—cut hollow |  | 1 — 1 —
1 | garden pot stand green & white |  | 5 —
| package |  | 1 6
|  | 7 — 10 6
Credit 12 champagne glasses | 1 — 1 — |
package | 1 6 | 1 — 2 6
|  |  | 6 — 8 0

The bushel of potatoes has lasted just five weeks, about 11 lbs a week. I have dined out 8 times or nearly twice a week—say 5 lbs for me, 1 lb Haji, leaving 5 lbs for Kate, less than a pound each. The pound of kitchen candles lasted from 14 Jan. to 11 Feb, the pound of soap to 18 Feb. Wright has sent no bills, I wonder why.

A thousand & a thousand loves.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 24 [1854]

Blackheath

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

136.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Blackheath

Feb. 24 [1854]

23

I received your Sunday’s letter dearest yesterday (Thursday) & meant to have written yesterday evening but I was tired, fell asleep in my chair, slept a long time & woke feeling unfit for anything but going to bed—the first time since my return that any similar thing has happened, for though I sometimes feel sleepy & doze directly after dinner, it never lasts many minutes. I know nothing to account for it, nor had I had anything particular to tire me yesterday. Your letter thank heaven contains much more of good than bad about your health—the bad is the weakness but though I ardently desire to hear that you are stronger I do not expect it till summer. Your having much less cough & uneasiness in the chest makes me think less about the weakness—one’s strength varies so very much with little apparent cause when once one is in delicate health—& I think one is always weaker at the end of winter—you, especially, always are, & no doubt winter is winter Edition: current; Page: [168] even at Hyères. I too am considerably less strong, or feel so at least, than I did at Nice, but I do not think that proves anything, nor am I sure that it would not turn out to be chiefly nervous weakness which would go off in a day’s walk, or a journey, or anything else which would increase real weakness. Altogether I hope the best for both of us, & see nothing in the state of either to discourage the hope. I hope we shall live to write together “all we wish to leave written” to most of which your living is quite as essential as mine, for even if the wreck I should be could work on with undiminished faculties, my faculties at the best are not adequate to the highest subjects & have already done almost the best they are adequate to. Do not think darling that I should ever make this an excuse to myself for not doing my very best—if I survived you, & anything we much care about was not already fixed in writing, you might depend on my attempting all of it & doing my very best to make it such as you would wish, for my only rule of life then would be what I thought you would wish as it now is what you tell me you wish. But I am not fit to write on anything but the outskirts of the great questions of feeling & life without you to prompt me as well as to keep me right. So we must do what we can while we are alive—the Life being the first thing—which independent of the personal matters which it will set right when we have made it what we intend, is even now an unreserved proclamation of our opinions on religion, nature, & much else. About that long journey—I shall not dread it so much for you if the cough goes quite or nearly quite off, which it is very likely to do, though no doubt there will always be much danger of its returning. It is quite possible that the journey may give strength instead of taking it away; most likely so, if the weakness is as I hope, chiefly nervous. It is a curious coincidence that the same day I received your letter in which you speak of Sykes’ return, he made his appearance. He just mentioned Emilia as regretting that she had not earlier information of your being at Nice (the humbug!) This he said among other things in a manner not requiring that I should take any notice of it which accordingly I did not. He seemed to think he had more need to apologize to me than I to him. His enquiries about your health I answered as you desired—“pretty well, but not strong.” It appeared he had heard about us from Gurney & no doubt heard all that gossiping creature had to say—the only thing he mentioned was that G. had been called in “at the eleventh hour”—it is very lucky it was not the twelfth. Sykes’ account shews that the return of cold weather which you have had has been general, & worse in France than here. At Bourges he said 12 degr centigrade below freezing & at Paris 4 degr I think he said: he did get to Châlons by the steamboat, but it was stopped by the ice the day after. Here it was cold, but nothing comparable to that as indeed our insular cold seldom is. I was amused with myself for what I wrote about the appointments,² when I read your comment. Edition: current; Page: [169] When I go next to C.³ which will probably be on Tuesday I will put on an old linen shirt. The flannels were from Brier’s, but I will get some from Capper’s today or tomorrow⁴ & will discard the second flannel though I am sure C. meant it quite seriously. Whatever danger I am in of consumption is not I think from general weak health as I am not sufficiently out of order for that, but specifically from the cough, connected as it is with congestion of the lungs which if long continued is always in danger of ending in consumption. For that reason it seems necessary to have the chest examined now & then unless the cough goes off. It was not examined the last time I went. I should like much to know the meaning of that swelling—had it not gone off before? Is there anything permanent about it? I too have been blistering for a fortnight past, with no perceptible result for the cough is rather worse. I subscribed to the anti-newspaper stamp affair solely out of hostility to the Times.⁵ If you think it better not I will not subscribe again—though surely it would be a great improvement to English working men if they could be made Americans.

Sharpers’ bill of which I sent a copy in my last letter,⁶ is dated June 1853. The Govt have brought in a useful bill for schools in Scotland⁷ but Russell, grown as you say dévôt, the other day repeated his declaration against giving secular education without religion.⁸

Adieu my own darling love & light of my life, love me always as you do.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 28 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

137.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Feb. 28 [1854]

24

I received your precious letter yesterday my beloved—precious always, but even more so this time than many others because it tells me that you are Edition: current; Page: [170] better & shews that you are more hopeful. I put off writing till today as I meant to go to Clark this morning that I might tell you anything he said. He thinks, from the indications of the stethoscope and the sounds on percussion, that the chest is a little better. It is the first time he has thought so, & though there is no diminution of cough, if he is right, that I suppose will follow. He thinks my stomach out of order (which is evident) but that medicine will do it no good—saving a slight tonic which he prescribed. I did not ask him about physicians at Paris as you told me not—but his knowledge of my having been at Nice came from me. He asked how long I had had the cough, & when I told him, he said it was imprudent to have let it go on so long without advice. I said I had not, & it was natural & seemed best to shew why I had sought other advice than his. You will say perhaps it was presumption in him to think or say that I had no advice because I did not come to him—but he was perhaps justified by my having gone several times to him on much slighter indications of chest disorder & by my now coming to him again. How I came to mention Gurney’s name I do not remember but I was a little curious to hear what he would say & what would be his judgment between G. & Travis & the result is that I think his opinion would be an affair of party. I have been led into writing all this by the mention of Clark. About our plans, & first our ultimate plans—we are not yet at the £500 certain which you mention,² but we are past £400: there is the 3 per cent stock—£141: last year there was from Herbert £43: from railways there is £175, altogether £359. Then there is above £700 ready to invest, besides what is in the Comml Bank which I suppose must be at least £500. We might turn the uninvested & the railway money into a life annuity, but as the railways give much higher interest than the common rate, I suppose we should not much increase the income by that. £1200 invested in railways at the present prices would yield not much less than 5 per cent or £60. That gives nearly £420, & we should add something more if we keep to the I.H. for this year, which it will probably be well to do in any case since my health during that time will probably decide not only on my getting next winter abroad but probably on the likelihood of my being able to get a pension. These things being considered you will understand why Clark’s more favourable opinion this morning was quite as disagreeable to me as agreeable. With regard to your coming over, especially with the prospect of a second crossing in autumn, but even without that, I dread it so much that I hardly allow myself to wish it—but when we meet at Paris there will be much greater means of judging—If as I hope the malady has now taken the turn, you will probably be much better then than now. I am very much afraid of your encountering the great cold of the centre Edition: current; Page: [171] & north of France too soon. It seems to me much too soon to leave Hyères yet, while the place continues to agree with you. The change in the direction is the 12th of April, the Wednesday before Good Friday—but Easter really makes no difference as to getting away unless when it is for three or four days only—& though to get away after the change of directors is much easier than before it, the going immediately after has no advantage quoad I.H. but rather the contrary. I have been reading a little book which I remember seeing advertised years ago but did not get it supposing it to be some merely quackish thing, but an edition having been readvertised just now I got it—called The Curability of Consumption, by Dr Ramadge³ & it is not a quackish thing at all—the writer is evidently well entitled to an opinion having been Senior Physician to the Infirmary for diseases of the Chest. I wish I had seen the book long ago—I certainly think any person would be very foolish to let themselves die of consumption without having tried him & his treatment, the chief peculiarity of which consists in breathing (during a small part of every day) through a tube so constructed as to prolong the expiratory movement. The number & quality of the cases of success which he cites, even in an advanced stage of consumption, are such as quite entitle him to a trial. His theory seems only one step in extension of the now generally received theory. He says: It is admitted that if by any means the formation of fresh tubercles could be stopped, those already formed would either continue inert or would soften & be discharged & the cavities left would probably be cicatrized. Now the reason why the formation of fresh tubercles is so seldom stopped is that as soon as there is much disease, the lungs & chest contract, & in proportion to the contraction the tendency is stronger to form fresh tubercles—& this goes on in an augmenting ratio, for when the lungs are of less dimensions while the air passages remain of the same, letting the air rapidly out, the expanding power is still further diminished. Therefore if by artificial means the air could be kept longer in, & the expansion prolonged the best chance is afforded of stopping the progress of the disease. He has combined very ingeniously a number of curious facts (if they are facts) in support of this theory—which seems at least as good as any other medical theory. If he is right, a cold or cough not originating in pthisis, instead of leading to it, is a protection against it—which is the most paradoxical part of his doctrine. I will bring the pamphlet with me to Paris—I am sure it should be at least read by every one who either has or is threatened with consumption. I sent the letter to the Frenchman⁴ darling & am so glad you liked it—I knew you would alter the ending & improve it. I adopted Edition: current; Page: [172] “considération amicale”. I liked “sincère” best but doubted if it was French—i.e. doubted if “considération” sufficiently included in itself the sense of favourable, without some epithet added to express it—which sincère does not—but it is only a doubt & has almost vanished on subsequent “consideration”. Atterer is to throw down on the earth, à terre—as in Danton’s famous “Pour les vaincre—pour les atterrer—que faut-il? De l’audace—et encore de l’audace—et toujours de l’audace.”⁵ Houblon is hops. The garden shall be attended to exactly as you say—I have written out the instructions to Malyon⁶ & shall speak to his man besides. The sticks are in their place in the corner, but whether all or only part I do not know. See how I go from one subject to another by the stepping stone of some accidental association—from the French of my letter to the French words & from hops to the garden. About the article on India⁷ I feel quite decided to give it up but must take some time to concoct a good letter. You have by this time got the chapter⁸—As so much is said of the French associations I must put in a few words about the English, of which Furnivall has sent me a long list, especially as it is going among the very people—but I shall take care not to commit myself to anything complimentary to them. F. has also from Nadaud⁹ some later intelligence about the French, nearly all of which are put down. & now my own love my own dearest love farewell.

[P.S.] There is a bill of 1/10 from one Price¹⁰ for mending the butter stand & for a fruit bottle. I suppose it is right.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

3rd March 1854.

138.

TO THE CHAIRMEN OF THE LIBRARY COMMITTEES, SOUTH CAROLINA¹

3rd March 1854.

Gentlemen,—

A long absence from England² has made me thus tardy in offering my acknowledgements to you and to the honourable bodies over Edition: current; Page: [173] which you preside for having included me among those to whom, under the resolution of the legislature of South Carolina,³ you have presented copies of the posthumous work of Mr. Calhoun.⁴

Few things can be done by the legislature of any people more commendable than printing and circulating the writings of their eminent men, and the present is one of the many examples tending to show that the parsimony imputed to the republics of the American Union is aversion to useless, but not to useful, expense. I am one of those who believe that America is destined to give instruction to the world, not only practically, as she has long done, but in speculation also; and my opinion is confirmed by the treatise which I have had the honour of receiving from you, and which, though I am far from agreeing with it on all points, I consider to be a really valuable contribution to the science of government.

With the warmest good wishes for the continued progress of the United States, and hopes that they may lead the way to mental and moral, as they have already done to much political freedom, I have the honour to be, gentlemen, your most obedient servant,

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 3. [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

139.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

March 3. [1854]

25

Your Monday’s letter which has just come, my own adored, gives me the greatest happiness because it contains by far the best account of your health I have yet had. The cough evidently going away & your being stronger, together with there being no expectoration, constitute such an improvement in all the alarming symptoms as puts me at ease on the subject of present danger, & though I know it does not amount to proof that there is no organic disease, it seems to me conclusive so far, that if there is, it is as in the case of those two in Australia,² the variety which is not, under proper precautions, fatal. I have always thought that if you ever had consumption it would probably be of this type, as well as that if I ever had it, it would be of the common type & therefore mortal—unless Ramadge’s plan³ should cure it. Edition: current; Page: [174] His notion is very consoling, for he is of opinion that half the people who go about, in good health, either have, or have had, tubercles in the lungs. Of course the strong ground we now have for believing that you can live in good health at all events on the Continent adds a great weight to the side of our giving up England. The pros & cons of that however we will discuss fully when we meet. As to the more immediately pressing point of when that should be—what you say of Directors &c going away at Easter might make a difference in other years, but I think not in this, for as it will be just the very beginning of the new system⁴ with the diminished numbers of the Court & the three Government nominees for colleagues I expect they will all wait to see what the new system looks like. What you say however of the convenience of Easter for our being much alone is a very strong reason indeed, & I do not see why the double plan you say you would prefer, should not be possible, since the second absence, if you return with me, need not, if we have fine weather for crossing, be longer than three or four days. If you do not return with me, the second visit can be put off till a little later—& on that supposition the earlier the first visit, the earlier also can be the second. Against these reasons is one very strong one that I dread the weather for you if you start so soon as the 20th March—The centre & north of France are so much colder than England. Here for some days past it is splendid weather for those in perfect health—not a cloud either by day or night, & the air the most transparent it ever is in England—March clearness without your plague of March dust; but sharp frost every night, ice on the ponds & white frost covering every thing, though the wind was south or south west—& now it is S. East & in consequence last night was much colder still. I fear your encountering anything like this, notwithstanding Ramadge’s paradox of the preservative effect of catching cold. It seems to me clear that the mildness of Hyères has abated all your chest symptoms (though the warmth of January may have produced the weakness & want of appetite) & I should dread their coming on again by travelling in March. This part of the question however you can best judge of. About my own health there is nothing new. The cough is not at all better. Clark advised a blister on the left side of the chest, as the right side, which was the worst before, is now according to him rather the best of the two. I shall do it as perhaps the former blistering did the good which he says has been done: but I postpone it till Saturday night that I may keep the blister on all Sunday (as I did the former) for blisters act so very mildly on me that unless I keep them on 24 hours they are hardly of any use. There is not much new in public affairs. The parliamentary reform, it seems to be thought, will be put off for this year,⁵ the public, it is said, being too much occupied with war prospects to give it the support necessary for Edition: current; Page: [175] its passing. I do not think however that in any case there would have been any strong public feeling for it. It will not sufficiently alter the distribution of power to excite any strong desire for its passing. The Civil Service examination plan⁶ I am afraid is too good to pass. The report proposing it, by Trevelyan⁷ & Northcote⁸ (written no doubt by Trevelyan) has been printed in the Chronicle⁹—it is as direct, uncompromising & to the point, without reservation, as if we had written it. But even the Chronicle attacks the plan.¹⁰ The grand complaint is that it will bring low people into the offices! as, of course, gentlemen’s sons cannot be expected to be as clever as low people. It is ominous too that the Times has said nothing on the subject lately. I should like to know who wrote the articles in the Times¹¹ in support of the plan—possibly Trevelyan himself. It was somebody who saw his way to the moral & social ultimate effects of such a change. How truly you judge people, how true is what you always say that this ministry are before the public. There has been a renewal of the anti nunnery stuff¹² in Parlt, & ministers again outvoted—& an inquiry ordered—the applicability of all the arguments to marriage, & the naif unconsciousness of the speakers, were quite funny. One said, a vow of obedience was contrary to the British Constn & a violation of the right everyone has (he did not even say every man) to personal freedom.¹³ Another inveighed against allowing young women under age to bind themselves irrevocably to they knew not what.¹⁴ It is for the purpose of putting in a telling word on such occasions that it would be pleasant to be in Parlt.—Did you see that Sir John Bowring¹⁵ is appointed Governor of Hong Kong & chief authority in China, & has just gone out, with Lady Bowring & two daughters? Your “much” is a great improvement in the letter to the Americans.¹⁶ I thought it would have needed “much” more Edition: current; Page: [176] alteration. I will now send it. The gardener came for the first time yesterday. He has put in the peas & covered them over with sticks. He was quite docile about the lime. Everything else shall be done as you say. Adieu with the utmost love.

You received the 200 f. & 100 f. notes?

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Mar. 6 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

140.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Mar. 6 [1854]

26

I have your Thursday’s letter today dearest so that it has come quick. The Pol. Ec. was put into the post 21 Feb. being Tuesday, instead of Monday, the day I wrote²—the reason being that Parker did not send it till I was just leaving the I.H. at near five oclock, & as I had no other copy I wished to read it quietly at home before sending it. It certainly dear was very wrong to read it without making that sentence illegible,³ for it was wrong to run any risk of that kind—the risk happily was small, as they were not likely to take the trouble of looking into letters or packets addressed to unsuspected persons, nor if they did were they likely to see that sentence, nor if they saw it to make the receiver answerable for a sentence in a printed paper forming part of an English book. Still it was a piece of criminal rashness which might have done mischief though it probably has not. Did it arrive with a penny stamp, attached half to the cover & half to the blank page, so as to be a sort of cachet? If it did not, however, it would not prove it to have been opened, as the stamp might come off. It was another piece of thoughtlessness not to say that I had no other copy. It is, however, probable, though not certain, that I could get another from Parker & I would have applied to him for one now if you had said that you would not send yours until you receive this; but as you will probably have sent it after receiving my next letter, & it is therefore probably on its way, I will wait to see. I quite agree with you about the inexpediency of adding anything like practical advice, or anything at all which alters the character of the chapter—the working men ought to see that it was not written for them—any attempt to mingle the two characters would be sure to be a failure & is not the way in which we should do the Edition: current; Page: [177] thing even if we had plenty of time & were together. This morning has come from Chapman⁴ a proposal for reprinting the article Enfranchisement of Women⁵ or as he vulgarly calls it the article on Woman. How very vulgar all his notes are. I am glad however that it is your permission he asks. I hope the lady friend⁶ is not H. Martineau. Mrs Gaskell⁷ perhaps? you will tell me what to say. I do not remember my darling, what I wrote that could make you uneasy about my health—but Tuesday’s letter will have told you that in Clark’s opinion I am better; & I am certainly better since I saw Clark, for since I took his tonic dinner pill (nux vomica) I have ceased to have the daily slight indigestion, in the form of acidity, which I used to have before. I have little now which shews stomach derangement except a white tongue, & sensations of dryness in the tongue & throat; and both these symptoms vary very much in degree. The cough is just at present better than it has been lately but not better than it has often been. I find no progressive improvement but I quite as much wish not to find it, as to find it. The expectoration is more marked than the cough as is to be expected since there is as we know a general tendency in me to excess of that mucous secretion—there is so much of it that there is generally no choice but between spitting it up & swallowing it. As to the time of our meeting I have not much additional to say. It is now much colder here, to the sensations at least, than when I last wrote; with north east wind & fog, & I fear it is likely to be very cold in France, but all this may change by the time you think of moving. With respect to the carriage, since so little would be got for it, what do you think of leaving it en remise with the Univers man at Lyons or with somebody at Châlon? If we go abroad next winter either for a permanency or for the season, which we are pretty sure to do, (apart from the possibility of your not crossing this year at all) it will be agreeable & even a saving to have the carriage which we know & like to take us to the South, & we are almost sure to go by that railway. The man might be paid two or three months in advance or six if necessary. I only throw this out as a suggestion.—On Wednesday the directors & ex directors meet to do execution on themselves.⁸ The 15 they have to select out of 29, with the addition of three nominees of Govt, will form the new Court of Directors from the 12th of April. Only three have declined being reelected, & two of those three would have had a good chance. I have not seen Sykes again—being out by rotation he does not come to the I.H. often.—On Saturday I completely Edition: current; Page: [178] finished the arrear of work here, so that I have done in two months the work of 5½. It is true I have generally remained till near five o’clock & have worked two Sundays at home—likewise that I never remember such light mails as they have been of late. I have also by no means got the two months work off my hands, as great part of it still wants my help to push it through the subsequent stages. Still you see how easily they could get their work done giving me any amount of leave of absence. True I have had no waste of time with Ellice & Oliphant,⁹ as I can do what I please with them—they generally read & pass on what I write & I have not even to see them—while with Hogg¹⁰ half my time was spent in explaining, defending, & altering so as to spoil it as little as I could. I have fairly set to at another essay, on the subject you suggested.¹¹ I wrote several hours at it yesterday, after turning it over mentally many days before—but I cannot work at it here yet, as there is another mail in today—luckily a light one. Wright & Sharpers¹² are paid. Adieu my sweetest & dearest.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 8, 1854

Sir Charles E. Trevelyan

Trevelyan, Sir Charles E.

141.

TO SIR CHARLES E. TREVELYAN¹

[After

March 8, 1854

]

I have not waited till now to make myself acquainted with the Report² which you have done me the favour of sending to me, and to hail the plan of throwing open the civil service to competition as one of the greatest improvements in public affairs ever proposed by a government. If the examination be so contrived as to be a real test of mental superiority, it is difficult to set limits to the effect which will be produced in raising the character not only of the public service but of Society itself. I shall be most happy to express this opinion in any way in which you think it can be of the smallest use towards helping forward so noble a scheme, but as the successful working of the plan will depend principally on details into which very properly your Report does not enter, I should be unable without some time for consideration, to write Edition: current; Page: [179] anything which could have a chance of being of any service in the way of suggestion.³

I am sorry to say you are mistaken in supposing that anything bearing the remotest resemblance to what you propose, exists at the I.H. It will exist in the India Civil Service by the Act of last year.⁴

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 9. [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

142.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

March 9. [1854]

27

I have received your Sunday’s letter today darling, the first almost that has been directed in your own dear handwriting—I hail it as a good augury. I do not think darling that you need be uneasy about my cough. It is not what anyone would call much—it is even very little were not the mucous secretion so much more than in proportion to it—the principal inconvenience of it is that it is a hindrance to much talking, or reading aloud. I do not think it ever permanently gets worse. I may very likely have it a long while, perhaps always, & without its turning to consumption, for I am more & more convinced that consumption is a constitutional & not a local disease, at all events “doctored into a consumption” I will not be. I have been coming to much the same conclusion as yours about going to Clark. I never meant to continue indefinitely consulting him—I have his opinion now that tonics are the thing for my stomach & I can manage those myself. I should not go to him any more at all for the sake of anything he can prescribe, but because I feel confidence in his knowledge of the signs of chest disease, & while there seems any liability to consumption it is good to find out now & then whether one is drifting towards it or away from it. All you say about conduct in relation to him I most certainly agree in. About the time of our meeting you, dearest, are the best judge. I mentioned in one of my letters that I think the double going to Paris might be managed if really best. Unless you are mistaken about the notes which is very unlikely, a 200 fr. note has been stolen—I have sent in all 1200 fr. The last 500 fr. I sent in two letters: the first, containing a 200 fr. note you acknowledged—in the very next letter after that, I enclosed another 200 fr. & a 100 fr. of which it would appear that you received only the 100, yet I feel sure that I mentioned both in the letter following, but it does not become me to feel sure of anything, especially after I have found Edition: current; Page: [180] the will which I thought I had given to you,² & found it in my desk at the I.H. with the Bramahlock,³ which I thought I had effectually searched & in which I thought it had never been. It is vexatious if the note is stolen—curious too that they did not take both notes. In any case I shall get another & send it. About the P[olitical] E[conomy] I shall write immediately to Parker for another copy. I do not intend to say anything in praise of the English associations but solely to state the fact that they are now very numerous & increasing—perhaps stating how many, according to a list which F[urnivall] gave me. Whatever I do write I will send you & it will cause no or but little delay as the thing can go to press meanwhile & alterations be made when it is in proof. The two inclosures I now send are very unlike that & one another. Powell’s⁴ note is rather embarrassing especially as I have not the key of the outhouse. I see two large holes, one of them going right under the wall & connecting the two premises. Kate says she never saw a rat till Monday when she saw one after Powell’s ratcatcher had driven them or made them, as he says, “retreat” to our side & established there, probably, the populous colony he complains of. You will tell me what is to be done. I wrote a note & made Haji leave it, in these words “Mr J. S. Mill is obliged to Mr Powell for his information & will have his side of the garden wall examined”: that seemed safe & uncommitting. The other note is from Trevelyan & is an appeal that I ought to respond to, but it will be difficult, & without you impossible, to write the opinion he asks for, so as to be fit to print. But he ought to be helped, for the scheme is the greatest thing yet proposed in the way of real reform & his report is as I said before,⁵ almost as if we had written it. I wish it were possible to delay even answering his note till I could send the draft to you & receive it back but I fear that would not do. As for news in the first place the income tax is to be doubled, for half a year only at present, but with every prospect of the same in the next half year & until the war ends.⁶ Secondly the election of directors has been made, & is generally good.⁷ They have only retained one (Astell) whom they decidedly should have rejected, & Edition: current; Page: [181] only rejected one (Cotton) whom they decidedly should have elected. Sykes & Eastwick, those I cared most about of the doubtful ones, are elected. Hogg has got in—the rejection of him was too much to hope for—but he has not been able to keep in his son in law. Bayley, Mangles, Prinsep, Shepherd, Ellice, Oliphant, were sure. The remaining five are Willock, Macnaghten, Leslie Melville, Mills & Martin Smith, the last two elected mainly because they are of the two great banking houses, but both rather useful directors. Two other bankers, Masterman the city member, & Muspratt are turned out—neither of them any loss—also Major Moore, & two named Dent & Whiteman, all of them some loss. The rest of the rejected are null or superannuated. I am now afraid lest Hogg should try for the deputy chair but I hope Mangles will, & will beat him. The gardener has put in the crops & dug all the middle of the garden & is today cutting the wall fruit trees—after today I shall not have him till I hear from you—but the week after next, I think he should dig the borders & flowerbeds. I wish I could send you some tea—& rain to lay the dust. Here it is now mild again & very pleasant. Addio con sommo amore.

Would “struck down” do for atterré?⁸

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 11 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

143.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

March 11 [1854]

28

My darling love I have just received your Tuesday’s letter, so I write now for the last time to Hyères, dear Hyères—it will always feel like a home to me, though it is not a place of which we should choose to make our permanent home. What you say of the dust & what we know of gnats, shew what all that coast must be except for a very few months of winter. That is one of the difficulties in our living abroad when part of the motive is a good winter climate—that the same place would be sure to be insupportable in summer, so that we require to have the means of frequent change & also could have no fixed home—as we could have at Paris or Bonn or Heidelberg if health had not to be considered. It is wise to take plenty of time for the journey & I should think the 18th not at all too early if as I suppose, Easter, with L[ily] begins with Palm Sunday. And there will probably be no reason now against travelling on account of weather—here it is quite the temperature of advanced spring—very pleasant but from its suddenness not agreeing well with me, if Clark is right. You would not suppose from my last letter that Edition: current; Page: [182] before I wrote again I should have gone again to Clark—but a new symptom is a reason for going, & mine was, night perspirations the last two nights—last night every time I dropped asleep, & this in spite of taking off bedclothes. This being one of the great indications of consumption (though also of other ailments) it was well to find out what it meant. Clark thought it was chiefly from the sudden change of weather & said that almost everybody is complaining of night perspirations, the queen among others. Whatever he may say, it is clear to me that no weather would produce any such effect on me if there were not a strong predisposition to it. He prescribed a different tonic, dispensing with vinegar & water—which I shall do or not as I like myself. I was inclined to prescribe walking, & to use the fine weather for that purpose on Sundays according to your frequent prescription of more walking which I certainly want, for the pains I consulted Bird about have all returned. Clark however recommends less instead of more exertion while this debility lasts, on that too I shall use my own judgment. I shall perhaps not go to Clark any more at all, unless I find myself getting worse. I shall write to Avignon darling & I am sorry on Lily’s account that the post office is a great way from the inns, & in a very out of the way corner. The inn seemed to me an excellent one—the best I found in the whole journey—Europe I think it was—I know it was not the Palais Royal though that also is said to be good. I will send the Examiner Poste Restante Avignon. You will not care much about it, but it may just as well go. Lily will like the cathedral & the tombs of the popes. I inclose now a 200 fr. note. I hope the other may be found but do not expect it. I inclosed in my Thursday’s letter Powell’s note about the rats—since then they have made their presence on our side of the wall very palpable—Kate shewed me this morning that they had in the night bored a passage under the door between the coal place & the scullery—& she says they now make a great uproar in the outhouse, of which I have not the key. As they never shewed themselves before no doubt Powell’s operations have driven them out of his place into ours. I do not know what it is best or even possible to do but to leave things as they are till we meet. How delightful that that will be soon—how much I shall enjoy hearing from you on the journey—you will tell me at what places to write to you. Now from my whole heart I pray that you may have in every sense of the word, the best of all possible journies. If you are as well as when we travelled from Nice to Hyères I feel no doubt of its doing you not only no harm but good. How I shall like to think of you going over the same ground as I did & staying at the same inns—but you will go I suppose by Aix & not through Toulon or Marseilles. The country will be much prettier than as I saw it—bleak & frozen in the south & covered with snow in the north. I have not yet any answer from Parker to my application for another copy of the chapter. What a rambling scambling letter. Adieu my adored.

Edition: current; Page: [183]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 14 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

144.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

March 14 [1854]

30

If my dearest one got the short letter I wrote yesterday to Marseilles,² she knows that I am pained to think of her being uneasy about my health & that I do not think there is cause to. I have been three nights now without perspiration except a very little the night before last, though I did not adopt Clark’s sponging with vinegar & water. I did take his tonic (much the same as your quinine draught) but not so often as he said. On Sunday the day was so fine & tempting that I thought I would try walking so after working till near one at the new essay³ I started for Eltham & found out the palace⁴—the approach to it & the ground just about it are most excessively pretty. I returned by a field path which joins the high road not far from Lee Lane & so completed the circuit in the most exquisite day possible in England, wanting only the Nice blueness & purity of the sky though it was equally cloudless—as it has been, day & night, though with a south wind, for a week past, till today when the rain has at last come. I was not at all tired & felt better for the walk & I shall certainly if weather permits use the remaining Sundays till we meet, or part of them, in walking, provided I have worked hard enough in the week to have earned a holiday. I still think the cough is better, nor have I much sign of stomach derangement except the white & dry tongue—the dryness I suspect has something to do with the too great mucous secretion lower down. The pains in the limbs &c. are also better—for them, & all stomach symptoms I am convinced walking is the best remedy. I do not think I mentioned the pains to Clark, or my having consulted Coulson & Bird, but it would perhaps as you say be right to do so. If C. thinks I require change of circumstances & especially treatment for chronic indigestion, the chances are that he would recommend a German watering place in the summer, which would not answer our purpose nearly so well as a winter abroad & would probably be incompatible with it unless we give up England this autumn. I do not think he thinks my lungs even threatened—it was only congestion he found on either side & very little of that. I have written at so much length to my dear one about my health not because I am thinking or feeling about it but because she is. To speak of pleasanter things, I need hardly say how heartily I feel all you say about the civil service plan⁵ & the contempt I feel for the little feeling shewn for it, not to speak of actual Edition: current; Page: [184] hostility. I give the ministers infinite credit for it—that is if they really adopt the whole plan, for as their bill is not yet brought in⁶ (it is not as you seem to think, part of the Reform Bill) we do not yet know how far they will really go; but the least they can do consistently with their speeches, will be such a sacrifice of the power of jobbing as hardly a politician who ever lived, ever yet made to the sense of right, without any public demand—it stamps them as quite remarkable men for their class & country—Of course all the jobbers are loud against them, especially newspaper editors who all now look out for places. Yet I so share your misgiving that they cannot know how great a thing they are doing, that I am really afraid to say all I feel about it till they are fully committed, lest it should do more harm than good. This was my answer to Trevelyan . . . [Here he quotes Letter 141].

Trevelyan’s answer: “You have done us a great service by the expression of your decided approbation of our plan for the reform of the English Civil Establishments; & as it is well known that you do not form your opinions lightly, I do not wish to trouble you to enter upon the details of the subject at present. If you can suggest any improvement in the more advanced stages, we shall hope to hear from you again.” This looks as if he desired support more than criticism, but it is useful as it opens a channel by which, without obtrusiveness, we may write anything we like in the way of comment on the bill hereafter & be sure of its being read by the government. They have already quoted me in favour of the plan—last night a discussion was raised about it by that true Irishman Lord Monteagle in the H. of Lords, who attacked it,⁷ but it was defended with real spirit & vigour by two Cabinet Ministers, Lord Granville⁸ & the D. of Argyle⁹ the former of whom mentioned as approving of it, along with Stephen¹⁰ & some others, “Mr J. Mill of the India House who is an able administrator as well as a philosophic writer”, that is the Times report.¹¹ It is evident they are always glad to have me to quote, & we must give them plenty to quote for. By the bye, the writer Edition: current; Page: [185] of one of the leading articles in today’s Morning Post¹² had evidently come hot from reading the Logic, & I am sorry to say did it no credit as a pupil for it was an article against the Jew bill.¹³—I find a good deal of difficulty in adding much to the chapter of the P. Econ.¹⁴ without altering its character, which must be maintained, in the main, as it is, as something written of but not to the working classes. I think I agree in all your remarks & have adopted them almost all—but I do not see the possibility of bringing in the first two pages (from the preceding chapter)¹⁵—I see no place which they would fit. Not having your copy, I do not know what sentence you would omit from page 330.16 I do not see how to bring in anything about short hours bills well; does it seem necessary to do so here?—& I have not yet succeeded in bringing in your remark on page 346.17 I have translated (with some omissions) all the French.¹⁸ I give on the next page all the additions I have made.¹⁹ If I make any more I will send them. I shall keep it back from Furnivall for a few days—if he is not urgent, till I hear from you.—While I am writing, in comes a German socialist²⁰ with an introduction from Courcelle Seneuil shewing that he had not received my letter,²¹ & that he has changed his address. This is a bore, as it necessitates writing to him again. He also says he sent a copy of the Translation of the Pol. Ec.²² but it has not arrived. I must ask at Delizy’s for it. I found the other day to my consternation that among bookseller’s catalogues & other printed things which I found on arrival & had thrown by unopened, I had overlooked an application from the Commissioners for enquiring into the law of partnership²³ asking if I still retained my opinions on limited liability & sending a long list of elaborately framed questions to be filled up with answers. I wrote apologizing for the delay, saying I was still of the same opinion & referring them to my evidence²⁴ as containing all I had to say, excusing myself therefore from answering the questions (some of which would have given me a Edition: current; Page: [186] great deal of trouble to answer & would not have been worth it). Yesterday I had their reply saying that my opinions would be taken into consideration (I suppose the official form). By the time my darling receives this she will have had three (or four?) day’s journey²⁵ & will be able to judge how she is able to bear it. I have been trying to make out what her stopping places will be but cannot do so satisfactorily. I suppose she will rest a little at the old city of the popes especially if the inn is as good as it seemed to me.²⁶ How I long to hear from her on the journey, but I shall have two or three darling letters from the dear old place first. I shall always love Hyères because we have been there together as I feel us here all this time, & she has got better there. Adieu—à tous les dieux.

Additional note, in brackets, to p. 331²⁷

[Mr Fitzroy’s Act for the better protection of women & children against assaults, is a well meant though inadequate attempt to remove the first reproach. The second is more flagrant than ever, another Reform Bill having been presented this year, which largely extends the franchise among many classes of men, but leaves all women in their existing state of political as well as social servitude.]

Page 332 near the bottom.²⁸ “The rich in their turn are regarded as a mere prey & pasture for the poor & are the subject of demands & expectations wholly indefinite, increasing in extent with every concession made to them. The total absence of regard for justice or fairness in the relations between the two, is at the least as marked on the side of the employed as on that of the employers. We look in vain among the working classes for the just pride which will choose to give good work for good wages: for the most part their sole endeavour is to receive as much, & return as little in the shape of service, as possible.”

Page 346, continuation of note.²⁹ “One of the most discreditable indications of a low moral condition, given of late by the English working classes, is the opposition to piece work. Dislike to piecework, except under mistaken notions, must be dislike to justice and fairness; or desire to cheat, by not giving work in proportion to the pay. Piecework is the perfection of contract; & contract, in all work, & in the most minute detail—the principle of so much pay for so much service carried to the utmost extremity—is the system, of all others, in the present state of society, most favorable to the worker, though most unfavorable to the non-worker who wishes to be paid for being idle.”

Edition: current; Page: [187]

Note to p. 347.30 “According to the latest accounts which have reached us (March 1854) seven of these associations are all which are now left. But Cooperative stores (associations pour la consommation) have greatly developed themselves, especially in the S. of France, & are at least not forbidden (we know not whether discouraged) by the Government.”

Note to p. 348.31 “Though this beneficent movement has been so fatally checked in the country in which it originated, it is rapidly spreading in those other countries which have acquired, & still retain, any political freedom. It forms already an important feature in the social improvement which is proceeding at a most rapid pace in Piedmont: & in England on the 15th of Feb. of the present year 1854 there had been registered under the Ind[ustrial] & Prov[ident] Societies Act, 33 associations, 17 of which are Industrial Societies, the remainder being associations for cooperative consumption only. This does not include Scotland where also these assns are rapidly multiplying. The Societies which have registered under this new Act are only a portion of the whole. A list dated in June 1852 gives 41 assns for productive industry in E. & Sc. besides a very much greater number of flour mill societies & cooperative stores.”

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Mar 18 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

145.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Mar 18 [1854]

31

Your Thursday’s letter my own darling love, has just come. As you expect to be at Lyons on the 24th or 25th or at least wish the letter to be sure of being there at that time, I do not like to write later than today. I hope you got my short letter to Marseilles & my long one to Avignon. They were written in the expectation of your not being there so soon as you now say—but still they would be, I think, in time. I sent the letter to Marseilles on the 13th, & that to Avignon on the 14th, having written my last letter to Hyères (which inclosed 200 fr.) on the 11th. You will have seen by my Avignon letter that Trevelyan does not want, at least for the present, anything more from me than he has got, namely a warm expression of approval with a readiness to write at greater length in defence & commendation of the plan—& also that they have already cited my approval in Parliament. However Trevelyan’s Edition: current; Page: [188] second note, of which I sent you a copy, leaves a complete opening for sending as you say a review of the report. I fear from the strong feeling my darling shews on the matter that she will be disappointed, but even if she had been here I do not think we could have kept him without any answer to his note till the complete review was ready, & if so the first answer however short must have expressed the warm approbation mine did.—My letter to Avignon also contained copies of all the new matter of any importance in the Chapter of the Pol. Ec. & asked what was the sentence in page 330 that you had marked to come out—but the chapter itself has arrived since & there is no sentence marked in that page. I suppose the dear one altered her mind & rubbed out the marks. I still hold to keeping it back from Furnivall till I hear your opinion of the additional matter which will be in a few days now. I am so sorry the few words I wrote to Powell² vexed her—I was much annoyed at having to write or do anything in such a matter without having time to consult her for I know I always miss the proper thing & above all the proper tone. I shall now do at once what my dearest one recommends, that is her last recommendation. I shall make Marshall send to pick the lock of the outhouse, & shall write to Powell exactly as she says, & then send for his ratcatcher. The clock that is broken is the one in the kitchen & I shall get Kate to ask Verney’s man to send some one as you suggest & I will take care that the gardener only hoes the flowerbeds. Russell has today brought in his bill for the reform of the University of Oxford:3 it will if carried make what will be thought a great change & in every thing which it touches the change will be for the better—but nothing will make a Church of England university a good place of education, except comparatively. The bill for the civil service is not yet brought in⁴—but I quite expect that it will go the full length of the report, that is, to make the competition for the first admission into a public office open to every young man between certain ages, without any previous nomination.—It is not proposed that promotion in the offices, or the admission of persons not already in the service to any of the higher situations, should go by competition—& indeed there would be much difficulty in managing that—for instance I hardly know what examination would shew the fittest person for an office like mine at the I.H. Seniority however is no longer to be the ground of promotion to offices requiring talent, & there is an attempt to make merit the sole ground of promotion—the thing most relied on however being that as the clerks &c will no longer be protégés of the heads of offices or of their political or other friends there will be much less motive to favor them for other Edition: current; Page: [189] reasons than merit than there now is. This is the very day she leaves Hyères, the blessed one. I hope (& feel sure) it is a very different day there from here, where it is most gloomily raining, though the morning was fine. The last two days have been bright & much colder with northerly winds, but today the wind is again south. I am truly happy that she is coming nearer. I look forward with the greatest interest to hearing from her on the route & am sorry I cannot write again till I write to Paris. Writing to her is the next greatest pleasure to hearing from her. Since I wrote last the cough & expectoration have been worse, then better again. There is very little cough, the expectoration is much the more prominent of the two. There is now however, I certainly think, less of that in quantity—but there was again a little blood this morning. I feel much less than my usual strength these two or three days, probably from some temporary cause (though I am taking quinine) not weaker however than I have several times felt when nothing seriously ailed me. Clark says I do not lose flesh, & that is also my own opinion.—I wrote another letter to Courcelle Seneuil telling him about the first⁵ & saying over again much more briefly what it said. Adieu my own—no words can tell how precious one.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 20 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

146.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

March 20 [1854]

32

I wrote to my precious one at Lyons on Saturday 18th foolishly thinking that it would be too late to write today—but Lyons is so much nearer than Hyères especially counting the railway, that I shall be quite safe in writing today: & it is the more necessary I should do so as I stupidly said nothing on Saturday about so important & interesting a matter as Chapman’s proposal.² Because the letter in which you spoke of it was not the last letter but the one before, I fancied I had answered it already, & only on thinking yesterday discovered that I had not. I sent to Chapman the letter you drafted, exactly as it was, only choosing the phrases I preferred where you gave the choice of two. I think that to refuse was best, on the whole, for I should not like any more than you that that paper should be supposed to be the best we could do, or the real expression of our mind on the subject. This is not supposed of a mere review article written on a special occasion as that was, but would Edition: current; Page: [190] perhaps be so if the same thing were put out, years after, under our own auspices as a pamphlet. I only wish the better thing we have promised to write were already written instead of being in prospect.³ In any case the article will of course be in any collection⁴ or rather selection of articles which we may either publish in our life, or leave for publication afterwards, & whichever we do it shall be preceded by a preface which will shew that much of all my later articles, & all the best of that one, were, as they were, my Darling’s. That creature Dickens, whose last story, Bleak House,⁵ I found accidentally at the London Library the other day & took home & read—much the worst of his things, & the only one of them I altogether dislike—has the vulgar impudence in this thing to ridicule rights of women. It is done too in the very vulgarest way—just the stile in which vulgar men used to ridicule “learned ladies” as neglecting their children & household &c.⁶ I wrote a good spell at the new Essay⁷ yesterday, & hope to get a good deal done to it this week. But I have not yet got to the part of the subject which you so beautifully sketched, having begun with examining the more commonplace view of the subject, the supposed necessity of religion for social purposes as a sanction for morality. I regard the whole of what I am writing or shall write as mere raw material, in what manner & into what to be worked up to be decided between us—& I am much bent upon getting as much of this sort written as possible—but above all I am anxious about the Life, which must be the first thing we go over when we are together. I did not get a walk yesterday as I hoped to have done—instead of the delightful warm sunshine of last Sunday it was a violent cold east wind with frequent heavy showers. If it had been fine I think a walk would have done me good, though I do not feel strong enough to attempt a long one. I do not expect to get any more good from Clark, but have a very great inclination to see Ramadge—though not unless you darling approve. I wish you could see his book.⁸ I wrote to you what I thought of it—& seeing him does not necessarily imply following his advice. Though his book is specially on consumption, it shews much experience in, & I should think understanding of, chest complaints in general. Be sure my angel when you write to tell me how you are in every respect. You have not told me lately. How I long to see you & be with you, my beloved.

Edition: current; Page: [191]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 27, 1854

East India House

Frederick J. Furnivall

Furnivall, Frederick J.

147.

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL¹

East India House

March 27, 1854

Dear Sir

I am sorry to have kept these sheets² so long, and to return them now with so few additions and improvements. But after much turning over the subject in my mind, I find that to say the things I wished to say, in such a manner as to be of any use, would alter the whole plan and character of the chapter, which being written of but not to the working classes, had better be read by them with that understanding, and is unfit to form a good foundation for a direct appeal to the working classes themselves. I have therefore made only the alterations which I think indispensable—and I shall be happy if, such as it is, its republication should do any of the good you hope from it.

I am Dear Sir
Very truly yours

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 29 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

148.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

March 29 [1854]

33

I write this my own darling, because from her Dijon letter received today I am afraid she will be disappointed if she does not find a Poste Restante letter at Paris. I had not intended to write till I heard from her where she would be staying at Paris—as I cannot help thinking that Poste Restante letters at that great J. J. Rousseau office must be very uncertain in the delivery & though I have much to say, both great & small, it would be particularly disagreeable either that you should not get it or that any one else should. The letter to Marseilles being written with considerable expectation of what did in fact happen, contained nothing which it mattered that any one should see & therefore I have not written for it. I fear you will have enquired at Paris for this letter before it has arrived—& as I shall so soon hear from you of a safer place to write to I will postpone everything that it Edition: current; Page: [192] would take long to write. You cannot think darling, or rather you can very well think, how much I enjoyed your dear letters on the journey & above all the pleasure it gave me to know that you had stood the journey so well, as is proved by your having got on so fast. That you have recovered so much strength is unspeakably delightful. If I could be at ease respecting your life & health whatever happens, I should have the greatest joy I am capable of. As I shall perhaps hear from you tomorrow I will cut this short here saying only the utmost love.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 31, 1854

James Bentham Mill

Mill, James Bentham

149.

TO JAMES BENTHAM MILL¹

[

March 31, 1854

]

. . . what is the original seat of his disorder, and though I have little trust in their theories I have a great deal in the experience of those who really have experience of the same kind of complaint.

I do not know how far you take interest in passing events. The time is very near when the new arrangements of the India Act² will come into operation. For my part, except the throwing open the civil service to competition, all the changes appear to me to be for the worse. It is the most faulty piece of work these ministers³ have turned out—whom otherwise I prefer to any ministers England has yet had.

yrs affy

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April 3. 1854

India House

Edwin Chadwick

Chadwick, Edwin

150.

TO EDWIN CHADWICK¹

India House

April 3.

1854

Dear Chadwick

I have read your paper² carefully twice through & have annotated it in pencil, sometimes suggesting alterations in the expression, at other times Edition: current; Page: [193] only indicating where they seem to be required. Your suggestions are likely to be very useful—but I think you undervalue what can be done by a general examination. I do not find in Trevelyan’s report³ that it is proposed to confine the examination to Oxford & Cambridge acquirements. All depends on having the examinations such as to afford a real test of mental capacity & good intellectual habits—then the list of eligibles being made out on that principle, each office might select from the list according to some test for the special acquirements it particularly needs—or, when special acquirements & those only are needed, as in some of the cases you mention, it might be allowed to take these from anywhere; & not solely from the list.

Everything depends on having a really good kind of general examination.

I need not say I shall be glad to see you.

yrs truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April 3. [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

151.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

April 3. [1854]

34

I did write to Paris poste restante my own darling—I had not intended to do so because I thought it so very probable that at that great J. J. Rousseau place you would never get it—but as I found by your letter from Dijon that you were expecting one, I wrote on Wedy the 29th, directed Mad. J. S. Mill, saying however very little because I avoided saying anything which I should regret the miscarriage of. I have been anxiously hoping for another letter all the week & fearing lest there should be a worse reason for its not coming than there was. I am so happy that you have accomplished the journey with so little fatigue or disagreeable. The bleeding of the nose is rather a favourable circumstance than otherwise, since it shews that even when the vessels are overfull, they tend to discharge themselves otherwise than through the lungs. A propos I had a visit lately from a rather elderly American, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, Carleton by name,² who called on me on account of the Logic & of my father’s Analysis (the P.E. he did not seem to have heard Edition: current; Page: [194] of) & seemed chiefly interested in the doctrine of liberty & necessity, thinking I had conceded too much to the free will side, & I had to explain to him that though I object to the word necessity I am entirely with the doctrine meant by it & am so understood by everybody except him & am attacked for it. On my asking him the usual questions about what he does here, how long he meant to stay &c, he told me that he had been long going about Europe for health, that for 18 years he had been subject to hemorrhage from the lungs, coming on at uncertain times, that the medical men say his lungs are tuberculated, but that he has had all that time & has still very tolerable health. You may imagine that this gave me great pleasure to hear. The only thing that I could find he did was to take cod liver oil, & he told me wonders about what Dr Williams,³ one of the great authorities as you know, says of the success of the oil in the Consumption Hospital, that a great majority recover or are greatly improved in health: he told me the numbers, but I have forgotten them. I have tried since to get Dr Williams’ paper on the subject, but I find it is in a medical journal & I cannot discover in what number.⁴ It is a great pity my own darling that cod liver oil does not agree with you, but I have the strongest hopes that you will do very well without it. I have but a poor account to give of myself: the cough it is true is gone—I do not now cough once in a week. But the expectoration continues & is of a worse kind—it is dislodged by a mere hem, & brought up by a mere action of the throat without coughing. I have more fever, & am weaker, much, than I was a month ago. I do not however think that I am now losing strength, or if I lose one day I gain another. Yesterday (a complete summer day as most now are) I took a longer walk than the Eltham one,⁵ in the direction of Bromley—a very pretty walk it was—was out two hours walking fast (always the best for me) & was not the least tired, nor should I have been so I believe if I had gone twice as far. I felt as if I could do anything, while today again I feel quite weak. But the worst is that we have lost our mainstay, so far as my health is concerned—reliance on the sincerity of Clark’s assurances. You may perhaps remember that the first time I went to him I had a suspicion that he did not tell me all he thought—but his more strenuous assurances the second time removed my suspicion: now however it is not a suspicion but a certainty—& the consequence is that I cannot trust anything he says that is favourable. However, time will shew, & soon, what we have to expect. If I could but be sure of your life & health whatever happens, I should care little for anything Edition: current; Page: [195] else.—My darling can judge how interested & pleased I was with all those nice letters she wrote on the journey. When I got her approval of the alterations in the chapter, I inserted a saving clause about piece work⁶ & sent the whole to Furnivall who promises a proof shortly. I have completed an essay on the usefulness of religion⁷—such a one as I can write though very far inferior to what she could. My poor mother I am afraid is not in a good way—as to health I mean. In her usual letter about receiving her pension she said: “I have been a sufferer for nearly three months—I have only been out of doors twice” &c “I have suffered & am still suffering great pain. I supposed the pain in my back was rheumatism, but it is not—it proceeds from the stomach, from which I suffer intense pain as well as from the back. Mr Quain⁸ has been attending me during the time, & he & Sir Jas Clark have had a consultation & I am taking what they prescribe—I can do no more.” And again in answer to my answer—“I am just the same, but it is not rheumatism that I am suffering from, but my liver. I thought it was odd that my stomach should be so much affected from rheumatism. Sir J. Clark is coming here at the end of the week to have another examination & consultation. I cannot write much as I am so very weak.” This looks very ill I fear—very like some organic disease. Mrs King⁹ she says is a little better & is probably coming to England. I told her what you said a propos of Mrs King’s illness. She wrote “I hope Mrs Mill is still going on well.” There is a kind of bathos in dropping down from such serious matters into trifles, but as trifling things must be done even when serious ones are doing, so they may be written about. The event proved you to be quite right about the Powell affair:10 In answer to my note he sent the ratcatcher’s address & offered to send him, but I made no answer & wrote to the man myself. Meanwhile he came again to Powell’s & after finding one other rat, came on our premises unasked & Powell also—a piece of great impudence on P’s part—but Kate very rightly would not allow them to do anything without orders from me. The ratcatcher came the next day in consequence of my note to him & searched all he thought necessary but without finding a single rat—so that it is plain there were none, but the one which he drove from Powell’s & which afterwards returned there & was caught. I had two notes from P. subsequent to the one I sent you but did not answer either of these. It is of no use transcribing them here. Adieu my darling—keep up your spirits. I will write again as soon as I hear from you & happily it does not take long now.

Edition: current; Page: [196]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April 5 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

152.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

April 5 [1854]

35

Your dearest kindest letter came today my own beloved, & first touching Clark—I should not my darling have used such a word as certainty about his not having told me his real opinion, if I had no reason for knowing it but a surmise of my own grounded on my notion of my symptoms. But what there is to say on this subject as well as on my health generally had better be said than written, if I am to have the happiness of seeing her almost immediately. About my going, I see no reason against it in the state of my general health but an unlucky complication has occurred in the shape of a boil on the chest, nearly under the left shoulder, which it seems is of a bad kind, approaching to carbuncle, & might be dangerous if the proper treatment of it were intermitted or if I were to go away from medical advice—therefore it seems necessary to wait the uncertain but probably small number of days necessary for getting rid of this, before I venture to leave—& the choice is between waiting that time, or my darling’s crossing without me. I cannot at all judge which is best as I do not know how capable she is of crossing. She alone can judge—but I am most anxious that she should not come if she is really dreading it much. If you decide, darling, to wait a few days till I am better able to come, I will write to you all I know about my health & all that I am doing with regard to it. But you must not think my angel that I am in low spirits—it is true I have a much worse opinion of my health than I had, but that is not being in low spirits nor am I at all so. I know & think nothing now that I did not know & think three weeks ago, but you did not think my letters to Lyons shewed low spirits. I do not at all like the idea of Lily’s losing the semaine sainte at Paris.—Do not think I am triste my own love or that it is the least necessary on my account that you should come directly.—I am feeling provoked by something in the H. of Commons last night. A creature named Bowyer² has obtained leave to bring in a bill to abolish actions for damages in case of breach of the marriage contract & to make it a criminal offence instead—in order as he says to be like all the Continental countries—& Fitzroy³ (Palmerston⁴ was absent) though he guarded himself & the Govt from being understood to concur, yet was rather favourable in tone than the contrary. It is mixed up with things ad captandum such as making the Edition: current; Page: [197] wife a defendant as well as the man that she may be heard in her own behalf & the two men not allowed as they are now to blacken her character unopposed. But we see how touching these subjects brings bad novelties as well as good. The Post attacks Bowyer for it,⁵ contemptuously enough, of course not on the right grounds, though as good as could be expected from ordinary conservatives—& bids him instead of this nonsense, take up the recommendations of the Divorce Commission to make divorce easier.⁶—I want my angel to tell me what should be the next essay written. I have done all I can for the subject she last gave me. What exquisite weather. I do hope hers is equally fine. Adieu for the present, darling.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April 5 [1854]

India House

Mrs. James Mill

Mill, Mrs. James

153.

TO MRS. JAMES MILL¹

India House

April 5 [1854]

My dear Mother

I received on Saturday another of Mary’s² vulgar and insolent letters. The impertinence appears the only motive for writing them and I cannot waste my time in answering any more of them. In this she affects to think that I wish to see her. Will you tell her, that neither I nor my wife will keep up any acquaintance with her whatever.

I hope you are gaining strength and will soon be quite well again. When you are able to write will you let me know how you are. I need not say that we shall always be glad to see you.

yrs affy

J.S.M.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April 8. [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

154.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

April 8. [1854]

36

My own blessed darling, I should not have written to you in a way which was sure to make you anxious & uncomfortable, if it were not that writing the whole truth would I know make you much more so. Even now I would much Edition: current; Page: [198] rather that what I have to tell could have been postponed till you had accomplished that crossing but any more reticence now would probably alarm you as much as telling all. The “all” then is that it is Clark’s own confession which made me say that he had been insincere with me—about three weeks ago, soon after I wrote to Avignon, he admitted to me that there is organic disease of the lungs & that he had known this all along. My dearest angel, almost all the pain this was to me either at the time or since, was the thought of the pain it would give you. He added many things by way of encouragement—that it would not necessarily shorten my life—that only a small part of the summit of both lungs was affected—that the stethoscope did not shew any progress of the disease since he first examined the chest two months before—that from the age at which the attack came & the gradual manner I had a very good chance for its becoming chronic &c &c. to all which I attach just as much importance & no more, as my own judgment would give to it if he had said nothing. I waited a week & then went to him again when I found that he could do absolutely nothing for me, except recommend cod liver oil, which I have taken ever since. Finding this I went to Ramadge,² & had a long conversation with him, which ended in my determining to try his treatment. If my precious one had been here I should not have done so unless she approved but even if I had written to ask her, it would have been useless unless she had read his book. He told me who some of the people were whose cases are mentioned in the book—persons of all ranks & classes, some of them of families whom I know—Colonel Astell,³ son of one India Director⁴ & brother of another⁵—a grandson⁶ of David Ricardo—a son of Burroughes⁷ the member for Norfolk—the family of Law⁸ the recorder of London, three of whom had died of consumption before he was consulted; four others all had the disease & he cured them all. He shewed me numbers of letters from people whom he had restored not merely to health but to strength & fitness for all active pursuits though many of them far advanced in consumption; some had been patients of Clark, Chambers,⁹ Watson¹⁰ &c. Wakley¹¹ it seems Edition: current; Page: [199] believes in him & recommends patients to him. Altogether I find it impossible to doubt that he has effected many very remarkable cures: & his theory seems to me very rational. He says, all medical men have examined the lungs of people who have died of consumption, but very few have done what he has done all his life, examined carefully the lungs of persons who have died of other than pulmonary diseases—& this shewed to him by a large experience, 1st the immense number of persons who have lived the ordinary time having tubercles in their lungs, or the marks of having had them formerly. 2nd, that these are always persons in whom the part of the lungs which remains sound is more than ordinarily voluminous. 3rd that they have generally had some conformation or some morbid affection which has impeded the free exit of air from the lungs & therefore by partially imprisoning the air has distended the lungs & enlarged the chest. Then it occurred to him to try if this could be imitated artificially, & he found that by the use of the inhaling tube which he invented the dimensions even of the chest itself were often greatly increased & by the expansion of the lungs cavities actually formed were closed up, & the further deposition of tuberculous matter stopped, on the same principle in which tubercles are never found in the muscles of voluntary motion & on which Clark accounts in his book¹² for tubercles being always deposited first & most in the upper lobes, because these are the least expanded by the act of respiration. His paradox about cough is not so much of a paradox when understood. Laennec¹³ & Louis,¹⁴ the two greatest authorities on lung disease, both strenuously maintain (as I know not from Ramadge but from my own reading) that cough not arising from consumption never does nor can lead to it; but they allow & so does Ramadge that it may call it from a latent state into an active—he merely says that the tubercles must have preexisted—that a bad inflammatory cough often accelerates their softening & seems to cause the disease—but that in itself the thickening of the membrane of the air passages by catarrh is a counteractive & often a preservative against consumption & he shews striking facts in support of this. So there being nothing absurd in his theory, & his array of actual cures in very bad cases being extremely striking, I thought there was ground for hope though not for faith. He spoke with great confidence of curing me—said that he seldom had so favourable a case or one in which there was so small an amount of disease & now when I have been following his instructions for a fortnight he thinks or professes to think that I am decidedly better & shall not only be cured but soon. I need hardly say that this is so much vain wind to me & will be so until I see it verified. But I Edition: current; Page: [200] think he is a good physician—a good prescriber. Though the inhaler is his sheet anchor, he does a great many other things to check the disease & support the system until the inhaler has time to act: he gives stomachics, tonics & slight sedatives, & fights against the hectic fever by applying a single leech now & then. I have done this four times & if it has done anything it has done good, for I have not grown at all weaker in the last ten days. Before that, I seemed to get weaker daily—but Ramadge said that this was partly from the liver, that I was in a sort of semi-jaundiced state & indeed my yellowness shewed it—now this he has corrected, not by mercury which he thinks the death warrant of a consumptive patient (though Clark gives it without scruple) as it hastens the softening of tubercles in great numbers at once. R. has prescribed taraxacum & certainly to all appearance he has made my digestion better than it has been for a long time—unless it is the cod liver oil which has done it. R. thinks nothing of that—it seems to me that a little acidity which I still sometimes have is connected with the cod liver oil. As to the pulmonary disease, R. asked to see the expectoration, which Clark never did—& having seen it, says it contains tuberculous matter, as indeed is very evident to myself. So that as there is softening going on, I must expect, as he says, to be feverish & weak but this will not continue if the formation of fresh tubercle is stopped, which he expects will be the effect of the inhalation. He reckons it a very favourable sign that there is so little constitutional disturbance when there is softening & expectoration of tuberculous matter taking place. As for the boil I told you of, I shewed it to him when it was only beginning & he thought it an ordinary boil—then again three days after when it had grown large & ugly & he said at once it was a carbuncle & very dangerous unless taken in time. He at once opened it, told me how to poultice it, & it is now rapidly getting well. He did not think at first but does think now that this boil is partly a tuberculous deposit. I tell you all this, darling, at so much length, that you may not think I am risking anything by following Ramadge’s treatment—In all minor things I am persuaded he does me good—while Clark did nothing & thought he could do nothing but leave me to nature. Of the chances of his curing the disease as he so confidently predicts I can no more judge than I could at first. There are no signs of my being better except my not being worse—but I could not expect any while there is softening going on—that he does not pretend that he can arrest. Whether he is right will soon appear however as he predicts great improvement in another fortnight. The man has a very quiet manner & has not, to my thinking, the air either of what vulgar people call an enthusiast, or a quack. But he has a way of evading anything one says to which he cannot give a satisfactory answer—& then he hardly admits that his plan can fail if properly tried, & persevered in. I am inclined to think that he does not generally know of the failures, as those in whose case the plan fails give over consulting Edition: current; Page: [201] him & he loses sight of them. But it evidently often succeeds—every time I have been to him he has shewn me more letters received that morning, always containing more or less evidence of success. I think it was right to try him & I hope you will think so too.—I do not, darling, feel at all unable to come over to her—I could do most of what R. recommends there as well as here—but if she is fit & able to cross there seems no sufficient object in it—if she was not I would go over directly. I sent a note at once to Haji about the cheque book but he instead of writing himself, got a cheque book & brought it to me—so I inclose two blank cheques—but would it not be better that I should send French notes as before? This long letter is all facts & no feelings—but you will know what the feelings are—the utmost love & wish to live solely for your dear sake & for our objects. I am not the least depressed in spirits, probably because I have hardly any of the sensation of ill health. I wish I could be sure that you would suffer no more than I do. Bless her!

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April 10. [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

155.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

April 10. [1854]

37

My precious! my beloved! what a joy it is to read such a letter & how relieved I feel by her knowing the worst of this business—though that is a selfish feeling too when it causes her so much pain. I am most anxious my darling to know how you are—& that you should be a great deal better before you venture that odious crossing. You will soon, darling, I know, feel calm again, for what is there that can happen to us in such a world as this that is worth being disturbed about when one is prepared for it?—except intense physical pain, but that there is no fear of in this case. I am sometimes surprised at my own perfect tranquillity when I consider how much reason I have to wish to live, but I am in my best spirits, & what I wrote even in the week after Clark’s announcement before I had seen Ramadge, is written with as much spirit & I had as much pleasure in writing it as anything I ever wrote. It is the greatest pleasure to me that you think as you do about Ramadge & his plans, even on my short & imperfect explanation—though I could not doubt that what struck one of us as being good would seem so to the other on sufficient explanation. I think it is clear that his notions are right & that his treatment at least works in the right direction: whether with sufficient efficacy to stop the disease, is the only doubt. I have hitherto done all he Edition: current; Page: [202] recommended. (I breathe through his tube three times a day for half an hour each time—that seems very little does it not? but he thinks it enough) with one exception—he always urges me to get another more complex & expensive apparatus to use in the evenings, which combines with the principle of the tube—the inhalation of the vapour of herbs—camomile, marsh mallow & others—but I have not done this because it evidently is not essential to his plans—nor do I see well the good it can do—he says it is strengthening & soothing. If you advise, however, I will try it. It has long been known that many people live to be old with tubercles but R. says nobody before him had the least idea how many. He thinks half the people who go about have had tubercles. I myself have had them before without knowing it & recovered, for the incident which produced the éclaircissement with Clark was my coughing up a chalky concretion which I at once knew must be the saline part of an old tubercle, which had been cured by absorption. As for Clark’s not asking to see the expectoration—he evidently had made up his mind as to the case from the first day—was convinced that though nature might save me, art could not—& preferred to say nothing which might render me more inquisitive & put him to the cost of additional falsehoods. I continue not at all weaker—though varying from day to day. Yesterday I took a walk nearly twice as long as last Sunday—& though I did not feel quite as vigorous when I went out as I did the former time, I am sure I am the better for the walk. It was a splendid & very hot day & I returned just tired enough to make sitting down a rest. I am stronger & better today after it than I was last Monday. Clark recommended as much exercise in the open air as I could take without fatigue. R. also recommends exercise in the open air, cautioning me however against fatigue. I had no idea what pretty hilly country one soon gets into in the direction of Bromley. I go to & from the I.H. as usual & I think it good for me rather than the contrary. I go in the usual 2d class which are close & give me the same command of window as the first class & the only precaution I use is to go backward. The boil seems extirpated & the place has only to heal. R. thinks as you do that it was a favorable circumstance as to the pulmonary disease. I now always breakfast at home & go out to eat something in the middle of the day—I find this agrees better with my stomach. I send the important pages of the April time bill² & also the Examiner which, to its disgrace, supports the creature Bowyer.³ The papers today announce that the ministers have appointed a Commission to draw up regulations for the competitive examination for the India civil service—of the four Commissioners,⁴ three are acquaintances—& Edition: current; Page: [203] as one of those is Lord Ashburton⁵ I suppose I shall be applied to for an opinion.⁶ The others are Macaulay, John Lefevre,⁷ & Jowett,⁸ an Oxford liberal & great auxiliary of Trevelyan. I do not know that there is anything more to tell at present my precious, but only my fondest love.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April 11 [1854]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

156.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

April 11 [1854]

38

I have your note this morning my own darling love. Pray my darling do not attempt the crossing till you feel better—much better. I am going on here with everything that can be done & your presence is not at all necessary, pleasant as it will be. I saw Ramadge again yesterday. If one could but trust what those people say, when they wish to give encouragement, I am doing very well; for he says the sounds of respiration indicate a marked improvement & that he is certain of a perfect & rapid cure. But he wishes so much to think so, & to persuade me of it, that I do not feel that what he says can be relied on. I am quite certain however that I am not now growing weaker, but, if anything, a little less weak, & I think too that I have a little less of the hectic fever, but not sufficiently so to build any decisive inference on. You are no doubt aware that it is not uncommon for these symptoms to abate when the first crop of tubercles have softened & been discharged—the patient then gains flesh & strength & there is an interval before any more tubercles soften & so there is an ebbing & flowing of the disease, but each time an additional portion of the lungs is made useless, so that at last one does not get better, but dies because one has spent one’s capital—this however is often an affair of several years—witness George²—Clark says it was astonishing that he lived, for he had a large cavity in his lungs already before he went to Madeira. But Ramadge is persuaded that by his treatment the deposition of fresh tubercles may be prevented: & though successive liquefactions of old Edition: current; Page: [204] ones at intervals from one another, often happen to his patients, he maintains that his treatment closes up the cavities if any which are left by their discharge—and I am quite satisfied that he does very often effect this, though it must no doubt (though he does not admit it) be very uncertain whether he can do so in any individual case. In any case however I feel sure that his is as you say the best mode to assist nature—& I cannot but think that my not getting weaker for nearly a fortnight while a considerable quantity of softening is going on, & not having more general derangement of health than I have, if it is not owing to his treatment is at least a favourable indication of the chances which nature holds out.—I am sorry to say darling I had two notes this morning from Clara & Mary both saying that my mother is very ill—one says that Clark & the other medical man Quain call her disease enlargement of the liver, the other tumour in the liver & that they think very seriously of it though not expecting immediate danger. I need not send the notes as you will see them so soon & now darling adieu as you will not care to hear about any minor matters at present—bless you my own perfect & perfectly loved one.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April, 1854

I[ndia] H[ouse]

Dr. Henry Cecil Gurney

Gurney, Dr. Henry Cecil

157.

TO DR. HENRY CECIL GURNEY¹

I[ndia] H[ouse]

[

April, 1854

]

My dear Sir—

I am sure you will like to hear how we are going on. My wife & daughter have just got home² after having made a very easy journey from Hyères, alone for I was not well enough to fetch them³ as I hoped to have done. My wife has continued in extremely delicate health ever since the illness at Nice⁴ in which evidently the lungs were much concerned. Though she does not recover any strength she has had no return of the attack.⁵ I have only lately lost the cough I had at Nice but the cause of it still continues. I am under a careful & minute system of medical treatment which I hope in the course of the summer will produce a change for the better. If you shd be in England this year we hope we shall see you. My wife & Helen desire many very kind regards and I am Dear Sir

yrs very truly

Edition: current; Page: [205]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April 23. 1854

B[lackheath] P[ark]

158.

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE NEOPHYTE WRITERS’ SOCIETY¹

B[lackheath] P[ark]

April 23. 1854

Sir,—

I have received your letter of 11th of April, in which you do me the honor to request that I will become a member of the Honorary Council of an association termed the N[eophyte] W[riters’] Society.

So far as I am able to collect the objects of the Society from the somewhat vague description given of them in the Prospectus, I am led to believe that it is not established to promote any opinions in particular; that its members are bound together only by the fact of being writers, not by the purposes for which they write; that their publications will admit conflicting opinions with equal readiness; & that the mutual criticism which is invited will have for its object the improvement of the writers merely as writers, & not the promotion, by means of writing, of any valuable object.

Now I set no value whatever on writing for its own sake & have much less respect for the literary craftsman than for the manual labourer except so far as he uses his powers in promoting what I consider true & just. I have on most of the subjects interesting to mankind, opinions to which I attach importance & which I earnestly desire to diffuse; but I am not desirous of aiding the diffusion of opinions contrary to my own; & with respect to the mere faculty of expression independently of what is to be expressed, it does not appear to me to require any encouragement. There is already an abundance, not to say superabundance, of writers who are able to express in an effective manner the mischievous commonplaces which they have got to say. I would gladly give any aid in my power towards improving their opinions; but I have no fear that any opinions they have will not be sufficiently well expressed; nor in any way should I be disposed to give any assistance in sharpening weapons when I know not in what cause they will be used.

For these reasons I cannot consent that my name should be added to the list of writers you send me.

I have the honor to be
Sir yr obt Sert

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

May 23. 1854

Sir Charles E. Trevelyan

Trevelyan, Sir Charles E.

159.

TO SIR CHARLES E. TREVELYAN¹

[

May 23. 1854

]

My dear Sir

I have as you requested written a longer letter on the plan for the reorganisation of the civil service & addressed it to the Chancellor of the Edition: current; Page: [206] Exchequer.² I have been much disgusted, less at the direct attacks on the plan, frivolous & interested as they are, than at the cold reception of it by those who ought to know better. It is an instance, along with the rejection of the Scotch Education Bill³ & many others, how much the present Government is in advance of the popular mind on most important subjects.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

May 31. 1854

B[lackheath] P[ark]

Sir Charles E. Trevelyan

Trevelyan, Sir Charles E.

160.

TO SIR CHARLES E. TREVELYAN¹

B[lackheath] P[ark]

May 31. 1854

My dear Sir—

I am sorry that a part of what I felt bound to say (in a letter signed with my name)² respecting the scheme of examinations circulated with your report, should seem to you likely to be injurious. But I hope you will not ascribe it to amour propre when I say, that I should much prefer withdrawing the letter to the omission of that passage.³ In substance it is simply an assertion of what I understand to be the avowed principle of the present Government, religious equality, a principle now very generally professed, but usually with a mental reservation of certain exceptions to it. I hold that there ought to be no exceptions & when a rule is proposed which would amount to exclusion from the public service on religious grounds, it is Edition: current; Page: [207] a matter of conscience & duty with me not to express approbation of the plan, without expressing in an equally decided manner how entirely I disapprove of such an appendage to it. Even without the proposed rule, there will be much danger lest in carrying the plan into operation the so called religious element should be allowed to assume such a predominance as to be practically a cause of exclusion: but when I see a religious test actually proposed, I must be excused for saying, that the advocacy of those whom it would exclude should either be dispensed with altogether, or allowed to be given under a protest against the exclusion.

I am my dr Sir yrs vy truly

To Sir C. E. Trevelyan

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 6. 1854

Blackheath

Sir Charles E. Trevelyan

Trevelyan, Sir Charles E.

161.

TO SIR CHARLES E. TREVELYAN¹

Blackheath

June 6. 1854

My dear Sir—

It is with great regret that I yield to your objection to a sentence which I think is required in justice to those who dissent from creeds. I have now weakened it so much that I hope it will not be found too strong for the public mind.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 9. 1854.

Blackheath Park

Mrs. James Mill

Mill, Mrs. James

162.

TO MRS. JAMES MILL¹

Blackheath Park

June 9. 1854.

My dear Mother—

I hope you are feeling better than when I saw you last week & that you continue free from pain. I write to say that I am going immediately to the Continent by the urgent recommendation of Clark who has been pressing me to do so for some time past & though I expect to return in a few weeks it will probably be to leave again soon after. I wish again to remind you in case it has not already been done how desirable it is that some one who is fixed in England should be named executor to your will, either instead of me, which I shd prefer, or as well as myself.

My wife sends her kindest wishes & regrets that her weak health makes it Edition: current; Page: [208] difficult for her to come to see you as she would otherwise have done. Ever my dear mother affectionately yours²

J.S.M.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 11. [1854]

Royal Hotel St Helier

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

163.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Royal Hotel St Helier

June 11. [1854]

My own darling love, I write a day sooner than we expected as I find that the mail leaves here tomorrow instead of Tuesday—a bad arrangement since it must make two sets of mail steamers necessary when one set would suffice. I had an excellent passage, except that we did not arrive till 11 o’clock, being 10½ hours. The tide was against us all the way & the wind south. I felt so sick whenever I attempted to get up, that I did not go on deck—but as this boat is made in the American fashion with the cabin on deck (the ladies’ cabin is below as usual—contrary to the usual practice of giving to women what is thought the best) I could see out of the cabin windows. It was a dull threatening morning. I saw the French coast to the left, a long low headland apparently a good way off, & Alderney very near on the other side—looking a bare green rising ground, not at all bold, & less in size than the part of the I. of Wight between Ryde & St Helen’s. We went outside Jersey, coasting the west side & then round to the south—parts of this were very rocky & fine on the sea beach & in the sea, but the island looked poor. The water was so low when we arrived that although there are two fine high stone piers, we had to land in small boats. I had been told of many inns & could not discover which was best—This was one of them & as it seemed to have a view I came here—but it is a poor inn, not very clean, at most passable. The vivres however are good. I have just dined at the table d’hote which is a real table d’hote, the landlord presiding. The cookery is all English—all things seem earlier than in England, new potatoes, peas, & Edition: current; Page: [209] the gooseberries quite large. The town is poorly situated, on the side of a harbour ugly as all harbours are (except Dieppe) au fond of a larger bay than I should have thought existed here. It is much more an English than a French town—I have heard nobody but boys in the streets speak French—& two thirds of the names over the shops are English—but then it is true half the shops have no names at all. It is quite like an English country town & the roads about are full of English second rate villas with a few first rate. The town is large—said to have 33,000 inhabitants, the whole island having only 60,000. I see nothing tempting either in the town or the neighbourhood—I have walked a great deal about the place & found some plants. Tomorrow I shall try to get conveyance to the chief show places of the island. As far as I can yet see it is generally bare of trees, though one or two well wooded ravines intersect it from the head of the bay on which the town stands. One cannot help comparing it with the Isle of Wight to which it seems quite infinitely inferior. The chief feature of it seems to be shady lanes. I have got some notion of prices from an old soldier who has been gardener to several of the Colonels of engineers here & from a Mr Williams at the table d’hote who seemed to be looked on as something of an authority. Beef & mutton are 8d, best butter 10½d, the pound (of butter) equal to 18 oz English. The butter at the inn is tolerable & intensely yellow. Tea & coffee are brought from the warehouses in England not having paid duty, so the price must be the same as in England minus the duty. Bread about the same as in England. I suppose house rent is low. Had a beautiful afternoon for my walk & it is now a fine evening—I shall walk again after putting in this letter. I am as well darling as I could expect to be, & in tolerably good cue for walking—perhaps by & by I shall be so for writing—but as yet I feel as if I should not wish to write a thing except letters to my dearest one. I already seem to have been an age parted from her—but it will be all for the best if it does me any good. I never have been out of spirits since my illness but at the prospect of leaving her & now I begin looking forward to the reunion—bless her, ever blessed one.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 13 [1854]

St Helier

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

164.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

St Helier

June 13 [1854]

2

Tuesday evening, darling, sees me still at this place for the steamer which was to have gone to St Malo today at 12 went on an excursion to Alderney Edition: current; Page: [210] yesterday & had not got back here at 5 o’clock, today, probably on account of the very rough weather. It is supposed that it will go to St Malo tomorrow morning. In the meantime I have lost what would have been a very rough & disagreeable passage but it does not matter, as I have not at all exhausted this place, which gains very much on better acquaintance. Yesterday & today began with driving showers, but turned to beautifully fine afterwards though now in the evening it is raining again. I was advised yesterday to go by an omnibus which makes the tour of the island stopping a while at the principal show places—but it turned out that the omnibuses had not yet started for the season, & as nobody wanted to go except four people from this inn, the omnibus owner sent a carriage instead. I felt very odd with my three companions, a middle aged man from Manchester & two young men. The middle aged man was very ignorant, the young men less so, one of them knew something of chemistry, the other of geology & they all liked walking. We went across to the north coast & saw the greater part of it, walking a good deal; & I had a six miles walk in the evening besides; to a tower on an old barrow planted with trees, from which the whole island is visible. Today I was kept dangling after the steamer till one (walking about however) but from one till ½ past 4 I went out, a most beautiful excursion, half an hour by omnibus round the bay, the same back, the other 2½ hours the prettiest walk in the island. The character of the island is table land very much intersected by deep green hollows with meadow at the bottom & wood up the sides—but no very fine trees—a coast very much indented & abounding in promontories which reminded me of the Riviera, wanting the mountain heights. I have made a good many excellent captures of plants. The experiment seems to answer thus far, for my strength is satisfactory & my health (as usual) improved by the much walking—the strength is encouraging for the recovery of flesh: for if the nerves are improved for one purpose they are likely to be so for another. But I have been & still am annoyed with pain under the right shoulder blade & between the shoulders. I have written to Clark to ask him if I should put on a blister. I applied a strong mustard poultice last night but from the awkwardness of the place could not do it myself, but found a chemist who came at night, made it & put it on—his name is Trueman & he is a true man for he gave me two ounces more of mustard & only charged a shilling altogether. I do not think this place can be cheaper than Devonshire except in taxed articles, tea, wine &c. I was asked in the market 3 sh. for a pair of fowls, a pair of ducks or a goose—none of them particularly fine. The 8d a pound for beef, mutton & veal is the Jersey pound of 17½ English ounces. Trueman says he pays £60 rent for his house in a street—but says a good ten roomed house in the outskirts may be had at £30. There are no taxes except a small one for making roads. The judges & other public officers are all unpaid, & the military are paid by England. There are many & various Edition: current; Page: [211] shops, some very large & showy—& a great many booksellers chiefly for French books, with which they seem as well furnished as any French provincial town. They are sending quantities of new potatoes to London, in the barrels in which they have just imported flour from America. The people seem all strong, healthy & well off—the French they talk to one another seems a sort of patois which I cannot understand. I have taken a sort of liking to the place & even do not dislike this inn. I was set against it at first by being offered a bedroom with a horribly dirty counterpane & one or two other small things, but the room I have & the place generally are quite clean & pleasant. This delay will throw all the plans one day later for writing & will make me a day longer in getting her precious first letter. I meant to have had another walk this evening but it has come on a pouring rain. The temperature & air are soft & mild as I remember South Devonshire. Adieu my darling—my own precious love.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 14 [1854]

St Malo

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

165.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

St Malo

June 14 [1854]

3

My dearest dearest love, I arrived here today, having started at 10 & had a smooth & easy enough passage of about five hours in the most pouring wet day there has been this year—so far is the weather from promising any improvement. As it was low water when we arrived, we could not approach the pier, but were taken on shore in boats & had then to walk at least half a mile over rocks & seaweed. It rained so violently when we arrived that I made up my mind not to risk getting wet, but to remain on board till the steamer could get in—but fortunately the rain abated before the last boat was gone & I was able to land. I did not go to the France where we went before but to another near it called Hotel de la Paix, also praised by Murray, & to which almost every passenger seemed to go. It appears good as far as I can judge. I have just returned from the custom house where the whole bevy of passengers, women & all, went in person, the commissioner system not, apparently, being organized here as at the more frequented ports. I walked round the ramparts before dinner (& was caught in the rain doing so) & even in this wretched weather the view was fine. But I can make no plans for tomorrow on account of the weather. The steamers to Dinan are not running Edition: current; Page: [212] now, & the diligences as usual are too early or too late. I employed the five hours of steamboat partly in conning over the subject of justice for the essay²—& partly in hearing the talk of the passengers, all quite commonplace people & yet one heard now & then the same remarks which would be made by superior people, e.g. that the English abroad all speak ill of one another & get up scandal against each other—saying “Ah we know why he lives abroad, he is obliged on account of his creditors” &c &c. The Jersey people seem to be spoken of, even by Jersey people, in the way Yorkshire people are spoken of—one would think they were “far north” instead of far south. From what I heard it seems that Australia is crammed with Jersey people—people of family as well as poor people. The emigration ships from Liverpool have agents in Jersey, & placards all about, & there is a ship of 1400 tons going from Jersey to Adelaide direct in a few weeks as one of the passengers said who is going by her with the remainder of his family to join part of it who are already there. I could not learn even the name of a single refugee at Jersey except Victor Hugo whose letter about that Guernsey murderer³ had drawn attention to him—the people seem to think him a half mad oddity. There are several newspapers in Jersey both French & English but they seem to be worth little. At the inn (all the inns being boarding houses) they reckoned me as a boarder because I took my meals in the public room, & they charged for board & lodging five shillings a day, which would be cheap anywhere else especially as there was no stinting in quantity or quality—I did not expect to find attendance put in the bill, but so it was, & comparatively dear, being at the rate of 15 pence a day. My back & shoulder are a little better than yesterday (Mr Truman applied a second mustard poultice) but they are still troublesome. I am afraid it is the slight inflammation which so often occurs in this disease & eventuates as the Yankees say in adhesion. However, if the weather would but improve I should get on well enough, & should have perhaps some chance of stopping the great & rapid wasting of flesh which has been going on for the last two months & which if not stopped would soon make me incapable of any bodily exertion whatever. But I do not despair of its being stopped, at least for a time, by this journey. I long to get to St. Brieuc & to hear from her though it will be only a day or so later than our parting. If your health goes well I wish to live—otherwise I am indifferent to it. I find the post does not go till 4 tomorrow afternoon, so I shall add a line tomorrow morning. Edition: current; Page: [213] Thursday 15th. Another wretched day of rain making it impossible to go anywhere. I have gone to the cathedral & about the town, got weighed, tried unsuccessfully to match my scissors &c and when I have taken this to the post shall have to sit down & write till 4 o’clock when I have taken a coupé place to Dinan—but if this weather lasts Dinan will be triste enough. It will not be time lost, for when I cannot go out I can write—but it delays the object of the journey. I seem today to be almost the only person in the inn—the other arrivals having all gone on. If it had been fine I should either have found some other way to Dinan earlier or made an excursion to Cancale in the forenoon. If it is fine tomorrow I may stay a day at Dinan, otherwise I shall go on to St. Brieuc for the letter. Adieu my own most dearly beloved angel.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 16. [1854]

St Brieuc

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

166.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

St Brieuc

June 16. [1854]

4

Ah darling! I arrived here this evening & she knows very well what was the first thing I did & what the delight was of reading her precious writing. Though I am here two days later than we reckoned on, it only arrived here yesterday—& has the Calais postmark of the 14th which I do not understand. Probably it did not get to London in time for Monday’s post. It seems to have come here from Calais in one day, which is important to know. But how could my darling think of not opening the letter, & all letters? It is odd enough, I was thinking today in the diligence that as nothing had been said about it, it was just possible you might not open. As the seal was red, no doubt the news there was not the worst news but it was of course a note caused by my announcement of going away. However she will read it now & send the contents. She can always best judge whether to send letters or tell me their contents. I expect few letters of which the contents will be worth eightpence, but still less worth a sentence of your writing. I am going on well—not inconvenienced by any weakness except in the arms, which get fatigued by holding an umbrella even if not up. The pain in my shoulder does not trouble me so much. The excursion would be pleasant enough if it were fine weather. Yesterday only cleared up a little (but not completely) while I was en route, en banquette, to Dinan. Today it was cloudy, but without rain, & I hoped it was clearing, but it has begun to mizzle again since I have been here. I had a walk at Dinan of near two hours besides going much about the town, walked much up hills & from relays on the road Edition: current; Page: [214] here (per coupé) & have had a country walk in the dusk since arriving. I now see what Brittany is like, a table land, looking much wooded at a distance, all cut up by inclosures but much of it not cultivated & so neither wild nor civilized—dull generally but fine whenever one comes to the ravines cut deep into it by rivers. So the plan is to halt in some of the best ravines long enough to explore them. Morlaix appears to be one of the best & there seem to be so many good excursions to be made from it that though you will have probably written to Brest, yet if you get this in time to write on Monday the letter will find me still at Morlaix which I do not expect to leave before Thursday morning. I am still three days from Morlaix as my plan is to go only to Guingamp tomorrow & to Lannion next day, so not reaching Morlaix till Monday evening. Do not however darling write to Brest after Wednesday as I do not expect to make any stay there. As you will now know that I am getting on well, it is possible I may not write again till I get to Morlaix so you will not be uneasy if you do not hear again for three days. One sees how cheap living must be here by the cheapness of the inns. At the inn at St Malo, one of the two best, & with pretensions to be the best, the table d’hôte was 2½ francs, breakfast with eggs 1 fr. tea the same; they got me a real petit diner, potage, cutlets, & potatoes for 2 fr. & charged for attendance ten sous. At Dinan, in one of the inns praised by Murray, I had tea (my own) & with the accessories, & café au lait with eggs in the morning, the whole charge was 3 fr. Of course I shall never think of giving more than ten sous for service except perhaps at Brest—& I have no doubt they will be perfectly contented. The people say living would be still cheaper if they did not export so much to the Channel Islands & to England. About this town they grow quantities of onions, said to be for England. After I sent my letter to you from St Malo, the rainy day gave me a long spell at the Essay on Justice² & if the weather is as bad as it threatens, we shall at least have the consolation of getting on with that. I began it in preference to the other subject because the thoughts had partly shaped themselves for it in my head. Among things I forgot, one was to remind her, a week before the 1st of July, to send on to the London Library a list of all books we have, including the lost book “A Cruize in the Mozambique Channel”.³ I am very glad my dear one was not troubled with Ley.⁴ How I wish I could wish away from her all other troubles. As this will not go till tomorrow I shall keep it open & if I add nothing she will know that I am well, that nothing is changed & that I am going to Guingamp per banquette at 12 oclock. I shall go in the banquette whenever I can as it is more open air & the coupé fevered me a little today though I had the window open. Adieu angel mine.

Edition: current; Page: [215]

June 17. On further thoughts my beloved you had better not write to Morlaix but to Brest, as I shall go from one to the other in a day, probably Thursday. It is a fine morning, darling, & promises well. I shall take this to the post before breakfast & walk after.

Bless her.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

19 June [1854]

Morlaix

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

167.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Morlaix

19 June [1854]

5

What a darling letter my own love—& how very much it makes me wish that I may get better when I know how great a pleasure it would be to my own sweetest one. Hitherto there is nothing particular to be said on either side of that question. Except the day of crossing & the day at St Malo I have had very tolerable weather—There has been only about one smart shower each day, & it has always been so timed that it has put me to no inconvenience. I have done everything exactly as I said in my last letter that I meant to—& have been so much out walking whenever I have not been travelling or eating that I really have had no time to write any more of the Essay except for an hour at Guingamp. These Breton towns are mostly pretty, quiet & cheerful, the houses mostly of square blocks of granite not stuccoed & therefore looking well, & slated upright roofs which give dignity. The valleys or rather narrow rocky ravines in which they all stand are excessively pretty, & pleasant to explore. This town of Morlaix however is the first fine thing I have come to—like a Swiss town or rather like one’s original idea of one, got from drawings—the rocks rising precipitous behind the tall houses. The town is on both sides of a very un-Swiss because canalized & harbourized river, with quays as broad & in some places as handsome as those at Rouen. I have walked this evening down the ravine to where the river spreads out as it approaches the sea—about 3 miles below the town. There are diligences here, & generally good ones, from everywhere to everywhere, & they go full 7 miles an hour going 20 miles journeys with the same three horses—but there has never been anybody in them except commis voyageurs going their rounds—the people whom the fine gentlemen that write the Times correspondence are so fond of abusing, but I must say from talking with them in diligences & at tables d’hôte I generally find them both sensible & right feeling—& today I got talking republicanism with one of Edition: current; Page: [216] them. By the bye at the table d’hôte here today where all except me seemed to be commis voyageurs I thought I never was at table with so many really nice looking men. I travelled from Guingamp to Lannion with a rather pleasant & well informed Englishman²—who or what I do not know, but he turned out to be in Brittany on the same errand as I, & had been staying some weeks at St Pol de Léon from which he was making a tour in Brittany. He had been he told me for a whole year confined to two or three rooms & hardly able to walk across one of them—expected by everybody to die of consumption which he still has, but all his symptoms are gone & he reckons himself quite well—though much thinner than I am he walks 20 miles with ease. This is encouraging but it appears to be another of the wonderful effects of cod liver oil which he has been taking for a year. I wish darling you could take it—would you not give it a trial again with quinine, as I took it at first? I really cannot think it was that which gave you the illness. This man broke two blood vessels at 17 & has been consumptive ever since—I suppose he is now about 30. He is coming to Morlaix this evening & he & I are going tomorrow on a very promising excursion into the interior—the day after I shall go with him to St Pol where there is said to be the finest cathedral in Brittany—I meant to go there & return here but as he tells me there is a diligence from St Pol to Brest direct twice a week, Thursday being one of the days, I shall go on by that. I suppose two days will be enough for Brest, one of them passed in going to the French Land’s End, Cape Finisterre, so on the 25th or 26th I shall get to Quimper—do not write there later than the 22d or the 23d if put in in London: if too late for that, up to Saturday 24th (in London) will be in time for Lorient. What a really cheap country this is. At the market of St Brieuc I saw what seemed to me most delicate mutton, too large to be lamb but otherwise like it; & this was 8 sous the pound—veal the same—a tenth more than an English pound—less than half the Jersey price. At Lannion this morning most beautiful lamb was the same price, veal the same & beef the same, which at St Brieuc was 2 sous more. Bread however free trade has made as cheap in England as anywhere—At St Brieuc the officially fixed price of the best quality was 11 sous the kilo or about 5d the 2 lb loaf & I do not suppose we are paying more than that at Blackheath. At Guingamp the table d’hôte was 2 fr. & my petit diner the price of a déjeuner, 1½ fr. At Lannion, an excellent inn, my bedroom excellent & well & much furnished, I had (my own) tea with an omlet at night, eggs in the morning, & the whole bill was 4 fr. The bedrooms are always 1 fr. though sometimes equal to those charged 3 fr. for elsewhere. I have got few plants yet in France—the botanizing at Vire & Dinan in 1844³ Edition: current; Page: [217] seems to have exhausted this part of the country. Thanks for the Spectator my treasure. x x x x x x

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 24 [1854]

Brest

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

168.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Brest

June 24 [1854]

6

I arrived here, my precious love a day later than I expected when I wrote from Morlaix, as the excursion into the interior, it turned out, could not be comfortably done in one day. I have received your letter No. 3 of the 16th—I am afraid you would not get mine from St Brieuc in time to prevent your sending No. 4 to Quimper, unless the day extra passed at Jersey had induced you to delay writing one day beyond the time we fixed. But I hoped to have found another letter here, written after you received that from St Brieuc. Perhaps it will come tomorrow morning. I propose staying two days here, one to be passed in going to Cape Finisterre. I hope to get to Quimper from here in one day but perhaps I may be obliged to take two & I shall probably stay there a day for the sake of going to the other promontory, the Bec du Raz, so I shall be at Lorient on either the 29th or 30th but as I shall not stay there, it will hardly do for my dear one to write there after receiving this. If she writes the same day or the next, direct Auray, Morbihan, the place from which the Druidical antiquities are to be seen; if the day after, to Vannes; afterwards to Nantes. This journey has been as pleasant I think as it would have been, without you, if I had been well. I have had no interruption from weather since St Malo & the weather having each day improved a little, yesterday became sunny & today hot. The excursion from Morlaix was into the central country of Brittany, to the mines of Huelgoat & the cascade of Saint Herbot, or rather into the fine woody ravines containing them. The country was very like the finer & wilder parts of England, & the waterfalls somewhat like our Swallow fall.² I went there as I said I was going to, with an Englishman who it seems is a barrister & is named Pope.³ He turned out a pleasant person to meet, as though he does not seem to me to have any talent, he is better informed than common Englishmen—knows a good deal of French history for example, especially that of the Revolution & seems either to have already got or to be quite ready to receive all our opinions. I tried him on religion, where I found him quite what we think right—on politics, on which he was somewhat more than a radical—on the Edition: current; Page: [218] equality of women which he seemed not to have quite dared to think of himself but seemed to adopt it at once—& to be ready for all reasonable socialism—he boggled a little at limiting the power of bequest which I was glad of, as it shewed that the other agreements were not mere following a lead taken. He was therefore worth talking to & I think he will have taken away a good many ideas from me. I shall probably see him again at Nantes as he is to be there about the same time with me. He had evidently travelled very little & I enjoyed his unaffected pleasure in the scenery. I went with him to St Pol de Léon, a pretty cheerful little place called poor & melancholy by Murray, possessing splendid sea views & a really fine cathedral, a good deal like Caen, besides another church with a tower which is very high & rather fine. I came on here next day (yesterday) stopping half way for a walk & to see a church at a place called Folgoat [sic]⁴ which is one of the sights of Brittany. I have not seen much of Brest yet, but it seems a fine town as well as a fine bay. As to health I have seldom felt better than these last days—the fever I had for two days at Guingamp having gone off. I have not felt quite so strong as at Jersey & the whole of the first week & I seem to myself to be still losing flesh; which however the weighing does not confirm, for I have been weighed here this morning & found to weigh 65 to 66 kilos instead of 65 as at St Malo. It was a more accurate instrument here & therefore I do not rely on the indication as shewing any real increase of weight but at least I cannot be losing much & it seems to shew that the journey is doing me good. Clark, from whom I have a letter in answer to mine, warns me not to walk so much as he thinks I am inclined to but I must be the best judge of that. I am always out of doors, & walking when not travelling. I have seen no English paper except one number of the Globe, but have now & then seen a French paper which has kept me au courant of what little news there was. From that I saw that there had been a debate on the ballot & that Palmerston had made the speech against it⁵ but that was all. I reckon on leaving our opinion on that question to form part of the volume of essays, but I am more anxious to get on with other things first, since what is already written⁶ (when detached from the political pamphlet that was to have been) will in case of the worst suffice, being the essentials of what we have to say, & perhaps might serve to float the volume as the opinion on the ballot would be liked by the powerful classes, and being from a radical would be sure to be quoted by their writers, while they would detest most of the other opinions. I have written nothing since Guingamp & if there are no wet days, may not write much for the present, but if I do, it will be today as I have no long excursion to make. You do not tell me how you are. Perhaps I shall Edition: current; Page: [219] have another darling letter tomorrow. The board & lodging (my usual three meals with their tea) at the best inn (a good one) at Morlaix was just 5 francs a day. At the inn at St Pol a person may board for 40 fr. a month—if they even charge the bedroom per night at their usual price, one franc, it is still less than £34 a year. This is the place for real cheap living.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 26. 1854

Charles F. Colman

Colman, Charles F.

169.

TO CHARLES F. COLMAN¹

[

June 26. 1854

]

Dear Colman—

Your letter only reached me to-day. The intelligence it contained though so fully expected was yet a shock.

I do not intend to act as Executor.²

I give my full authority to open the letter which you mention.³

When you write to me again you can write to my wife for the address.

I hope that the delay in my receiving your letter will not cause you inconvenience.

I am yrs faithfully

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 26 [1854]

Quimper

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

170.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Quimper

June 26 [1854]

7

I have just arrived here my dearest angel & found your letters of the 17th & 19th & also one from Colman.² It is a comfort that my poor mother suffered Edition: current; Page: [220] no pain—& since it was to be, I am glad that I was not in England when it happened, since what I must have done & gone through would have been very painful & wearing & would have done no good to anyone. It is on every account fortunate that another executor has been appointed. There is a matter connected with the subject which I several times intended speaking to you about, but each time forgot. Unless my memory deceives me, the property my mother inherited from her mother³ was not left to her out & out, but was settled equally on her children. If so, a seventh part of it, being something between £400 & 500, will come to me, & I do not think we ought to take it—what do you think?⁴ Considering how they have behaved,⁵ it is a matter of pride more than of anything else—but I have a very strong feeling about it. Supposing this decided there is the further question, whether simply to refuse, by which the share will fall to be divided equally among them, or to give it up to Mrs King⁶ who wants it most or to Jane who alone of them all has behaved decently well? I have copied on the other side Colman’s letter & my answer. I wish I could have had your approval of the last before sending it. The applying to Haji instead of to you was exactly like them, though probably it was rather from ill breeding, not knowing it was an affront, than that they intended one. As for me I am more feverish & fatigued than I was, but perhaps both will go off. My first day at Brest, Saturday, was sunny & hot, but Sunday there was a sea fog which made my view from Cape Finisterre very limited, & it rained all the way back. Today there has been much wind & several smart showers but the evening is fine. This is a pretty country town, with a cathedral larger but hardly so fine as St Pol. I liked Brest—especially the harbour which is a great inland sea, communicating by a narrow passage with the sea without. I heard most beautiful military music both in the morning & evening. Your last letter Edition: current; Page: [221] appears by the postmark to have been four days in coming. I have nothing to alter in the directions for writing which I gave in my letter from Brest. I have always asked for letters up to the last moment. No second letter to Brest had come when I left & I now hope you did not write there a second time. If you did however they will probably forward it. Do darling tell me how you are. If you get worse I do not wish to get better. Adieu my own darling. Your letter of the 19th is No. the fifth but is marked 4.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 30 [1854]

Lorient

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

171.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Lorient

June 30 [1854]

8

I arrived here this morning my precious angel & got your dear letter—it grieves me that she has been so unwell. I hope she went to Brighton as she intended & was better for it. My darling it quite reconciles me to my own chances the moment I think she is getting worse, but I would far rather be afraid of having to leave her than to lose her. I hope this is only temporary & that she is better again by this time. I feared she was unwell, but from a wrong cause, her not sending this letter to Brest, if she had I should have received it on Saturday but I believe I asked her not to write to Brest later than Tuesday. This letter has the London postmark of 21st, Paris & Nantes of 22nd so you see, letters get to Nantes the very next day, being the whole way by railroad. So Nantes will be safe to write to until you hear from me from Nantes. I wish I had seen a full report of Palmerston’s speech²—what was given of it in the Spectator did not at all account for your high opinion of it, certainly only the commonplaces I have been familiar with all my life—while the speeches for the ballot were below even the commonplaces. The ballot has sunk to far inferior men, the Brights³ &c. When it was in my father’s hands or even Grote’s⁴ such trash was not spoken as that the suffrage is a right &c &c. But Palmerston’s saying that a person who will not sacrifice something for his opinion is not fit to have a vote seems to me to involve the same fallacy. It is not for his own sake that one wishes him to have a vote. It is we who suffer because those who would vote with us are afraid Edition: current; Page: [222] to do so. As for the suffrage being a trust, it has always been so said by the Whig & Tory opponents of the ballot & used to be agreed in by its radical supporters. I have not seen a single new argument respecting the ballot for many years except one or two of yours. I do not feel in the way you do the desirableness of writing an article for the Ed[inburgh] on it. There will be plenty of people to say all that is to be said against the ballot—all it wants from us is the authority of an ancient radical & that it will have by what is already written & fit to be published as it is⁵—but I now feel so strongly the necessity of giving the little time we are sure of to writing things which nobody could write but ourselves, that I do not like turning aside to anything else. I do not find the essay on Justice goes on well. I wrote a good long piece of it at Quimper, but it is too metaphysical, & not what is most wanted but I must finish it now in that vein & then strike into another. Quimper & Quimperlé are two of the prettiest towns I have seen. All the towns in Brittany are prettily situated, being in vallies & by clear streams, & about each of these there are evidently enough of pretty walks for a week’s exploring. The weather however (which up to Brest was much better than yours seems to have been) has been very bad since—today is the first day not rainy since Monday—today is bright & fine but it is the fineness of a confirmed wet summer which I now fear we are going to have. But I have managed to get some good walking every day besides the travelling which was always with an open front either the banquette of a diligence, the cabriolet of the courier or a cabriolet voiture. I am also now, I think, in as good walking condition as I was at first, which for several days I certainly was not—whether accidentally or because I had overdone, & exceeded my strength. I think the day I partially rested at Quimper did me good. I did not go to the Bec du Raz & the Baie des Trépassés as it was too far & bad weather, but went to the nearer Peninsula of Penmarch instead, a fine rocky coast, & I got some plants. Next day I went to Quimperlé but it rained nearly all the way—it cleared however in the evening & I had a walk. This town is uninteresting: but not as Murray pretends, dirty—on the contrary it is extremely clean: but Murray’s information is almost always either false or behind hand. However the inn here, recommended by him, is one of the best I have come to. I have had a nice walk, even a pretty one, though the country is uninteresting compared with most of the other places. Though I do not now expect letters before Nantes I shall ask for them at Auray & Vannes. Adieu & a thousand loves & blessings.

[P.S.] I suppose H’s letter⁶ had nothing worth telling now when the end is come.

Edition: current; Page: [223]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 4 [1854]

Nantes

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

172.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Nantes

July 4 [1854]

9

I arrived here darling this afternoon from Vannes & found her two letters. To begin with what I feel most about—surely dearest love it is full time to have some advice about the swelling in the side? either to see Tuson² in the way you thought of doing or to send for South³—it would be so advantageous in case of any sudden illness to have some competent person near who knew something of the previous state of your health—& I cannot think my darling angel that it can be safe to let this pain in the side grow worse—I have no doubt it is something not necessarily connected with the general state of the health & capable of being treated & cured separately—though tending while it continues, to make all other illness worse. Then about the things required by bad health which you say you are small luxuries—let us have them, that is, you have them darling, at least up to our income. We are now living much within it—& we are not likely to lose more than £300 a year for the Directors are not likely in the circumstances to give less pension than the highest they can give by law, which in my case would be, I am almost sure, three fourths of the salary. I suppose we can decide tolerably well now what mode of life to lay our plans for. I suppose we may resolve to go abroad for the winter—for my own part I now feel pretty confident of being alive then, & not so much worse as to make it impossible or useless for me to go—& though if we are alive we may probably come to England next spring, I suppose we shall never again live in England permanently, so we can judge well enough what we can afford, & have everything desirable which is consistent with it. About that matter of my mother’s inheritance,⁴ of course as your feeling is so directly contrary, mine is wrong, & I give it up entirely—but it was not the vanity of “acting on the supposition of being a man of fortune”—it was something totally different—it was wishing that they should not be able to say that I had taken away anything from their resources. However that is ended, & I need say no more about it.—You do not mention my letter from Brest, but I suppose you received it. I cannot imagine why that from Morlaix took so long. You must have by this time received the one from Lorient. Since that time there have been four beautiful days, & I hoped the Edition: current; Page: [224] fine weather had come, but alas, it rained much last night & a few showers this morning: it has however been fine since. I staid one night at Auray & two at Vannes, & saw the Druidical antiquities partly from one & partly from the other—a Frenchman at the table d’hote at Auray advised me to go from Vannes to the places which are best gone to in a boat, for the sake of going through the inland sea called Morbihan & its multitude of isles—& I am very glad I did so, for the panorama of them as seen from two islands on which I landed was quite unlike anything else in Brittany, & as is always the case with these things, what one sees by the way is much better worth seeing than the things themselves. I spent all yesterday on the water except a three hours walk about Locmariaker between going & returning—it was lucky I had the fine weather when it was so much wanted, for distant views & water scenery. It was most beautiful & enjoyable. I meant to write to her from Vannes, but did not get back till after post time & thought it better to write from here. I had some very nice walking too at Auray & much of it. That part however of Brittany is in general much tamer than those I had seen before. The northern part is as I described, table land intersected by deep ravines containing clear streams. The corner by Quimper & Quimperlé is much prettier, being all hills & deep valleys, with little or no table land. The rest, from Lorient to Nantes, comparatively flat & tame, though very pretty in parts as at Auray where the river, fine when the tide is up, flows among wooded though not high hills. The south coast also is not nearly so cheap for travelling as the north—whether for living I do not know, for they say prices have been raised in all the further end of Brittany by provisioning the Brest fleet—but at Quimper as well as Brest the table d’hôte was 3 francs & nowhere since has it been less than 2½ & they ask, for all but their worst bedrooms, 1½ francs. However at Lorient veal & mutton were only 9 sous & beef 10. Butter (good all through Brittany) they asked in the market 13 sous for a pound of. There, as at Brest, I am told the best meat is 15 sous, but I have not asked at the market yet. Murray is as ridiculously wrong as usual about the fineness of this town. The quais which are the only thing pretending to be fine are infinitely below Rouen—the best part about equal to the worst of Lyons & no fine buildings, for the cathedral, though of a stately height & with fine columns, wants length & is altogether poor externally. It is quite funny to see how the travelling English who inform Murray, copy the ways of thinking & judging of Frenchmen. I expected to find Brittany very bare & wild instead of which it is the best wooded part of all France, remarkably like England in general appearance, intensely green, with decidedly less of heathy ground than any part of the south of England, & what there is, not looking wild because cut up into inclosed patches. Murray is quite poetical about the stones at Carnac which he says are on a blasted heath, as dreary as Macbeth’s—now the heath is a cheerful piece of greenery close to a large village & there are oats growing between Edition: current; Page: [225] some of the rows of stones. Brittany however must be much altered—the most splendid roads cut it in all directions & the marks of recent cutting down of hills & terracing the slopes of roads by changing their direction are perpetual. As for my health, I am still feverish, for the last 24 hours more so than usual—but my strength has come back & I can walk as well or better than before I set out. I do not expect to find that I have lost any flesh since Brest. I shall get myself weighed tomorrow. I think the excursion has done me good, though there has not been time for it to do much. I do not know whether to prolong it or not. I found a letter here from Clark advising me to stay a few weeks longer—I shall not do that, but I feel rather inclined, as I am so near, to employ a week in seeing something of La Vendée—this however I shall not do unless I hear that you are better & that you advise it. Letters will come here very quickly, & en attendant I shall go to Pornic, the sea bathing place we have often wished to see—the letter (however short) which I hope to find at the post office here when I come back, will decide me whether to take the additional week or return at once, by Angers & Saumur, then crossing the country to the Rouen railroad & taking the steamboat from Dieppe. Adieu my own precious darling angel.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 5. [1854]

Nantes

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

173.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Nantes

July 5. [1854]

10

You will be surprised, darling, at my writing again directly, but I cannot tell you too soon what you will be glad to hear. I was weighed this morning & found to weigh 67 kilos. The difference between this & 65 at St Malo, 65 to 66 by the more accurate instrument at Brest, is more than can be accounted for by any inaccuracies & is the surest proof that the excursion has done me good. Even if I have gained much less than four pounds in three weeks, it is very encouraging & makes me think I may have still two or three years of life in me. If so, much may be done in the time. I have been going about this town all the morning, pleasantly enough, as every French town contains much interesting & is at any rate agreeable. I spent a very pleasant hour in the picture gallery in which there are some good pictures, & old copies of many more. The town itself improves on further knowledge; I had not seen the best of the quais, which is below the main body of the town, & opposite the shipping, but it is not equal to Rouen or near it. Beef & veal here are 12 sous the pound, mutton 14—the first place where I have found mutton the dearest. Tomorrow at ½ past 7 I shall start by the steamboat Edition: current; Page: [226] for Paimboeuf & from there to Pornic. I have heard nothing of my St Pol acquaintance.² I want to order mourning, a coat & trousers, from Carbery, & would write to him but I do not know where to tell him to send the things: Will she darling either tell me what she thinks, or order them—perhaps Lily would write a note in my name. Thanks darling for the Spectator which this time is better than usual & now adieu with a thousand loves & blessings.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 8. [1854]

Nantes

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

174.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Nantes

July 8. [1854]

11

I have just returned from Pornic my own precious one & have found here her two letters. All the letters she mentions have come safe & in their right order though several had been lying some time in the post offices before I received them. I am glad she is going to see Tuson—I am very anxious & do not much like prolonging my absence when I do not hear that you are better—however on the whole I think it is best that I should make the excursion I projected into La Vendée as I am so evidently benefiting by the journey. The two days which I spent at Pornic I have been quite remarkably well & stronger for walking than I have been at all since I began to lose strength; as well as very little feverish. Today I am rather more feverish again but that is a symptom which has always varied very much up & down. Pornic is such a pretty, funny little place—about the size of Rottingdean, & in much the same situation, except in being at the head of a little cove—the height of the place above the sea much the same but the actual cliff (or rocky escarpment rather, for one can in most places get down it) only about half that height—but the place & its paths & drives over the sea are very pretty & at present very quiet & the whole place is fragrant with Spanish broom which they plant everywhere. I looked at three or four of the houses or lodgings to let—they are all very clean & with a little additional furniture we could inhabit some of them—the general demand seems to be 500 francs for the season, or 200 the month—very dear therefore—but the best I saw would take less & the next best asked less (130 fr. the month). There are some good (or at least better) looking ones out of the town in good situations. The sea view is very fine with the long narrow island of Noirmoutier six leagues off, closing up a considerable Edition: current; Page: [227] part of it. There is another watering place, le Croisic, apparently more pretentious, but this is further off, on the coast of Brittany, towards Vannes, & I have not seen it. I went down the Loire in the steamboat to the very mouth of the mouth, at Saint Nazaire but the country on both sides is flat & uninteresting. I do not know how far I shall go into La Vendée as it will depend on how I like it, but in any case it will be convenient to return through Nantes, so darling write there up to the 12th inclusive. I hope she has not written to Rouen as that will be so long to wait. The weather has generally been very pleasant—sunny & warm, with a few very short showers every day—it seems to be much worse with you—three wet summers in succession—a thing that has not happened since 1828/29/30 & of those only 1829 was as bad as these have been. I have not only gained some good but probably escaped some harm by being away at a time when I could probably have walked little. On returning from Pornic I found here my consumptive acquaintance Mr Pope & he is going into La Vendée with me. I do not know whether much can be made of him but he seems to me the sort of person for whom chiefly we write & I should like to send him the Pol. Economy. At present I do not believe he ever heard of it or has the least idea who I am, except that he now knows my name. About the ballot, it is quite true that few speak or write against it but persons of Whig or Tory tendencies—but one of Sydney Smith’s most popular things,² sold at railway stations &c is an attack on it & there are & will be plenty of speakers against it & plenty of articles in all the newspapers—the daily ones I mean—except the D. News & perhaps the Advertiser. On reconsideration darling, direct aux Sables d’Olonne, Vendée, up to the 11th & Nantes to the 13th inclusive. Adieu with all possible love.

[P.S.] De Morgan³ can I think wait.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 12. [1854]

Napoléon Vendée

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

175.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Napoléon Vendée

(formerly Bourbon-Vendée)

July 12. [1854]

13

My last letter, my precious one, was I believe wrong numbered; it was dated Nantes July 9. It was really No. 12 & this is No. 13. I have got thus Edition: current; Page: [228] far very pleasantly, & am evidently benefiting more & more—my increase of feverishness has quite gone off; these last days I have had very little fever & though I cannot perceive by the eye any increase of flesh, I shall probably find some increase of weight when I am next weighed. Another sign of improvement is that there is certainly some enlargement of the chest. I had not measured for some time, & I now find a very visible difference. I am stronger & more capable for walking purposes than I have yet been. So you see darling the journey has answered its purpose as far as I am concerned. I am anxious for news of her but I probably shall arrive at Les Sables soon after her letter. This country is on the whole inferior to Brittany but has some very pretty places & the weather has been extremely accommodating, being fine at all walking times & raining chiefly at night, or if by day, during the times when it is of no consequence. Having a not disagreeable companion in this excursion makes a variety, an additional change from travelling alone; though the change to travelling alone will be quite as pleasing a variety when it comes, for the man² has very little in him though perfectly well disposed to receive. We went on Sunday to Clisson, an exceedingly pretty rural valley with a fine old castle & two shew pleasure grounds which would be very pretty indeed if they were kept as they would be in England; Monday to Mortagne, Tuesday to Les Herbiers & today here, having at each place two long walks & a good stroll besides. There are hardly any towns & very few large villages—the country is bosky & green, the best of it like Brittany, & therefore like England, the greater part like Warwickshire, & the tamer inland counties—a large fine ruined castle of which one never heard, at every village with almost no exception—the towns & villages all new, having been all destroyed in the Vendean war³ either by the royalists or the republicans—but nothing whatever to make one like the idea of living here. All that Murray says of the country either was never true or has ceased to be so; it is more uniformly highly cultivated than any part of England which I know of, & the lanes he talks about are simply English lanes, very like those in Sussex—but the whole country both in matter & spirit must be extremely changed by the fine roads which now pierce it as the French happily say in all directions. The crops are splendid & the people from all accounts better off than in most parts of France—a labourer earning about £24 a year & his food. The eatables are not so good as in Brittany—there I never once met with any but very good butter even in the smallest places—here it is seldom good & I have never yet found it very good. This town, the only one of any size in La Vendée, except Les Sables, was built by Napoleon⁴ as a means of coercing the Vendeans & is a very inactive dead looking though not uncheerful Edition: current; Page: [229] place—unluckily not in a beautiful situation. We have now got into the Plain of La Vendée, having left the hilly part of Les Herbiers—the last point, the Mont des Alouettes, where the Duchess of Berry⁵ built a chapel, commands a view almost from Nantes to the very opposite extremity of La Vendée & the weather was most splendid for it. We liked it so much that we walked up to it again in the evening. We go tomorrow to La Rochelle which will be the extreme point of my peregrinations & shall then make a round to Les Sables & from there to Nantes. My darling will be safe in writing to Nantes up to the 15th. I shall write again from Les Sables if not sooner. Adieu my own precious with a thousand thousand loves.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 15 [1854]

Rochefort

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

176.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Rochefort

July 15 [1854]

14

My own dearest love, I had not the slightest expectation of writing to you from this place or of coming here at all—my plan was to go north from La Rochelle by the roundabout way of Niort & Fontenay—but it appeared that the only ways to get from La Rochelle to Niort today (except by voiture which was too dear even for two) was at 7 in the morning inside a diligence or at 5 in the evening—the first was undesirable on all accounts & as the people at the Messageries said there was a diligence from Rochefort to Niort at the same hour in the afternoon, it seemed as well, having staid all yesterday at La Rochelle, to take this place on the way to Niort—but on coming here it appeared there is no diligence till 5 tomorrow morning. This is the first contretemps that has happened to me in the whole journey—but I shall not lose a day by it though I may be obliged to shorten my walk either at Niort or Fontenay. I shall in any case be at Les Sables on Monday evening. I did not care at all for seeing Rochefort but without Niort & Fontenay one has not seen La Vendée & I had laid my plans so as have a splendid walk at each. You may know by my taking it so leisurely that the journey continues to do me good, indeed it seems to do me more & more. I was weighed at La Rochelle & had gained two pounds more, making six pounds since St Malo—it shews how much weight I must have lost before, as these six pounds make not the smallest perceptible difference to the eye. Edition: current; Page: [230] I have gained still more in strength: yesterday at Rochelle I was out from eight in the morning till nine at night literally with only the exceptions of breakfast & dinner—& walking all the time except an occasional sitting on a bank. La Rochelle is a very nice town, very clean & quiet, with arcades along almost all the streets like Suza and Bologna—the baths are by the seaside a little way out of the town, in a very prettily planted garden & shrubbery along the seaside something like the Villa Reale at Naples, but short in comparison. The military band plays there twice a week in the evening & we happened to hit upon it by accident at the very time. The garden was full of French people—I saw no others—very gay & smart, though not looking like our idea of ladies or gentlemen. The whole place is very pretty; there is a reading room & concert room at the baths, everything in short except baths themselves. I went in to see the kind of thing—they were little oblong tin cuvettes, smaller & less good looking than those at Pornic, which were very like our bath at home but smaller. There are people passing & repassing to the baths all day, sometimes in private carriages, & it is evident that the place is very much used as a watering place by well off French people—who seem by the bye when they go there to take all their children with them. It is odd they nowhere in France contrive to have baths fit to use. Dirty however the baths did not seem, & still less at Pornic, where the people evidently pique themselves on their propreté. La Rochelle is hardly pretty enough to wish to live there, though the sea views are very fine: but it might be pleasant to visit. Meat, the first quality of all kinds, was at the market 12 sous: butter, tolerable but not equal to Brittany, 15. This place, Rochefort, is a quite modern town, built by Louis XIV & very neat & pretty of the kind but no pretty country near. It is now & has for some days been splendid weather—not too hot because tempered by a fine sea wind. All the corn seems fit to cut & some is already cut. I am impatient to get to Les Sables for her letter, & nothing but the great good it is doing me would have induced me thus to prolong the excursion—this contretemps about the coaches therefore bores me. Bless you my precious precious life.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 19 [1854]

Nantes

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

177.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Nantes

July 19 [1854]

15

My dearest angel, as I found no letters at Les Sables I came on at once here & found your letter dated the 12th which tells me of another to Rouen Edition: current; Page: [231] & seems to tell of another here, for it says “I told you in my last that I had written to Rouen”—the last I received before this, was dated the 6th & said not that you had but that you would write next to Rouen. I hope darling that your memory, generally so accurate, has confounded these two things—for otherwise a letter has been lost—the very civil man at the post office here made a great search for it but without effect. I suppose the letter at Rouen will tell me what I most wanted to hear viz. what Tuson said. I found here a note from Colman inclosing the note of my mother, which he mentioned before. It is dated 27th March & runs thus—“I did not mention the furniture in my will which you were so kind as to leave for my use, but as some of it is a great deal worn, I hope you will take the best of it, & do as I should have done if I had considered it my own, give the rest to your two unmarried sisters, Clara & Harriet. Your plate is taken care of & will be restored to you by your sisters. God bless you my dear son—I sincerely hope that you & Mrs Mill will enjoy many many years of uninterrupted happiness.” I remember, before, she could not or would not understand that the furniture was given to her out & out, though it was repeatedly impressed on her. Colman says, “I inclose your mother’s letter which was opened agreeably to your permission. With regard to the furniture C[lara] & H[arriet] wish me to say that as they mean to give up housekeeping, they have no wish to receive from you that share of the furniture to which your mother refers in her letter, & as they intend leaving the house as soon as possible they would be obliged by your letting them know what you wish done with it & where you wish your plate to be sent. I have written to Mr Wotton² my cotrustee to arrange if possible to transfer the funds left by Mrs Burrow’s³ will on Monday next, & should you be able to send it I should be glad of a line by that time to say whether you wish a transfer made or the amount sold only, & if the latter into whose hands you wish it paid. If I don’t hear from you we shall adopt the usual course.” The last matter therefore has by this time settled itself—as to the first, it is most unnecessary & absurd that we should have to write or do anything about it at all. Of course we can only say that the furniture was my mother’s & must be dealt with as such—but I cannot write the note without a consultation so unless you think it can wait for my return (as I shall be at home now in little more than a week), perhaps darling you will write to Rouen what you think should be said & in what manner, both about that & the plate. A letter will be in time if it leaves London on the 22nd—It is most unlucky that there should have been such atrocious weather in England. In this journey I have hardly lost an hour by weather though there has been a good deal of rain—but four days ago the weather set in intensely hot & bright, & one day even reminded Edition: current; Page: [232] me of those days at Tours. I have therefore not been able to walk quite so much as before, especially such long walks, though I have walked a good deal & am not at all weakened by it. My strength is most satisfactory but this is not weather to gain flesh in. A good deal of the feverishness has come back but I could not expect less in such hot weather. Thanks darling for what she says about Mr Pope, but I do not think he is at all of a calibre to be a permanent acquaintance. I thought more of him at first than I do now from finding his opinions or sentiments so good on the great subjects & such an apparent willingness to receive, & from finding that he was a little up in French history, had read some poets &c I fancied him well informed, but I am now chiefly pleased with the proof he seems to afford that right opinions are very widely scattered through England, when they have reached so very little educated & so little clever or rather so dull a man as he seems to me to be. I will give him a general invitation to call at the I.H. & I can hardly do less after passing so many days in travelling with him—& if he comes we can aviser about anything further. Since I wrote from Rochefort I have seen Niort, an ugly & Fontenay a pretty place—also a fine cathedral at Luçon—Les Sables is on a splendid bay, reminding one of Sandown, but with a still finer beach & a magnificent swell of the sea in waves parallel to the shore, breaking into surf half a mile’s length at a time. There is nothing else good there; the town is the meanest French town I ever saw, hardly a house with more than one story to it, & the streets or rather lanes the worst paved I shd think in France. The town forms a narrow ridge between the bay & a large harbour, much too large for the place as the entrance is getting itself filled up by sand & ships cannot enter. There are plenty of bathing machines, but the hot baths! oh! The principal establishment has just four, in little closets on the beach. Adieu my own most precious. I go tomorrow by railway to Angers.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 24 [1854]

Rouen

Charles F. Colman

Colman, Charles F.

178.

TO CHARLES F. COLMAN¹

Rouen

July 24 [1854]

Dear Colman

Owing to a change in my route, I did not get to Nantes till later than I originally intended. With regard to my mother’s furniture,² I always considered it hers, & have often told her so. I think it or its proceeds should be Edition: current; Page: [233] distributed equally among all her daughters. The plate which my mother had, also to be distributed equally in the same manner. I am

yrs faithfully

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 24 [1854]

Rouen

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

179.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Rouen

July 24 [1854]

16

I have just arrived here my own darling & have received the three letters you addressed here containing the entire history of that horrible abscess. As it has turned out I am perhaps fortunate in having received them all together, as I should have been very anxious, which now I hope there is no cause to be, but on the contrary a permanent evil got rid of (I did not perceive the bull). It confirms your old impressions, for you have often thought there had been inflammation & an abscess is I believe proof positive of chronic inflammation which also it carries off. How very fortunate you saw Tuson when you did. I have not written since Nantes & have come here in less time than I intended, owing to the tropical heat, as the Paris papers very truly call it, which makes it almost impossible & not altogether desirable to walk much. I meant to have had country walks; & long ones, at all the places. At most I have only been able to walk about the towns. The first day I halted at Areines for a few hours & had a 3½ hours walk in the hot sun (with my umbrella up however) & did not feel tired, or the worse for it—but I could not have done so any other day. At Saumur I walked in the evening to the druidical remains which are much finer than any I saw in Brittany, but none (except Gavr Innis on the island) are really fine like Stonehenge because, like all things in France, they are the reverse of solitary. I had generally to set out too early in the mornings to have an early walk, & in the evenings even after dark it is most sultry. This morning however at Vernon where I went on purpose, I was out at half past five till about half past seven & afterwards passed some of the hot hours in the shady woods of Louis Philippe’s² chateau—an evidently nice house, with grounds & woods which we could make pretty. Notwithstanding the scorching heat & intense sun, I like the Seine as much as ever but the Loire is a thorough humbug—though a fine river, for the Seine after it looks like a ditch—but it turns out that the part from Blois to Tours which I always supposed the dull introduction to something very beautiful beyond, is the only pretty part there is, or at least much Edition: current; Page: [234] the best. From Angers almost to Saumur is an absolute plain. There seems some prettyish country behind Saumur towards the south, but not visible from the river. The finest things I have seen are the cathedrals. Angers is more curious than fine, Evreux fine, Le Mans magnificent, but Chartres deserves all & more than all that has ever been said of it—I only know Amiens & St Ouen that can be compared with it, & till I have seen them again I do not know if even they are equal to it. I shall see St Ouen this evening or tomorrow & the other nice old places & shall have plenty of time to do the little commissions she gave me the pleasure of. I shall get weighed again tomorrow but shall not be surprised if I find I have lost flesh in this very hot weather. I have not lost strength, which is very satisfactory. However seeing the heat which as is natural grows every day greater, I see no use in continuing the journey & shall therefore return home at once. I almost fear you may not get this before my return. I shall go to Dieppe tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday) & the steamer I find leaves at two on Wednesday morning & also at 8.45 on Wednesday evening. At present I think I shall go by the former, in which case I shall have the happiness of being with her some time on Wednesday—if not, early on Thursday. I have been absent six weeks last Saturday, exceeding the longest term we thought of, but it has done enough good to be well worth it. I shall write the letter to Colman³ exactly according to your pencil which seems to me perfectly right—about the plate, there is nothing at all curious or which was presented to my father, & to us it would only be worth its value as old silver—I will therefore as you suggest tell him to deal with it as with the furniture. About Mr Pope, he & I exchanged cards when we separated the first time, & my card had no address on it—I meant to have written India House but forgot. When I left him at Nantes I said I should be glad to see him when he comes to England & that he would find me or hear of me at the I.H. but he asked me to write to tell him how I am when I get to England & I said I would—I meant to write last thing from Dieppe in order that the writing might be like a continuance of only travelling acquaintanceship, but I shall now, I think, not write till I see my precious love & have discussed that & many other things. On the Loire the inns continue cheap though not so cheap as in Britany but the moment one is in Normandy dearness begins. At Saumur the best meat was said to be 11 sous. I got a dish of fine currants for a sou. The best inn at Nantes, an excellent one, is very moderate for a large town. Thanks darling for the Spec. With all possible love.

[P.S.] If she only wrote three to Nantes I got them all—but instead of June 26, July 6 & 12 I got June 29, July 4 & 12.

Edition: current; Page: [235]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 27. 1854

Blackheath

Frederick J. Furnivall

Furnivall, Frederick J.

180.

TO FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL¹

Blackheath

July 27. 1854

Dear Sir

On returning from the Continent I have just received your letter and its numerous inclosures. I will consider of what you propose,² and will give you an answer the first moment I can find leisure from the many things I have to attend to on returning from an absence.

I am Dear Sir
Yrs very truly

J.S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Aug. 1. 1854

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]

William Stigant

Stigant, William

181.

TO WILLIAM STIGANT¹

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]

Aug. 1. 1854

Sir—

Having just returned from the Continent I find your note. I very much wish that it were in my power to refer you or anyone to a book or set of books fitted to form a course of instruction in moral philosophy. None such to my knowledge, exist. In my opinion ethics as a branch of philosophy is still to be created. There are writers on the subject from whom valuable thoughts may be gathered, & others (particularly Bentham)² who have thrown some though not sufficient light on the mode of systematizing it. But on the whole every one’s ideas of morals must result from the action of his own intellect, upon the materials supplied by life, & by the writers in all languages who have understood life best. The part of psychology which corresponds to morals is one of the most imperfect parts of that most Edition: current; Page: [236] imperfect science. Its most important portion, the laws of the formation of character, have never yet been treated otherwise than superficially. Some idea of the little which has been done may be gathered from parts of Hartley on Man³ & from my father’s article “Education”⁴ in the Suppl to the Enc. Britannica; but I do not recommend even these for any other purpose than that of furnishing suggestions & stimulus to your own thoughts.

I am Sir yrs faithfully

J.S.M.

William Stigant Esq.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

7th August 1854

East India House

Barbot de Chément

Chément, Barbot de

182.

TO BARBOT DE CHÉMENT¹

East India House

7th August 1854

Monsieur,—

Votre lettre est arrivée à mon adresse pendant que j’étais en voyage et ce n’est qu’aujourdhui que je suis à même d’y répondre.

Vous me demandez les noms des personnes connues, scientifiques ou politiques de ce pays-ci, qui adhèrent à la doctrine de M. Comte, et vous me faites l’honneur de me demander, en outre, mon propre jugement sur cette doctrine.

Il y a en effet en Angleterre un certain nombre d’individus qui ont connaissance des écrits de M. Comte² et qui en font, à plusieurs égards, un grand cas. Mais je ne connais ici personne qui accepte l’ensemble de ses doctrines ni que l’on puisse regarder comme son disciple;³ à commencer par moi, qui Edition: current; Page: [237] ai suivi sa carrière dès ses premières publications, et qui ai plus fait peut-être que tous les autres pour répandre son nom et sa réputation.⁴

J’admets en général la partie logique de ses doctrines, ou en d’autres mots, tout ce qui se rapporte à la méthode et à la philosophie des sciences.

Tout en y trouvant quelques lacunes que je m’efforce de remplir à ma manière je reconnais que personne, hors Aristote et Bacon, n’autant fait pour perfectionner la théorie des procédés scientifiques.

J’admets en grande partie la critique de ses devanciers, et les bases générales de la théorie historique du développement humain, sauf les divergences de détail. Quant à la religion, qui, comme vous le savez sans doute, pour lui comme pour tout libre penseur est un grand obstacle auprès du commun de mes compatriotes, c’est là sans contredit que mes opinions sont le plus près de celles de M. Comte. Je suis parfaitement d’accord avec lui sur la partie negative de la question, et dans la partie affirmative, je soutiens comme lui que l’idée de l’ensemble de l’humanité, representée surtout par les esprits et les caractères d’élite, passés, présents, et à venir, peut devenir, non seulement pour des personnes exceptionelles mais pour tout le monde, l’objet d’un sentiment capable de remplacer avec avantage toutes les religions actuelles, soit pour les besoins de cœur, soit pour ceux de la vie sociale. Cette vérité, d’autres l’ont sentie avant M. Comte, mais personne que je sache ne l’a si nettement pesée ni si puissamment soutenue.

Restent sa morale et sa politique, et là-dessus je dois avouer mon dissentiment presque total. En me donnant comme positiviste autant que personne au monde, je n’accepte en aucune façon la politique positive comme M. Comte se la représente, ni quant aux anciennes doctrines qu’il conserve; ni quant à ce qu’il y ajouta du sien. Je ne conçois comme lui ni les conditions de l’ordre, ni par conséquent celles du progrès. Et ce que je dis pour moi, je pourrais le dire pour tous ses lecteurs anglais à moi connus. Je ne pense pas que les doctrines pratiques de M. Comte aient fait ici le moindre chemin. Il n’est connu, estimé, ni même combattu que comme philosophe. Dans les questions sociales il ne compte même pas. Lui-même il n’ignore pas ce fait, et se plaint que ses admirateurs anglais n’acceptent que sa philosophie et rejettent sa politique.

Il me parait, donc, peu probable, Monsieur, que vos sentiments envers la doctrine de M. Comte puissent rencontrer ici le genre de sympathie dont vous témoignez le désir. Toutefois M. Comte commence à être assez généralement Edition: current; Page: [238] connu comme chef d’école, et dans le nombre de ses lecteurs il peut y en avoir quelques uns qui acceptent ses doctrines plus intégralement qu’aucun de ceux qu’il m’est arrivé de connaître.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Aug. 19. 1854.

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]. London

Theodor Gomperz

Gomperz, Theodor

183.

TO THEODOR GOMPERZ¹

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]. London

Aug. 19. 1854.

Sir—

I have the honour of receiving your letter dated the 20th of July. As the specimen of your translation of my Logic,² which you mentioned your intention of sending, did not accompany the letter, I have waited some days for it; but as it has not yet arrived, I will no longer delay expressing to you the pleasure it gives me to learn that a translation of my book has been undertaken by one who has entered so thoroughly into its spirit, as your letter shews you to have done. I am not acquainted with the translation which has been made of the Inductive portion of the book.³ I am glad to hear from you that it has been so successful; but you have very rightly judged that, to give to the cultivators of physical science the theory of their own operations, was but a small part of the object of the book and that any success in that attempt Edition: current; Page: [239] was chiefly valued by me as a necessary means towards placing metaphysical & moral science on a basis of analysed experience, in opposition to the theory of innate principles, so unfortunately patronized by the philosophers of your country, & which through their influence has become the prevailing philosophy throughout Europe. I consider that school of philosophy as the greatest speculative hindrance to the regeneration so urgently required, of man and society; which can never be effected under the influence of a philosophy which makes opinions their own proof, and feelings their own justification. It is, besides, painful to see such a mass of cultivated intellect, and so great an educational apparatus, as exist in your country, wasted in manufacturing a false appearance of science out of purely subjective impressions. To be thought capable of maintaining a contest against that school even in Germany, is one of the highest compliments my book could receive. Of the opportuneness of a translation, & its chances of success, you must be a much better judge than I can be. Your letter is a proof of your competency for translating the book & I shall be happy to give whatever assistance my opinion can afford you on any of the minor matters on which you express a desire to communicate with me.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

le 22 août 1854

London

Pasquale Villari

Villari, Pasquale

184.

TO PASQUALE VILLARI¹

East India House

London

le 22 août 1854

Monsieur

La brochure² que vous m’avez fait l’honneur de m’envoyer, ainsi que la lettre qui l’accompagnait, étant arrivées pendant que j’étais en voyage, ne me sont parvenues que très récemment. Permettez-moi, en vous offrant mes remerciments, de témoigner ma sensibilité aux choses flatteuses que vous avez dites à l’égard de la dernière partie de mon Système de Logique.³ Vous avez vu, avec raison, dans ce sixième livre, le but principal de l’ouvrage tout entier, qui a été surtout destiné à répandre sur la méthode des sciences morales, les lumières qu’on peut trouver dans les procédés des sciences physiques. Je ne m’exagère pas la portée de ce que j’ai fait, ni même de ce Edition: current; Page: [240] qui peut se faire dans ce genre. Mais j’estime comme un grand honneur à mon livre, d’avoir éveillé des sympathies et donné une impulsion scientifique jusque dans votre pays, à des personnes qui s’occupent des études morales et politiques. J’aurai pleinement réussi, si j’ai fait quelque chose pour donner aux cultivateurs de ces études, les plus importantes et les moins avancées de toutes, une meilleure discipline intellectuelle. Il me semble qu’aujourd’hui c’est là surtout qu’ils font défaut; et une approbation comme la vôtre m’est un témoignage précieux que mes efforts dans ce sens n’ont pas été tout à fait sans fruit.

La traduction anglaise de votre Essai,⁴ que vous m’annoncez comme devant m’être remise, n’est point arrivée.

Acceptez, Monsieur, l’assurance de ma haute considération.

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Sept. 19, 1854

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse] London,

John Rae

Rae, John

185.

TO JOHN RAE¹

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse] London

,

Sept. 19, 1854

Sir—

Your letter of Jany 9th has reached me within these few days. I am glad to hear of the various literary enterprises you have in hand or in contemplation, as I feel assured from the character of your work on Pol. Ec. that your speculations on any subject to which you have applied yourself will contain (whether I agree with them or not) enough both of knowledge & of originality & ingenuity to more than justify bringing them before the world. I have made more use of your treatise² than you appear to have been informed of, having quoted largely from it, especially from your discussion of the circumstances which influence the “effective desire of accumulation”, a point which you appear to me to have treated better than it had ever been treated before. I have already published my opinion that nothing was wanting Edition: current; Page: [241] to your book except favorable chances to have gained you the reputation you desire, & which I hope you may acquire by other writings.

You could not however have addressed yourself to any person less capable than myself of giving any useful assistance in bringing out your speculations on the Hawaiian language. My own pursuits do not lie in the direction of comparative philology nor have I any acquaintances in this class of érudits (chiefly to be found in Germany) from some one of whom you desire a recommendation & his name as editor. Nor do I think this would easily be obtained for the preliminary pamphlet which you contemplate, whatever might be the case with the completed work.³ Even to get the pamphlet printed is more than I am able to undertake, not only from pressing occupations, but because the state of my health renders my residence in England, at the time when your MS could reach me, extremely unlikely.

Dr. Arnott⁴ whom you mention as an old acquaintance is alive & flourishing & may possibly have it more in his power to promote your object than myself.

You ask me how your book became known to me. I first heard of it from Mr. Senior⁵ who recommended it to me as a book of which he had a high opinion, & after I had read it through his means I picked up a copy on a stall.

I hope your health is quite reestablished.

I am Sir very faithfully yours

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Oct. 26, 1854

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]

Edward Herford

Herford, Edward

186.

TO EDWARD HERFORD¹

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]

Oct. 26, 1854

Sir

I beg to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of your pamphlet “On Some Fallacies of Political Economy”.²

I quite agree with you that many fallacies are engendered by the vague & ambiguous use of the word Capital even among political economists. I do not think however that anyone entitled to the name of a political economist ever confounds capital with money, or with the right to receive money; however Edition: current; Page: [242] often that gross blunder may be committed by the writers of “city articles in the Times”, writers ignorant of the very elements of the subject. The phrases which you cite as examples appear to me to arise from a confusion of another sort, viz. the employment of both these words, money & capital, to express loanable capital, or capital seeking investment, a misuse of terms extremely frequent, & leading to the notion that the causes which influence the loan market & the rate of interest have something to do with the quantity of the currency, than which in my opinion no notion can be more erroneous.

My own definition of capital is the portion of wealth which is destined to be employed for the purpose of production; & my difference with you on this point is well summed up in one sentence of your pamphlet (p. 43), where you say it is absurd that what is not capital should merely by the altered intentions of its owner, become capital, without any change in itself. I hold on the contrary that whether any given portion of wealth is capital or not, is solely a question of the intentions of its owners: just as it is wholly a question of the intentions of the owner whether a given bushel of wheat is seed or food.

I perceive that you are not aware that I have treated the subjects of your pamphlet at much length in my Princ of P.E.³ to which therefore I can refer you for a fuller exposition of my opinions.

I am Sir yours very faithfully

Edw. Herford Esq

Coroner

Manchester

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Oct. 30 [1854]

John Revans

Revans, John

187.

TO JOHN REVANS¹

Oct. 30 [1854]

Dear Revans

Having received no answer to the note I wrote to you at Dartford a fortnight ago I suppose it did not reach you. I therefore write this to the Club to remind you that the longest time you proposed for repaying the £30 you borrowed of me has now for some time expired—

I am yrs fy

John Revans Esq

Reform Club

Edition: current; Page: [243]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Oct. 31 1854

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]

Edward Herford

Herford, Edward

188.

TO EDWARD HERFORD¹

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]

Oct. 31 1854

Sir—

In answer to your last note I beg to say that I am well aware that the few words I wrote to you do not contain all that is necessary to explain & vindicate the view I take of some of the most vexed questions in P. Economy. I have endeavoured to do so to the best of my ability in a book which is in print, & I hope to be excused for saying that I have not time to do it over again for a correspondent. I will therefore only say in answer to your last point,² that if it is the actual use & not the destination which decides how each portion of wealth is to be classed, then there is no food until somebody eats it & no seed until it is sown.

Again apologizing for my brevity I am Sir

yrs very faithfully

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

le 1er novembre 1854

London

Pasquale Villari

Villari, Pasquale

189.

TO PASQUALE VILLARI¹

East India House

London

le 1er novembre 1854

Monsieur

Je vous demande pardon de n’avoir pas pû répondre plus tôt à votre lettre du 25 septembre. Puisque M. Macaulay² ne m’a pas remis la traduction anglaise de votre essai avec l’essai même, il est à craindre qu’elle ne soit perdue. Mais en supposant qu’elle me fût parvenue, je ne saurais vraiment à qui m’adresser pour la faire imprimer. Le public anglais est tellement en arrière du mouvement intellectuel Européen, que les hautes spéculations historico-sociales ne sont ni goûtées ni comprises, et j’ai peur qu’il ne se trouverait guère de lecteurs pour une esquisse historique de ces spéculations, surtout faite par un étranger, habitué à s’adresser à un public beaucoup mieux préparé à tout égard. Il est plus que probable qu’un libraire qui en entreprendrait la publication, en serait pour ses frais, et les directeurs de Edition: current; Page: [244] journaux et de revues ne voudraient pas insérer la traduction d’un écrit qui a déjà paru autre part. Ayant si peu d’espoir de succès, je vous demande la permission de ne pas m’occuper des nombreuses démarches qu’exigerait la tentative. Si le traducteur, ou tout autre de vos amis, croit avoir des chances de réussite, il n’a qu’à reclamer le manuscrit auprès de M. Macaulay, pour en faire l’usage qu’il jugera devoir être le plus utile.

Il est très probable que je passerai une partie de l’hiver prochain en Italie pour cause de santé, et dans ce cas j’espère avoir le plaisir de faire votre connaissance personnelle.³

Agréez, Monsieur, l’assurance de ma considération amicale.

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Nov. 4, 1854

Edward Herford

Herford, Edward

190.

TO EDWARD HERFORD¹

[After

Nov. 4, 1854

]

Sir—

It was because I thought I perceived from your manner of referring to my book, that you had only referred to it & not read it that I mentioned it to you as containing my opinion on all the points on which you consulted me. I did read both your pamphlet & your letters with attention, & I assure you that they do not contain any difficulty which I had not previously considered & as I believe resolved.

I am Sir

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Nov. 13. 1854

East India House

John William Parker, Jr.

Parker, John William, Jr.

191.

TO JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, JR.¹

East India House

Nov. 13. 1854

Dear Sir

I have much pleasure in giving this introduction to Mr Alexander Bain. I have long known him, and have mentioned in my Logic the obligations I was under to him in that work for remarks and illustrations.

The work which he proposes to you to publish² is the result of many years of thought and study, and I am strongly persuaded that it will be an important advance on any previous work on the same subject. I may add that Mr Bain Edition: current; Page: [245] has had great practice as a popular writer, and has shewn much capacity of making abstract subjects interesting by his manner of treating them.

I am Dr Sir
yrs very truly

J. S. Mill

J. W. Parker

Junr Esq.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Nov. 17. 1854

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]

John Revans

Revans, John

192.

TO JOHN REVANS¹

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]

Nov. 17. 1854

Dear Revans

Not having received any answer to the two notes² I wrote to you respecting the £30 I lent you I can only suppose that you have not received them. I now write to say that I am going abroad for the winter on the 25th of this month³ & if I do not see you before that time I shall be obliged to leave your note of hand with my solicitor Mr Wm Ley &c &c L[incoln’s] I[nn] Fields who will apply to you for the amount.

I am yrs faithfully

John Revans Esq

Stone—Dartford

Duplicate to Reform Club.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Nov. 26. 1854

Blackheath

William Ley

Ley, William

193.

TO WILLIAM LEY¹

Blackheath

Nov. 26. 1854

I have been prevented by great press of business from calling on you this week as I intended to ask you to be kind enough to undertake a small matter of business—an old acquaintance of mine named Revans borrowed £30 from me last May promising to repay it in July—This he has not done & 2 notes on the subject² having remained unanswered I last week wrote to him,³ saying that I shd place his note of hand in your hands to obtain the money. I enclose his reply & request you will be good enough to take the needful Edition: current; Page: [246] steps to get it paid & if you succeed paying the amount into my act at Messrs Prescotts 62 Threadneedle Street.

We are leaving town for Torquay for the benefit of its milder climate for my wife who is in very delicate health after which I am going to the S. of Europe for the winter. My wife desires her kind remembrances.

I remain
Yrs very faithfully

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Dec. 5, 1854

Torquay

Sir John McNeill

McNeill, Sir John

194.

TO SIR JOHN McNEILL¹

Torquay

Dec. 5, 1854

2

My dear Sir—

I have been unable to answer earlier your note of the 10th of last month, having only found time to read the book³ you were so kind as to send me during a few days passed at this place before going abroad for the winter.⁴

Mr Ferrier has the rare merit in a conversationalist, of complete fairness. He understands the opinions of all the opponents whom he notices, as fully & states them as clearly & forcibly as his own. He has a very telling mode of discussion. His fabric of speculation is so effectively constructed, & imposing, that it almost ranks as a work of art. It is the romance of logic.

I should be very happy if I could add that I believed it had done, what the author is firmly persuaded it has—solved the problem which all philosophers from the first origin of speculation have been vainly hammering at. On the contrary, it is depressing to me to see a man of so much capacity under what appears to me so deep a delusion. Truly the main hindrance of philosophy is not its intrinsic difficulties, great as they are, but the extreme rarity of men who can reason. It is enough to make one despair of speculation when a man of so much talent & knowledge as this book displays & who piques himself peculiarly on his reasoning faculty commits nearly every fallacy set down in books of logic & this at all the most critical points of his argument. He says that whoever admits his first proposition must admit all Edition: current; Page: [247] the rest. I do not admit his first propn:5 but even if I did, his first great paralogism as it seems to me consists in thinking that his second proposition⁶ follows⁷ from his first, & there is a similar or a still greater logical blunder each time that he makes any really fresh advance in his argument. The whole system is one great specimen of reasoning in a circle. Unless each successive conclusion is presupposed it is impossible to admit the premisses in the sense in which alone they can support it. All this I am satisfied I could prove to you, book in hand, in an hour’s conversation. Before I had finished the book I understood his mode of proceeding so well that I could generally see before-hand in what manner he was going to beg the next question. The effect is most disheartening, for when a writer who can so well point out the fallacies of others builds an entire system of philosophy on paralogising, what confidence is it possible to feel in avoiding them, & how vain seems all hope that one has done or can do anything to help these subjects forward. The only thing which alleviates this discouragement is the belief that the author was from the first on a wrong tack—as all metaphysicians, in my opinion, will be until they leave off revolving in the eternal round of Descartes & Spinoza (of the former of whom this book continually reminds me), & cease to imagine that philosophy can be founded on “necessary truths of reason” or indeed that there are such things as necessary truths—any at least which can be known to be necessary in the metaphysical sense of the word. Pray excuse the seeming crudity with which I have expressed the opinion you asked from me—it has not been crudely formed.

I am Dear Sir very truly yours

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Thursday Dec. 7, 1854

Blackheath

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

195.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Blackheath

Thursday evg
[

Dec. 7, 1854

]

1

My own darling—

my perfect one—how she always knows how to put the utmost possible of pleasurable recollection into the painful fact of parting.² That little drive & that sweetest farewell have kept me in spirits all day & will keep me so till I have a dear delight of a word to overjoy me about a week Edition: current; Page: [248] hence. To tell the dear one what she wishes to know—I felt no cold, to speak of—none at all till I had got full half way. I had some sandwiches at Swindon as we intended & enjoyed the supper when I got to what will be home when its sun shines upon it again. The fine sunny day made the country look extremely pretty as far as Bath & beyond. The train arrived exact to its time. I called at Pope’s³ but found him not at home—not out of town however—so left my card with a few words in pencil. I stopt en chemin at Deane’s⁴ to buy a trowel, but they had never heard of such a thing as a trowel that folds up! so I must do without. I found Mrs Lynes⁵ & her husband both here—they had received the note & done everything right. The shoemaker sent a man who put the strap in order quickly & effectually. After emptying the red bag I locked it & put it in its old place under the bed—& as there is now nothing in it (except Ross’s⁶ gloves) I have, in case it should be wanted, put the (padlock) key in one of the table drawers in my room. I forgot to return the big medical book to Dr Royle⁷ before we left & am rather afraid to leave that to the people here lest they should make some mistake between that & the library parcel—if you find it here darling when your darling self comes back, please return it directed Dr Royle, India House.

As long as I was in sight of the same sea which she sees from her window I did not feel separated—it gave me a pang when I lost sight of it—but I am & shall be cheerful. This is hardly worth writing but perhaps she would rather have it than none. I shall write very soon.

With every possible kind of the utmost love—

Your own.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Dec. 9. 1854

Orleans

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

196.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Orleans

Dec. 9. 1854

2

I am here darling at our old quarters in the Hotel du Loiret & shall not get on any further tonight. I have had two days of little misadventures—in the Edition: current; Page: [249] first place dismal weather yesterday & today, though tonight it looks as if it might perhaps clear for tomorrow—then a very rough passage which made me very sea sick—I can almost say I knew for the first time what seasickness is, having had violent pains in the abdomen along with the most excessive sickness. When the boat stopt I was as you appear to be in the same case—I could hardly totter up the steps & had besides a bad return of sickness on the quay. However all this left me in the course of the evening. The next thing is that the effetti must have been excessively knocked about on the steamer—perhaps only by the extreme pitching of the ship—but when they came to be opened at the douane, the large portmanteau was found unlocked, having lost precisely what the smaller one lost at Boulogne before—a very strange effect to come from knocking about—however I miss nothing and do not suspect foul play. Not only was the lid of the cod liver oil box split lengthwise but one of the bottles was broken & had spilt a good deal of the oil—happily spoiling nothing but the red leather cover of my writing book. When I opened the dressing case the earthenware tray which it contains was also broken. I suppose all this happened because the portmanteau though full was not tightly pressed & squeezed down from overfullness as it usually is & therefore could not stand the knocking about. No further harm happened to any of the things on their land journey thus far, & I must go on as I can with them. The necessity of getting the lock mended obliged me to stay this morning at Paris which in any case it would have been disagreeable after arriving at 12 o’clock to leave at 8.40, the latest train which would have taken me to Poitiers today—so I waited for the 1 oclock train which would have taken me to Tours tonight in the dark by a slow train but it was pleasanter to stop here & take the express tomorrow at 11/9. I think I shall stop at Libourne as it is a place I have not seen & so get to Bordeaux by daylight the morning after. It may perhaps be fine by that time. Even Paris looked its very worst—dark, soaked & uncomfortable. The new street to the Hotel de Ville is now all but finished—the houses all built & occupied except just by the Louvre where they have pulled down all the houses between it & the Rue St Honoré & are rebuilding them. The fine old Gothic tower of St Jacques la Boucherie will be the centre of a place—they are restoring it as they are all the old monuments in France. The oldest of the old, & blackest of the black, the Palais de Justice now looks like a new building, to its great loss in my opinion. I went to the Bedford which was comfortable but by no means cheap. I passed your or rather our Hotel de France which was pleasant to see—as it is pleasant to be in this inn where we have been. Yesterday in the railway I was afraid that I was getting into that half mad state which always makes me say that imprisonment would kill me—& which makes me conscious that if I let myself dwell on the idea I could get into the state of being unable to bear the impossibility of flying to the moon—it is a part of human nature I never saw described but have long known by Edition: current; Page: [250] experience—this time the occasion of it was, not being able to get to you—when I reflected that for more than six months I was to be where I could not possibly go to you in less than many days, I felt as if I must instantly turn back & return to you. It will require a good deal of management of myself to keep this sensation out of my nerves. I hope next time I write to have something better to tell than a heap of petits malheurs. I must not forget to say that Mrs Lynes² (who was very attentive) produced before I went her account of the comestibles she had bought for me amounting to eighteen-pence besides 3d postage on the Adelaide paper & said they were short of money, so I paid her the 1/9 & also 1/8 to cover the parcels money—I made up & directed the medical book to Dr Royle³ & left the library books for her to make up & I thought one might be 8d & the other a shilling but perhaps not so much. I told her to keep the account & give it to you when you return. This letter is worth nothing anima mia but to tell her that I have got safely thus far. I have got some books from a library to read this evening & so get through this dull part of the time. Adieu delight of my life.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Dec. 11. [1854]

Bordeaux

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

197.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Bordeaux

Dec. 11. [1854]

3

My own precious one, I have no more disasters to tell of—it has been very fine weather these two days, though rather cold. Snow fell in the night at Orleans but it melted in the morning & I was not the least cold during the journey in consequence of the nice mode of warming the first class carriages. A man told me on the way to Dover that one English railway, the Great Northern, has adopted this plan: I am sure it is an ample reason for going by that way to the south in the winter half of the year. The railway journey was pretty, especially near Poitiers & there was an agreeable German, of Lubeck, in the carriage whom I had a little talk with—also a young naval officer who had just got leave of absence to see his relations at Angoulême while his ship the Austerlitz is refitting at Cherbourg (having been damaged in the Baltic); his extreme delight made him speak with enthusiasm of everything, especially Hamburg which he seemed to think the most splendid place in the world. He was taking a Russian sheepskin cloak to his vieux père. I Edition: current; Page: [251] stopped at Libourne as I intended & had a walk about it this morning—the best thing there is the bridge of the Dordogne, the view from which is really fine. It was getting into cheapness again—for a thé complet, breakfast with eggs & bed the charge was 4 francs which with half a franc to the waiter was the whole expense. There was ice in the streets & it is sharp today though not sufficiently to be unpleasant. I came on to Bordeaux in a bright sun, always in sight of one of the two fine rivers & have now been strolling about Bordeaux for several hours—it is quite as pleasant & handsome a town as I remember it—but I find it is more difficult to leave it than to get to it, all the diligences being night ones. There is one to Toulouse at 1 oclock in the day reaching Toulouse at 10 next morning but by this they will not book to any place short of Toulouse! & they say chance places are seldom to be had. I do not know if I shall close with this or take my chance of a place part of the way & go on next day by a different diligence. In any case this will not be till Wednesday for I shall give tomorrow to La Teste. I have not gone to our old Hotel de France but to the Hotel du Midi which is in a much better street & of which I liked the advertisement. I have seen the cathedral & another large church—neither of them very fine. The restoring is going on here as it is every where else in France—to the great indignation of Ruskin²—& I dare say the new figures of saints round the entrances &c &c are not so good as the old were, but of that I am not much of a judge & care very little about it—but what I can perceive is the extremely bad effect produced by their restoring a part at a time, a single window perhaps of a high tower—which looks bright & white in the midst of a dark time stained building producing false unnatural & ugly lights & shades & destroying the effect of the true. It is a very cheerful looking town & not nearly so modern in appearance as I fancied it in recollection. I have seen the large fine theatre outside & intend to see it inside this evening. The air here is about half way between the English air when one calls it particularly clear—as often in March—& the real southern air—but it was charming after the damp weather although much sharper than at Torquay—perhaps however there is now a north wind at Torquay too. I do hope she will not feel it much at Highfield. I have had the good luck to find here, when in search of a Tasso, all the four poets in one volume,³ not too large to go in the pocket nor too small print to read by ordinary light—it cost 7½ francs & is a very good investment of the money. I stupidly left my little ivory memorandum tablets at home & have not been able to find another here at an admissible price. I feel the inconvenience of being without Edition: current; Page: [252] it. This letter has hardly anything in it worth sending but it is a pleasure to write it & it will be a pleasure to her to hear that I am going on well. I shall have more to tell of perhaps next time & then more & more afterwards—I dream almost every night that I am with her or that she is travelling with me. Adieu my darling darling more precious than ever love.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Dec. 13 [1854]

Bordeaux

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

198.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Bordeaux

Dec. 13 [1854]

4

My darling one perhaps hardly expects to hear again so soon, but the best time to write is when I have a spare half hour. I went to La Teste yesterday in a middling day & had six hours consecutive walking there, on the beach & in the pine forest. La Teste itself is a rather shabby village but about a mile from it, is the watering place Arcachon by name, really a tolerable turn out for a French watering place. It lies along the coast, in one road or street which I thought I should never get to the end of—nearly two miles it must be—the houses on one side looking to the sea & on the other to a long ridge covered with pine woods, almost close to the houses—it is empty now but the quantity of hotels & lodging houses (mostly in the pavilion form) is immense—horses & carriages to be had every where & some large architectural looking private houses built or building—for the whole place looks quite new & is rapidly spreading along the coast. The worst is that its sea is to the north for it is not the real sea but an inlet or basin as broad as the broadest parts of the Solent, or broader—but the real sea is soon reached from it. After going a long way by the sea I returned by the pine forest which seems to cover the whole line of coast here & in which I was near losing myself. It is really fine—a succession of bold ridges covered with a pine, not the stone pine but like very fine Scotch fir, full of paths, & where you continually come out on points from which you see across deep woody ravines to other bold woody hills. The underwood where there is any, is tall broom & a sort of tree-like heath, inland, but towards the sea it is arbutus in profuse quantity & splendid flower. According to my recollections of Murray,² this railway, he pretended, went through the hills of Medoc but it is entirely false. Edition: current; Page: [253] You get directly on the Grandes Landes, which until near the sea are a dead flat & alternate between pine woods & open very wet looking heaths on which I unexpectedly saw in two places, the men we read about, clothed in sheep-skins & mounted on stilts. The day was altogether as pleasant as was consistent with only moderately good weather & a state, in myself, not at all enjoying—the causes of which are probably in part physical, & the long walk of yesterday which has evidently done me much good will I dare say partly remove them. As yet I have not been able to enjoy anything much & yesterday as I was returning in the railway carriage I felt that I must say to my darling that she must not be surprised if she finds any day that I am on my way the very shortest way home. Now I have said it I feel relieved & probably shall be able to go on without. It is evident that the journey even now is doing me good as to health—I was weighed this morning just as I was at Torquay & the result (66½ kilos) shews an increase of more than 2 lbs since, which is very much for the time exactly a week. It is a still duller day today though not actually raining & I am not sorry that I took my place right through to Toulouse though it will give me tonight for travelling & the day tomorrow at Toulouse where I do not want to stay. That makes it unlucky that we did not arrange for a letter at Toulouse as I do long for the first word from her. I shall soon be in the real south & I shall get her first letter at the moment of arriving there. I went to the grand théâtre which is for operas & ballets—very large & fine with gilding & painting, but the boxes all hanging like separate balconies without any support under them which seems to me very ugly. After one of the usual absurd & immoral little pieces there was a ballet called Grenadilla³ which I quite expect will be to be seen in London—all ballets are dull but some of the scenery & even the dancing in this were prettier than usual & if it were not for the noise which the French presume to call music it would be pleasant. There are seldom any newspapers at the inns but local ones but I see from those that things make little progress in the Crimea. I learnt from one this morning qu’on voit en angleterre de nobles ladys confectionner de leurs blanches mains des masses de plummpuddings [sic] pour les soldats de Lord Raglan.⁴ When I put this letter in the post I shall ask if there are any for me though I do not expect any & shall then go to a salon de lecture for the first time to learn some verités de cette [force?] là. Adieu my darling—I dare say I shall write from Toulouse tomorrow but perhaps I may have the luck to be able to leave immediately. Adieu con tutti gli amori et baci possibili.

Edition: current; Page: [254]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Dec 14 [1854]

Toulouse

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

199.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Toulouse

Dec 14 [1854]

5

I begin writing this evening my darling though I probably shall not finish & send off the letter from this place. Instead of arriving at 10 in the morning the diligence brought me here sometime after dark—in a most dismal day—it rained very much in the night & has been all today like the worst November day (barring fog) in England—but (the satisfactory circumstance is) not cold—I did not feel cold at all in the coupé though it was not full—only one person besides me, who by the bye had not much conversation though he professed to have travelled immensely, as all the persons with whom I have conversed in this journey have done. The German I told you of had seen Niagara, & was just returning from South America, not having been at home for several years. I am not at our old place which seems not to be known by its name now—they call this where I am (the Hotel de l’Europe in the Place Lafayette) Hotel Bibent now, saying that M. Bibent keeps it. I am very comfortable here, luckily as I have caught a bad cold. I suppose the immense chill, almost amounting to an ague fit, which I had at La Teste soon after coming in from my long walk (much heated by quick walking, not to be benighted in the forest) was not wholly as I thought at the time, the effect of my complaint, but was the sign & consequence of catching this cold. I am glad to find that I can get off tomorrow at ten in the forenoon & to avoid night travelling. I shall go no further tomorrow than Carcassonne. It is not far to Narbonne after that & the change to a southern climate is somewhere about Carcassonne which corresponds here to Valence in the Rhone Valley. I believe I passed in the night through some pretty country about La Réole & Agen: there was some very pretty this morning along the base of a line of hills by a road raised somewhat above a broad valley or rather plain in which the Garronne winds beautifully—how splendidly the southwest of France is provided with rivers. All the affluents of the Garronne are large & fine, the Dordogne, Tarn, Lot &c. The rest of the country which I saw both near Bordeaux & here was dull & uninteresting enough, at least in winter. I am beginning to think what I shall take in hand to write during this journey—we were to have discussed that, but forgot to do it & I am a good deal puzzled what to fix upon—it would be a pity to do nothing all this long time & I expect to have plenty of evenings on my hands especially when I become stationary anywhere. Perhaps my darling will suggest something—she may conceive but I am sure she does not know what a difference it makes in the Edition: current; Page: [255] possibility of any verve in writing on a subject & even in the capacity of writing about it at all, for it to have been of her dear suggesting. I was constantly falling asleep for moments in the diligence & dreaming directly of her—the dream mixing oddly with reality as for example, I dreamt that I was seated by her in a carriage with four places with Lily sitting facing us as usual & could not make out in my dream how we came to be three when just before I was sure we had been only two in the carriage—at other times dreaming of much finer scenery than I was passing through. She will not lose anything by not getting this letter directly. I hope I shall be able to tell her of bright skies before I send it. As yet I have only had that once, the day I arrived at Bordeaux.

Carcassonne. Dec. 15. I have just got here, my beauty, at about nine in the evening. It has been another gloomy day, without actual rain, but the roads everywhere soaking with wet. This line of road goes all the way through a kind of valley which extends from one to the other sea but for a long way after Toulouse the heights are very distant & tame. There was nothing fine till (a little before dark) we reached Castelnaudary, a town spread out on the top & sides of an eminence rising in the middle of the valley in question which is here on the broad scale which French scenery so often is—the town looks one way over what seems a vast valley to some very high ground called the Montagnes Noires, forming the termination of the Cevennes at this end, & the other way to some bolder & nearer confused ridges which rise behind one another towards the Pyrenees. In fine weather no doubt the Pyrenees can be seen. I dare say there is fine country between that place & this but the night concealed it. The people all look well off & so do the animals: all the way from Bordeaux there is a splendid breed of cattle like those in the Pontine marshes, & the geese are so enormous that they seem intended to be eaten by beings superior to men. One sees however perfectly here what people mean when they talk of the inferiority of French agriculture. There are scarcely any ploughs, all is done by hand—digging or rather hoeing with instruments like these

or

which it is quite painful to see them work with—accordingly the green corn is hardly more advanced than it was a month ago in England & most of the land is not yet prepared for seed at all—if it were not for their mild winter they could not get their corn into the ground till spring. It is very curious to look at the faces of a crowd in one of these towns—a great many faces very beautiful—many quite idiotic—most of them characteristic in some way & every now & then one (generally a woman) so deeply tragic as hardly any English face is capable of being. Having so much physiognomy as the French Edition: current; Page: [256] have no wonder they are physiognomists. People seem to me to talk less about the government than they did a year ago—they neither speak for nor against it—& they do not talk half as much about the war² as people in England do. I was asked for my passport at Castelnaudary for the second time after landing—the first being at the inn at Paris, & with apologies, merely as they said to take down the name. Nowhere else have the inn people asked my name & they have nowhere produced a book. I find I can get on to Narbonne tomorrow in the middle of the day, which will give me time for a walk here & to see the place. I have had no walk yet, deserving the name, except the one at La Teste. By the bye in what I said about the pine forests I did not mention the use they are put to. Great numbers of trees have a large piece of bark sliced off near the bottom, where the turpentine exudes & drying up becomes a large white cake of considerable thickness. The woods belong to the government & are advertised pin maritime à gommer mort, or à gommer vif, as it happens. The landlord at Toulouse is the man who had the Hotel Bibent which last still exists but is called Hotel de Paris. The Place du Capitole is all remis à neuf—they were I think in 1849 pulling down the side opposite to the Capitole—that is now a long Palais Royal like affair with arcades, & the other two sides exactly like it, arcades excepted, looking bran new, très magnifique, & of a desolating sameness. They have now named the Rue & Place Lafayette, Rue & Place Louis Napoleon but I perceive the people still use the old names. My cold is getting better. Goodbye darling—I shall get her beautiful writing tomorrow which is next (though far removed) to her beautiful self.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Dec. 18. [1854]

Montpellier

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

200.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Montpellier

Dec. 18. [1854]

7

My precious love, after I had put my letter in the post at Narbonne I walked about the town & in the neighbourhood in the most delightful sunshine & temperature though with a great deal of wind: a man here said, we have almost always du vent only rarely a calm (une bonace). Nothing can be seen of the sea nor even of the lagunes (here called étangs) which come close up to the town, & though there are heights & ridges at no great distance there are no rocks visible except a sort of mural line along the top of a long ridge which closes the view southwest, through which there are gaps evidently Edition: current; Page: [257] made by water washing the precipice away. As the country is cultivated to the top of the heights there is no beauty at this season except what the climate gives; it is all bare earth or scarcely visible stubble, the olives being scattered & poor—nevertheless it was very pleasant after the northern stay. These southern towns have mostly low houses so that when seen from without they seem to crouch at the foot of the lofty cathedral forming an apt image of middle age hierarchy. By the bye the people in all this country are either most strenuous catholics or their religion has received a great fillip from the cholera, for in all the towns I have lately passed through, most of the houses, great or small, are placarded with printed papers imploring the intercession of Marie conçue sans péché & occasionally of St Roch, the latter usually requested to preserve them from the cholera. I enjoyed the walk & even got a few plants—all along the road, afterwards I passed among the dead carcasses of so many fine plants that I would gladly have found living. The hedges here are mostly of that grey coloured maritime-looking shrub which is so much planted about Torquay—nice Torquay!² how I have conned over all its localities in the bit of England that is in our map of France & which gives the outline of that coast really well. I soon found there was little more to be seen of Narbonne & determined to omit Perpignan on the principle of leaving something for another time—it would come so well into a Pyrenean tour which we shall make perhaps some day if we live & are strong enough. So I came on to Beziers by a diligence which leaves at two & arrived at ½ past 4 & notwithstanding the wind, made myself very comfortable in the banquette. There were mountains at no great distance to the left all the way, which & the passes through them were evidently very fine, but it was plain that most abominable weather was going forward there, & now & then the tail of a cloud from that quarter brushed over us & gave a few drops of rain—looking back to Narbonne I more than suspected that the place was having its first rain for a year past if the man told truth—another man said, il ne pleut jamais ici, pour ainsi dire jamais. Beziers is a nice town on a steep hill, with a nice new part & a nice old part. I went to the theatre there, tempted by an opera, La Favorite,³ which was really very well sung and acted—but the pit was the most boisterous assemblage I ever was in—perhaps the day, Sunday, had something to do with that. I had the theatre for nothing, as it cost me exactly what I should otherwise have paid for fire, being one franc: at Narbonne they wanted to make me pay 1½ franc. At Beziers the charge for dinner & bed, the former a large table d’hôte, the bed as good as anywhere & the bedroom very decent, was three Edition: current; Page: [258] francs. I have found no such low charge anywhere else. I left at six this morning for Montpellier & arrived there at two. The night had been splendid, the stars even brighter I think than at Nice, & the early part of the day was exquisite, but the mountains enveloped in rain & at last the clouds gradually collected everywhere—it became as dull a day as in England, except that even in dull days here there is a transparency in the air which we never or very seldom see in England. When I got here it had just begun to rain & promises to do so all the evening which is the reason I am writing. I had meant to walk about till dark & chat with my darling in the evening. There will be no letters yet but I shall ask for them directly to familiarize messieurs du bureau with the idea. I am in what is called the best hotel, Hotel Nevet, a large place in the best situation in the town, & by good luck the landlady who pretends to speak English, apologized (as her premier was full) for giving me a ground floor room which suits me the best in the house, with a direct outlet to the esplanade through a garden, very nicely furnished & comfortable, the cost being two francs. I shall stay here several days, till I have seen all the old places & all those I had not seen which are worth seeing & I shall take the opportunity at the same time of recommencing the cod liver oil which I suspended during the journey. I have several times read a little of Tasso,⁴ to the benefit I hope of my Italian, for I do not seem likely to derive any other pleasure or profit from it—it seems to me the most prosaic of prose & I do not think that this is only from not liking the subject of the Jerusalem, nor what is called romantic poetry in general. Fortunately the same volume contains Dante who with Filicaja⁵ & perhaps Alfieri⁶ seem to me as far as I know the only Italian poets—but I shall try the Aminta⁷ which is perhaps better & I suppose I must attempt a little of Petrarch especially if I go to Vaucluse. I have a great respect for him as one of the principal restorers of ancient & founders of modern literature but I cannot say the little I have read of his writings or know of his life interests me much. It now pours, & I shall probably get wet in going to the post but I must do so as for aught I know it may save a day—letters however go quick from here as it is almost all railway. A propos the Bordeaux & Cette line was in sight all the way making rapid progress in all parts & almost finished in some—also the Canal du Midi the great work of Colbert⁸ which is made very ornamental by its windings & by a broad Edition: current; Page: [259] towing path planted on both sides all the way with trees—mostly planes, which are the staple as though they lose their leaves in winter they do not in summer, as most of the deciduous trees do here, thus failing when shade is wanted. But the plane has like the Australian trees the bad habit of stripping itself of its bark & exposing itself stark naked, or with a few fragments of clothing hanging in rags about it. All the towns, this included, look at a distance just like the grey limestone they are made of which also stands out of the ground in blocks like the houses of some of the dwarfs in Tieck’s⁹ fairy tales. Does not my treasure find my letters very rambling. I write things just when & where they come into my head—how I long for the next letter, but it would not be written I am afraid till yesterday—however as I said it will come quick. Will my darling kiss her next letter just in the middle of the first line of writing—the kiss will come safe & I shall savourer it. Adieu darling

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Dec. 20 [1854]

Montpellier

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

201.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Montpellier

Dec. 20 [1854]

8

I have had but a poor specimen of this climate, my beauty—the first day it rained heavily all the afternoon & evening—the second was brilliant but there was such a violent north wind that I sometimes could hardly stand against it & had to hold my hat on & walk stooping—& this morning when I awoke it was snowing hard—& though the snow soon melted in most places, on the promenades there was still some left late in the afternoon. So you see, first it blew, then it snew & then it thew, & perhaps tomorrow I may have to say then it friz. The people say that there was no rain in November this year & it is just like our ill luck last year that it should have come now. In spite of this I was on foot yesterday from soon after daylight till dark, with the sole intermission of breakfast. The country is not beautiful but peculiar—like no other I ever saw—much as my recollections made it—but the rocky waste which chiefly composed it formerly is in many places changed to vineyards & olive grounds. The limestone of this country is hard, but moulders into very tolerable soil & if people will take the trouble to dig out with pickaxe & shovel the hard blocks they generally find soil enough hanging about them to plant in & the stone itself does to build with & is burnt into lime for mortar. I found many large spaces inclosed by walls Edition: current; Page: [260] & containing houses & grounds where I only remember garrigues (as they call these wastes) so multiplying the little campagnes which dot the whole country round the town as at Nice or Marseille. I walked out 12 kilometres on the road I best knew, being that which leads to the chateau formerly of the Benthams²—but which has ceased to be theirs these twenty years & more—I found my recollections in no material point inaccurate. This road must be quite the finest which leads out of Montpellier—it goes direct towards the foot of the Pic St Loup the only mountain very conspicuous from the town & the approaches to which lie over & among rocky heights & I came to several views very like & fit for Salvator.³ The town itself is much the same except that it is very much cleaner, better paved, & has many new buildings—like all towns in these days it has evidently become manufacturing & the outskirts are crowded with works of different sorts, of which one effect is that the clearness of the sky is now much tarnished by coal smoke—for the place having a railway right into the heart of one of the chief coal basins of France has taken to burning a great deal of coal (& sometimes also le cock as they pronounce it). Hence the promenade du Peyrou on the top of the hill which the town covers, still the finest promenade for situation & beauty I ever saw (the water which supplies the town is brought to this promenade by an aqueduct of two rows of arches spanning a great valley) now looks across smoke towards the sea, & only on the side towards the mountains has its beautiful clearness. I have not yet had weather to see the Pyrenees from it, as can always be done when there is fine weather in that direction. Today I have gone very little out of the town, the roads being sloppy with the snow. If my own recollections did not confirm it, I should think the people here were in a conspiracy to tell lies in defence of their climate. They say it hardly ever snows (two people have told me they saw snow here today for the first time) & that it sometimes does not rain for 18 months but this it seems is the season of the high winds. The wind yesterday though due north direct from the mountains & so strong & though I was walking right against it was not, I am bound to say, cold—& today it is warm but not so warm as it was at Torquay when I was there. Tell me dearest when you write what weather you had at the same time. Today I saw the picture gallery all new since I was here & I should think the best to be found in any provincial town in France, founded by a painter named Edition: current; Page: [261] Fabre,⁴ who spent in collecting pictures all of his life which was not employed in painting them, & gave them all to his native town, since which two other people have given their galleries to add to it. They are mostly originals, many of them of the best painters & some very fine. Either the same or someone else also gave a large library to the town, which is kept in the same building. On the whole the place must be pleasant, having always had very good literary & scientific society & the usual share of other—as somebody in Chamfort said of some place, la bonne société y est comme partout, et la mauvaise y est excellente. Living must be cheap—at a large butcher’s shop I was told that beef, mutton & veal were severally 10, 11, & 14 sous the lb, best parts & best quality (the woman asked more when she thought I was a buyer & when they understood my object the man evidently made a conscience of telling me the truth). For good sized fowls I was asked 15 sous—they must be still cheaper at Toulouse (I wish I had asked) that country being said to be the head quarters of fowldom, & I passed on the road repeatedly waggonloads of hencoops full of them laden top heavy like hay waggons in England, which a fellow traveller said were going from Toulouse to Marseilles not for the fleet but for the ordinary supply of the town. This seems as if in Provence as at Nice the peasants did not keep fowls as profusely as they do elsewhere in France. For plump little turkeys the woman who had the fowls asked 4½ francs but this was only her first word. The meat I can positively say is excellent if I may judge from this table d’hôte—which is by many degrees the best I ever dined at—all the dishes of good quality, well cooked & in profusion & what is more uncommon, the most perfect order, rapidity & polite attention in the serving—though thirty or forty are always there, every one is individually asked to take of every dish, the waiters having an immense variety of civil formulas with which they offer it as a master of the house would to his guests. The servants of all sorts are all pleasant mannered people & the whole thing gives one a high idea of the old lady who manages it. I have a very comfortable room, & the rest from travelling is very pleasant & useful—not that I was physically overdone but mentally. This evening when I have finished this letter I have my plant papers to change & dry, my Italian to read (Aminta is not such dull work, quite, as the Gerusalemme) & a novel to finish with. There is here a nice library & salon littéraire where I get books & read the papers—they always have Galignani & occasionally get the Post or Chronicle. I was agreeably surprised at seeing the Post & not the Times. Tomorrow I shall perhaps get another precious letter. I have asked each Edition: current; Page: [262] day of the very civil people. Altogether I like the place, but it is not beautiful enough nor quite a good enough climate for one to wish to choose it as a place to live in. I wish though that my darling had seen it with me & hope we shall come here some day together. I will finish by saying that the cod liver oil I am sure is an excellent thing for me, for I never had digested perfectly since I left it off, & have from the very first day I resumed it—a thousand loves & kisses to my own divine treasure.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Dec. 22 [1854]

Montpellier

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

202.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Montpellier

Dec. 22 [1854]

9

You see dearest angel that I am here still, but I leave for Nîmes tomorrow. I got her second letter yesterday morning on the way to the railroad & it is quite painful to think of her being worried & put out of spirits & the benefit of the change in great part lost by that most unsuitable companionship—it is always so—when you are for any time with the grand’mère² your feelings & conscience are always revolted & nerves set on edge. You have said the truest of words—always dupe de votre cœur—you thought she felt declining & had the natural wish to give what she would feel agreeable, but you are not physically fit for that now—& why should you throw yourself away on one for whom Caroline is not only good enough but pleasanter to her than you. Why did you do it & why did I not try to dissuade you. If it was but to be soon over—but two months are such a terrible length of time. I shall be as glad now to know you safe at home as I was glad to think that you were in that nice place—nice before but spoilt in idea now by that presence. I have not much to tell—I should have written directly after reading her letter if I had not known that she would in the meantime have received several of mine which would shew that I was feeling more comfortable. I am getting on very well & shall do well enough—different somehow from the summer journey—I was then what people call much more out of spirits, that is I thought badly of my prospects as to health which now I do not—but then I was active & buoyant, mentally, & liked to talk to all sorts of people—now I feel no disposition to it & generally am silent at tables d’hôte & even with fellow travellers (after a few words have been said to shew friendliness) unless they shew a desire to talk. This they seldom do—the French are now a much more silent people than the English. Among perhaps Edition: current; Page: [263] forty people at table there will not be six who say anything & these generally only to their own party & but little to them. I have seen hardly any English: at Béziers there were two, but they aspired to being fast & I kept aloof from them. There are three or four in this inn, & some of them are said to dine at the table d’hôte but I do not distinguish them by sight or tongue—though I do one or two Germans. As for my proceedings—I went yesterday by the railway to Cette, which I found little worth seeing—a seaport is always ugly & a small one worse than a large, because you cannot get away from the port. But this sky makes everything look well. I walked back 29 kilometers (18 miles) & should not have been at all tired had it not been again a day of violent wind (though otherwise very fine) & in the whole distance I could never, for fear of losing my hat, walk for any consecutive five minutes upright—I could only see the view by occasionally looking up, with my hand firmly attached to my hat. This is not pleasant—my neighbour yesterday at dinner told me there is always wind here, & a waiter to whom I have just spoken thinks nothing of this wind, & says it will be the same all January & February & much worse in March—a nice place for consumption! but the wind is not cold, only troublesome. The waiter said if there were only more rain here the pays would be trop riche. Today par merveille there has been but little wind (though we should call it anywhere else a fresh breeze) & a fine sky though with many beautiful clouds. The mountains are loaded with masses of cloud every day & all day & there must be torrents of rain there. Today I have walked about & taken a moderately long walk out in the garrigues. I like when a place is at all interesting to stay long enough there to carry away a permanent image of it which I am sure is correct, which one never does of a place one only passes through. This place if it would but cease blowing, would gain on one extremely—I never saw anything more lovely than the Peyrou & its view this evening just after sunset, & from something different I suppose in the state of the air I saw none of the smoke I mentioned before—everything was pure & the tone that of the finest Poussin.³ At the gallery I had great pleasure in seeing an exceedingly nice painting of Pau with the castle & mountains. I shall stay I suppose two nights at Nimes, there is much to see there but I shall see tomorrow the Arènes, Maison Carrée &c & next day go to the Pont de Gard—on foot if possible. Adieu my precious—there is never a day an hour or a minute when I am not wishing for her. There is no doubt another letter on the way to Marseilles—there would perhaps be time for still another there, but to make sure I will rather say, write to Genoa the day she receives this if it is quite convenient. I will ask there if I do not find two at Marseilles. Adieu again mio bene.

Edition: current; Page: [264]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Dec 23 [1854]

Montpellier

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

203.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Montpellier

Dec 23 [1854]

10

I wrote yesterday my darling & she will get this by the same post. I write again to thank her for such a sweet note (No. 3) & to send a letter I have just received from Pope.² There seems to have been a malentendu altogether. He means to go to the south of France in the very worst months & asks me to tell him where. I do not know any place that would suit him except Hyères or Pau (perhaps Cannes?) & I hate to send him to either. I shall not write to him till I hear from you. Pisa, Rome or Malta are the places for him but he evidently does not like going alone to Italy on account of the language. Malta I had suggested to him before. I am so happy that even in those most depressing & irritating circumstances her health has still improved. Mille mille baci.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Dec 25 [1854]

Avignon

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

204.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Avignon

—

Dec 25 [1854]

11

We thought of being at Florence today my dearest & I am only here—but that was when I thought of leaving England sooner than the 8th. Last Christmas Day we were together at Hyères, a day I shall never forget—now I am not far from the same place but without the delight of my life. She knows I wish her every good that can possibly be wished at this time & a happy meeting in the warm weather six months hence unless I am happy enough for it to be sooner by her coming to meet me. How unlike this day to the last I spent here—about the same time of year: but it makes as fine time now as it made villain time then. I little thought that the place where I should first in this journey fully taste the pleasure of existence would be Avignon—if I had not come here I should not have known what a splendidly beautiful place it is. The Promenade des Rochers, close to the Cathedral—in these southern towns they always contrive to have a fine promenade in the finest situation—from this promenade on the summit of the town there is a complete panorama all round, commanding a fine Vega encircled on all sides by mountains with the snowy Mont Ventoux the foremost of them & through this three great rivers winding viz. the Rhone below the town & its two enormous and widely diverging branches above this under the Edition: current; Page: [265] splendidest of skies & suns & with the temperature of a fine day at the beginning of October. I could have spent the whole day with pleasure merely pacing the two long bridges across the two branches of the Rhone. I arrived here from Nimes about 12 & walked about till nearly dark which is not till after 5, for the winter days are longer & the summer days shorter in these latitudes. It will be lovely going to Vaucluse tomorrow. The most prominent object at Nimes is the Arènes, about half the size of the Colosseum but much more perfect at least externally—it forms the centre of a great place & my window looked out on it—& it looked finer at night than in the day. Here too I had two splendid days, with no more wind than was agreeable, though not quite equal to this day at Avignon. The Maison Carrée is a very nice graceful temple, Greek not Roman though of the Roman times, & in perfect preservation. They have made the interior a picture gallery & museum & there are some good pictures. There are in the town some other Roman antiquities but only like the nameless ones one finds everywhere in the Campagna—also an old Roman tower on the top of a hill, the ascent to which is a nicely planted promenade & from the top of which is a splendid view of the town & country. Nimes consists of boulevards with shops & houses in the Paris stile encircling an old town somewhat like the old part of Nice. For my part I am coming to like the modern parts best. It is not the uncomfortable squalid oldness of the buildings that makes the French towns so delightful—it is the infinitely varying physiognomy, & that is as perfect in the boulevards of Paris & Nimes as in the oldest recesses of either. I went yesterday to the Pont du Gard—being 22 kilometres, it was too far to go & return on foot but a cabriolet with a good horse only cost 10 francs. This day gave me a picture for life. The Pont is an aqueduct of three tiers of arches crossing a ravine at an immense height—almost perfectly preserved, even to the conduit which conveyed the water & which I walked into & a good way along though I could not quite stand upright. Against the lowest tier of arches was built, 100 years ago, a bridge to carry a road across but it is a bye road—the place is most retired & on the other side of the Pont nothing is seen but the old stonework. Beyond is the loveliest & wildest ravine winding among ilex & other bushes, along the middle of which runs the purest of all crystal streams. I had a glorious walk up the ravine to an old feudal chateau with high machicolated towers. Everything looks so splendid under this sky, though today is the first in which I have had perfect physical comfort—all the other bright days there has been too much wind though they thought nothing of it at Nimes & said it always blows there. The cathedrals in these towns are mere common churches like that at Nice. The one at Montpellier has nothing remarkable but a porch which from its height & the size of its two pillars seems built by & for giants. I went into a church here & found a man preaching with Edition: current; Page: [266] great vehemence a metaphysical & philosophical sermon, shewing that science (of which he really seemed to know something) can explain & understand very little—wherefore incomprehensibility ought not to hinder us from believing.—I sent her from Montpellier Pope’s letter. His plan now is that I should not have him for any part of the time I might have liked to have him, & should have him in Greece where I would much rather not, since I shall there see more or less of people with whom he would be merely in the way. I should have liked well enough to have him in Sicily but you see he gives up that & I feel inclined to shirk him altogether but do not know the best way. However I need only at present tell him where to direct to me if he writes. I have no idea where to advise him to go.

I shall go to Marseilles darling the day after tomorrow & shall write as soon as I have been to the post office & fixed by what steamer to leave. If this weather holds, the journey will be very pleasant. It evidently rains or snows very much in the mountains, as is shewn by the muddiness of the Rhone. I cannot make up my mind whether to call on Mr Pasquale Villari or not at Florence & also whether to leave my card with Bulwer.² Adieu my darling of darlings. The people were going about everywhere so cheerful & gay this fine fête day.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Dec. 27 [1854]

Marseille

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

205.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Marseille

Dec. 27 [1854]

12

I found her dear dear letter on arriving today my own cherished one. What good her letters do me—this one has put me quite into spirits because of her being so well (considering the circumstances) & because she has fine weather & likes the place—she makes me like it again, the dear one does, but I long for the time when she will go out & enjoy it—how often I realize those nice walks & drives about there & I think I like them quite as much as any place I have been in since, without counting the fact of her being there, without which no place is beautiful to me. One of those six hours Sunday walks is about as much as I can really enjoy fully the beauty of when my darling is not with me. However darling I am cheerful & doing very well & was this morning when I weighed 68 kilos being 3 lbs more Edition: current; Page: [267] than Bordeaux, 5 than Torquay & 8 than London. I have got up to the highest I weighed in the summer excursion—all but a pound, the weight of the thick waistcoat. A propos that waistcoat has worthily justified its own existence—I have done many things that I could not have done but for the complete protection it gave to my chest. I found on getting her[e] (what I did not expect) that a steamer starts for Genoa tomorrow—so as I do not expect any more letters here, I have arranged everything for going by it. I am sorry to say it takes 24 hours & starts in the morning instead of evening so my only hope for escaping sickness consists in the calm weather which after so much wind is now delightful. The days have continued splendid till this morning which was partially cloudy but entirely cleared off towards afternoon. I have come to the Empereurs because she went there—it is full of English—there were several English officers in uniform at the table d’hôte—young men one very handsome & all I should think very silly. Vaucluse is not like my expectations except in those broad features that one cannot be mistaken in. Of course a shew place is always prosaic, but instead of the villas which would recommend it in England there is one of the ugly villages which look like the worst part of the towns. Happily just above the village the ravine takes a turn & there is a quarter of a mile tolerably clear but there is nothing like seclusion as at the Pont du Gard. The source is at the foot of a mountain apparently nearly the height of Snowdon, but with scarcely a particle of green on it & knocked about in ledges & pillars & other fantastic shapes & the water comes out, if it can be called coming out, at the back of a precipice which reaches nearly the whole height of the mountain. Here in a nook where the narrow rocky gorge suddenly ends, is a pool about the size of a small pond on a common, but out of this rushes a mountain river as large as the Adour at Bagnères & immediately tumbles over a series of enormous blocks of rock for about the height of the Swallow fall,² with the most splendid noise & foam, after which in the next furlong the water gushes out from at least 100 places in the mountain & swells the stream till from its size & rapidity if it were in England it would rank as one of our notable rivers. A thing I have not seen mentioned, I think, in any description is that in the quiet pool above the fall you constantly hear a deep hollow roaring as if there was a great commotion of waters in the heart of the precipitous mountain—& possibly there is, though more probably it is the effect of the loud noise of the fall—reverberated from every part of the amphitheatre of immensely high rocks which surrounds. Altogether it was very fine, especially the water & one had to ignore the Café Pétrarque, the Hotel Pétrarque et de Laure &c all of which happily were out of sight. It is 27 kilometres from Avignon & a cabriolet cost 12 francs. The bill for the two days at Avignon including servants Edition: current; Page: [268] was 21½ francs, about 8s.6d a day. The whole cost of this three weeks journey is just about £20, from Boulogne, or counting from London £23: rather different from the summer journey which cost less than £31 for nearly seven weeks—but there has been much more railway & a greater distance travelled besides tables d’hôte at 3½ fr. instead of 2 f. & 2½, & bedrooms 2 f. instead of 1. so that I have done pretty well. I hope darling to find another sweet letter at Genoa. Ah dearest I wish I could tell her all my dreams—last night I had such a sweet dream—dear one had come & was going the rest of the way with me. She sees I have taken just about the time we thought in getting from England here. My beauty will get this letter pretty quick especially as I shall put it in the post tonight for there are two mails in the 24 hours from here. How much pleasanter railway travelling is in these countries than any other. It seems to suit every country better than England—it cuts up beauties of detail but suits the scale of the objects here which are large & far apart. In all the towns here the railway with its long lines of arches is a really fine feature in the view. Addio con tutti i baci possibili—ah dearest how I do love you.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Dec 30 [1854]

Genoa

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

206.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Genoa

Dec 30 [1854]

13

I write my angel before having received her letter if letter there be, for it has not arrived yet as it was impossible it should—& by calculation it seems hardly possible that it could arrive today or tonight so that it was a mistake asking her to write here, but I was so very anxious to hear without those very long intervals that I took the chance & I dare say the post office here will redirect to Pisa. I had a horrible passage—the boat did not get off till half past one though it required everybody to go on board at eleven—& it arrived here about half past one yesterday—at first I did pretty well, remaining on deck in the beautiful afternoon & evening & passing that fine coast on which I could quite distinguish Hyères, at least its exact position. We passed close to the islands, but it was very rough even then whenever we were not under the shelter of the heights a strong north wind having set in early in the morning. After dark I was wretchedly sick & had hardly any sleep for sickness & all day after arriving here I felt so ill & miserable that I could go nowhere & do nothing. I am terrified at the idea that all this must be gone through again for Sicily & again for Greece—it seems as if Edition: current; Page: [269] nothing that they can give in my solitary condition can be worth it. Today however I am well again & have gone about in the most exquisite cloudless day, without the slightest cold though there is snow on the low mountains just outside the town on the side next Chiavari. I am quite reconciled to Genoa which looked so dismal in the abominable weather we had last year that my impression of it was very disagreeable, but in this glorious weather it looks splendid. I am at the Quattro Nazioni, where the people are very attentive & I am very comfortable though it does not seem to be very thriving. It appears that the only way here to have a bedroom with a fireplace is to take a sitting room with it or to pay the same as if you did. I have therefore a large cheerful sitting room au 3me with a bedroom opening from it for which I pay three francs. By the bye the Hotel des Empereurs was about the dearest inn I ever was in, in France: 3 fr. for the sort of bedroom which is 2 fr. everywhere else: table d’hote 4 fr. & other things in proportion. There is a beautiful promenade here planted with trees & a garden looking splendidly over the eastern part of the town & the mountains adjoining it—made, as an inscription shews since we were first here—& where do you think the railway goes? Exactly in front of the hotels, between them & the terrace wall, every train night & day passing close to your window—which cannot be pleasant for those au premier I should think. I feel much more in spirits again than I yesterday thought I should in the whole journey. I have nearly arranged with a vetturino to go to Lucca in three days, halting at Sestri & la Spezia, paying 40 francs which is more than I like to pay but having tried several I do not think I shall be able to do better. Among the disagreeables of that sea passage one is a bad cold in my head which it has left—but I do not mind it, as these colds go off without leaving any cough that lasts above a day or two. I see either the French papers or Galignani sufficiently often to be tolerably au courant but I seldom read those tiresome speeches even when I have an opportunity. Why dear did you wish the Foreign Enlistment Bill to be lost?² It seems to have been a mistake because unpopular but no doubt Lord Raglan wants more practised soldiers than they are able to send him. I have not seen in the whole of my passage through France a single indication great or small that the war is popular there. They talk of it quite as they would of some foreign contest & generally I think do not augur well of its success. Neither have I heard one word uttered in favour of L. Napoleon. People say but little & I do not like to tempt them to say much but they say quite enough to shew the most entire hostility. I shall now take this to the post & perhaps see one or two of the palaces. I seem much farther from my dear one than in France—any place in France if it be ever so far off seems so much a Edition: current; Page: [270] home to us. I do not get on well with the Italian here not only from the badness of my Italian but of theirs, for it is a horrible patois almost as unItalian as the Venetian but without its softness. Adieu darling—love me always—a thousand dearest loves.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

30 Dec. [1854]

Genoa

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

207.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Genoa

—

30 Dec. evening [1854]

14

There was no letter by today’s post, darling, which came in about two. I should wait here for one: only that I am not certain she will write here. The post office promises to send it on to Pisa if it comes. I have been on foot nearly all day & have commenced performing the first duty of man when in Italy, that of seeing pictures. I have seen two of the best palaces, the Brignole Sale & the Pallavicini, both full of fine pictures, & also a church or two: there were plenty more to see, but too many pictures the same day are more than do one any good—& at the best this hurried seeing of picture galleries is a sort of feast of Tantalus. If I could come each day to one, or even two or three of the finest pictures I have seen today, & sit down before them until I got to feel them really what a different thing it would be. As it is one only sees. I dare say by the time I leave Italy I shall be able to give a tolerable guess at the authorship of a picture, but perhaps I shall not have had much enjoyment of them. I could not help seeing however what a gem almost any one of these pictures would appear in any modern exhibition, & what is much more in any private room—& again even the common unknown pictures in the churches all shew how the great painters have created certain types & a certain stile which makes even the commonest Italian painting have a certain grandeur as well as grace in it—something which is to Guercino² & the Caracci³ what they are to Titian & Michael Angelo & I see the same in the colossal statues in the churches. I have seen also a great many of the finest Vandykes extant, for the great Genoese families seem all to have had themselves painted by him—& a Rubens that might almost be taken for a Raphael, it is so really beautiful. My negociation with the vetturino is off for he has found other English & they will not travel tomorrow because it is Sunday, & the next day is fête (New Year) so he says he cannot go till Tuesday, and I have bargained with another to take me to Spezia in two days & I shall probably finish this letter there. Perhaps Edition: current; Page: [271] it is as well so, for I may possibly stay there a day & go to Lerici or Porto Venere. I wish dearest you could see this place in its beauty—I am now quite charmed with it as I was the first time. This inn too is so much better & the people pleasanter than where we were. A propos the trains which pass the window are only the goods trains, which go to the custom house for the convenience of loading there: I suppose it is the great means of transporting foreign goods to Turin. I have been reading a number of Italia e Popolo which has a vigorous attack on our friend the Avenir of Nice for saying the Piedmontese ought not to hate the French government.⁴ It is quite a pleasure to read any thing free spoken again. I am strong & well today, to my almost surprise after the extreme prostration of yesterday—but that no doubt was partly owing to having eaten nothing for 36 hours.

Sestri. Dec. 31. The voiture plan is answering capitally & I am very glad I did not go with those English people, for being with Italians only I get on like a house on fire with my Italian. The vetturino had managed to fill his vehicle with Italians of I know not exactly what rank though certainly plus que modeste, who no doubt paid him very little, for there is anything but prix fixe on these occasions—but none of them were at all disagreeable & one pleasant man about 40 with whom I got into conversation directly though he could speak nothing but Italian & evidently was not an educated man but yet (what never happens in England) spoke his own language clearly & correctly. I got on capitally by referring often to the little dictionary & had the satisfaction of giving him a breakfast or rather dinner which he would not have had otherwise. A propos of the dictionary when I teazed Lily for it I did not know it was the nice copy with her (my darling’s) name in it. I thought it was a similar one that I had formerly & which I would much rather have taken for such hard wear than this, though it is sweet to have this. The voiture travelling does excellently in all ways—one makes use of the whole day, does not get into the night, & by utilizing hills & the midday stoppage one gets nearly all the good of a walking tour—today besides a very long hill I walked from the stopping place, Rapallo, nearly to Chiavari before I was overtaken. It quite agrees with my recollections that this eastern Riviera is finer than the western: there is more variety in the farms, there is not the interruption by those plains & generally instead of going round the promontories, one crosses them, which makes more variety: what it does resemble is the last bit from Mentone to Nice, & it is Edition: current; Page: [272] not at all finer than that. Indeed that mountain of La Turbia with its appendages of Montalbano, Villafranca, St Jean, St Hospice & Monaco comprise in themselves all the beauty of which this kind of scenery seems susceptible & whoever has seen them thoroughly has seen the whole Riviera, & I am much inclined to think, all that is really characteristic in the scenery of Italy & Sicily altogether. Consequently I should have been more excited by this if we had not been at Nice so lately⁵—nevertheless I enjoyed it much, having the most perfect weather yesterday & today while the sun was up not a moment of cold though many of heat & this although the people here talk of the weather as cold—what must it be usually on the last day of the year! & the foliage here is just the same in winter as in summer. I saw shortly before sunset an effect of light which I never imagined possible & should have declared impossible I am afraid if I had seen it in a picture. The bay being very calm & merely just rippled, the reflexion from the nearly horizontal sun was projected not in the ordinary way but in a broad pillar of light as well defined as a river or a great road, of the exact breadth of the disk of the horizontal sun, extending in a perfect straight line or avenue beginning at the horizon & ending at the shore & too dazzling in every part to be looked at for more than a moment. In nearly the whole distance whenever one turned back one saw the line of the other Riviera backed by high snowy mountains, extending full half way to Nice (one man said quite into France) & looking quite close. There is here at Sestri a first rate inn but I think it will prove very dear. The only dear thing in the bill at Genoa was the firewood, in excuse for which the man said that wood is always dear there & is brought from Cività Vecchia. I should rather suppose it is brought from Tuscany (though perhaps the Tuscans want all their wood themselves) or perhaps from Corsica, the préfet of which I see advertises his coupe de bois by affiches in the streets of Genoa. There is great complaint of the distress of the people here—my fellow traveller said everything had failed except olives—not only the vines but all grain & that the propriétaires are dying of hunger. A propos I have been reading of a great & rapidly extending disease among silkworms, propagated by the eggs—it seems as if there was a conspiracy among the powers of nature to thwart human industry—if it once reaches the real necessaries of life the human race may starve. The potato disease was a specimen & that was but one root: if it should reach corn? I think that should be a signal for the universal & simultaneous suicide of the whole human race, suggested by Novalis.⁶ What a number of sensible things are not done, faute de s’entendre! In the meantime let us make what we can of what human life we have got, which I am hardly doing by being Edition: current; Page: [273] away from you. I think I should feel the whole thing worthier if I were writing something—but I cannot make up my mind what to write. Nothing that is not large will meet the circumstances. I have finished Aminta & am toiling through the Gerusalemme but this evening for a change I added a canto of Dante—what a difference! now I said, I am beginning to enjoy—I shall take the occasion of reading Dante through though I have no helps—luckily I read Sismondi over again last winter.⁷ This Genoa is full of remembrances of those 16 volumes & by the bye was the most turbulent, the worst governed & the least respectable of all those republics, the frantic personal animosities of the factions of nobles not only filling the place with perpetual bloodshed but making one or the other party continually put the place under a foreign despot, either France, Austria or Spain. There is no city in Italy except Naples for whose antecedents I have so little respect—but still the occasional freedom & constant demand for energy made them vigorous & successful both in war & in commerce: it is curious now to think for how long a period they were masters of Galata in Constantinople, & Caffa in the Crimea. I ramble on darling because it is the only way of talking to her. I shall not however close this letter tonight. I do not find any plants now—the few I found in France were all of them last roses of summer, not first ones of spring—but the hellebore is beginning to come out to my great delectation. I brought a botanical relic or two from Vaucluse & have tried to read a little of Petrarch but it will not do— i begl’occhi of Laura m’ennuient. I must give her a specimen of my fellow traveller—he was remonstrating with another for jumping out of the carriage & falling down & after some other things he added E tanto più facile di farsi male che di farsi bene.⁸ It reminded me of “toute chose a ses inconvéniens”. Now darling I must go to bed for my fire is going out.

Spezia 1st January. Every possible good that the new year can possibly bring to the only person living who is worthy to live, & may she have the happiest & the maniest New Years that the inexorable powers allow to any of us poor living creatures. I have been travelling again from eight to seven—all the first part to Borghetto was among what seemed the tops of mountains exactly like those which we saw from the back of the house at Nice but twenty times as many of them—sometimes quite inland, sometimes seeing the sea or the fine coast far below—coming often to snow which was lying in all the places where it had drifted, & which a week ago, it seems, made this road impassable even to the post. In one fine descent there Edition: current; Page: [274] was visible in front a long high range of completely snowy mountains, like the Alps or Pyrenees, being the Apennines, near Pontremoli I suppose. From Borghetto I walked on for more than five hours & was in the very town of Spezia before the carriage overtook me, though I had walked up several great heights before. I saw by a rather dim moonlight that magnificent first view of the Gulf of Spezia & walked down the winding descent of the mountain to it through the olive groves. The inn seems a very good one & the rooms only Genoa price—Sestri was a franc more & I think I shall stay here tomorrow especially as this vetturino though very eager to take me on to Lucca or Pisa cannot be talked into doing it for less than 35 francs. Here is one of the conveniences of a companion. Though as you see by my walking I am strong enough, my digestion is far from good & has not been so in this journey. I do not think it is the diet, because I digested perfectly in the last journey & did not digest well at Torquay. I am afraid the unlucky truth is that I cannot digest without cod liver oil & that none but Allen’s agrees with me. Certainly the only week of decent digestion I have had this December was when I was drinking one of the bottles of that—I have to save it, been drinking some since, bought at Avignon, but it does me no good, no more than the two kinds I tried at Torquay. I have begun one of the three remaining ones today & if I really thought I should see Pope, I certainly should ask him to bring some more out with him.⁹ Meanwhile the case is coming to pieces—it was not strong enough for so much jolting & tossing by sea & land. The Italian has gone on glibly today & my progress surprises me. There was among others a jovial young Franciscan who I am sure is no hypocrite: you should have heard his merry laugh at my suggestion that the electric telegraph would formerly have been thought un’ opra del diavolo—Nothing like cold even in the mountains till after dark & not much then. To shew you the care I am taking of my diet, I eat only some soup at Borghetto, & here at night a roast chicken (what a small one!) with boiled potatoes & no bread & no tea. I shall take to simple hot milk in the mornings, because with that bread is not necessary, & I shall try what bitters & quinine will do again. Here is a long letter my beloved & it does not end quite so satisfactorily as the beginning but there is no help. I am very sleepy from so much walking & must go to bed. The Franciscan was a most ignorant fellow—he guessed the mountains towards Nice to be those of Corsica. These last we ought to have seen but could not as the day was less clear than the last three or four though still very fine. There is a beautiful spring heath just beginning to come into flower which will make the wilderness blossom like the rose. Good night my dearest dearest love—I kiss her mentally with my whole heart. The mysterious looking paper I inclose this in will do as well as anything else for a cover.

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1855

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 2. [1855]

Spezia

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

208.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Spezia

,

Jan. 2. [1855]

15

Another day such as one comes to Italy for—a perfect climate, & beauty which wants nothing but the dearest eyes in the world to see it. This gulf I think is very nearly the most beautiful place I ever saw. I do not wonder that Shelley came to it.² A propos I met a boatman who told me he had served Shelley: when I asked him to point out Lerici, he first said that Byron had lived there three months & that he had served him, then mentioned “altro celebre Inglese, il signor Shellì, ch’ha perduto la vita.” If he did serve Shelley he must have been a mere boy at the time. It was not in the gulf itself that the catastrophe happened. The gulf they say here is always as it was today, quite smooth—it had less ripple than the lake of Como which it somewhat resembles but is only about half the length & near double the breadth (as I guess). The neat, really pretty & pleasant town stands in a very small vega³ entirely shut in by mountains & cannot feel any wind but the south: between it and the gulf is an open garden & a promenade road planted with trees from which on the eastern side of the gulf unfold before you three ranges, the first only hills though (like all here) of the forms of mountains, a range of dark mountains behind, & beyond that a lofty range of snowy mountains of the sharpest & peakedest sort of which the part which can be seen from the town is equal to any part of the Pyrenees or Alps that I remember: the highest part, a magnificent peaked ridge, is called Monte di San Pellegrino. I should delight to have this view from our window. Perhaps Spezia would be too hot in summer to live in, but the right place would be somewhere on the east [west written above east]⁴ of the gulf, which has this especial view & only the morning sun while we should see the sun in the afternoon on the mountains opposite. Lerici is on the wrong side; Porto Venere on the right, in both senses. I staid at the excellent inn till 11 to rest myself, then sauntered out on the Porto Venere road, going round the seven beautiful coves, of the form of harbours, which succeed one another & five of which are said to be deep Edition: current; Page: [276] enough for ships of war: Napoleon intended to make this the great military port of his empire; I am very glad he did not. In going round these lesser gulfs almost every view of the mountains & coast that is possible presented itself & at the end is a strait separating the promontory from a high rocky & woody island (merely the end of the promontory cut off). At one end of this strait towards the outer sea (about 8 miles from Spezia) is Porto Venere a little old town with immensely high dark ugly houses rising from the very sea itself—with a fine church however in a high position & another ruined church in the exact corner point commanding they say the whole coast to France, but today there was a complete fog out at sea though inland & in the gulf it was beautifully clear. The town is squalid & the houses speak of former riches & present poverty—the people are now all fishermen & the women & children look unhealthy. I often observe this in the healthiest situations when the towns have that horrid look. Spezia on the contrary is bright, clean & cheerful with dignity. I had been so often offered a carriage in the tiniest places yesterday, that I thought I should have found one here to go back with, but I could find only boats & the sea & strait were so rough (though the gulf was quiet) that I could not venture it but made the boat go to the nearest village in the gulf some distance off & joined it there. This made the walk decidedly too much after the much walking of yesterday & it taxed my strength but it does not seem to have done me any harm & I am considerably better today by having taken myself in hand by diet & medicine. The climate at present is divine: one never for an instant thinks of cold, except near daybreak or dusk. The nice rooms too everywhere are a pleasure: all the inns on the great roads of Italy are got up for the English who do this good at any rate that there are such inns at all the stopping places as one only looks for in at least a provincial capital. The name of the inn translated into English generally hangs out, thus Cross Malte Hotel. } I copy exactly one I saw yesterday: the French name is generally written along the front of the house, & the Italian not at all. My voiturin has at last consented to take me to Lucca for 25 fr. if he finds anyone else & for 30 fr. if he does not but that is much more than enough: however I have agreed to it. I think I shall go to the “Grand Hotel Universe” (as it calls itself in an advertisement). Lucca is only half an hour of railway from Pisa so if I stay more than a night at Lucca I shall run over & get my letters. Spezia is a sea bathing place & the baths form a part of the handsome pile of buildings composing this inn which from the sea looks like the Hotel de Ville at least. All up these mountains wherever there are olive grounds there are also houses & here & there on a projecting rock, a church or a village. As there is so much wildness & grandeur in other parts of the view this is pleasant.

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Pisa, Jan. 4. Here I am in the old town, the old inn & I really think in the old room. It feels very strange. As soon as I had installed myself I rushed to the post office & what was my disappointment to find it just shut (at ½ past 2) not to open again till 5. You may be sure I was punctual & I got her dear letters of the 25th & 28th both marked 5, but not that of the 27th on the Popish affair⁵ so I went again & the much enduring much bewildered man promised that he would have a thorough search by tomorrow morning. My comfort is that the letter of the 28th having the postmark of today (if I read it rightly) that of the 27th if sent to Genoa could hardly have been sent on so as to arrive today. How sweet & precious her letters are. I am so glad she thinks so well of Torquay, it is exactly what I should expect from what I saw of the place. The nuisance of England is the English: on every other account I would rather live in England passing a winter now & then abroad than live altogether anywhere else. The effect of the beauty here on me, great as it is, makes me like the beauty of English country more than I ever did before. There is such a profusion of beauty of detail in English country when it is beautiful, & such a deficiency of it here & on the Continent generally & I am convinced that a week’s summer tour about Dartmoor would give me as much pleasure as a week about Spezia. There is not much to tell about the journey these last two days. The weather has been somewhat less pleasant, a good deal of frost both nights, & clouds with occasional sunshine in the day: this evening the sky is bright but the mountains seen from here are shrouded with clouds. The road wound through the first range of hills I saw from Spezia, into the valley of the Magra, a broad straight valley most of it stony & barren from inundations, this we forded at the height of the wheels & reached Sarzana the last Sardinian town. From this till near Lucca the road was level, along the edge of a plain, having on the left the snowy range I mentioned before, & when we had passed that, other less grand often woody mountains. The regular road was through Carrara but there have been troubles there & the place is en état de siège & it was thought there would be delays & hindrances from the police so I consented to the vetturino’s proposal to go by a bye road avoiding Carrara: it was very likely humbug of the fellow who is a great cheat & a most impudent rascal (not insolent, which is the way of these people). I had to make a scene & call him a liar publicly to which he gave me ample provocation. He pretended too that he would not go through Massa for the same reason, but he did, & there was no obstruction. I slept at Pietra Santa where also is an excellent but dear inn: however I got off part of the charge. The road today was through the finest olive grounds, but sometimes had on the right a Maremma in great part overflowed which I was told was ricefields. We Edition: current; Page: [278] crossed one of the ranges of hills & arrived at Lucca but I did not stay to see anything—it is so easily seen from this place. I came on by the first train & shall probably stay here some days, the more so as I have been quite poorly these two days. Why my digestion has broken down so suddenly I cannot conceive & when it was so excellent before. That was the last thing I expected to happen on this journey. It has not been good from the first barring London, but the increase of weight up to Avignon shews that nothing was seriously amiss. I think that odious sea has done it: but when my breakfast today was two cups of hot milk & even that acidified in my stomach & my dinner was two wings & a leg of a small fowl & two potatoes without bread or anything else whatever & even that acidified & when besides I have the nameless sensations proceeding from indigestion in a later stage of the process it is quite time to look to it especially as this is doing me harm otherwise. The (very slight) night perspirations I had for a short time in spring have come back these two nights & I have suddenly a pain in my left shoulder which troubles me at no other time but makes it impossible to lie on that side, which as it is the side I chiefly lie on, takes away a great deal of my sleep. I have lost strength too but not more than one always does from indigestion. I am thinking of consulting one of the English physicians here. I shall stay here till I feel really well & shall probably not go to Florence at all as there will be no letters there & I cannot bear to be so long without them—besides I begin to be very doubtful of getting to Greece at all, if even to Sicily & if so there will be ample time for Florence in spring. It is a great bore that letters take a week coming from Torquay here & of course two days longer to Rome. I shall be very comfortable in this room for which I am to pay 4 pauls, little more than 2 francs though it is au premier. It seemed strange to come from the immensely high stone houses of Genoa & the Riviera to a town of stuccoed houses of no great height. The climate seems quite different from the Riviera—there is a moister look about the air in spite of its clearness. I have been to the Duomo—the grassy piazza that looked so pleasant looks now as if a fair had just been held on it. The cathedral itself seems to me less fine outwardly & finer within than I thought—though all the arches are round & the columns Greek & the ornamented ceiling modern Italian it has almost a Gothic effect. There are also many fine pictures especially five or six of Andrea del Sarto⁶ whom I think quite next to Raphael. As they are in a church I can go again & enjoy them. The Baptistery is shut up for repairs: which I regret as I wished to go into it in remembrance of the day we saw the bambino baptized there. I never saw so many beggars as here & they are such wretched objects one wishes to give to them all—it is quite impossible to see anything in peace for them. Some however are exactly like the figures of the same kind of people in the pictures. One hears much of Edition: current; Page: [279] Italian pictures & little of Italian sculptures except M. Angelo’s but I see everywhere statues in the churches which seem to me as fine in pose & features & finer in expression than the Greek—in the cathedral at Sarzana there are some apostles really glorious. This town has to my eye a very deserted look, much more so than as I remember it—it is said that the political jealousies & fears of the Grand Duke which have made him take away the Law Faculty from the University and remove it to Siena,⁷ have done harm to the place. I really think I am better this evening unless it is writing to my darling that makes me feel so. As the post goes out late I shall not lose any time by keeping this letter open till tomorrow when I can give her the latest account of how I am. You must take all my impressions of the places cum grano, for I am conscious of seeing everything on its worst side & I feel that I cannot do any justice to what the places would be to me if I were there in a home & with the one who constitutes home. You will be quite safe in writing to Rome on the 13th: how much later I shall be able to say in my next letter.

Jan. 5. No return of perspiration last night my beloved one & the pain in the shoulder sufficiently diminished to enable me to lie sometimes on the left side. The pain extends now all down the left side of the back & I should think is only rheumatic. I do not feel much the matter with me today except weakness & if I continue as well all day I shall take one of Clark’s alterative pills at night which I should think will quite bring me round. I shall not go out much today. Luckily the day is not very tempting—it began half foggy like a fine day in the heart of London & is now very cloudy. I have got some French novels to fill up the time with. The letter is not forthcoming at the post yet: if it went to Genoa it will probably arrive this afternoon. How unlucky that I said anything about writing to Genoa. I still feel inclined to get on to Rome without going to Florence but I feel all my plans rendered uncertain by the bad effect the sea appears to have on me. I will write very soon without waiting to fill a long letter as I know she will be anxious. What a comfort that her health gives me no new cause of anxiety: I shall have to take care not to walk too much, which has not been necessary before. The walking to & at Spezia would have been nothing remarkable when I was at Blackheath or even at Montpellier but it is evident I was exhausted & not fit for a long walk & after the long walk I was not fit for even the moderate walk to Porto Venere—but she may depend on me for taking care in future. I have had a severe lesson—adieu darling of my soul—

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John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 6. [1855]

Pisa

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

209.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Pisa

Jan. 6. [1855]

16

I am still here darling, wandering about the town for I am not yet strong enough to take a long country walk & the short ones here are good for nothing. Before I leave I shall walk through the Cascine² to the sea, & go to Lucca. I feel very much put out about my plans. It is pretty clear that I shall recover from this attack under my own treatment without going to a doctor, but it is discouraging to find that there is so much difficulty in what never before had any, viz. keeping myself in a condition to digest. The Popish letter³ has not yet made its appearance. This place is pleasant more from recollections than anything in itself. Today began as dull as any day in England; then the sun came out & it is now warm, & like a fine early day in English spring. Whatever people may say, Tuscany is not Italy. I have seen nearly everything there is to see here. Today being a fête I heard the end of the service at the Cathedral: the organ was beautifully played & the music beautiful: but no singing, only the usual groaning noise in the intervals of the organ. The cathedral is the only building which grows on me. The Baptistery & the leaning tower seem to me child’s toys but I now admire the cathedral without as well as within. Lily would have liked to hear that service, looking into the choir with its gallery above gallery, staircase above staircase like Piranesi,⁴ & every part (which is not painted in fresco) fine marble or gilding—besides a gigantic Christ in mosaic covering the circular roof of the apsis. You, I think, would have felt with me here where the priests are powerful, preponderance of detestation of the whole thing. I must say too that now when things are no longer all delightful merely because Italian, I feel sickened by the perpetual inscriptions in honor of those Medicean grand dukes, who like all the Italian princes for the last three centuries were as worthless vermin as ever crawled on the face of the earth. I could look with some pleasure on the statue of Peter Leopold⁵ “forty years after his death”—he was a philosopher like his brother Joseph 2d & was the greatest reformer & Edition: current; Page: [281] legislator that modern Europe had yet had, but even he, having become emperor of Austria, began the war against the French Revolution & died soon after exhausted by sensual excesses. This is a splendid place for the very oldest church paintings—besides the almost effaced frescoes of the Campo Santo, the Academy of Fine Arts is full of them, many, indeed most, very fine in their way, & with much more ease & grace of execution than is commonly said. But they have only one kind of expression. As the ideal of those painters was exactly that of a Hindu or Buddhist ascetic, entire absorption in thoughts of another world, these are not like living creatures, & if one met them one could take them for nothing but somnambulists. I think I see now in what the great merit of Giotto consisted. His figures are alive & look as if they had relation to this world. The others have generally even their eyes turned inward, or if they now & then seem to be looking at something it is languidly as if they were in haste to get back to their dream. If Giotto was the first of the modern painters who reinvented life, he deserves all his reputation. Perhaps however it was Cimabue.⁶ There is a Cimabue here but it seems much below Giotto of whom there are multitudes (perhaps many of them by his pupils)—the stile of Giotto is quite that of the modern painters. The thing which has given me most pleasure of all I have seen here is that the Government has not ventured to efface all the remembrances of 1848.7 There is still in the Campo Santo the monument with the names of those who died for Italy in that campaign—also the chains taken by the Genoese from the Pisans in a naval victory & given to the Florentines who kept them attached I think to the Cathedral were given back to Pisa by the Florentines as an act of fraternity in 1848⁸ & were put up in the Campo Santo with an inscription containing their whole history which still stands. Perhaps the Govt is not afraid of them because like all other inscriptions here they are in Latin. But it is plain that nothing but foreign force supports this government. Even the custode of the Campo Santo and the wife of the custode of the Academy who shewed me a splendid group of sculpture executed ten years ago by a brother of Guerrazzi,⁹ were both of them quite evidently as strong friends of the cause as they dared to shew.

I have been to the post office since the post came in—it has not brought the missing letter.¹⁰ I have written to Genoa about it, but as it would not do to delay writing to Pope any longer at the risk of his not receiving the letter Edition: current; Page: [282] before the time when he proposed going (the middle of January), six days at least being required before it will reach him, I have written recommending Nice—& saying about myself that the sea has made me so unwell as to make all my beyond sea projects uncertain but that a letter will find me at Naples & that when I know where to direct to him I shall be happy to let him know my further plans. It is a bore having to write without receiving your letter but luckily you mentioned Nice in that of the 28th & I think mine to him is quite safe. I shall send this by the same post that my beloved one may know I am getting better—I hope I shall be sufficiently well & strong tomorrow to go to Lucca & see the town, the churches & pictures there. A propos the railway carriages are of the nasty American kind with a passage down the middle going through all the carriages (of the same class, that is). At least the 2d & 3d classes are so—I did not see the first. The 2d class is cheap enough—two pauls—less than a shilling. & now good night my dearest darling angel.

I see Galignani pretty often—surely the mismanagement at Sebastopol¹¹ must be very gross though the Times says so.

[P.S.] Admire the postage stamp, a crowned monkey, pretended lion.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 8. [1855]

Pisa

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

210.

HARRIET MILL¹

Pisa

Jan. 8. [1855]

17

My dearest angel, I have got rid of my sensations of acidity & of nearly all the other sensations of indigestion—& have no feelings of illness left except those slight ones which always accompany the sort of weakness which still remains. Though my tongue is not yet right, the pain in my shoulder is gone, but I do not recover strength, & I do not get rid of the night perspirations. They are not alarming—there is not enough of them to be a cause of weakness & I am convinced they are only an effect of it being accompanied as they were last spring with a certain facility of being put in a perspiration in the daytime. I cannot understand why I do not recover my strength as I am now able to digest my usual breakfast of eggs tea & toast, & a small dinner of roast meat or chicken & potatoes only. But it is much easier to lose strength than to recover it when one has my disease. Today I resolved to try if I could shake off the weakness & I therefore went to Lucca. (I should have gone yesterday but the Sunday trains did not suit for coming back. The Sundays Edition: current; Page: [283] & fêtes seem much observed here as to work, though not I dare say as to play.) All I did at Lucca did not amount to an hour’s strong walking but it was of course more in reality as it was partly seeing churches &c. I do not think I am the worse for it, but I felt fatigued all through, walked very slow & had to constantly sit down. We shall see if I have perspiration again tonight: if not, I shall leave tomorrow for Siena on the way to Rome: if yes I shall leave, but for Florence, & see Clark’s man, Dr Wilson,² as he may not think it prudent for me to go so long a journey just yet. You see darling I tell you everything at the risk of making you uncomfortable but you will have the more confidence in what I tell, & it is doing as I would be done by, for it is what I wish you to do to me—I am afraid you do not always. Lucca is a quiet dull town, now no longer a residenz & I dare say a very cheap place to live in, as well as convenient, being close to Pisa, Leghorn & Florence by railway, & its Bagni (two or three hours off) the best summer residence in Italy. It is of brick & stucco surrounded by a red brick wall, on the top of which all round is a fine broad carriage road, planted with a double avenue & the bastions at the angles are lawns planted with groves. The view from every part of this road is beautiful: on one side the town with its many high svelte square church towers, marbled & columned, on the other the panorama of mountains which surrounds the town on all sides, leaving only a very small opening towards Pisa & a rather larger towards Florence. These mountains are at a considerable distance from the town & begin by olive covered hills mounting gradually on one (the north) side to many summits. The cathedral is one of the finest in Italy. The immense height gives these basilicas internally the effect of Gothic, but in this all above the lowest line of arches of the nave is Gothic & of the highest & gracefullest sort. In this & some of the other churches there are some beautiful pictures, which gave me more pleasure than any I have seen in this journey except the Andreas at Pisa.³ The best are by Fra Bartolomeo,⁴ Ghirlandajo⁵ & Daniele da Volterra.⁶ I much prefer seeing pictures in churches to the way one sees them in the private galleries—malgré the presence & jabber of a custode whom I generally take the first time of going, & was obliged to take at Lucca where they have the odious way of keeping all their celebrated pictures covered up. The custode of the Duomo at Lucca was quite a model of the genre by his Edition: current; Page: [284] senility, (he was a regular Pantaloon) his garrulity, superstition, & intense respect for all the powers that be. Il m’en coûte not to go to Florence where there is such an enormous mass of pictures & sculptures, but I shall not if I can help it. In any case darling you can write to Rome as late as the 16th & I shall wait there long enough to receive it. There is no use in stopping longer here though I like the place & am in the pleasantest situation in it. I notice a curious thing here—a list hung up of the persons who have obtained exemption from paying the visits of ceremony customary at the new year—this exemption is obtained by paying a florin (2½ pauls about 14 pence) to a certain charitable institution. This seems to me a very droll practice, of paying a commutation in money for an obligation of politeness & it shews how irrational a thing opinion is, when it continues to impose formalities which it proves itself to consider utterly unmeaning & inept. I wonder if this bizarrerie could have grown up anywhere but in a catholic country where sins are tariffed at so much, & prayers, penances & masses at so much & an account current kept open with heaven. There is a convent here which is exactly a piece cut out of the Alhambra. As for the climate, it is most satisfactory as to mildness. They call the weather cold at present, & a bit of the city moat which still remains (on the north side of the town & therefore under the shade of the wall) was not only frozen over this morning but much of the ice still remained this evening at sunset: but I had to laugh at the idea of calling it cold. I never feel so. One needs a fire in the house, but a little is enough. But as to clearness—I have had here all weathers but rain—mostly sunshine & today cloudless, but never so clear a day as any we had those ten days at Torquay. There has always been much haze. I fancy Torquay would suit everybody whom this suits. The fine days here do not seem finer than there but no doubt there are many more of them: though according to Murray more rain falls at Pisa than either at Leghorn, so near, or Florence, so much higher up in the mountains. I was amused by two Italians in the railway chattering French & English to one another. I suppose from the same motive as we talk French at home.

I am in complete spirits my darling one—not only not uneasy but not the least nervously depressed. There is nothing to regret but the loss of so much time out of that which was to have produced improvement in health. If it was to be it is better it should have been so near the beginning, as there is plenty of time to make up for it. Addio mia divina—mia adorata.

Mind she tells me whether she stays at Torquay beyond January. If not I shall have in less than a fortnight to leave off directing my letters there. Jan. 9. No perspiration last night darling & I hope I shall have no more now. I shall be off for Siena today & keep Florence to console me if I cannot get beyond sea. No news of the missing letter. Adieu. A thousand loves.

Edition: current; Page: [285]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 10. [1855]

Siena

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

211.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Siena

Jan. 10. [1855]

18

My darling love, to begin with my health as what interests her most. I have had no more return of perspirations & for the first time today my stomach has felt something like the sensations of recovered health. Encouraged by this I tried the experiment of eating a few grapes after my modest dinner—the first grapes I have seen—there is not a grape at Pisa & I fancied there were none in Italy. But the experiment failed—they turned sour directly. You see in what a very delicate state my stomach is—why, heaven knows, for I have done nothing to try it—& that 24 hours seasickness should have so changed the whole condition of the digestion is as strange as any other explanation one can give. I have no doubt however that this acidity will be gone tomorrow, & my strength also seems to be a little returning today—perhaps it will return in time. One of my conjectures is that I have been having a little softening of tubercle, as Ramadge thinks I have had before though Clark thinks not—this would account for the sudden loss of strength & I am inclined to the idea because of the increased quantity & worse quality of the expectoration, which however is only as it has been several times before. I think myself in full though slow convalescence & I must endeavour not to get unwell again. I abused the Lucca railway, but what shall I say of the Leghorn & Florence? The seats are lengthwise—the passengers have their backs to the country—& there is a back to back seat down the middle—the unfortunate occupants of which are the only ones who can possibly see out, by peeping between their opposite neighbours if the blinds are not drawn as they mostly are, since they are drawn when the sun shines & there is no motive to undraw them when it does not. Luckily there are seats along the two ends as well as sides & I got a place on one of them. I looked into the first class carriages & saw the occupants in the same comfortable manner seated round the carriage with a table in the midst. Odd that the Italians care so little about their beautiful country. The Siena line which is a branch turning off at Empoli (an hour short of Florence) has carriages of the usual English & French sort. The railway soon passed by the last mountains of the mountainous country which extends from here to Nice & entered a richly cultivated plain, with few mountains in sight & those distant & low. Nothing was visible but very clean looking crops of green corn in regular beds like a garden ground, divided into squares by rows of mulberry trees with vines festooning from one to another. The country from Empoli to Siena I did not see, as it was dark, there being only two trains, early morning Edition: current; Page: [286] & evening. Siena quite agrees with my recollection of it as a cold looking gloomy town—not at all cold though to the sensations—in spite of the very narrow streets, very high houses & almost entire absence of places (one excepted) or any other openings from which to see more of the sun than illuminates the top story. It must be a delightful town in a burning sultry summer. Though it is all hill I had gone nearly all over it before I could get the least bit of view out of it. When I did, I found that the backs of many of the houses must have a country view, as it lies on the twisted chine of a ridge (chine not in the I. of Wight sense) into which two deep ravines full of olive grounds run up from the country. I then caught a fine view or two of the town—the country of which only a little can ever be seen at once, seems not fine for Italy—it is more like a French view & we should call it fine there. The cathedral however is magnificent. I could not have supposed that round arched buildings could give me so much of the same feeling that Gothic ones do. But when there is the same immense height, & when the same infinite quantity of details subordinate to one coup d’oeil which gives such a feeling of vastness in the northern Gothic is reproduced in another way by the infinite quantity of figures (painted or statues) colouring gilding &c to which the alternate black & white of the marble within & without contributes, one is (at least I am) surprised to find how it affects one. The peculiarity of this cathedral is that it is paved with sculpture—historical pictures being chiselled in the common pavement & that under the dome being a peculiar kind of mosaic, of white & brown marble & black composition. I had no idea that the effect of this could be so fine & I expect I shall find the common pavement of cathedrals tame after it. The one piazza is like that at Brussels & there is an hotel de ville as large & still more moyen âge than that, though not so beautiful, with a tower as high as I ever saw (much larger at top than bottom) but all brick & looking entirely made for the warlike uses of the times of the signorìa & not also for ornament like those in Belgium. I can imagine that the tocsin heard from that must be awful. I saw all the pictures of note said to be in the town viz at the cathedral, the hotel de ville & the church of the Dominicans—there may be private galleries but Mrs Starke,² now my only help, does not mention any of those I saw. Some are celebrated but there are none of such as interest me—except that some in the cathedral shew the effect that may be produced by great vast frescoes in a fine church. I have been plagued out of my life with vetturini & I was near having to go to Florence. One rascal broke his appointment but I have closed with another to take me in 2½ days to Viterbo from where there is a diligence to Rome Edition: current; Page: [287] in one day: this is to cost me 8 scudi: there are four other travellers I suppose Italians all. My hopes of seeing Sicily have a little revived by learning from Mrs Starke that even in her time it was quite practicable to go to Reggio on the straits of Messina by land—the road excellent, vetturini to be had, only the inns bad. I shall enquire about it fully at Naples, & at present my feeling is that way or not at all. Hitherto I have not known what a bad inn is in Italy. This one is the least good I have been at & this would be a good one in France. If I can get a companion of the right sort we may take a servant with us who can buy & cook provisions & so it may do. Thank heaven it will not now be so very long before I have another letter—I hope several. I dare say I shall have time to write on the road. Adieu my sweetest most precious beloved one.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 12. [1855]

Orvieto

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

212.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Orvieto

,

Jan. 12. [1855]

19

My blessed angel I begin this now but I dare say I shall finish it at Rome. It grieves me to think that every fresh letter is longer before it reaches her—but when I get to Rome that will no longer be the case, for the present. To continue the bulletin of my health—those grapes were a most unfortunate incident. They brought back all the dyspeptic symptoms which I hoped I had got rid of—not quite so bad as before, however, except the tongue, which is worse. By extreme prudence in diet I am I hope conquering the dyspepsia again, but I cannot hope to get rid of it while travelling—the inevitable irregularity as to hours & the difficulty of finding in these little places anything that I dare eat, are great impediments. What I chiefly fear is that though I shall get rid of this state of the digestion I shall remain subject to it—if so my prospects every way are much impaired & I should now think it a great thing if I could be sure of coming back in as good health & strength as I was from August to November. But at Rome I shall have quiet, good food, a good climate & good medical advice if I need it.—My darling sees by the date that I have come a different road from our former one—by Chiusi (Porsenna’s² capital, now a small town on the borders of Tuscany) Città dela Pieve (city of the parsonage house) where I slept last night & Orvieto Edition: current; Page: [288] to join the other road at or near Viterbo. I have had to do with a rascal of a voiturier—really the impudent knavery of these fellows disgusts one with Italian travelling. These troubles are much less unpleasant when we are together, because (not only I have her help, but) the feeling of being bored & worried for her takes away the bore & worry—but when it is for myself only it is a real torment. This rascal signed a written engagement in the presence of the inn people which I thought bound him to every essential point. But unluckily I consented to a clause for paying the money in advance. The consequence was that instead of a proper voiture, I was disposed of to a series of four successive diligences, the rascal pocketing two thirds of my eight scudi, the amount of which has astonished by its roguery each successive office to which I had to go. Yet I beat the fellow down all I could but he held firm, knowing I suppose that I was in his power. Further, though he undertook in writing that I should be at Viterbo tomorrow evening, I found on inquiring here that the diligence leaves in the evening & arrives next morning, so that I am fain to pay two scudi more for a carriage to myself to go in the daytime. The diligence from Viterbo to Rome is a day diligence so I think I am sure to get to Rome on the evening of the 14th & glad I shall be. I shall then too feel warm again, for these two days have been real winter days, the first cold I have felt since leaving England. They were, au reste, very beautiful days. The country, the first day from Siena, was hilly, but only what we should call fine country in France; until Chiusi, which is extremely fine—a broad wide spreading valley (the Val di Chiana) (not like English valleys) along the front of the hill (all these towns are on hills) & beyond this is a magnificent mountain; the Monte della Pieja [sic], to which we were approaching half the day—On the same side with Chiusi was another valley & heights beyond it, more than hills yet not mountains, on the top of which was Città della Pieve. Today the whole journey was most beautiful through & over forestry rather than woody hills of great height. Orvieto occupies the top of a hill precipitous on all sides with perpendicular rock—tufo they call it & it seems so for it looks like white strongly agglomerated sand. There is one of the finest cathedrals I have seen—roundarched within, but pointed without, with a splendid façade in which with the Gothic forms & even a rose window is combined quantity of fine bas reliefs & all the rest very well painted in fresco—the effect altogether is very fine. Within are the excellently preserved frescoes of Luca Signorelli,³ said to have been much studied by M. Angelo before painting his Last Judgment & indeed he has evidently taken much of the conception from them—there are four of them on the same subject. The others, Paradise, Hell, & Antichrist a false image of Christ with the devil whispering in his ear & surrounded by great folks—but the Edition: current; Page: [289] conception of this promised more than it fulfilled. They are altogether the most like M. Angelo of any I ever saw. There are some other frescoes of Beato Angelico⁴ in his soft devout stile but they were on a ceiling & so high up that I could not look at them comfortably. I walked about half round the front of the rock on which the town stands, by a horse path on the side of the hill. The situation is very fine, a deep valley all round, an exaggeration of Nassau, the high surrounding hills covered with olives on the sunny side, with oaks on the other & in summer it must be lovely—it was so to the eye even now. The inn here & that of last night are merely decent Italian inns, good of their sort but none of the comforts I found at all the others, nevertheless last night I had the sweetest sleep I have had for a long time, full of dreams of you & of happy being together & of planning & doing things for the good of others. I was quite sorry to be waked at three (it was four the night before) for the diligence. But tomorrow I shall not leave till eight. I have a good sort of landlady here who does everything I want & tries much to content me. But I remark that every Italian I have to do with, rogue or honest, has the manner & appearance & I have no doubt many of them the reality of good nature—they all seem glad to do little kindnesses, & the manner of all is courtesy itself. Today I have succeeded for the first time in getting kid for dinner (N.B. not a good specimen) & have for the first time boiled tea as we did at Hyères, a most pleasant feeling of similitude to me just now. I had only entamé my tea once before, having found good tea everywhere, save at Genoa where finding theirs bad I tried my own, but it was bad too proving that the fault was in the water. At Pisa & all the places on the road their tea was excellent & they made it themselves, only too strong & enough for three people. The pope’s doganiere at C. della Pieve was deaf to hints about money—how he did peek about everything, with what immense curiosity—perfectly civilly—ending by making me pay exactly the sum I shewed him before, viz five pauls. I think my strength is coming back a little, but so very gradually that I am not certain.

Viterbo, Jan. 13. I feel nearly well today my darling—even my tongue is better. I have got onto the great road again, & therewith to a comfortable inn, though I had not much reason to complain of the others. I had a very enjoyable long night—these large Italian beds are so very pleasant—full of dreams, none of them disagreeable, I remember one—I was disputing about the ballot with Calhoun,⁵ the American, of whom in some strange way I had become the brother—& when I said that the ballot was no longer necessary, he answered “it will not be necessary in heaven, but it will always be necessary on earth.” From Orvieto here much of the way is extremely fine—the Edition: current; Page: [290] view of Orvieto itself crowning its rock, seen from the ascent of one of the higher hills which surround it is one of the finest things I have seen in Italy. It looks the very type of Shelley’s “warrior peopled citadels.”⁶ The latter half of the way was an approach to a striking mountain, somewhat resembling that of Radicofani & the driver had the impudence to pretend it was that. The fact seems to be that they seldom know the names of anything but towns, & if you ask about anything else you are answered at random. Today we passed Montefiascone, the day before yesterday Montepulciano which with Orvieto makes the three places which are said to make the good wine, but I suppose they make little or none now. I had a distant peep of the lake of Bolsena. Tomorrow I shall start early either by the diligence or a voiture & I shall get to Rome by nightfall, but I shall put this into the post here, as she will get it two or three days sooner by my doing so. I shall write almost directly from Rome. How I look forward to the letters there—they are the chief cause of my not going to Florence. Adieu angel of my life—blessedest love.

It was astonishing the quantity of country people I met going to market at Orvieto. Today also I have seen a great number of people working in the fields. Many of them wear pantaloons of goatskin with the hair on, which gives them a Robinson Crusoe look. Most of the countrymen wear cloaks which they throw over their shoulders, Spanish fashion. adieu again—

Rome—Jan. 14. To my great disappointment the post at Viterbo was shut. In other places I have been prepared for this contingency by obtaining postage stamps, but here in a new country I am as yet unprovided with them & if I had them should not have known how many to put. What is worse the post office was closed here too when I arrived & I cannot get my letters till tomorrow morning. I came here in a very comfortable but slow diligence in a very fine day, but which would be called decidedly hazy even in England. I have never had what we mean by a southern sky since Spezia. This agrees with but exceeds my previous idea of the local climates of Italy. Rome on entering by that striking Piazza del’ Popolo looked prodigiously fine—more so than I expected. The long dusty road from the Ponte Molle as well as the principal streets were crowded with people walking & with carriages—it being Sunday evening—but I saw none but Italians & the waiter at Franz’s says there are very few forestieri⁷ this season which he attributes to the cholera though it has been over these two months—so much the less my chance of finding a companion. But I have to get well first & I have not been very well today, but expect to be so very soon by aid of rest & Dr Deakin.⁸ I have got Edition: current; Page: [291] a comfortable room at Franz’s for 5 pauls, about 2½ francs which I think is as little as I can expect & I shall now for some time return to regular habits. The idea of stopping some time in the same place (& that place Rome) makes me feel excessively comfortable. Though I am not in the mood of expecting much from anything away from home, I do expect great pleasure from the statues & pictures here. I have been running through Mrs Starke’s catalogue with delight & mean to live in the galleries. The Campagna is not tempting at this season, looking dead & brown. As yet nothing looks green except the young corn—although it did not feel cold today there was ice in every shady place. There is a proverb here—dopo Candelara, d’inverno siamo fuora—after Candlemas (Feb. 2) winter is over—but it wants more than a fortnight of Candlemas yet. The view at the approach to Rome was splendid—some accidental rays of sunlight struck exactly in the right places. All the streets are full of placards about the Immaculate Conception which has just been for the first time declared an article of faith.⁹ Decidedly this old carcase of the Papacy stirs about, & makes believe to be alive. The first sign I saw of the French was near Viterbo, a board with “Limites de la garrison”—but the French have all left Viterbo now & only a few remain at Rome. It is very disagreeable not to know with more certainty my future movements, so as to be able to make sure of no loss or delay of any of those precious letters—but unless my health hinders which is very improbable I shall stay here long enough to receive the letters of the 16th (the last date I gave her) & then go to Naples. So she had best write to Naples, darling, & continue doing so till I am able to tell her whether I go on to Sicily or return to Rome. I long more than I can express for tomorrow’s letters, it is so long now since I have had any. I forgot to say that the perspirations have quite gone: I did not welcome the coming but I sped the parting guest. I fear the post for England only goes out three times a week so that I shall never be able to send letters oftener—but I shall always write then—adieu again life of my life. I shall make the same envelope serve by sealing it.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 15. [1855]

Rome

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

213.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Rome

—

Jan. 15. [1855]

20

This morning I had the happiness to find two of her letters at the post office—one was unsealed (the seal was broken, but as if it had parted of Edition: current; Page: [292] itself)—one the Pope letter² sent from Genoa to Pisa & faithfully forwarded from thence—the Genoa people having attended to my letter from Pisa though they forgot their previous promise. It was wrong of me to risk losing one of her precious letters—but otherwise it is as well that I did not wait for this at Genoa, as in that case I should have written directly to Pope giving him the choice of Montpellier or Hyères, while as it is I write according to her last & best advice. The other letter was her nice one of the 4th. Italy as you say is much improved by whatever of the modern improvements has reached here—it is a pleasure to see the electric telegraph even here; it reaches from Rome to Bologna, but (characteristically) with only one wire. I would wager much that the French made it be erected. Rome is not at all changed & is a place like no other. One lives entirely in the past. “Du haut de ces pyramides quarante siècles vous regardent”³ was little to ‘it’, for there it was only the fortieth century back, qui regardait, but here it is the whole succession of intermediate centuries—all history seems to planer over one. There are from that same Egyptian period the innumerable obelisks. I had quite forgotten there were so many—they meet one every where with their hieroglyphics—there is the vast population of Greek statues of all periods, there are all the Roman remains & the whole middle age, down to St Peter’s & most of the churches which represent the renaissance & the Pope with what belongs to him is just another old ruin, of which being more recent than the others it is natural that there should be a greater quantity of remains: & those priests & monks & their mumbling services are those more modern remains—still standing to wait till the next comes—& that this is true & no illusion the siege in 1849 proves.⁴ In the meanwhile the whole place is a historical museum with some theatrical representation of history still going on. I have been to St Peter’s, the apparent smallness of which from without astonishes me more than ever—it is vastly inferior in effect externally to St Paul’s—but what a difference internally! I enjoy it more than I ever did—enjoy is the word—the more so as it is the only warm place I have been in today except my room (& that I had to change because the first I had proved very cold). St Peter’s is evidently warmed artificially. You have not Edition: current; Page: [293] seen & felt Rome cold & looking cold. Today is a bright, real winter day & the streets of Rome admit of hardly any sun: only the Piazza of St Peter’s with its soldiers exercising was bright, & how those two beautiful fountains did sparkle & make rainbows in the sunshine. The promenade too of the Pincio was bright, & where sheltered, tolerably warm. The Borghese garden, as seen from it, does not seem the worse for wear. But the cold & the look of cold makes the lookout on the Campagna disagreeable instead of pleasant. The town only is pleasant, with its fine principal streets & its innumerable domes. I went to the Vatican & began seeing the statues but it closes at three & I was turned out—today was the public day, Monday, but it is open on other days by a fee to the custode which I shall not grudge. I have read up the Times at the old place, Monaldini’s. There is another place of the same kind now, Piale’s, also in the Piazza di Spagna, which seems more frequented, especially by English. The only thing I found noticeable was the Queen’s letter⁵—was there ever such a chef d’œuvre of feebleness—O those grandes dames how all vestige of the very conception of strength or spirit has gone out of them. Every word was evidently her own—the great baby! & it is not only the weakness but the décousu, the incoherence of the phrases—sentences they are not. No wonder such people are awed by the Times, which by the side of them looks like rude strength.—Whom should I find here in the same inn but Lucas⁶—not a bad rencontre to make at Rome. I left my card for him & shall no doubt see him tomorrow. Au reste, nobody else here whom I know, judging from the lists at the libraries. Hayward⁷ appears to have been here in autumn but no doubt has left. There is a Lady Duff Gordon but I suppose & hope it is the mother of the baronet.⁸ And there are a few people whom I have just seen—Lady Langdale⁹—some of the Lyalls¹⁰—& Edition: current; Page: [294] others whom I forget. If Naples is like Rome I have no chance of a companion. I have found the address of Dr Deakin & shall call on him tomorrow. I have been considerably better today but I think it best to consult somebody about my stomach & my strength. I am anxious to get back the last, since at present long walks which have done me so much good hitherto, are impossible. I have not ventured to take quinine while my stomach was at all disordered, which it is still, a little. I see a great many English priests all about, as well as many other English. On Thursday I believe there will be fine music at St Peter’s which I will certainly hear.—There is so much to do & to see here, that it has taken off my nascent velleity of writing. On my way here cogitating thereon I came back to an idea we have talked about & thought that the best thing to write & publish at present would be a volume on Liberty.¹¹ So many things might be brought into it & nothing seems to me more needed—it is a growing need too, for opinion tends to encroach more & more on liberty, & almost all the projects of social reformers in these days are really liberticide—Comte,¹² particularly so. I wish I had brought with me here the paper on Liberty that I wrote for our volume of Essays—perhaps my dearest will kindly read it through & tell me whether it will do as the foundation of one part of the volume in question—If she thinks so I will try to write & publish it in 1856 if my health permits as I hope it will.

Jan. 16. I saw Dr Deakin this morning: he is a pleasant mannered man. He thinks he can set me right by a dose of bluepill & that I should afterwards take steel. I do not like taking mercury, as Ramadge thinks it so bad in consumption—& it was partly foresight that mercury would be recommended, which made me unwilling to consult any medical man if I could help it—though I took one of Clark’s mercurial pills on my own prescribing. I told Deakin my objection which he seemed to think just against taking mercury as an alterative—to remain in the system, but this he said was to purge me & be carried off. So I mean to take it. I am certainly stronger today—I have walked about more than any day for some time. I am getting quite familiar with the obscure part of the town by my daily journeys to & about the post office, which is now removed to a most inconveniently distant place, the Piazza Madama (so named from Catherine de Medici)¹³ between the Pantheon & the Piazza Navona. It was less cold today because less wind, though Edition: current; Page: [295] the basins of most of the fountains had ice all round the edges over which the water flows. How very pleasant is that multitude of fountains everywhere—but indeed Rome is the city of multitude—multitude of fountains, of obelisks, of domes, of statues. I went through the Museum, catalogue in hand, today, & now knowing the whole, shall return often to see those I most like. It gave me quite as much & more pleasure than I expected. The celebrated Meleager¹⁴ I do not care a rush for—I should never have guessed it to be ancient. The Apollo is fine but there is a Mercury (formerly mistaken for an Antinous) which seems to me finer & a gigantic sitting Jupiter who is magnificent. The Ariadne if such she be is most beautiful & so are many others. The Laocoon I can see deserves its reputation but it is not the sort of thing I care about. I see with very great interest the really authentic statues & busts of Roman emperors, & eminent Greeks—although as you know, not only no physiognomist but totally incapable of becoming one. But I find the pleasure which pictures & statues give me, increases with every new experience, & I am acquiring strong preferences & discriminations which with me I think is a sign of progress. After the gallery I was tired & rather cold, & glad to sit in warm St Peter’s. Nothing I find grows on me more than this building. There is a great deal of nonsense talked about it e.g. that from being so well proportioned it does not look its size (internally). It may not to an unpractised eye, but to any one accustomed to great buildings it is evidently at once the largest he ever was in. The only truth I find in the saying is that it would look longer if it were not so high & higher if it were not so long. Whatever part you are in the eye cannot rest for a moment on anything which is not fine: in every direction the arches make fine perspective—& every bit of the wall which is not gigantic sculpture or fresco is precious & many coloured marble or gilding—the last not predominating too much as it does in some of the gaudier churches. It is a pity that the fine imposing monuments are all to insignificant popes. At least they have buried Raffaelle & Annibale Caracci in the Pantheon—the last with an affecting inscription by the painter Carlo Maratta.¹⁵—I have had Lucas sitting with me a part of this evening talking about all manner of things—I talking infidelity as freely as he Catholicism. I find I know a great deal more about Italy than he does—he was never at Rome till now & has been nowhere else in Italy & has a great deal of Rome still to see & seems to like the idea of seeing it with me—so we shall probably go about a good deal together when the Irish Catholic business he has come about allows him. He expects to be detained some weeks rather waiting than doing anything & is well disposed by way of parenthesis to go to Naples with me when I go. This will be Edition: current; Page: [296] pleasant. I have just discovered that there is a diligence from Rome to Naples with coupé, which goes in two days, stopping at Terracina for the night—can anything be pleasanter? I shall see everything & have no trouble with vetturini.—I have looked at the windows of the old place at the corner of the Vicolo degl’ Incurabili—the only time I have gone down the Babuino (I went on purpose). The rooms are still to let. I am truly happy to say there is a post daily to England, so that I shall both receive & send letters without any unnecessary delay. Writing in this rambling way to my darling is the nearest approach I can get (though how unlike) to those nice talks at our dear Blackheath which she wrote so sweetly about. A propos I did not tell her why I did not go to the Baths of Lucca as she seems to have thought I would. They are quite high up in a defile of the mountains, where the sun rises two hours later & sets two hours earlier than in the plain—& are abandoned by visitors after the end of September. I thought they would be cold, & wintry looking & that it would not be pleasant to be there, nor could I well judge either of the accommodations or of the beauty of so completely a summer place. So I passed over that as well as Florence.

Jan. 17. Having taken Deakin’s prescription I am staying in doors for the present, but I shall be able to go out before post time with this letter. After taking mercury it will not do to go to cold galleries & churches, but to walk in the streets will do me no harm. It is not so fine today—there are some clouds. I have not had a drop of rain since the day I arrived at Montpellier & almost always very fine weather—but Lucas says that he also has never once, since he arrived here in the beginning of December, seen a single day brighter than a fine day in England. Evidently what one means by an Italian sky is a South of France sky—confined in Italy to Naples & the Riviera. But at this season there is not here even the soft purple light which we used to see in March. The hills all round look merely wintry & not at all inviting. It may be different at Naples & probably is so. I have not yet gone near the antique parts of Rome, beyond coming accidentally on the temples of Vesta & Fortuna Virilis while rambling about waiting for the opening of the post office which was delayed by the non arrival of the courier. I ask daily for letters but do not expect any till she has received mine from Spezia & this sad increase of distance makes the time very long. I expect too to hear in two or three days from Clark & Ramadge to both of whom I wrote from Pisa about my digestion & perspirations. Adieu my precious angel. Before this I hope she has got rid of that worrying company¹⁶ & is enjoying quiet & the beautiful place.

Edition: current; Page: [297]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan 18 [1855]

Rome

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

214.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Rome

Jan 18 [1855]

21

I went this morning to a gran funzione at St Peter’s—the festival of the chair of St Peter—mass was said or sung before the Pope who sat on a throne at the extreme further end of the church. Except foreigners & a few of the populace & some women apparently of the rank of ladies for whom tapestried seats were put up, there were few there but those who were there officially. The music, which as usual was all vocal, gave me no pleasure—it was either the Gregorian chant or some of that very old church music which is much the same. When it was over I saw the procession pass out—the cardinals & bishops followed by the Pope carried above the heads of the crowd in his chair, then the guardia nobile & the soldiers. I did not expect to find the Pope’s features so entirely insignificant—he is not like an Italian. The Cardinals had all sorts of physiognomies, austere, sensual, or bland, but almost all of them marked features of some sort. After this I went with Lucas & a young English priest a friend of his to the pictures in the Vatican—first Raphael’s great frescoes, then the gallery of oil pictures & then to the statue gallery, only stopping at the few finest. They neither of them knew half as much as even I do about pictures & sculptures but Lucas seems to receive pleasure from them & to be capable of learning to feel something in them. The other seems an ignoramus, as I suspect most of the English priests are, except the converts. I have no faith whatever in Lucas’s catholicism. If he is a Catholic at all it is a mere opinion, or fancy of the head. At least he is totally different from what I should be if I believed Catholicism. Perhaps he is shy of demonstrating with me what he thinks I should not respect—& I have thought in England that he was very guarded with me—but I much suspect that he is so because he does not wish me to see how little of a Catholic he really is. Not only he never shews one atom of religious feeling, but it is evident that the things he cares about in Rome are chiefly the memorials of ancient Rome like any English dilettante. I think he has not half as much feeling of & for Catholic things (at least Catholic art) as I have. He lets me have most of the talk & it does me some good to have somebody to whet my faculties on—he is a little better than Pope perhaps. The pictures give me great & increasing pleasure. The frescoes by their composition & by the grace & dignity of the separate figures—but what delighted me most was the Madonna di Foligno,² & next two or three Perugino’s³ and a Coronation Edition: current; Page: [298] of the Virgin in Raphael’s first or Perugino manner. I could stay with pleasure an indefinite time in Rome. No doubt we should not, in the long run, like living there, but it is the only place in this journey except Spezia, where the idea of the possibility of living there has presented itself to me. If it were not for the letters I should be tempted to stay here a fortnight more instead of a week. As to health—although Deakin’s medicines have not acted in the way he intended, either they or something else have made me a great deal better & even stronger. My digestion seems quite coming round—my hunger, by dinner time, is so great that though I repress it I still eat a great deal more than I did, & nevertheless digest it better. The weather has changed to a mild west wind & rain.—If Rolandi⁴ has it, you would I think like to get from him a novel called Eugène, by Emile Barrault⁵ the St Simonian—it is full of good things well said about marriage, divorce & the position of women—the St Simonians & the Fourierists deserve eternal gratitude for what they have done on that subject. I go daily to the post, each day with increasing hope of a letter from my own only darling. I think there must be one tomorrow.

Jan. 19. And here it is my precious precious one & well is it worth going twice through the rain for it as I had to do. I am so happy that she was at last restored to her quiet,⁶ & that the froissement of feelings & nerves had done no other harm to her health than retarding the improvement which therefore I trust began from that time. Every word of her handwriting is so precious & so delightful—I count the days each time till I get another. I find letters take ten days from Torquay; at least this did, therefore I shall remain here till the 26th, this day week. I can be in no better place at this dead time when the country has no attractions. At this place I for the first time in this journey (except that one day at Avignon) enjoy existence—partly because I really digest better & have the feeling of returning though not of returned health—partly the being stationary for a while, which rests both mind & body—but besides I am getting quite immersed in statues & pictures. I passed the best part of today in the Sistine & in the statue gallery. I had no idea that I could derive so much pleasure from pictures as I did from those of Michael Angelo in the Sistine. The more fine pictures one sees, & the oftener one sees the same the more one enjoys them. I do not know or understand a bit more about them than before—it is the spontaneous development of a pleasure. I have left off reading about pictures & I see nobody who knows or affects to know anything about them. I mean to see all the good pictures I can while I am here or at Naples. This would be the time & place for getting good & Edition: current; Page: [299] cheap copies of fine pictures if my darling thinks it would be pleasant—perhaps she will tell me what she thinks of it. By the bye, I do not like the Transfiguration. There is a great deal of fine in it as there must be in anything which Raphael took much pains with but it is not a pleasing picture. There should either be completeness of beauty perfectly satisfactory to the eye & mind or else first rate power in a picture & in that there is neither. There are figures quite repulsive—the kneeling woman might sit for one of the Furies—& to see the want of power in the Christ one has only to look at the rising & soaring figures in the Last Judgment. They seem to have no weight—or rather soar with a force which annihilates weight. My dear one can have no idea of that picture, having seen it in a light which was darkness visible.—I shall see Deakin again tomorrow & perhaps he will think it time for me to begin taking steel. I recover very slowly & have been so much thrown back that it will need all the time from this till Midsummer to realize the good we hoped for from this journey. My dear one will have seen from my letters that her advice to eat much while very careful what, was not suited to my case for I was quite unable to digest much of anything, & now though I have a ravenous appetite & eat a good deal more, I cannot always digest it. Deakin recommends game & poultry rather than meat—the two days I had game for dinner I digested better than any other day. Today I had a roast chicken & have not been quite so well this evening; I eat them with potatoes only. I do get stronger but it is very slowly—but long walks will come again in the early Neapolitan if not Sicilian spring. I saw about the cholera at Ravenna—that coast is I fancy the only part of Italy in which there is cholera now (if it is still there). The robbers there I fancy are patriots. How bravely the Sardinian government is keeping up the fight with the priests.⁷ You will have seen darling that I at last got all your dear letters. I was probably mistaken in supposing that Allen’s oil agrees better with me than the others. Here in Italy it has not done at all better & Deakin advised me to leave it off. What gave me the idea was that I began to digest badly at Torquay & laid the blame on the oil I got there, but I now fancy it must have been something more deeply rooted. Deakin says there is very good cod liver oil here & before leaving here I shall replenish. It is now very mild here but thoroughly rainy—it rains much in the day & torrents every night.—Lucas & his friend have just been here to say that they have got an admission to the Pope’s palace in the Quirinal & I have agreed to go there with them tomorrow & then to go to the Rospigliosi palace & other places in the same neighbourhood. As my darling has not said anything to the contrary this will be the last letter I send to Torquay. I shall direct next to Blackheath unless I hear meanwhile that Edition: current; Page: [300] she will stay the three months (instead of two) there, which I most earnestly hope that she will & that the weather will be mild enough to make the smoke a minor evil. I have twice or thrice been troubled with smoky chimneys, but by extreme good luck have never once had wet or bad wood—the bellows which had such hard work in our Nice journey, has had almost a sinecure. I fear I have not got on with my Italian at a rate at all corresponding with my first start. When I got unwell I felt disinclined to the great exertion of talking in a language one does not know. I shall do better hereafter. With returning health & the pleasure of this place I find my activity of mind greater than it has been since I set out & I think I shall be able & disposed to write a very good volume on Liberty,⁸ if we decide that that is to be the subject. Ah darling how very deeply I feel the sweet & kind things you write & how I bless her for them.

Jan. 20. It is a fine morning dearest though it does not yet look like a change of weather. I feel very well, as I generally do in the mornings; & expect a pleasant day. I shall make the most of this week—At present it feels as if any place would be very flat which does not contain St Peter’s. I shall put this in the post while I am out. adieu & a hundred thousand loves & blessings.

Too late, alas, for the post—so I reopen to give the latest bulletin. I went to the Quirinal; to the Rospigliosi, to Sta Maria Maggiore, to St Pietro in Vincoli & returned by the Colosseum & the Forum—a very long & interesting day’s work. There were few pictures which I cared much about except the Aurora of Guido⁹ at the Rospigliosi. The engravings from it are hacknied but the original fresco raised Guido very much in my mind. I do not place it much below Raphael. There is also a very nice Speranza by Guido in the sacristie of S. Pietro in Vincoli. But the grand thing there is M. Angelo’s Moses, certainly one of the noblest statues in existence—nobler perhaps than any Greek. S. Maria Maggiore you know—it is internally the finest specimen of a Basilica I have seen. The Colosseum looks much larger & finer than I expected—the difference between it & the amphitheatres at Arles & Nimes is incalculable. They are making great new excavations in the Forum & have got down to old pavements & foundations of buildings which throw quite a new light on the localities—among others they have discovered the exact place of the Rostra—I find Lucas has made a complete study of these old sites & can explain everything to me like an accomplished Cicerone, while I can instruct him in Christian art. Does not that tell tales? I must go back to these scenes alone. It began to come on me like a quite new feeling, that of Edition: current; Page: [301] the relics of the old city among gardens & country—after I have been filled full of the modern town. I must go back & realize it. You see darling that I am enjoying the full advantage of a second visit. All the inevitable disappointments were got over in the first & I now have eyes only for what is fine, & there is so much of that, that it has put me in as much of a state of tranquil enjoyment as I can have anywhere without you. I am the better too for having somebody to talk with but I furnish nearly all the talk & Lucas would have quite wearied me by this time at Pisa or anywhere that had comparatively little to see & little to interest. I have not seen Deakin today—he is seldom at home till afternoon & today I let pass the suitable hours then. But I have cared less about it because my digestion seems steadily improving & I am perfectly well otherwise—without even any more or worse expectoration than in England—but still my strength comes back very slowly. I see the English papers daily—Times, Chronicle & (strange to say) the Leader. The adhesion of the Sardinian government to the alliance may be a good stroke of policy for Sardinia but very bad for Italy & the world—it chains Sardinia to Louis Napoleon & sends away the only disciplined soldiers of Italy to die in a cause not Italian¹⁰—adieu once again my darling darling love.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 21 [1855]

Rome

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

215.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Rome

Jan. 21 [1855]

22

In my enumeration of the places I went over yesterday, my treasure, I omitted the vast remains of the Baths of Diocletian, two small parts of which have been made into two churches, one of them (designed by M. Angelo) very large & magnificent & a part of the remainder forms a great convent of Carthusians whose curious greyish white habit I for the first time saw. Among the pictures which struck me I omitted a beautiful Annunciation by Guido in the private chapel of the Pope’s palace on the Quirinal. The palace itself contained nothing but what one would expect: save some quite recent Gobelin tapestry which the eye could not distinguish from fresco painting. Today I went to the basilica of St Agnes a mile outside the Porta Pia to see the ceremony of blessing the lambs. Two pretty little creatures, white & woolly & decked out with ribbons, well trained to be quiet, were first carried about the church to be admired & caressed, then laid on the altar, where a Edition: current; Page: [302] form of words was said over them & they were sprinkled with holy water: this was the ceremony. I had proof here that there is fine church music in Italy for I heard one of the finest masses conceivable sung to the organ like Warwick Street or Moorfields.² This is the day they bless the horses at St Antony’s church, near Sta Maria Maggiore. All day horses were being ridden or driven there (from the Pope’s to those of the poorest person who had a horse) caparisoned to their utmost & when they got to the church a priest came out, read the form & sprinkled them. After seeing this I went to St Paolo fuori le Mura³ [sic], the great basilica which was burnt down but has now been rebuilt as fine as ever & is one of the largest & most splendid churches of Rome. What a change of times when the altars are encrusted with malachite given by Nicholas⁴ a schismatic prince & the four pillars of porphyry which support the baldacchino were a present from the Mussulman Mehemet Ali.⁵ Returning I went over the cemetery of foreigners—English, Germans & Russians chiefly—& found out the tombs of Keats & Shelley, the last the simplest & most modest of flat stones, the first a small headstone with a pathetic epitaph ending with the words dictated by himself “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” Some time both ought to be removed like Napoleon’s when there is a fit place to receive them. But it will never be to an English but to some cosmopolite Pantheon. I also saw the tomb of Goethe’s son⁶ who died here a year before his father. Lucas who went with me to all these places was evidently much interested—I am more & more confirmed in my opinion of the little that his Catholicism amounts to. I must make the amende to his friend the Rev. Mr Kyne⁷ (or Kyan) for though he is certainly not a man of information, Lucas says he devotes & has for many years devoted his whole life to going about among the poorest of the poor in Clerkenwell & is here to recruit his health injured by that exertion. He is living here with Talbot,⁸ the Pope’s chamberlain in the Vatican. There is no end to the English & Irish & even American priests here. There is some hardship at the English & Irish colleges for there are no fires whatever (except the Edition: current; Page: [303] fire for cooking). This is no trifle for it can be very cold at Rome. Yesterday & today it has been cold as well as wet with much rain & occasional hail—the Tiber is swollen into a full rapid dark muddy stream & the adjacent parts of Rome & of the country are flooded. There is fresh snow on parts even of the Alban hills. Certainly there is no temptation to stir out of the town.

Jan. 22. I saw Deakin again today & he thinks me so much better that he does not advise me even to take steel. He draws the most favorable augury from the manner in which my digestive functions have recovered themselves & thinks I shall soon get back my strength: so far so good. It has been finer today though not without rain. I went to see the Borghese pictures with Lucas & afterwards met him unexpectedly at the museum of the Capitol. The Borghese collection pleased me much—there are no first rate specimens of the very first masters but a very good selection from the different schools; it is richest in Roman & old Tuscan, & the gems are two or three Francias.⁹ The admiration of Francia I thought mere pedantic humbug from the much belauded specimen in our National Gallery, but from the pictures of his I have since seen I rate him very high. The picture gallery at the Capitol is about equal to the Borghese; I liked best a Fra Bartolomeo & some Venetian portraits. The ancient sculptures are fully equal, for their number, to those at the Vatican; the Dying Gladiator perhaps superior to any. There are some reliefs of scenes in which Marcus Aurelius is introduced which appear to me quite wonderful & are very delightful to me from my extreme admiration of the man. The place is full too of curiosities: the brazen she wolf of Romulus which was struck with lightning at the time of Julius Caesar’s death: the fragments of a most curious plan of old Rome, unfortunately dug up in many small pieces: the original Fasti Consulares also fragmentary but in large fragments, going back to some of the consulships preceding the Decemvirate. All these are believed genuine by Niebuhr & the most critical judges who have fully examined the evidence. These are much more interesting to me than the remains of Roman buildings, which with two or three exceptions are very ugly & all very much alike. Lucas says his business at Rome is coming to a crisis: he came to prevail on the Pope to take off the interdict lately laid on priests against interfering in politics: if he cannot succeed in this, he & others mean to give up politics for the present. Cullen, the Archbishop, is the head of the party opposed to him & he & Cullen are to meet this week by desire of the Pope, to try if they cannot arrange matters amicably:10 if not, the Pope will have to decide between them. I conjecture that the interdict, so absurd in a Catholic point of view was procured by Louis Napoleon to prevent the English government from being embarrassed by Ireland during Edition: current; Page: [304] this war. Lucas thinks it is not this, but Cullen’s Whiggish inclinations, & it is curious that while Cullen was supported in getting the Archbishopric on the one hand by MacHale,¹¹ on the other, if Lucas says true, Lord Clarendon¹² was writing the strongest letters in his support on the ground of his being a perfectly safe man: three people known to Lucas have he says seen a letter from Ld Clarendon to the brother of More O’Ferrall¹³ to that effect. This shews skilful duplicity in Cullen at all events. I heard from Ramadge today (not yet from Clark). R. has told me what to do if the perspirations return. Deakin does not seem to like my leaving Rome so soon, but if I continue to get better I shall go next Monday, being the first day of the three times a week diligence after the day I expect my darling’s letters of the 16th. You see dearest I am making the most of Rome & it is giving me as much pleasure as I am capable of having in this solitary journey. In such weather too as I have had I could have done little in the way of country walks even if I had been stronger. I have a great deal of walking in Rome, & though I sit down all I can, always am very tired before I come in to dinner at five. I have got Eustace’s Tour¹⁴ & am reading it: things have got on since then. He travelled in 1802: scarcely even an octogenarian now is such an old twaddler. Every thought & every principle of judgment he has on great matters or small has been obsolete these 30 years. Yet I must have been born when it was published or very soon after. It interests me because it is full of quotations from the Latin poets & applies them to the places.—Lucas says that Ward¹⁵ lives at the Catholic college in Hertfordshire, & though a layman gives lectures on dogmatic theology & is preparing a treatise thereon. He has lately had a bad illness. Perhaps he is more likely to think himself out of Catholicism in England than to look himself out of it here. I no longer think that coming to Italy should cure the converts. There is nothing to the eye that contradicts the professions, & as to the mind, there are no doubt still learned doctors of theology as there always have been.

Jan. 23. I have received today my darling’s letter of the 13th which makes me very anxious & uneasy about her, & especially about that pain in the chest—it Edition: current; Page: [305] reconciles me to her going so soon to Blackheath, because she will be nearer to good medical treatment. My angel if it continues, pray see either Tuson¹⁶ or Ferguson.¹⁷ It was likely enough that having held out as long as those irritating circumstances lasted you would break down or have an illness immediately after—that we know is the commonest of common turns of affairs—it is most unfortunate that anxiety caused by my letters should have come exactly at that crisis. It is the greatest comfort to know that the Pisa letter relieved the anxiety & I hope none of those which followed will have brought it back. My angel knows by this time that there is nothing to be alarmed about, but there is a great deal of time lost. I was weighed this morning at an English saddler’s on the ground floor of the very house in which we passed so many days together. I found I had lost 15 pounds since Avignon, being the eight I had gained & seven more. I of course knew I must have lost a good deal but did not expect so much. There is all this lee way to make up, & nearly two months of the time gone. But I dare say as Deakin says, I shall recover strength & flesh very fast when my digestion is once right. The worst is that though it is now pretty right in the main it still requires the utmost care—Careful as I am I have very few days entirely free from indigestion. I begin to get impatient of the loss of precious time. The time here at Rome passes pleasantly enough, but that is not what I came here for, & such pleasure is not worth going or staying away from home for. I passed the greater part of today in the Vatican, seeing the old things over again & some which I had not seen—among these the workshop of the mosaic workers, those who copy in mosaic the great pictures—also tapestry said to be from cartoons by Raphael, 23 of them, among which all the seven at Hampton Court¹⁸—but these seven are so infinitely superior to any of the others that I cannot believe the rest to be by Raphael. They must be by his pupils. The Transfiguration improves on better acquaintance by the aid of a better light,¹⁹ the day being at last fine. I think the left hand half of the lower part of the picture as fine as anything ever painted & the right hand half is better than I thought. There is a very fine Isaiah by Raphael—in the stile of the prophets of M. Angelo in the Sistine, which is in the church of St. Agostino here. I saw it today, having been struck with the copy of it in mosaic which had just been finished at the workshop. I continue to dislike the Meleager²⁰—but I must add to the first rate statues one I had not much noticed before, an athlete scraping himself, I suppose after a contest. That, the Apollo, the Antinous-Mercury, the Dying Gladiator & the Moses seem to me the finest statues I have seen, but there are some most glorious portrait-statues Edition: current; Page: [306] of philosophers, orators & Roman emperors, a Lysias, a Demosthenes & a Nerva, besides many others. The enormous multitudes of everything are most impressive here: each of the innumerable fountains has its large or small group & in every garden or common pleasure place of any sort all the ornaments are antiques—mostly statues or reliefs—so that one comes to feel it one’s natural state to be surrounded by them. Then the originals of the great pictures walk about the streets & meet you everywhere. I am continually seeing exactly the same heads & figures which are in the pictures—male chiefly, for the women as elsewhere disappoint, though they are handsomer here than anywhere else in Italy. By the bye I went once to the opera (the pit is all in stalls, the price two pauls, about tenpence) (but staid only one act, of Rossini’s Cenerentola).²¹ Cinderella & her two sisters were I should think the three ugliest old women in Italy—the sisters looked disagreeable as well, which was in the esprit of their rôle—as for Cinderella she looked a bonne grosse paysanne who was exactly in her place & never ought to have been taken out of it. Every box in a very large house was full, though through the Carnival there is an opera every night at two theatres. I never saw such a display of large faces. The Roman women are so made by nature & they heighten it by putting their hair entirely off their faces. What the common people are like except outwardly I have not found out & do not well know how for I am not thrown among them here. I wonder she should find such rambling & superficial letters interesting or amusing. You should not my darling write in ink—I can read the pencil perfectly & do not my love write when it is painful—or write only how you are my own precious angel—it is delightful to read her letters but when I know each one costs her much pain & does her real harm I had much rather only hear how she is in a note from Lily. Good night darling & a thousand loves.

Jan. 24. I kept the letter open to say that all is well this morning. I am going to pass a day alone among the ruins. Addio mia divina.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 24 [1855]

Rome

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

216.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Rome

Jan. 24 [1855]

23

This has been a very full day & I will give an account of it to my darling. I set out rather discouraged about myself, being less well than usual, but I have been on foot from 10 till 5, & though I often sat down, it was never for Edition: current; Page: [307] long—& I walked with more spirit at last than at first & felt tired only in the way I used after the long walks at our dear Blackheath. So I hope I am getting back my strength. After putting my letter into the post I went across the Capitol & walked or rather scrambled all about the Palatine, looking from that deserted hill over all Rome & especially the Trastevere. The Palatine is all kitchen gardens except a villa of an Englishman named Mills,² one of the most gimcrack erections possible but apparently very nicely planted & in a most enviable site. I then went round by the Colosseum & the arches of Titus & Constantine into the line of the Circus Maximus which leads past the immense remains of the Baths of Caracalla (looking like fragments of a mountain) towards the Appian Way. Presently I saw written up on the left “Sepulcra Scipionum” so I went in. It is a succession of vaults & winding passages cut out in the rock, which served as the graves of all the Scipios from the Scipio Barbatus,³ greatgrandfather of Africanus,⁴ whose tomb makes so great a figure in the Vatican Museum, to Scipio Asiaticus⁵ the brother of Africanus. Africanus himself was not buried here but at Cumae where he died in exile. Everything that could be removed from this sepulchre has been taken to the Vatican except the long funerary inscriptions which mark the place where each body was deposited & identify the persons. After this I saw what was much more curious, several columbaria:6 first one small shew one, then seeing the word inscribed I went into a private ground & met the owner who very politely shewed me two very large & fine columbaria which he had discovered in his grounds & most curious they are. These are the places built as repositories for the ashes of those who were burnt—square chambers deep sunk in the ground, with steps descending to them & all the sides from top to bottom laid out as it were in shelves & pigeon holes with the ashes of 6, 8, or 12 persons on each shelf in various receptacles, each with an inscription shewing the name & rank of each person, & often with a small bust, glass vessels for libations &c. These places not having been dismantled are nearly as the Romans left them & they bring one into the midst of Roman life (for death is the greatest incident of life) in a way nothing else does. The proprietor has found a third of these which appears to have belonged to persons of consular rank & promises he says to be still more curious—it is not quite excavated yet but he invited me to come & see it in three or four days. After this I went out at the Appian gate, Porta San Edition: current; Page: [308] Sebastiano, & walked some miles along the road which coincides with the old Appian way, passing the tomb of Cæcilia Metella⁷ & the very large remains of the Circus of Romulus (the son of Maxentius)⁸ about the size of a modern race course (which it was) but in the large brick buildings all round for the spectators much of which is still left. A little beyond the monument of Cæcilia (you know that round tower shaped like the Castle of St Angelo) the original pavement of the Appian Way is for some distance uncovered & forms the present road—but the present Pope is uncovering the whole line further on for many miles & you can see it going strait [sic] to the horizon across the long arm of the Mountain of Albano, while under your feet are the original old blocks which Horace trod on in his journey to Brundusium.⁹ This road goes over a succession of slopes & hollows forming a hilly boundary to the plain between Rome & Albano & from it is seen the entire ensemble of those long broken aqueducts which you remember with the range of the Sabine mountains behind, making a fine & characteristic picture. I returned to Rome by the way I came, but instead of going in at the Appian gate, wound round the outside of the walls of Rome to the gate of St John Lateran & went into that fine basilica: the finest church in Rome except St Peter’s. It does not look fine at a distance but when you are near enough to feel the effect of the colossi on the roof presided over by the gigantic St John bearing his tall cross, it is imposing. The façade too is very fine & from the side next the city it groups well with the Pope’s palace of Lateran adjoining. Almost all the churches at Rome, however fine inside, are mean & ugly outside. This & S. Maria Maggiore are the only exceptions, save St Peter’s which is not ugly but worse for the exterior so dwarfs what ought to be the grandest building in existence that even the obelisk in front seems to bear an appreciable proportion to it. I returned to the inn by the region of the Monti: from the Lateran to S. Maria Maggiore is a macadamised road between high walls planted with trees on both sides, down one slope & up another with the two basilicas closing the view both ways & I could not help turning round every minute to have another look at the Lateran in the sweet evening light. Then through the church of S. Maria & along the Via delle quattre Fontane which ends at the Trinità de’ Monti. It was the first day of pleasant air & climate I have had at Rome—all the others were either cold or rainy. I do not know if my darling cares to read about all these minutiae—I spare her a great many of the minor things I see but when I am much pleased or interested I always write it out directly. These deserted parts of Rome, country & country roads within the walls, Edition: current; Page: [309] with no houses but here & there a bastide or a villa (but now & then a splendid church or a great convent) have a great charm to me.—Lucas has just been here. He has had his meeting with Cullen today, finds him very hostile—no chance of an amicable arrangement¹⁰—means to stay here & fight it out—but can do nothing just at present therefore thinks he shall be able to go to Naples—& if so Mr Kyan proposes to go too. So we shall be a party of three. I should have liked Lucas better without Kyan but he is not disagreeable nor much in the way. We shall see. Meanwhile they are going with me to some more pictures tomorrow.

Jan. 25. I am in the best of spirits today about my own health but anxious & impatient to hear of hers. I have bought Murray’s Guide to Naples¹¹ & its territory which I find will be very useful. I find from it that to go to Reggio by land is perfectly safe & usual & that there is a diligence (the mail) the only obstacle to my going by which is the very small amount of luggage which the mail takes; so it will depend on my finding on enquiry that the steamboat & the inn at Reggio can be trusted with the rest of my luggage. I shall advise with the banker thereon. Vetturini in abundance go that road but I do not like that so well. If I had one or two companions we could post. Anyhow I feel no doubt now of getting to Sicily somehow so darling if you are pretty well, do not direct again to Naples. If you are worse I certainly will not go further off till you are better but of this I hope the letters I shall receive at Naples will tell me fully. If you are doing well please dear write once to Messina such a letter as you would not mind losing, & not again till you hear from me again. I shall find out immediately after reaching Naples, how it is to be. Lucas has just been here to say he can go, so if we can get the three coupé places for Monday we shall go then. I saw Deakin again today: he thinks me much better, as I am, & quite fit to travel again. But what chiefly encourages me is that I feel decidedly stronger in spite of the extra walk yesterday, or perhaps in consequence of it. I begin to feel some excitement about seeing Calabria. It must be splendidly beautiful. Today I have seen many fine things. In the morning I went with Lucas & Kyne to the Farnesina where are the frescoes of Cupid & Psyche designed by Raphael & coloured by his pupils, & the fresco of Galatea by himself: the first pleased me as much as I expected, the last not quite so much, but with frescoes by Sebastiano del Piombo¹² & others the room has altogether the only fine specimen I have seen of how a room may & should be ornamented in this stile—every hole & corner filled with something graceful & the whole blending Edition: current; Page: [310] in perfect harmony. There are also some beautiful frescoes at this palace by Bazzi of Siena¹³ whom some other pictures I have seen of his make me place very high. He was a cotemporary of Raphael. We then went to three churches in the Trastevere, two of them on the Janiculum having by far the finest views of Rome, all of which is spread out below with its background of mountains—One of them S. Onofrio where Tasso died & is buried & where are still the remains of his oak¹⁴—the main trunk of which was blown down in 1841. The other is S. Pietro in Montorio. In all three there are fine pictures. In the afternoon I went by myself to the Palazzo Barberini to see one of the finest small collections of pictures in Rome: the original Beatrice Cenci,¹⁵ as much surpassing the copies as they usually do; & a portrait of the wife of Cenci, Lucrezia:16 the real Fornarina¹⁷ by Raphael—quite unlike the one at Florence which according to Stendhal is neither the Fornarina nor a Raphael¹⁸—this exactly corresponds with a Fornarina by Giulio Romano¹⁹ in the Borghese, & is a disagreeable looking woman but a splendid picture, with that peculiar glow of colour which I find nowhere but in Raphael & with him only in his latest manner & which, it seems to me, is the greatest merit of the Transfiguration. There is also a fine Titian, a Francia & an Andrea del Sarto quite first rate, & a very fine Bazzi & Giovanni Bellini.²⁰ I Edition: current; Page: [311] must see as many of the remaining palaces as possible tomorrow for they are often not open on Saturday & Sunday—We found the Corsini closed today for a week—such ill luck will happen. I have just now appointed with Lucas to see the Doria & Sciarra²¹ tomorrow & perhaps others. Wherever one goes after Rome, must be inferior in the way of art, & it must be natural beauty that is to be the compensation. At Naples the one gallery is full of treasures but one is not surrounded by art in all shapes as one is here—but spring is coming—Candlemas which even at Rome they call the first day of spring, will be here immediately & the meadows of Proserpine come into bloom early. If I am easy about my darling’s health I hope the remaining five months will be pleasant & profitable & perhaps she will be able to meet me before the end of them. Adieu my own, my divinest, most adored angel.

Jan. 26. All well this morning my beloved. I shall post this when I go out & I hope find one at the post office.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 26 [1855]

Rome

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

217.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Rome

Jan. 26 [1855]

24

No letter today—& rather fear she did not get mine in time to write on the 16th in which case I fear I shall not hear till I get to Naples. That will be on the 31st, the places being taken for Monday, two banquettes & one coupé being the best we could do. I saw the Doria gallery today (a wet day) with Lucas & Kyne & the Colonna & Braschi palaces by myself. The Doria disappointed me—it is a very large collection & would make a sufficient national gallery for a second rate kingdom, but most of the pictures seemed to me third rate. There is however one long corridor full of portraits by Titian, Giorgione & Rubens—in this was also a fine Francia, & (very like Francia) a Giovanni Bellini: these two & Perugino have a complete family likeness—a Leonardo which though called a portrait of the second Giovanna of Naples² is vastly like his one always recurring face—& finally the Magdalen of Titian, a splendid picture, perfectly satisfactory & pleasurable in execution (conception apart) but as a Magdalen ridiculous. I have seen many Titians at Rome & they all strengthen my old feeling about him—he is of the earth Edition: current; Page: [312] earthy. At the other two palaces there were some fine pictures, the majority portraits by the Venetians—at the Braschi the so called Bella of Titian, which I don’t like, & what is reckoned a chef d’oeuvre of Corregio of whom there are few good specimens here which I don’t like either though I can see that it may have strong points of colouring. Lots of Gaspar Poussins³ at all three, deadly cold, & several ambitious Salvators,⁴ to my feeling quite poor: a St John & his famous Belisarius, which seems to me inferior to the poorest even of the Bolognese painters. Evidently the culmination of painting was in the three generations of which Raphael forms the last, Titian belonging to it also though as he lived nearly 60 years longer than Raphael one fancies him of a later date. The worship of the still earlier painters is a dandyism which will not last, even I hope in Germany: the contempt of the Bolognese eclectics who came a century after has a foundation of reason but is grossly exaggerated. Guido especially has risen greatly with me from what I have seen at Rome & so has even Domenichino⁵ whose finest pictures are here: him however I do not, as a matter of taste, care the least about. But I begin to think Ruskin right about Gaspard & Salvator, perhaps even Claude,⁶ & to think the modern English landscape painting better than theirs. If I did not write my impressions every day I should not write them at all, for seeing so many pictures one remembrance drives out another—but they leave a total impression extremely agreeable. I never was immersed in pictures before, & probably never shall be again to the same degree, for at any place but Rome one hardly can be, & even at Rome with her, there would be so much greater activity of other parts of the mind that the atmosphere would be different. Even the season & the bad weather contribute by throwing me upon the indoor pleasures of the place: My dearest may well smile at my pretension of giving opinions about pictures, but as all I say about them is the expression of real feelings which they give or which they fail to give me, what I say though superficial is genuine & may go for what it is worth—it does not come from books or from other people, & I write it to her because it shews her that I have real pleasure here & have made really the most of Rome in that respect & in others.

Jan. 27. No letter still & I now feel no doubt that mine arrived too late for the 16th. I have just got information which takes away all doubt about my going to Greece, unless my health should take some bad turn. This is, that the Austrian Lloyd’s steamers from Ancona to Corfu which take only 48 hours the whole way, touch at Brindisi so that if I go there from Naples Edition: current; Page: [313] which is perfectly easy, the passage across will be the shortest possible, 12 hours at most. This is capital. Today I have been seeing all that I had left unseen. I always do a great deal more when I go about alone. Besides mounting the tower of the Capitol for the fine panoramic view of Rome & descending to the Mamertine prison⁷ under it: a frightful dungeon into which people were let down through a hole, reputed here to be the place where St Peter & St Paul were confined & wrought sundry miracles but to me interesting from the more authentic fact that it was the place where Catiline’s associates⁸ were put to death—besides this & what remains of the Tarpeian rock & the Cloaca Maxima & several other ruins & walking all over the Ghetto or Jews’ quarter which is no longer locked up at night, the present Pope having pulled down all the gates—besides all this I saw quantities more of pictures, Raphael’s famous Sibyls at Sta Maria della Pace, a beautiful fresco, though I could not see any inspiration in the Sibyls—the Palazzo Sciarra where is the real Bella of Titian, the one I saw yesterday being either a copy or a reproduction, but Titian where he has not gorgeous colours is to me little—also a fine Leonardo but always the same face. The Palazzo Spada where are some very ambitious & I think bad Guido’s (as there are also at the Sciarra including one very celebrated Magdalen called delle Radici) but one Magdalen by Guido quite unlike his usual type & which seemed to me exquisite. Three or four Francia, Perugino & Fra Bartolomeo, always agreeable, & some of Andrea del Sarto whom I like less than at first as I see he can only paint in one stile & most of his pictures seem like imitations of himself. There is a Leonardo at the Spada exactly like Christ & the Doctors in the National Gallery. There is at this palace a colossal statue of Pompey⁹ supposed to be the very one at the foot of which Caesar fell, & if it is not it, it deserves to be—it is exactly what one would wish that statue to be. I spare you the churches, ruins &c of minor note which I saw. There are now hardly any pictures of note in Rome which I have not seen, & many of the finest repeatedly. As it is now probable I shall not return to Rome, I am glad to have made the impression complete & strong. I have been reading some parts of a book of some celebrity “Rome in the 19th century.”¹⁰ It is Edition: current; Page: [314] on the index¹¹ but books which are so appear to be tolerated at the English circulating libraries. The writer (I forgot her name) is a pert, prejudiced, ignorant, rash, vulgar minded English or more probably Scotch woman & her book, what she says all other books about Rome are, worthless, except for some details of information. I have seldom read a book which made my bile overflow so much & I have paid her off in the margin of the book. Eustace¹² is a god compared to her.—I was quite sorry to see Emilia’s death¹³ in the Times of the 19th. The same paper contained the death (aged 42) of one of the most valuable men in India, Goldsmid the Bombay Secretary.¹⁴ A few days ago I saw Mr Ley’s death:15 how will that affect Arthur? I was weighed again today before going away: I had neither gained nor lost. There could not be much difference in so short a time, but I hoped for a little. I seem to be going on improving & I think the change to Naples will now be useful.

Jan. 28. No letter—I have left written instructions with the post office people to send letters on. Yesterday was bright & rather cold, today is violent rain, with a north wind too—which only ceased late in the afternoon when I tried to have a walk but the ground was too wet for me to do much. I stept into Sta Maria del Popolo in time of vespers where the organist was trilling away like a comic opera. I should have liked to have had a fine day for my last look at Rome & had meditated a country walk, but it was not to be. When I have paid my bill here my journey will have cost me up to this time (deducting the fees to Deakin, medicine & everything else not properly chargeable to travelling & living) as nearly as possible £50. That is for about seven weeks & a half of time, but the distance travelled is considerable. I shall post this at the moment of leaving, (seven tomorrow morning), for the diligences start from the very court yard of the post office. How anxious I am for the letter I shall find at Naples, that I may know how she is, or rather was, for the worst part of this distance is that all the intelligence of health is already old when it arrives—adieu darling—adieu my own dearest love. This is a poor letter but she will not mind. Bless her. Adieu.

Edition: current; Page: [315]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Jan. 31 [1855]

Naples

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

218.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Naples

,

Jan. 31 [1855]

25

I arrived here late yesterday evening my own precious love & this morning went for letters but to my great disappointment found none—which considering how poor an account of your health the last gave me, makes me very uneasy & anxious—it is quite right my darling, not to write long letters when it is painful & hurtful, but half a dozen words either from her dear self or from Lily to say how she is would be the greatest comfort & relief—that is really what I care about—the rest is delightful to have but not painful to be without. As the letter I expected did not come to Rome I made sure of finding it here but I looked over all they had with the letter M & found none. If one is lost it is an unlucky coincidence. We came here, Lucas & Kyne & I, by an excellent diligence stopping the night at Terracina. The first day was bright & fine, with a good deal of ice; the snow very low down on the mountains & the hills about Albano & the view of & from the Pontine marshes were most beautiful, though the day was not clearer than the least clear of the fine days we had at Torquay. We took a pleasant moonlight walk round part of the Bay of Fondi. The second day yesterday was soaking rain like the day we were at the Sistine that Palm Sunday—& the beauty of Mola di Gaeta & all that beautiful road was entirely non existent. Today it has not rained but the clouds have not cleared off—Vesuvius, Capri & nearly all the coast have been invisible—it has been useless going to the Strada Nuova di Posilipo & all we could do was to walk about the town & go to the Museum where we went through all the Pompeii & Herculaneum rooms preparatory to going to Pompeii. Naples otherwise looks just the same as it did but I do not find my reminiscences of it nearly so distinct and accurate as those of Rome & Pisa. On the strength of Murray we came to a lately established inn on the Chiatamone called the Hotel des Etrangers expecting to find it as good & cheaper than the old inns which are all extremely dear, & we are not disappointed: we have a very good sitting room with a fireplace & three very decent bedrooms (one of them with a fireplace) for two piastres a day, about eight shillings which for Naples is cheap. It is true they are au quatrième but we have all the better view. My future movements are quite uncertain. All the improvement I had made in a fortnight of perfect regularity & choice diet at Rome did not hinder me from having a thorough indigestion each of the two days of travelling; the fact is my digestion will not stand the irregular hours which travelling necessitates nor the inferior & less digestible food which you get at the inns. It remains to be seen whether I shall ever again digest as I Edition: current; Page: [316] used to do. The good side of the matter is that I got better as soon as I arrived here & have felt as well today as I did at Rome. It is curious that the morning meal, of eggs tea & toast never disagrees with me: it is always the dinner, & whatever that is composed of, I invariably have some little indigestion, & unless I have tea directly after, a good deal. Tea seems to be an absolute necessary of life to me now, & I ascribe much of the indigestion yesterday to not having been able to have tea before I set out. You see dear unless I get much better while I remain at Naples it is out of the question going to Reggio by the courier—if I go by land at all it must be by voiture & taking provisions with me i.e. a great supply of macaroni which I can cook myself & on which I believe I can live without inconvenience. But there is little chance of my having any companion—There is nobody I know here in the books of the English library, though there are quantities of English or Americans. Lucas is evidently much tempted to go on to Sicily but does not seem likely to be able to manage it. And it is quite uncertain whether I shall be in sufficiently confirmed health to go at all. If not, I shall stay here all February & go to Rome in March. So darling I must ask her to direct here, such letters as she would not much mind losing, & if I go to Sicily we must take the chance of the people at the post office here sending them on as the Pisa people most faithfully did. The people in the Neapolitan territory are more than ever the rogues of Italy: they always try to cheat in changing money: everywhere else the custom house officers appear to be no longer bribed but here they are more openly venal than ever, they ask or rather demand the bribe:—& custom houses have been multiplied to multiply the occasions of it. Besides the one at Fondi there is one at Mola di Gaeta now, which & the one at Naples we bought off without their opening anything: at Fondi they did open, but let everything pass. The Strada Toledo is as noisy & crowded as ever, but has now trottoirs, which none of the other streets yet have. The Chiaja looks very pretty & the Grotta di Posilipo much more curious than I thought. I do not like her to be longer without a letter, so I shall post this first thing tomorrow morning when I go to ask for letters—so adieu my darling of darlings.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 3. [1855]

Naples

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

219.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Naples

.

Feb. 3. [1855]

26

No letter yet & I should be seriously alarmed if I did not force myself to think that a letter must have miscarried. I think of all sorts of evils that can have happened—& of all sorts of misunderstandings that can have prevented Edition: current; Page: [317] a letter from coming. Is it possible that you did not know where to write after you ceased writing to Rome & that you have been waiting for a letter to tell you? But you know my darling love that whatever I might do afterwards I should go first to Naples when I left Rome. I am so anxious that I do not at all like going to Paestum tomorrow but as it is the only day which will suit Lucas & Kyne who talk of returning to Rome in two or three days I think it best to do it—& on the whole after going to the post office twice every day for four days I find that perpetual renewal of disappointment harder to bear than a couple of days intermission which leaves at least a stronger hope that I shall find a letter when it is over—mind dearest by a letter I only mean a few words from your dear self or Lily saying how you are—all the rest is de luxe, that only is necessity. We have had very poor weather since we came—we have never seen the Bay till today—We went this afternoon to the Strada Nuova di Posilipo on which we had not set foot before & though the day was more hazy than any I saw at Torquay it was still fine enough to more than surpass my expectations & recollections of both views, that towards Sorrento & Capri on one side & that towards Pozzuoli & Ischia on the other. We went to Pompeii one day which was tolerably fine, though the lowering clouds only let us see Vesuvius or the bay by occasional glimpses. Pompeii you have seen & therefore I need not describe it. There is nothing doing there, & hardly any more of it uncovered than in our time—only one house of any importance. The amphitheatre however which we did not see is well worth seeing, being the only one I have seen in which the seats or a great part of them remain, & the place therefore looks like what it was & not like a mere ruin. The railway is the shabbiest & dirtiest, I mean the carriages, that I have seen anywhere—au reste well managed in essentials. We have passed a great deal of time in the Museum but have not yet seen any of the pictures, for it shuts every day at two, & yesterday was shut altogether. I think as I did before that the collection of Greek statues is the finest for its size I ever saw—the average much higher than in the Vatican—& this although I thought neither the Toro Farnese nor the Hercules equal to their reputation—the famous Aristides (now called Aeschines) not finer than many other statues not celebrated—& the precious King of Naples² has shut up the Venus Callipyge & the other Venuses on pretext of public decency—the Pope too has done the same to the Venus of the Capitol. If these things are done in Italy what shall we come to next? I take it as a matter of course that the Venus de Medici will be under lock & key by the time we go to Florence. I think the Pompeii frescoes in the Museum & those at Pompeii itself much better than I thought them formerly, & my impression of the smallness of the houses & narrowness of the streets is much less than it was. The climate & temperature here both in rainy & in fine days is deliciously Edition: current; Page: [318] vernal, & my health is benefitting much by it, being already decidedly better than at Rome. I have not therefore called on Dr Strange³ but I mean to do so, knowing no one else with whom to advise about going to Sicily. I have made no plans yet & shall not think of any till I have letters—If they do not come soon or if they are not satisfactory I shall set off at once for home. If otherwise I shall still remain some time here—I have Capri and Ischia to see & several fine long country walks to take & if today’s weather holds they will be extremely pleasant—the spring too has sufficiently commenced to promise good botanizing which I shall begin as soon as Lucas goes. He seems thoroughly to enjoy this place—while the Irish papers say that he is on his way back to England “mortified, exasperated & ready for anything desperate.” I like him much better as a companion than Pope: he is a man of some instruction & some ability as well as lively & cheerful & I am sorry he cannot go with me to Sicily as he would evidently much like to do. I have had no answer from Pope & do not know whether to direct to him at Nice or not. How the people die—there is Archdeacon Hare gone now.⁴ Let us try to live as long as we can. Adieu my own beloved.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 7. [1855]

Naples

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

220.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Naples

Feb. 7. [1855]

27

No letters yet! but I am somewhat tranquillized by finding that no newspapers have arrived in Naples during my absence in consequence of the stormy weather. It is a sad specimen of the Neapolitan climate—this is the eighth day I have been here & in all this time there has been only one afternoon in which it was possible to see the bay—& but for that afternoon which we spent on Posilipo, Lucas & his friend (unless tomorrow proves very unlike other days) would have left Naples without having ever seen it. We went to Salerno on Sunday, the 4th, & put my last letter in the post there because the Naples post office was not open that morning. One of the most unpleasant things here is the impossibility of knowing when the post office or indeed any other place will or will not be open. Since that, every day has been like a windy & rainy April day in England, & about the same temperature. We went to Paestum on Monday & the largest of the three temples was very fine—finer than I remembered it. The solitude however is quite gone—there are now in the enceinte of the old walls, several large & many small buildings—one or two ugly masses called villas—& Edition: current; Page: [319] the whole of that plain is dotted at intervals with new looking well to do habitations. When we came to the ford of the Silarus it was much swollen by the rains & the ferry was declared impracticable for a carriage, so we walked the remaining five miles & back & I was glad to be able to do it though I felt quite fatigued before it was done—I am not however at all worse for it. We did not see the tops of any of the higher mountains. The day after we went from Salerno to Amalfi by a new corniche road & though the opposite side of the gulf was invisible, what we could see was splendidly beautiful: we then returned by the same road nearly to Salerno & by La Cava to join the railway at Nocera & returned to Naples by the last train. In the evening the clouds cleared off partially & shewed the extreme beauty of the valley of La Cava, now studded with primroses. Today was heavy rain in the forenoon which we spent at the picture gallery in the Museum. It is a poor collection, not exceeding except in number our own National Gallery. Titian’s Danæ & the Venus of Tintoretto have disappeared from it no doubt from the same motive as the marble Venuses. There are however a few fine pictures left. There are several Correggio’s much praised, but none which pleased me. The best point in this gallery is that as at the Louvre a selection of what are thought the best pictures are collected together in one room. In the afternoon the weather having cleared a little though still showery we went to Posilipo & saw the antiquities there of which the only one worth seeing is a tunnel, considerably longer than the Grotta di Posilipo, & like that going right through the hill, made by Lucullus² for his private use & lately discovered & cleared out by the present King of Naples.³ The only good point I have heard of in this King is that he has really spent much money in improvements & especially in road making: the Amalfi road, that to Sorrento & the railways, besides a carriage road up Vesuvius as far as the Hermitage, & putting in complete order the four great post roads of the Kingdom, two of these being to Reggio & Brindisi: Lucas, though he has had such bad weather, is perfectly delighted with what he has seen & especially with the natural scenery & so seems his friend to be who is very pleasant & companionable.

Feb. 9. At last thank heaven I have got your letter of the 28th—one has been lost, for the last I received was dated the 13th & there is a number missing. It can scarcely be at the office here, as they have shewn me every day all they say there are under the letter M. If it was sent to Rome, & the Edition: current; Page: [320] post office has neglected to forward it, Lucas has undertaken to make them send it on. Even this one has been longer on its way than necessary, the Times being here up to the 2nd of this month. The stormy weather has delayed the steamboats, three of which arrived today & brought all the papers from the 26th inclusive. As the last letter which reached me gave a poor account of your health I have been very anxious—& have not been easy in my mind the whole time I have been here. Dieu merci all is right & I will endeavour not to be uneasy again. The papers bring up the news to the large division against the ministry & their resignation⁴—a real misfortune for it is a chance if the next is as good. I think it was foolish of them to oppose an enquiry—When such accusations are made & believed, no matter how insufficient the authority, they ought to be enquired into. And everything practical which is under the management of the English higher classes is always so grossly mismanaged that one can quite believe things to be very bad, though not a jot the more because it is asserted by the Times & its correspondent. How very Times like to cry out now for Lord Grey⁵ as war minister after all their attacks on him in & out of office for incapacity & conceit. I shall think seriously about the book on Liberty⁶ since my darling approves of the subject. Lucas & his friend left early this morning, much delighted with his visit & said repeatedly that he had seldom enjoyed three weeks as much as since he met me at Rome. He is really for an Englishman a well informed man—for every historical fact or Latin quotation I brought out he had one as good and he has some will & energy, which distinguish him from nearly everybody now, & talks really intelligently on politics on which he & I generally agree. Of course a professed Catholic could not agree with me on much else & I should have talked much more controversially with him but for the presence of his friend Kyne latterly whose priesthood imposed a restraint on us both. As I was Cicerone to them at Naples I of course planned everything with reference to them—for myself the three days spent in going to Paestum would have been better passed at Ischia, which now I don’t think I shall see more of than can be seen from Posilipo. But Paestum was a better recollection for them to carry away. Yesterday was spent in the Pozzuoli & Baiae excursion, also, for me, a waste of time: but in returning the afternoon & evening were delightful & the view of the bay & mountains exquisite. I have passed the whole of this morning on the hill of Posilipo, going up & down & round about. As so often happens in such cases, the morning they left was much the finest morning for staying which had occurred since they came. Edition: current; Page: [321] I sat on a ruin on the very top of the very end of the promontory with the blue sea at my feet (never blue till today) the broad bay of Baiae with Misenum, Procida & Ischia on the right, Capri & Sorrento on the left, Nisida in front with the staring prison on the top of it in which poor Poerio still lingers.⁷ That blot excepted all was the loveliest possible. Coming from Rome here is completely coming from the enjoyment of art into that of natural beauty. I enjoy it far more than I expected & it was with the mind only that I reflected, if there was such a place in England how much more beautiful the detail would have been made. But there is nothing wanting to it, seen from this promontory in “the purple noon’s transparent light”⁸ for such it was, even though hazier than a fine English day & though it rained soon after. I have recovered a good deal of the strength I had lost & walked about from nine till three without being done up—though after I returned, the second walk to the post office (one in the early morning having been ineffectual) made me very very tired & I do not know how fit for walking I shall be tomorrow. If I can I shall walk tomorrow to the Lake of Agnano & the Solfatarra which I tried hard to see with Lucas yesterday but there was not time enough & he was tired. You cannot imagine anything more delightful in climate than Posilipo today—the near side of the promontory was like, not a cool summer day but a hot one, short of what one calls excessive heat like that of last July—the want of sun hitherto has I think kept back vegetation, but the almond trees are brilliant with flower, there are single & double camellias in flower in the garden of the Chiaja & the air was full of the delicious smell of the beanfields—the 9th of June would be early for them in England, but there is not a difference of four months in the season—it is that the beans are here sown in autumn while in England where the frost would kill them they are not sown till spring. The inaccessible sides of Posilipo are covered with stocks in flower & with what the Torquay gardener calls a Coronilla, but which I am convinced is a Cytisus. It is Medicago arborea. I have done with sightseeing here unless in case of a rainy day. My plan is to take a long country walk every day while I am here & to go to Sorrento & Capri, but (unless Dr Strange when I see him says something which alters my mind) to start for Sicily on the 16th, going Edition: current; Page: [322] by sea direct to Palermo which the steamboat office promises to do in 15 hours, the night being included, while to Messina owing to stoppages at various places on the coast, it takes 26. So if my darling has written to Messina I shall get it but not for some time—meanwhile please dearest write to Palermo as I shall return there after the western tour of the island before I go to Messina, Etna, Catania & Syracuse. I shall keep this letter open till tomorrow that I may tell her the result of another weighing (I ought to have gained much, for though my digestion is still feeble & precarious I feel breathing health in at every pore) & I shall then take the letter to Rothschild’s⁹ where I must go tomorrow for money. I have heard nothing from Pope & do not know if he has gone to Nice or not. I unfortunately forgot to say anything to him about medical men & have regretted it ever since. I have read in the papers about severe frost & snow in England but at that time it was frosty & cold even at Rome—not at Naples or very slightly. But since Spezia I have not had one day not decidedly hazy. The people are very tiresome in one’s walks—every one whether working or idle asks for money & my ears cannot get quit of the sound of “Signor! piccola moneta” “Signor! piccola botteglia” (the common phrase here) “Excellenza! qualche cosa per mangiar maccaroni in questi giorni” (this last phrase usually by a woman & smiling). They frequently propose to eat my health in macaroni. All this besides the morto di fame (here pronounced mort’ di fam’) from every ruddy faced chubby urchin in this populous neighbourhood. At Baiae some boys & girls insisted on dancing what they said was the tarantella, saying that it was molto curioso; in which after seeing it I did not agree. Then they positively will not let me go to the good points of view, for one does not choose to go accompanied against one’s will by one or more of these people & expected to pay them for annoying one: I generally refuse to go & afterwards go by some other way. The cone of Vesuvius owing to subsequent eruptions is more stumpy than when we were here, but the outline of the mountain is still exquisite. Here as in all the rest of Italy they say there has been no wine made these five years & even their ordinaire is brought from Sicily. Nothing can be more beautiful than this place. You can I dare say imagine how I enjoy the beauty when I am not looking at it—now in this bedroom by candlelight I am in a complete nervous state from the sensation of the beauty I am living among—While I look at it I only seem to be gathering honey which I savourer the whole time afterwards. I wonder if anything in Sicily or Greece is finer. Now goodnight darling. Before going to bed I shall read a little more of another much lauded book on Italy, Vieusseux,¹⁰ who I think Edition: current; Page: [323] is a still greater donkey, though a trifle less pert & conceited than the Scotchwoman Mrs Eaton¹¹ I think her name is. He professes to give an account of Rome but scarcely disguises that he (though a Catholic) found the whole place a confounded bore. He is a kind of French Englishman—born in England¹² but has lived chiefly in France to very little purpose.

Feb. 10. A rainy day, though now (two afternoon) with gleams of sunshine from time to time. No Lago d’Agnano nor country walk of any kind. I went about the town after breakfast trying to get weighed but could not. I have since been to Dr Strange, an elderly, sensible sort of man. He examined my chest with greater care and trouble than any one ever yet did, not even excepting Clark. He gives a very satisfactory account of it. He finds no sign whatever of disease on the left side—some little on the right, & he is not quite sure that there is not a small cavity there: but, cavity or not, he gave a decided opinion that the disease is now stationary. The deranged digestion he thought might be owing to the damp season which he says is deranging everybody’s digestion: at all events that may have made it slower in being removed. But it is going away as quickly as I could expect. He says Palermo & Messina & even Malta are quite as bad as to March winds as Naples: but as I told him how little susceptible I am to cold or changes of temperature, he thought I need not mind that. So I am still in the mind to go on the 16th & Palermo will be the place for my darling to write next: but I think only once, & then to Messina, as the letters take so long coming. I am very fit for a little walking today but I think a long walk would have been too much for me. Adieu with the utmost love.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 11. [1855]

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

221.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Feb. 11. [1855]

28

My darling love, I have today accomplished my walk to three of the ancient craters which, to the number of at least five, are within a walk of Naples, & my exploration of the woody & mountainous tract (commonly known as the Phlegraean fields) of which they are a main feature. The first is the Lake of Agnano, about three quarters of an hour’s walk from the further end of the Grotta di Posilipo. This is one of the usual lake craters, surrounded by woody hills—about the size & character of the Lake of Albano, with the mountain Edition: current; Page: [324] of the Camaldoli Convent (the highest on this side of Naples) presiding majestically over it as the Monte Cavo² does over the other. The next is the Solfatara, which differs from the others in being still partially in operation. The footpath to it from the Lake of Agnano, fortunately a back way which avoids all teaze from Ciceroni & beggars, winds up to a great height, on the outside of the hill or mountain the hollow of which forms the crater, which outside however though bushy is white & yellow from the alum & sulphur which rather form part of the soil than exude from it. This brought me to the very highest point, overlooking Posilipo & all the hills about, to Vesuvius & the mountains of Sorrento & on the other side the Ischia & Cuma district, with the Solfatara deep below. It is a well marked crater, only broken down at one point, towards Pozzuoli, &, from the height, looks (or rather about half of it looks) like a plain of very uneven white sand. On getting down to it however I found it studded every here & there with smoking holes, one of which dipping under a sort of cliff, letting out huge volumes of sulphurous-smelling opaque vapour, & all encrusted about with sulphur of every shade of colour & variety of texture, large enough too to seem the entrance of a cave, really looked as if it might be one of the wicket entrances to the infernal regions—very like one described in the Pilgrim’s Progress.³ At several places in this platform there are works for extracting alum & sulphur from the soil & vapour, but as it was Sunday & the people were not there I could not see the process. I then reascended the opposite side of the crater & wound up a much higher ridge than the other to look down from the very summit into the third crater, that of Astroni which cannot be entered without a special permission; being kept as a park & hunting ground by the King of Naples, who is said to have filled it with deer & wild boars but I saw none: this is far the finest of the three, being a perfect crater, unbroken except where a little cutting has been made about half way up for an entry—treble the size & double the depth of the others, a wild open forest of ilex with two or three ponds instead of one great lake. There is a wall built all round the rim of the crater, but in very many places it can be Edition: current; Page: [325] seen over. As a detail this is far the most beautiful thing I have seen here. I should like to look over that wall every day of my life: I walked about half round it, then returned to Naples by the Lake of Agnano. I did not intend to go to the Grotta del Cane which I knew was hereabouts, but finding myself close to it I went, & I am glad I did, for even in things of this sort I find seeing is a very different thing from reading about them. I would not let them put the dog in, though the little fellow came trotting up as if he was quite used to being temporarily killed. A lighted torch was enough for me, & it did go out with an instantaneousness which I did not expect. The so called Grotta is about the size of a good sized closet, though how far the substructions go I know not. They pushed some of the gas towards me for me to taste & the taste & smell were pleasant—exactly like some artificial Seltzer water which I had drank yesterday. Strange that what is so pleasant in the stomach should be so fatal in the lungs. But there is another quite as curious cave close by, which I had never heard of & which is not in Murray though discovered the man said 24 years ago—this is the Grotta ammoniaca in which the exhalation of ammonia when I stooped to about half my height almost knocked me down with the shock. It was like the very strongest sal volatile. There are also some ruined buildings supposed to have been baths, in the different rooms of which hot vapour full of sulphuretted hydrogen comes out of the hill side as copiously as water from a spring & coats everything with saltpetre & flowers of sulphur. I enjoyed this walk greatly, though it was a cloudy watery looking day, & gave none of the fine effects of light—Vesuvius however was clear all day & the Sorrento mountains towards afternoon. I have perhaps been doing great injustice to Tuscany, for Naples hitherto has been worse: it has had nothing southern but the delightful temperature. But even so the beauty is a perpetual feast. I am not caring at all for pictures & statues now—natural beauty engrosses all the capacity I have of that sort—not that my enjoyment of the others was not as real, & very nearly as great, but because one sort of excitement of this set of faculties is as much as I can take in at once. As I was nearly seven hours doing this, steady walking with much climbing, & only occasional sitting down, & do not feel overdone this evening, I may consider myself to have got back nearly my former strength. On Sundays all the shops are shut here as well as at Rome; but the people amuse themselves; the young men in holiday dresses were playing at bowls in a dozen places. All this day (perhaps because it was an unfrequented path) everybody told me the way & nobody asked for anything except one man who fairly earned by his information the half carlino I gave him. But the custodi are, in every sense, impayables. There was one for each of the caves & another for the baths. The fellow at the Grotta del Cane demanded six carlini before letting me in, but as I positively refused to give more than two & proceeded to walk off I got in for two & could Edition: current; Page: [326] probably have got in for one if I had stood out for it. I could hardly tear myself from this place if I did not reflect that we are much more likely to come here some other time than to go to Sicily—unless indeed, par impossible, we go to live there. I meant to go to Capri tomorrow by the weekly steamboat which goes & returns every Monday, but the sea is too rough—I should probably be sick & it is a chance if the Grotta Azzurra would be accessible. I have only once seen the bay smooth. There has been a strong wind from the sea ever since I came, the only wind from which the bay is not sheltered. I shall scarcely see Capri now unless it be in returning from Sicily—a boat from Sorrento even if the weather improves would probably be too expensive. There is little chance even of a fine enough day for the view from the Camaldoli, said to be one of the finest things here.

Sorrento, Feb. 12. Here I am darling & at the same inn,⁴ La Sirena which looks as pretty as possible; only I think we were not on the ground floor which I am now. By the bye I only ascertained today, by finding the number of the house in Mrs Starke, that my inn at Naples, the Hotel des Etrangers, is the very Casa Brizzi which we were in, though not then called a hotel. Being in a totally different part of the house & the entrances of all the houses being so much alike I only gradually recognized it, or rather suspected it. I came by the railway to Castellamare—it was pleasant to see such a neat town in this part of the world. The road here you know as far as Vico—the remaining new part is still more beautiful, as it goes round the mountain at a greater height. The first half of the road across the plain of Sorrento has been considerably widened, at the expense of the orange gardens; & the new wall on one or both sides of the road is not nearly so high as before: but the latter half is the same odd sort of lane it was formerly. In the streets of Sorrento itself I do not think two carriages of ordinary width could pass. It is all very beautiful though the day is damp, & here rather cold: this side of the promontory is always much colder than Naples. Sorrento is a summer residence & there seems absolutely nobody in the house—& the book testifies that there have not been above a dozen persons this year. The host or rather hosts, the brothers Gargiulo⁵ (one of whom Murray says was a servant of Mrs Starke) have this inn & two other shewy ones in the place—therefore they must have thriven, but (if the waiter is to be believed) not since 1848: he says people pass the winter in Naples, go to Rome for Easter & then go home while this place depends on those who return after Easter. He complains also of the war & the cholera, which last however has spared Sorrento Edition: current; Page: [327] itself. In any case I shall have a day or two’s walking & botanizing here, & if the sea continues as rough, I shall not hurry to Sicily—not from fear of shipwreck, but of seasickness. I was weighed this morning, having prevailed on the English groceress Mrs Stanford to make shift to weigh me. My weight was 73 rotoli all but three ounces—but the oddity is that authorities do not agree about what a rotolo is. Murray says it is 1¾ lb English: if so I have lost weight even since Rome, which is so very improbable that I set this down among Murray’s many unpardonable errors. Mrs Starke says it is two ounces more, 31 oz which makes me a gainer of eight ounces⁶ in the last fortnight. Mrs Stanford says she always calculates a rotolo at 2 lb English; & the Frenchwoman at the library says it is 33 French ounces, a kilogramme being 36, or 11/12 of a kilogramme, which as a kilo is rather more than 11/10 of two English pounds makes a rotolo equal to 2 lbs at least: if so I have regained within three pounds of the 15 lbs I had lost. Mrs Starke is the most likely to be right & even on her shewing I am doing very well. I have had to buy some of Mrs Stanford’s tea, though most of my own is still unused—but I shall have need of it all in Sicily.

Feb. 13. Out today from half past nine till five. I have recovered all my strength. How pleasant, once more, after 3½ hours’ walking, much of it climbing, to find myself at the foot of a very steep & rather high mountain & not to feel that I had rather not climb it. I did so, & when I had got to the top was not at all tired—& scarcely tired when I got back to the inn, three hours after. The mountain in question was the Punta della Campanella, a promontory of Minerva, occupying the extreme end of the Peninsula of Sorrento. Even when I had got half way up I hesitated about going on, because the clouds which had never quite left the top during all this dull morning, seemed just then to be thickening & coming lower down: but the sky seemed to lighten a little— & before I got quite to the top all was clear. I sheltered myself partially by the little chapel from a wind that threatened to blow me down; not over the precipice, for it came the opposite way, from the south. Though not very clearly or brightly I did see the whole of the Bay of Naples one way & the Gulf of Salerno the other, & even part of the coast of Calabria beyond the Gulf. I staid nearly half an hour watching the clouds draw off Capri, Vesuvius & St Angelo, the highest mountain of this peninsula, higher I believe than Vesuvius—& found it difficult to go away, as the scene grew more & more beautiful every five minutes. But I had a delightful walk back, seeing for some time both bays— & indeed more, for I could see the mountains of the south side of the bay of Gaeta—& afterwards only the bay of Edition: current; Page: [328] Naples but this more & more clearly the whole time. But my darling must not suppose that even then I saw the bay as it is at its best—as we saw it long ago. When I see how very lovely it is now I should much regret not seeing it as I saw Spezia if I did not hope to see either it or Sicily & Greece in finer weather. Though the air is never clear nor the lights the right thing, there are yet two colours very perfect. Vesuvius this evening was a splendid purple & St Angelo a fine lilac, which last was the prevailing colour the evening of my return from Baiae. There has been but one fine morning, that on which Lucas left, which I passed on Posilipo, but it generally grows more or less fine about two in the afternoon. As far as I can judge at present, if we lived in Italy, Castellamare would be the desirable place. It is itself one of the most beautiful points of the coast, near all the most beautiful—it is a possible summer residence since even Naples is so & this is cooler. Murray says 8 degrees cooler by day & 10 or 12 at night. It has twelve mineral springs, chalybeate, saline & sulphureous—& for convenience it is an hour from Naples by railway, the fare by first class being 1s.8d. by second 1s.2d. Thereby hangs a tale. I did not suppose that the general roguery of Neapolitans in money matters extended to the railway, so took the word of the man who gave the tickets for the fare—accordingly he made us pay, to Pompeii, & again back, first class fare for second class tickets. Having informed myself since I tendered the right sum for Castellamare & got my ticket without parley. I shall not get to Capri—the people here say it would be impossible to get into the Grotta with this sea. The wind is higher than ever & though it blows off this shore & makes in this part of the bay no surf, one can see the waves rolling outwards, an unusual sight—& the south wind is as contrary as the west for going to Sicily. I dread sickness, for though my strength has returned I still digest but indifferently—it is true my appetite is so great here that I eat twice as much as I do at home—& though it is only of the most digestible things I perhaps ought to eat less—but while I gain flesh & strength I must be doing well. I shall put this letter in the post here—it saves time, as I shall probably stay here another whole day & when I get to Naples the day after, may find the post office closed. This backward country is the only one in Italy where one cannot prepay by stamps. They profess to send even unpaid letters by the steamboat though not by land; but Rothschild’s people profess to be very sceptical about their really going. My last letter which went through Rothschild I dare say went safe: I hope you received the one before which though dated Naples was put into the post at Salerno. Tell me darling in your next letter whether she has received all mine. The extreme beauty of this country makes me independent of a companion—I do not long for a companion, but for my darling. A companion however would be a convenience by rendering things practicable which would now be too Edition: current; Page: [329] expensive—among others going to Reggio by voiture. The time it takes—ten days—is another strong objection—the bad inns another, but I do not much mind that, as I can take macaroni & cook it myself, & make tea (without milk). Adieu darling. How long I fear it will be before I get another sweet letter.

Feb. 14. Man proposes but the devil disposes. First & foremost there is actually no post office at Sorrento. Letters are entrusted to the boatman who conducts the market boat to Naples early in the morning & who may perhaps put the letters in the box, but I should expect, pockets the money with which he is entrusted to pay them—Secondly—I decided to remain another day at this dear inn (the first by the way in all this journey in which I have had damp firewood) because the walks are so splendid: this morning looked unpromising, but I climbed the heights & had got half way down the Scaricatojo when the rains set in so seriously that after taking shelter twice as I best could I had to return to the inn. I just saw enough to know of what a glorious view I had been deprived. Yet I must go back to Naples tomorrow or I shall lose the steamer for Sicily—where it is quite time to go if I do go. It is tiresome to come to Naples for weather like a very wet summer in England. I shall keep this letter open now to Naples & probably send it by Rothschild. If I go on the 16th or 17th I shall write next from Palermo—if I do not, I shall write again from Naples. I am very well after yesterday’s walk. Addio angela mia.

Naples, Feb. 15. A stormy day, with frequent rain & hail—the wind changed back to the west & violent. It was not however so bad in the early part of the day as to prevent me from walking to Castellamare, with a mule (like our donka formerly) to carry my portmanteau. The walk was pleasant but the wind almost blew me away. The bay of Naples about whose freedom from storms so much has been written, was raging like the bay of Biscay, & magnificent spray dashing over the coast road though raised many feet above it. There seems no prospect of this ceasing & I have given up all hope of immediately going to Sicily. On arriving I found another bottle of cod liver oil broken (no doubt by a fall from the mule) & more mischief done to books & linen than before. The linen I have sent to be washed—the books there is no help for—& as misfortunes never come single, a third bottle burst, I suppose from being put on the mantle shelf. I have now but two left, one of them empty. Happily the one I had left of Allen’s is the survivor. I suppose I must wait here for better weather. This would be no displeasure were it not that it is becoming thoroughly rainy & stormy weather. It seems as if the house would blow down. Adieu my own precious love.

Edition: current; Page: [330]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 16 [1855]

Naples

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

222.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Naples

,

Feb. 16 [1855]

29

You see my own love that my letters fall naturally into the journal form whenever there is something doing every day & a quiet evening to note it down. The consequence is a good deal of repetition & surplusage & diffuseness, but she has the things fresh & fresh, & she knows what I do every day, which is very pleasant to me to think of. Today, darling, was a fine & even a calm day after the storm of yesterday & of the evening & night—& I thought I should not have a finer day for the Camaldoli, so I walked there. It is as I mentioned the highest summit on the north side of Naples.—The ridge on which part of Naples stands (& the first prolongation of which, covered with houses, is called the Vomero, from a supposed resemblance to the shape of a plough) rises gradually to this height crowned with the convent. It is the only place from which there is a panorama of the whole neighbourhood—the Sorrento mountains, those of La Cava, Vesuvius, the Apennines, & the mountains all round the bay of Gaeta. All these could be seen clearly today except those on the north side of the bay of Gaeta which the hazy state of the air made indistinct. The plain of Campania looked very strange in the bright sun—one uniform level of leafless trees, with which all the arable land of the Neapolitan territory is clothed, the vines growing on the trees & the crops of corn, beans, & lupins under them. On the other side were Ischia, Capri, &c & the Phlegraean fields—Astroni like a huge round bowl, & Posilipo like a tiny ridge raised by a child. The very steep side of the Camaldoli mountain towards the Lake of Agnano & the sea is covered with low wood, chiefly chestnuts, & through this I returned to Naples passing through the Grotta, making a walk of five hours besides much previous walking in the town itself. I called again on Strange—who by the bye refused to take a fee this second time, which has never happened to me before with any medical man. His opinion of the state of my lungs is very favorable—& after hearing what I had to tell him respecting my little susceptibility to cold, & that dry air has always agreed with me best, he saw no objection to my remaining in Sicily through March; on the contrary he thought that Rome, which is not good for the digestion, though better for the lungs than Sicily, was on the whole in my state not so good a place for me. This entirely agrees with my own feeling—my digestion, always good at Blackheath, began already to suffer at Torquay; & at Pisa & Rome it got better very slowly, while Edition: current; Page: [331] here from the very first evening there was a marked change for the better & my strength soon came back altogether. Lucas felt the same—he had never digested well at Rome, but felt better as soon as he arrived here. And Sicily in Strange’s opinion belongs to the class of climates like this & not like Rome or Pisa or Torquay but, as he says, like Brighton, which you know always put me in health directly. If I should find the winds in Sicily bad for me either by cold or dryness, Strange advises me to return not to Rome but to Sorrento, of which climate he has a very high opinion—& told me a wonderful history of a patient of his who after going uselessly to Madeira came with half his lungs actually gone, but got so well at Sorrento that he is now living in England a robust man. With this encouragement to remain in Sicily I do not feel so eager to go there directly & instead of going tomorrow (17th) I now think of going on the 20th when I hope the weather will have calmed down still more completely. In the meantime I think of going to Ischia.—I shall write this evening to Hill, who will be expecting to hear from me by this time. He has shewn, all through, great interest in my health. To my surprise, Peacock at last shewed or professed some, & pressed me to write to him if ever so little, so I suppose I must write a few lines to him from Sicily or Greece.

Feb. 17. No Ischia, for the steamers are always changing their day, & the one which was to go today not having yet arrived from Marseilles its departure for Palermo has been put off to the 19th & of course none will go on the 20th. I shall therefore go the day after tomorrow & there is no time to go to Ischia first. The sea is getting smoother & I shall have a good chance of a calm voyage. This journalizing gives you all my changes of purpose of which you see dearest there are not a few. Being a little tired with the much walking lately I went no further today than Posilipo. After ascending the drive I walked quite along the top of the hill to the village which is exactly over the Grotta—looking towards the Camaldoli, Astroni &c. with the increased interest produced by my now intimate knowledge of them. On this north side of the ridge, (as well as yesterday in the fields below it) I found the beanfields not only not in flower, but nipped (as well as many other things) by recent frosts. The temperature however today was that of a delightful English summer. The weather began heavy and ended very fine. There is a fresh arrival of newspapers today, the only one for nearly a week: containing the new ministry. Palmerston will now either make or mar his reputation—much will be expected from him & he will be ambitious of being remembered as the Lord Chatham² of this war. I was glad to see Ld J. Russell, even at this Edition: current; Page: [332] late hour, hoping that Lord Raglan would disregard the “ribald press”³—pity he never said so till he had felt the ribaldry of the Times against himself in its grossest form. I perceive by incidental mention that the newspaper stamp is to be given up⁴—also that the government are to bring in a bill for limited liability in partnerships. My dearest one knows that I am not prone to crying out “I did it”⁵ but I really think my evidence did this—for although there are many others on the same side, yet there would but for me have been a great overbalance of political economy authority against it—besides I have nowhere seen the objections effectually answered except in that evidence. We have got a power of which we must try to make a good use during the few years of life we have left. The more I think of the plan of a volume on Liberty, the more likely it seems to me that it will be read & make a sensation. The title itself with any known name to it would sell an edition. We must cram into it as much as possible of what we wish not to leave unsaid.—I have been reading here, for want of another book, Macaulay’s Essays. He is quite a strange specimen of a man of abilities who has not even one of the ideas or impressions characteristic of this century & which will be identified with it by history—except, strangely enough, in mere literature. In poetry he belongs to the new school, & the best passage I have met with in the book is one of wonderful (for him) admiring appreciation of Shelley.⁶ But in politics, ethics, philosophy, even history, of which he knows superficially very much—he has not a single thought of either German or French origin, & that is saying enough. He is what all cockneys are, an intellectual dwarf, rounded off & stunted, full grown broad & short, without a germ or principle of further growth in his whole being. Nevertheless I think he feels rightly (what little he does feel, as my father would say) & I feel in more charity with him than I have sometimes done, & I do so the more, since Lucas told me that he has heart disease, & is told by his physician that whenever he speaks in the H. of Commons is at the hazard of falling dead.—I now hope that my Salerno letter arrived, but fear that it arrived late—for a note to Dr Deakin which I put into the post at the same time & place (the morning of the 5th) was not delivered till the 12th & I have only got his answer today. My note was merely to ask him to change his steel prescription made up with acid, for one without acid, as the acid disagrees with me—which he has done.—I shall send this letter from Naples but not, like the last two, through Rothschild—there is nothing very precious in it, & Rothschild demands such an enormous sum for postage that he must make no little profit by this branch of business—though Edition: current; Page: [333] his managing man is very anxious to impress that he loses by it & only carries it on to oblige foreigners. Lying, even without much apparent motive, is so thoroughly the habit of this country (Naples) that it seems to be in the very air, & one finds it where one does not expect.

Feb. 18th. Another change in the steamboat—it came in so late that it will not be ready to go tomorrow nor perhaps even next day—so I might have gone to Ischia—but I cannot now, for there is no counting even on its unpunctuality. But the weekly boat goes tomorrow for Capri returning the same day & I am inclined to go by it. Today the weather is, not like a mild but a very hot summer day—oppressively hot whenever the wind is not blowing directly towards one. I have been out for another round in the Phlegræan fields, almost entirely different from the last. I went round the right side of the Lake of Agnano instead of the left side as before—climbed the woody side of the crater on the right side of Astroni—got into a region of defiles & chestnut woods—made a great circuit including the crater of Monte Barbaro, got to Pozzuoli by the Street of the Tombs—a complete necropolis of columbaria in very good preservation—took a country carriage from Pozzuoli to Naples (costing 1s.4d) in which I was more shaken than I ever was before in my life. This curious region is literally nothing but craters—whenever you are not on a ridge you are in a bowl, & every ridge is circular. The subterraneous fires seem to have found so many vents that the craters press against one another like cells in a honeycomb. The variety & beauty of the woods, mountains & ravines is wonderful—there are points where from the disposition of the foreground Monte Barbaro seems as high as Mont Blanc—from the ridges the great view is continually stealing in—& on the descent to Pozzuoli the bay & even the usually ugly town looked quite heavenly. As I reentered Naples the whole mile & a half (as I suppose it to be) of the Chiaja was as crowded with carriages as Hyde Park in the season—& at the same hour, too, five oclock. Almost all seemed Italians but none looked like what we call the higher classes—I suppose it is that the higher classes here look exactly like all the other classes, & that is, I must say, very mean. Except the lowest class, whose look of perfect freedom, & sans gêne without any of the externals of rudeness or grossness, makes them much more distingué than their superiors. The merry look of all classes of the people is pleasant—even the soldiers, a party of whom today were dancing in the middle of the road to castanets beaten by one of themselves. And they always look round to invite the passerby to take part in their mirth which I always do by looks & often by words, difficult as it is for us to understand each other when neither can talk decent Italian. Whatever may once have been true about the idleness of Neapolitans, nothing of it is true now—they beg, but they also work, & when at work, do it with a will. I have not sought Edition: current; Page: [334] to talk politics with anyone & have only once got into conversation on any political subject—this was with a tradesman, who groans over the state of things—longs for help from England, France, or anywhere—as an Italian, is proud of Piedmont but envies it for having as he fancied the guarantee of England⁷—& was most anxious to have it known in England that the Neapolitans are not to blame, for they could do no more than be cut to pieces which many of them were. He asked me how things go on in the Crimea, as they are not, he said, suffered to know anything—To shew the ombrageux disposition of the government, he said that when Prince Napoleon⁸ passed through this place, every shopkeeper whose shop he had entered was put under the surveillance of the police.—The country is covered now with spring flowers, except the woods in which there are next to none. Walking in them is otherwise like what it is in England in the very hot days one sometimes has near the end of April while the trees are still leafless. These are quite leafless still, but that is because they are chestnuts. It is pleasant to see orange trees loaded with fruit of the height of stone pines. The children everywhere play at ball with oranges. This hot day I wished that I durst eat some.

Feb. 19. I am not destined to go to Capri. Thinking the sea smooth enough I got up & breakfasted an hour earlier than usual & walked down to the port where I found that the sea is too high for getting into the Grotta Azzurra & that therefore the steamboat does not go. I walked out & botanized (rather successfully) about Pozzuoli—this & reading at the reading room took up the day. The steamer for Palermo is really fixed for two oclock tomorrow—but I have not much faith in it. I shall not be sure till I have made fresh enquiry tomorrow morning—& on my way back if I am really going tomorrow I shall post this letter, so she will know if she gets it with no further addition, that I really went on the 20th. I shall write very speedily from Palermo. Adieu mine own.

Feb. 20. I reopen this to say that I have just been weighed again & have gained in eight days half a rotolo & three ounces, about 1¼ lb English⁹—If the people here are right this is within a pound of what I weighed at Avignon. Even according to Mrs Starke it is 3 lbs more than when I left London. Adieu again my angel.

Edition: current; Page: [335]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 22 [1855]

Palermo

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

223.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Palermo

,

Feb. 22 [1855]

[30]

At last darling I write to you from this place when a little while ago I hardly thought I should ever arrive. I am well rewarded for running the hazard. By good luck the day I started though a dull & finally a rainy day, was the very first since I have been at Naples on which the sea was really calm. I had a very favorable passage: starting at nominal two, really half past three, & having been honestly told at the (Sardinian) boat office that it took 18 or 19 hours according to weather, I found myself to my surprise in Palermo harbour before 8 in the morning when I was looking forward to two or three more hours of suffering. The sea was so calm that there was hardly any perceptible motion at all, which however did not prevent me from being sick, though not so desperately sick as last time: but the misery after I landed was even greater, & lasted many hours. However this one day has almost paid me for it. The essential is that it has not upset my digestion as it seemed to do before: I have had indigestion since, but not very badly & though I felt weak today the weakness partly went off with walking. This place is not much like what I expected. I thought it would be, for Sicily, flat; but it is shut in by a complete amphitheatre of mountains, about the height apparently of those about Nice or rather higher, & as close to the town. The mountains are most beautiful especially one with a conical top (Monte Cuccio) which on nearer approach resolves itself into a mitre, with two minor peaks like shoulders. This is not the Monte Pellegrino—that, which nearly touches the town, is an insulated mountain, close to the bay, & with a Vega all round the rest of its base. It forms indeed one horn of the bay, which is very open i.e. long in proportion to breadth. This is the roughest outline. I hardly think you will make out what I mean by it.

Then as to the town—I expected to find it very formal & regular, with fine buildings, & rather dull. It is not regular at all, except that two long strait streets intersect each other at right angles in the middle: the others are as irregular as in any other southern town. There are no fine buildings, architecturally; Edition: current; Page: [336] very few that pretend to be: very few handsome houses (this very handsome inn being one of the best) indeed there can hardly be fine houses where all is worn & washed off stucco or paint. But it is the liveliest, gayest most dancing about place, like no other Italian town, but like a good second class French town, & every part of it smelling of cookery which considering that it was Ash Wednesday shews that Catholicism is liberally interpreted. Perhaps this is because it is the only place in Europe where the clergy have lost none of their property. Then I fancied the Marina a quay like those at Paris except in being less commercial. Instead of this it is a promenade, very short, very broad, & something like what the Mall of St James’s Park would be if the sea was where the inclosed garden is. The houses are in a row like Carlton House Terrace, with a real raised terrace: underneath is a single avenue of trees, then a very broad promenade for carriages, then a raised trottoir, then the sea—One of the tallest of the houses (which are all irregular & in that respect unlike Carlton Terrace) is this Trinacria hotel, & from my window au quatrième I look down on this & on the perfectly tranquil sea—& whenever I like to go out on a balcony on the other side of the passage I see over the roofs of the city the lovely outline of the mountains. These mountains though bare & rocky shew a soft green on almost every part; whether this is cultivation I shall presently find out. One of the first things I found here was that during this whole month of rain at Naples the weather here has been so unseasonably dry as to threaten short crops: a scirocco which has dried everything up. & the morning I arrived the first that had been un poco fresco. Certainly anything more perfect than the weather of these two days could not be desired. The warmest summer sun with light summer breezes—the trees indeed not in leaf, though some of them are beginning to be so & the elms are many of them quite green but on coming near, one finds it is with seed, not leaves. The public garden splendid with tulips & daffodils, the narcissuses over; & in the first country walk, what cartloads of plants! the country in a blaze with them like the chalk hills in June, more than half of them new to me; some twenty acres of asphodels in brilliant flower. I had only the embarras des richesses & had to buy today twelve more quires of paper. The sky a fine blue, but chequered pleasantly with light clouds, & not at all hazy: only however like a clear day in England. I suppose the so called Italian sky, unless it is only a South of France sky, is to be found only with the Tramontana² & not when the wind is from the sea. With our Tramontana in March we often have a very bright sky. On the whole I prefer a sky like today’s. But the heat is sufficient to make me not dislike the idea of a cold wind next month when the sun will be still hotter.—Yesterday just before I went out I wrote my name in the inn book, & the moment I came in, the Edition: current; Page: [337] waiter gave me the card of the consul Mr Goodwin.³ I thought, here is an old gossip who is on the qui vive for all English to find somebody to chatter to. I went this morning early to leave my card in return, meaning to take no further step but to wait to see what he would do next: but it so chanced that the only person I could find in his office was himself. So I was in for it, & had a long chat. He is the chatterbox I supposed but his talk with me was all on interesting subjects, chiefly Sicily & its people—he had read he said some of my writings, which I doubt but he had certainly heard of me from Senior whom he has seen here, & I soon found that he meditated writing a book on Sicily⁴ & had got together materials with great pains & apparently care—& though elderly & lame, jumped about on his crutch with the agility of a boy to fetch all sorts of manuscripts & tables to display to me. I am inclined to think from the indications I saw, that his facts are to be as much depended on as such facts almost ever are & I learnt much from him. To begin with what interests us personally, he says that living is not cheap here—on account of the very heavy taxes, especially octroi, which as he calculated (& he shewed me his figures) are fully £1 per head of the population of this poor country & the mode of levying many of them still worse. Houserent is very high: his house (he called it a house, not rooms) costs him £90 a year: the rooms seem very good, but he says he should pay in Tuscany just about half as much for similar accommodation. The people he says have no dislike to foreigners, & like the English (I suppose because they have seen little of them); they dislike only the French, which dislike he thinks is traditional, & dates from the Sicilian Vespers:5 not improbable, among a backward people. They are also the only Italians whom the French have never governed, & who have nothing to thank the French for: they were the beginners of improvement everywhere else & it is worse for Sicily not to have had them. Yet (to shew how far European ideas reach) even Sicily has had ever since 1812 the French law of succession, only so far modified that the father may dispose by will of one half instead of only a child’s share. Accordingly many of the great estates are being broken up, to the great advantage of the people as this man sees & says, though he timidly added that he did not know how it would operate ultimately. I made particular enquiries about the tenure of land: most of it he says is not metayer⁶ as it is in Italy generally, but held at a quit rent, so that the cultivators are virtually proprietors. From his facts I gathered that they are pretty well off, Edition: current; Page: [338] though he thinks they are deteriorating, because as he says improvement does not advance & population does. The only improvement he could speak of was a new adjustment of the land tax lately made which he thinks very beneficial: He says the Neapolitans are as much encamped here as the Turks in Europe—they are regarded as foreigners & there are 30,000 troops in Sicily to keep the island down: among whom the only ones whom the Government trusts are the Swiss (I hear soldiers jabbering German everywhere). The Naples Govt therefore grudges everything to Sicily & lays out nothing in roads or anything else. The Sicilians want England to take Sicily but Goodwin tells them no, England has colonies enough already. He says every tenth man you meet in the streets is either a priest or a placeman & the number of idle people dangling in hopes of a place (if even one which they can barely live by) is enormous. He says the government publishes nothing which they think discloses anything disagreeable, but they did publish a classified return of those who died of cholera & among these, after almost every mode of recognized occupation was enumerated, those returned as of no profession or regular occupation were in the ratio of 24 per cent of the male population. There do not appear to be many vagrants & he thinks these are in great part people supported in idleness by their families, waiting for something. He told me a great deal very interesting about agriculture & other occupations. He says there are much fewer English mercantile houses here than formerly, & he supposes much less business done, owing greatly to the anti free trade policy of the government. I asked him if he knew anybody who wanted to make a tour in the island as I should be glad of a companion: he did not, but this evening I had a note from him telling me he hears there is a Mr Travers Cox⁷ in this inn who is in that predicament & wants a companion: how one sees in everything the man who rushes to tell every word he hears & ask every question. The note also invited me to tea tomorrow to meet two or three of the resident English. I saw he meditated an invitation & am glad it is not to dinner. It confirms me in the belief I already had that he is not married, for as Lord Shaftesbury⁸ would say, a man is by nature incapable of giving a dinner party: It seems I have no chance of seeing a newspaper here unless by Goodwin’s means—the landlord here, Ragusa (the one to whom Leslie Melville⁹ gave me a letter & who seemed extremely delighted & flattered thereby) told me that there is no reading room, no circulating library of any kind, & nobody but Goodwin who takes Galignani, but Goodwin he says has a splendid library. I am thrown on my own books Edition: current; Page: [339] & have begun reading Goethe’s Italian travels¹⁰ which I had in Italy formerly & read—I like them much better now—he relates impressions in so very lively a manner & they seem to me to be all true impressions—he went, too, a learner in art, & I find many of his feelings at first very like mine. I forgot, though bringing German books, to bring a German dictionary, but I get on tolerably without one. I have also Theocritus,¹¹ a proper book for Sicily. I judge that of the remaining few months of my time, six weeks cannot be better spent than in this island—which will leave about time for a glance at Greece & returning home. I feel no doubt about Greece now—the seasickness I can bear, my only fear was that it would cost me all the health & strength I had gained but about this I now feel at ease, for the passage from Brindisi to Corfu is considerably shorter than from Naples here. Only, if I have time enough, I shall return to Naples by Reggio & the Calabrian route which will take at most ten days from Reggio. I wish more than I can express that my darling was here to see the beauty & enjoy the exquisite climate. Goodwin says they never suffer from heat except in July & August, & even then there is every day a northern sea breeze from nine o’clock till four. If so it must be the finest climate in the world: such a February & no hotter summer. Messina he says is cold in winter & no other place in Sicily fit to live in. Certainly I have never yet been in a place where existence was such a pleasure. I want nothing here but my one want—but what a want! only here it is the want to share enjoyment, not the want of wanting enjoyment: as in all the journey till Rome, of which even the pleasantest parts, were vanity & vexation of spirit. Pleasure began at Rome, increased at Naples, & is still greater here—& will continue so if I either go alone or if Mr Travers Cox turns out well. I am half inclined to go alone, but the great saving in expense is a solid consideration which turns the scale.

Feb. 24. morning. Yesterday morning having been a little feverish in the night & not having slept the latter part of it I saw the dawn from my window. This house, & the Marina generally, do not look north as I had supposed, but considerably more east than north, so that even at this season the sun comes in for near two hours after sunrise. I saw the fishing boats going out in the twilight—they are small boats mostly managed by one man, but have a South Sea look, the head being bent round & prolonged into a high peak. You must imagine this a sea like Brighton—no ships are visible—there are Edition: current; Page: [340] a few in a corner, not to be seen from the Marina, but so few & small that you hardly notice them—the minute amount of commerce for the capital of so large & naturally rich an island is ridiculous. Both yesterday morning & this, at six oclock before it was quite light a regiment of infantry marched along the Marina with the band in full play—Invalids here have no chance of a morning slumber. There is in the next room to mine a poor Frenchman, a Prince de Beautremont,¹² whose cough is painful to hear. I started about nine to climb Mount Pellegrino: I went round the harbour & bay & found the mountain not close to the bay as I fancied but a mile or a mile & a half from it. You know all about this mountain & the cave of Santa Rosalia,¹³—the daughter of one of the Norman Kings who retired to this cave & whose body is preserved in the same cave turned into a chapel—she being the patron saint of the place there are abundant pilgrimages & the grand fête & procession once a year—consequently there is a broad made road though not a carriage road, to the chapel, nearly two thirds of the way up—this road winds across & across one of the bends or coombs of the mountains & then sweeps round it to a sort of elevated plain among the tops, of which there are two or three smaller & one much higher principal summit—I made the ascent in company of a flock of goats one of several which were climbing & climb daily to this high level where there is a little green—on the side of the mountain there is hardly green enough for even goats to feed—it is all grey rock, in small scattered blocks, without even bushes but with many flowering plants. I chattered with the young men & boys who tended the goats, as much as their & my ignorance of Italian permitted: they were astonished & amused as the people all about are at my botanizing, but always seem to understand when I say it is per curiosità & are troublesome with their eagerness to get plants for me in hopes of a few grani. The chapel of Sta Rosalia is in a corner of the bit of table land. There is a front to it like a small church, but when you enter there is the grotta—not like most things so called an ugly cellar or vault, but a spacious Robinson Crusoe cave such as one imagines, & in it a splendid spring, not rising but dropping from the rocks.—In a semi subterraneous receptacle, is the marble statue of the saint, clothed in a robe of gold (as they say)—at least a tablet in the church commemorates that a King of Naples had it made at an expense of 2000 scudi. I climbed afterwards to the summit where is a telegraph tower & two soldiers (one of them also a tailor) to manage it. The views all the way up had been very fine but from the top was one of the most glorious I should think in the world. Edition: current; Page: [341] The whole north coast of Sicily (all mountain & bay) as far as the eye could reach, the sea studded with the little round Lipari islands, the larger island of Ustica farther west, the exquisite Vega of Palermo & the town itself spread out as in one of the bird’s eye Panoramas, the amphitheatre of mountains round it—Before I had reached the top I had caught the first view of Etna, which I thought I recognized in a white dome like object that rose through & above the white clouds—& when I reached the top, the soldiers confirmed this. The day was the most perfect of summer days, the wind light & easterly, just sufficient to temper the sun’s heat—the soldiers called it scirocco di levante, to distinguish it I suppose from the real African scirocco—Goodwin calls it the vento Greco. After enjoying the view for some time I started down the mountain. It was 12 when I was at the top & it took an hour & a half to reach the foot. I certainly never at any time of my life could have first climbed & then descended this mountain more vigorous & fresh. I feel equal to climbing Etna itself if this were the season for it. When I got to the inn I was not even tired, except indeed my arms with the weight of plants I carried, to the edification & amidst the apostrophes of the public—who were full of questions & remarks—the most complimentary of which was one I overheard, one woman having given a shout of astonishment (all speaking here by the common people is shouting) when another quietly remarked to her that it was for my bella & was a galanteria. I wish indeed it had been for my bella, & a day never passes when I do not wish to bring flowers home to her. You see by this how beautiful the flowers are: this time, besides some lovely blue flowers, there were some noble specimens of the tall yellow asphodel of our gardens, which grew quite comfortably out of the rocks of Pellegrino & were gathered for me by an enterprising goatherd. On entering the town I was actually stopped at the octroi—I was asked what those were: “plants” I said—“what do they serve for?” “per sciente”. what did I bring them for? “for curiosity”—“there was nothing doganale”—they were quite satisfied & dismissed me with the pleased animated look & voice which everybody here has on every occasion. When I got to the inn, the old fellow had been there with a carriage to take me out! lucky I missed him—soon after, a card with the corner turned down from a Mr Villiers Meynell¹⁴—I could not at first conceive who this could be—but at last concluded that it is one better known as Frederic Villiers whom I knew a little, long ago, no connection of the Clarendon family but as I remember being told, a natural Edition: current; Page: [342] son of a man named Meynell, & who I suppose has now taken his father’s name. He then was or professed to be a great crony of the two Bulwers¹⁵—who were not yet known & celebrated—it was before the publication of Pelham.¹⁶ This man & Charles Villiers¹⁷ who were at Cambridge at the same time were called savage Villiers & civil Villiers—it is the same man who was returned for Sudbury with Dyce Sombre¹⁸ & turned out for bribery, whereby the borough got disfranchised. I did not like the man formerly, & expect I should like him less now, so I shall return his call only after a due interval—At eight oclock I proceeded to Goodwin’s, two doors off—there were as I expected no women—but three or four English mercantile people, of much about the knowledge, range of ideas & cultivation which one expects from such—what that is I need not say—but Goodwin was a sun among these minor luminaries. They confirmed what he said about the people, that all classes of them like foreigners, (& English) rather than otherwise, & make things pleasant for them, but none of them spoke so well of the climate as Goodwin—they said it was very hot [for] three months but admitted that those who live in the Marina or anywhere by the seaside do not feel it, unless indeed there is scirocco when you must shut all doors & windows fast. It seems to be an almost Australian hot wind.—Generally one finds bad weather everywhere & is told that it is an extraordinarily bad season—here all say it is extraordinarily fine—quite a remarkable winter, & things a month more forward than usual. The weather certainly is perfect, or rather was, for I fear the long postponed rain is to come now: there is an evident change coming today. I am pursued everywhere by bad weather. I found this old fellow Goodwin had made an engagement for me again for this evening to an American named Gardner¹⁹—I thought it was quite time to stop this, so I excused myself, expressing dislike to going out in the evening & readiness to call on his friend in the morning, which accordingly is to be done today. Mr Travers Cox I find has a wife with him, but has a half inclination to make a visit to the ruins leaving her here. Already (though not personally known to Goodwin) he had heard of my projects (though I had not said a word of them to the landlord or anyone at the inn) & like a sensible person, wishing I suppose to see if he should like me or not asked the host to place him next to me at the table d’hôte—but as I don’t dine there, this did not take effect. (N.B. I always pay less than the price of the table d’hôte.) I doubt much if any stranger Englishman will value my beaux yeux & interesting society sufficiently to tolerate the vagaries of a botanist & for my own part I find the Edition: current; Page: [343] plants society enough. A note came from an anonymous Englishman in the inn to know if I was a member of the University Club & a brother of the late Professor Mill²⁰ of Cambridge. O these English! the gossiping gossip hunting of English living idly at a place like this. I must be off to the post, for this is post day—always irregular here, depending on the steamboats. Adieu with a thousand thousand loves.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 24 [1855]

Palermo

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

224.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Palermo

,

Feb. 24 [1855]

31

As soon as I had put letter 30 in the post, I called on Goodwin by engagement, & was quite relieved by finding that on second thoughts, it seemed to him that as it was post day some other morning would do better for calling on his friend. It appeared he had engaged me (conditionally as he called it) to Villiers Meynell for this evening & wanted me to dine with him (Goodwin) one day & drink tea another but I excused myself from going out in the evenings at all. Of his today’s civilities I accepted two—one was the transfer to me of a place he was offered but cannot make use of to see the procession tomorrow. There is to be tomorrow & all next week a grand celebration of the Immaculate Conception²—I have found this already over at all the other places but here I have exactly hit on it & every effort is being made to have it on the greatest scale possible. The place offered is at the house of a Sr Bordonaro³ who Goodwin says is a great merchant & just returned from England: he, & his, probably are worth going to see. The other thing Goodwin did for me was to give me a reading of a whole week’s Galignani’s arrived this morning. It is not quite the fault of the Palermo people that they have no reading room—there was a Casino where the papers were taken; but after the revolution, though all the members who were considered liberals (among the rest Goodwin) retired, the others were told that they might have a Casino on the ground floor where the police could have its eye always on them, but must not have one au premier. By the bye when I landed they asked me all the questions which are said to be asked at Vienna of people going to Hungary: where I was going to live, what my object was, & if I knew anybody at Palermo: if I had said yes, the next question would have Edition: current; Page: [344] been: Whom? It pained me to read of the terrible frost & snow in England (as well as at Paris) to think that she has had that to bear, while I was in a perfect summer temperature, for even at Naples it was the weather of summer though of a wet summer. I quite respond to what Goethe says, that he would gladly leave to the Italians everything else if only he could (like Dido) inclose a piece of climate as large as an ox hide cut into strips would go round, & place that exactly round his home.⁴ There seems little other news. What a clever & judicious hit of Palmerston, sending Russell to Vienna.⁵ I went out for my walk as usual, but the rain which I foresaw, came on by degrees & became quite settled, but light mild rain. It will do much good to the country & thus far has done no harm to me. The country even so looked beautiful. There is a singular feature both in the town & environs which struck me from the first—you every now & then come to what seems an old pillar or obelisk, from 12 to 20 feet high, occasionally reaching 30 or more—In the streets this always accompanies a fountain: in the surrounding country also water often gushes from it a little above the bottom, or half way up; sometimes you see no water but only hear it inside. Of course I knew that the water must be brought there in pipes & as the things all looked like old ruins I was not surprised to hear from Goodwin that they were made by the Saracens. Everything done in Sicily since the time of the Greeks seems to be their work—they drained this city, in consequence probably of which it only lost 1 in 33 by cholera when Messina lost 1 in 3 or 4: & they made these water works—the water is brought in earthen (i.e. tiled) channels from the mountains & rises to the tops of these pillars which are furnished with a small reservoir & from this the water is carried in pipes to the fields surrounding each—especially the orange gardens. Goodwin says it is calculated that every Sicilian orange sold in London has absorbed a hogshead of this water. The Saracens did the same at Valencia & Grenada but I did not know how it was done. A great article of cultivation here is a kind of sumach—a great deal of the country is laid out in it; the first leaves are gathered, dried & squeezed into powder & sent to England to be used in calico printing: the second crop of leaves with the young twigs are crushed in the same way & sent for tannery purposes to England. This however is said to exhaust the soil & cannot be kept up more than a few years. The cactus is a great feature Edition: current; Page: [345] in this country: there are two kinds, one prickly, the other not, or much less so: this last grows wild all about. They grow with a thick trunk like a middling sized olive of which the branches are cactuses & when they are planted close together to form a hedge they so interlace that it would be as easy getting through a brick wall. These cactuses are grown for their fruit which is said to be excellent. Palermo is I think about the size of Rouen. The public offices differ from all other houses (except this inn) in as much as they look as if they had been whitewashed or painted lately. The others seem as if they had never been so treated since they were first built, & the more you see of them the more utter defiance you perceive of all attempt at any sort of appearance; but indeed how can a place look well when all the ground floors are uninhabitable, given up (where not to shops) to the poorest people who dry their clothes in the courtyards. What is called a Piazza here is an immense open space, left to nature, seldom even levelled, & with the ugly sides of all the houses turned towards it—I mean in appearance, for in reality those worst sides are their best sides. It reminds me of nothing so much as of the open spaces made in London when a quantity of houses have been pulled down to make a new street. Of course with the obvious differences of say climate & people. Buildings private or public which aim at architecture, (these are chiefly in the outskirts) generally however aim at neatness too. Their architecture is generally of the Moresco⁶ type, at least it resembles my notion of such—colour reddish or red yellow: the forms mainly squares, arranged side by side & one upon an other—the detail (especially the windows), a kind of fantastic variety of Tuscan Gothic. The Cathedral has quaint square towers large & small on different parts of its roof, but such effect as they & its Moresco rectangular front might have is taken away by the unsuitable excrescence of a dome stuck between them—these paltry ugly domes all like one another, which are the universal type of a church at Rome, Naples, all their dependencies & here, have given me a complete distaste for the stile.—These travels of Goethe give me a number of curious feelings. I had no idea that he was so young & unformed on matters of art when he went to Italy. But what strikes me most in this & in him is the grand effort of his life to make himself a Greek. He laboured at it with all his might & seemed to have a chance of succeeding—all his standards of taste & judgment were Greek:—his idol was symmetry: anything either in outward objects or in characters which was great & incomplete, or disproportioned (exorbitant as Balzac says of a visage d’artiste)⁷ gave him a cold shudder—he had a sort of contemptuous dislike for the northern church architecture, but I was amused (& amazed too) at this most characteristic touch—that even Greek, when it is the Greek of Palmyra, is on too gigantic a scale for him; he must have something little & perfect, & is delighted that a Greek Edition: current; Page: [346] temple he saw at Assisi⁸ was of that & not the other monstrous kind. He judged human character in exactly the same way. With all this he never could succeed in putting symmetry into any of his own writings, except very short ones—shewing the utter impossibility for a modern, with all the good will in the world, to tightlace himself into the dimensions of an ancient. Every modern thinker has so much wider a horizon, & there is so much deeper a soil accumulated on the surface of human nature by the ploughings it has undergone & the growths it has produced, of which soil every writer or artist of any talent turns up more or less even in spite of himself—in short the moderns have vastly more material to reduce to order than the ancients dreamt of & the secret of harmonizing it all has not yet been discovered—it is too soon by a century or two to attempt either symmetrical productions in art or symmetrical characters. We all need to be blacksmiths or ballet dancers with good stout arms or legs, useful to do what we have got to do, & useful to fight with at times—we cannot be Apollos & Venuses just yet.

Feb. 25. A thorough rainy day: & I should not have gone out had I not thought it might be unpolite to Mr Bordonaro not to make use of the favour he had conferred on me: I therefore made myself spruce & sent for a carriage, the people here never telling me that there was to be no procession. When I arrived I had to learn from Bordonaro himself that in Sicily they can do what in France & England is deemed impossible, viz. to put off the eclipse.⁹ It is certainly a more sensible plan than to have an eclipse in a rainy day when nobody can see it. There was not even high mass at the Cathedral, for in expectation of the fête they had had the usual services all early in the morning (even vespers as a priest told me). I did not find this out till I had been in the cathedral some time. It is but poor inside, though large. Each of the side aisles is roofed with a succession of small domes, which luckily cannot be seen from without. I think the priests must feel very safe here, or they never would allow confession to be made so ridiculous as it is in this cathedral. The confessionals, of which there is one to every pillar of the nave & I believe of the transept, are made like large baby’s chairs, open not only in front (except just at the bottom) but nearly half way down the sides: & the places where the penitents kneel are quite outside, in the open church. In these half open sides of the chair in which the priest sits, there is a little Edition: current; Page: [347] grating to which the penitent’s mouth is applied on one side & the priest’s ear on the other, the whole being in full public view. In the only one which I saw occupied, it was the priest’s turn to speak, & the penitent, a woman, was applying her ear outside & the priest talking into it through the drilled holes of what I improperly called a grating; he jabbered most volubly in so loud a voice that if I had chosen to listen I could have heard every word he said. It was as if two children in a room held up a small sieve between them & affected to converse through it. I suppose that with southern literalness they think absolution is absolution & that no decencies need be observed, & after all the child’s play of the grating is not more unmeaning than most of their other forms.—The rain continued all day—it is good fortune amidst bad, that with so much rain as I have had this is the first entire day I have lost from weather. I stayed in my pleasant room reading—among other things the first idyll of Theocritus, which is very sweet & melodious. I read also part of a book by a Professor in the University here, on Palermo & its neighbourhood.¹⁰ He says that there are some years in which there is no scirocco in summer at all, that it often lasts all day but never more than three days & that very rarely: that while it relaxes healthy people it revives weakly ones but that to the astonishment of everybody, when the English were here during the war,¹¹ many of them “dressed in cloth” walked about in the sun during the scirocco & liked it—he supposes it gave a pleasant stir to their nerves, & acted on their “robust constitutions” as a gentle zephyr does on Sicilians. The average number of rainy days in the year is, he says, 64, & of days in which rain falls more or less, 131. So it is by no means a dry climate, & to my consternation I find March is the rainiest month except December. By his account the thermometer at Palermo never, in ordinary years, sinks quite to the freezing point. It is singular that he uses English feet & inches & the English thermometer. Snow however falls, not very seldom, but of course does not lie in the town. The rain yesterday & today is evidently caused by the east wind which set in the day before, when I climbed the Pellegrino—not that it is a wet wind, but the change of a wind which has blown long, with fine weather, brings rain here as it does everywhere else. I felt it colder before the rain came—& it is now cold enough to require a fire in the evening—I wanted one too to dry the papers of my plants, as in this damp air, spreading them out is not sufficient. The plants, what with determining new ones, & changing & drying the papers, take up several hours in every 24.—I have been thinking darling that when I get back I should like to reprint a selection from the review articles &c.¹² It Edition: current; Page: [348] seems desirable to do it in our lifetime, for I fancy we cannot prevent other people from doing it when we are dead, & if anybody did so they would print a heap of trash which one would disown: now if we do it, we can exclude what we should not choose to republish, & nobody would think of reprinting what the writer had purposely rejected. Then the chance of the name selling them is as great as it is ever likely to be—the collection would probably be a good deal reviewed, for anybody thinks he can review a miscellaneous collection but few a treatise on logic or political economy—Above all, it is not at all desirable to come before the public with two books nearly together, so if not done now it cannot be done till some time after the volume on Liberty—but by that time, I hope there will be a volume ready of much better Essays, or something as good: In fact I hope to publish some volume almost annually for the next few years if I live as long—& I should like to get this reprint, if it is to be done at all, off my hands during the few months after I return in which India house business being in arrear will prevent me from settling properly to the new book. Will my dearest one think about this & tell me what her judgment & also what her feeling is.

Feb. 26. The day of the gradual & very slow clearing off of the rainy weather. There has been but an occasional ray of sunshine & now & then a little rain, & though the weather seemed to improve by degrees, I am not even now sure that it will be fine tomorrow. I walked to Morreale [sic],¹³ a little old town directly inland from Palermo, a little way up the rocky mountain & overlooking the principal of the passages into or through the mountains—which, with a rather broad entrance, seems to contract rapidly beyond this place. In entering this town I walked into the rain, which even so short a way up the mountain had not ceased, though Pellegrino & the mountains near the two horns of the bay had long been clear. The wind had changed to west, & the very wet looking clouds which covered the mountains south from Palermo seemed to thin away as they blew over towards the bay. At Morreale I saw a convent of Benedictines which shews what convents were in the days of their grandeur—splendid long galleries with pictures, magnificent cloisters & the reverend fathers sleek & neatly dressed. There is also a cathedral here, much older I should think than that of Palermo & certainly much finer—in which some of the old Norman Kings of Sicily are buried—the interior is mostly covered with very old gilding & very old quaint & naif mosaics from the Old Testament with an enormous Christ in Mosaic in the apsis like that of Pisa—altogether in the dark stile of St Mark’s at Venice, though the chapels are decked out with the richest & finest marbles. This church looks better than usual from outside, especially from a distance, as you ascend the mountain side towards the town. But as a general rule, no south Italian Edition: current; Page: [349] church, scarcely even any at Rome, is fine outside. Architects have never found out any new means of making a mere wall other than ugly—to have done so is the triumph of the real Gothic church architecture. When that stile is departed from, architects feel obliged to stick in unmeaning columns in order not to have a dead wall. They do not do that here, & the few ornaments they have invented do not, any more than the little square holes they call windows, give life or beauty to the wall. It remains a mere wall after all they can do & besides they let these walls get shabby like their houses—by the stucco peeling off. The view from Morreale must be splendid in fine weather. The rocky mountain side above the town & road, is covered & hid with cactuses: it is these with their broad flat oval dish like leaves which make the mountains look green from a distance. The fruit, Indian figs as it is called, is sold along the road side—it has a red pulp something like that of a real fig, full of seeds, sweet, but without much flavour. Looking down again from the road, you see below you not the soil but the tops of orange trees, out of which, as out of long grass, rise occasional olives & some taller leafless trees looking like walnuts, with an occasional cherry tree in full flower. I made a detour westward to return by a country road instead of the long suburb of Palermo which the mud rendered almost impassable. The plants accumulate at a rate quite frightful: today I brought in a bit of an aloe in flower. The fête is to be on Thursday, the first of March: I suppose if the weather is fine.

Feb. 27. It is fine & pleasant this morning darling, though still too cloudy—but the return of the feeling of fine weather does me so much good—& Pellegrino from my window looks so very very beautiful through this soft light. I shall have a delightful walk. As this is post day I shall begin by putting this letter into the post. I fear there will hardly be one for me yet. What a happiness it will be to have one again. I so long for that dear handwriting—it is of no use longing for that dear presence. A thousand blessings & loves to my darling of darlings. How scratched this letter is with corrections—but I write everything at first just as it comes & it is as awkwardly expressed as it is when I speak.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Feb. 27 [1855]

Palermo

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

225.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Palermo

Feb. 27 [1855]

32

This has been a day of pleasure. In the first place when I took my letter to the post I received hers of the 15th—& happy I was to see the dear handwriting after being so long without it. I hope hereafter that my localities will Edition: current; Page: [350] not be made uncertain as they have been hitherto by health. I do not wonder that my dear one has been ill with such dreadful cold. How much I hope that it has by this time ceased. It seems so strange to read of everything being buried up in ice when it requires an effort to me to believe that it is not June—the country covered with flowers, the temperature perfect summer, the corn as high as it is with us in the middle of May—the almond trees covered with green leaves & with rather large young almonds. However all here say that it is a much warmer than average season.—As I went out this morning I was told that Goodwin had just left a message that the procession² was fixed for today. He had told me yesterday that it was fixed for Thursday March 1st & now I did not feel at all inclined to go, my mind being set on a walk in the fresh fine weather after the rain. So I saw no more of the show than could be seen in going to & from the post office—viz. two carriages of senators, exactly like the lord mayor’s coach—& the streets heavy with as much finery as could be procured. In many of the side streets they had hung across, & along side, on ropes, their chemises & petticoats, which I seriously believe they did in honor of the fête. Having seen thus much I turned my back upon the Maria Immacolata & my face towards an old convent at the foot of the mountains south east from Palermo, called Sta Maria di Gesù. The only thing it is celebrated for is the view—but I did not stop to consider the view from the foot of the mountain, preferring to climb the mountain itself—which I did, among bushes & a profusion of splendid flowers to a considerable height, when I got among cultivation & took a footpath along the top of a sort of ridge or shelf—to a point at the extremity of one line of mountain, looking direct towards the sea. Here I sat for about half an hour & then made a circuit back to the town. The day grew finer every hour & at last appeared quite like settled weather. The town shewed more finely than from any other point & the combination of sunlight clouds mountain sea & the fine plain (which looked its largest from here) produced such a variety of beautiful effects as no words can give any idea of. In the evening the town was illuminated & I determined to see what it was like. It was finer than I expected. The principal street a mile long, called here also Strada Toledo, in which every house has balconies to every story (whereof there are three four or five—the uppermost very often a nunnery, with grated balconies), made a fine effect by its long vista when lamps (a sort of lanterns but very bright) were ranged all along all these balconies. Some few people tried festoons & a few had lanterns of coloured paper or little lamps of coloured glass but on the whole there was little attempt at variety and the effect was all the better. The cathedral was lighted along all its prominent lines & round the dome & several of the towers, but nothing like St Peter’s. A splendid moon looked down upon it all from a clear blue sky, & seemed to think all Edition: current; Page: [351] this artificial imitation of her light very unnecessary. I had two unexpected treats: one was, I found the door of the Jesuits’ convent open & I walked in, to the square courtyard or cloisters which, seen by moonlight, is a thing to dream of—the most exquisitely light columns supporting the cloisters, & other columns above exactly similar supporting a second quadrangle of open loggie—like nothing I ever saw elsewhere. The other treat was, some most beautiful music by the band of one of the Swiss regiments, in the Place of the vice regal palace. The principal clarinet, who led, was a player quite fit for the Philharmonic—& the execution altogether was perfect—most of the music also very beautiful. You may judge of the enormous size of this very ugly Place when I say that there was another much louder military band playing at intervals in another part of the same Place & that it did not interfere with the effect—it was scarcely audible. These Swiss soldiers with some of whom I got into talk, all conversed with one another in French—most of them seem to be from the Valais, some however are said to be fresh from the Forest Cantons—some from Vaud. I have been speaking to Ragusa³ about a tour of the island, or rather the western part of it, which is all I mean to do from here. He advises me not to take a guide but simply a muleteer (who will do just as well) with two mules, & says that it will cost only three piastres a day including nourriture which the muleteer provides, it being necessary to take much of it from Palermo—If I took a guide it would cost five dollars—the dinner indeed would be on a much grander scale but this I do not want: Since it is to cost no more than between 12 & 13 shillings a day for travelling & feeding, which is much less than I expected, I am very glad I have not shackled myself with any companion, which besides would hardly have diminished the expense, since two persons would have required two muleteers & perhaps two pair of mules as well as two breakfasts & dinners. I am not at all eager to leave this place, but I think it is time to be moving. Ragusa requires two days notice, one day for engaging the muleteer & another for the muleteer to engage the provisions—but notice tomorrow morning will enable me to start on Friday the 2d which, if the weather tomorrow is as fine as it promises, I have decided to do.

Feb. 28. A most lovely morning with blue sky & sea. Goodwin sent early to propose to me a drive out with him: this agreed well with my plans, for as I leave this place so soon I intended to devote this morning to what I had not seen of the town. So I went to Goodwin (who lives only two doors off) to say yes, & as I told him I should call on Meynell today he proposed to go with me. I gave Ragusa authority to engage mules for Friday & then went to the University where there are said to be fine sculptures & pictures, but the place was shut: it will be open however tomorrow. I then passed the Edition: current; Page: [352] greater part of the time until Goodwin’s hour (one) in seeing churches, of which there are three or four much finer & some nearly as large as the cathedral—especially one (St Joseph) with enormous antique marble columns. I saw no pictures of consequence—the church where the best pictures are was not open—but I had seen at Morreale two reckoned fine specimens of a painter of great local celebrity, known as Il Morrealese⁴ & thought them fine—they were like no other painter’s stile & while the figures were mostly fine & well grouped they all seemed portraits, which I take to be a merit. I then went to the English banker’s for money—the partner (named Thomas)⁵ whose brother I had met at Goodwin’s & who was very polite with his offers of service, shewed good reason for some alteration in my plans. My idea was to return from Girgenti to Palermo & then go to Messina by the coast road, by which Bartlett⁶ said there was a diligence—but it seems there is not: the only diligence goes first to Catania, through the middle of the island. Therefore my best plan is to go first to Catania too, go from there to Syracuse, & to Messina last: but also as the road from Palermo to Catania goes full half way from Palermo towards Girgenti (that being also a circuitous route) my best plan will be not to return to Palermo at all, but to go from Girgenti either to join the diligence or straight to Catania by voiture which can be got at Girgenti. By this I shall save much distance & a good deal of expense without seeing less of the interesting part of the country. I calculate darling that there will be quite time for her to write me to Messina after she gets this letter. The next after that should be to Naples. Goodwin took me to several places, among others to a house called Belmonte,⁷ built by a principe of that title—now belonging to one of the exiles—rented at one time by Lord Shrewsbury. It has an English shrubbery in the Torquay stile—but the beauty is in the situation—it is on a projecting point of Pellegrino, the grounds reach to a place where they are stopped by the precipitous side of the mountain—& from this place the bay, the plain & the mountains display themselves in perfection. The wind had changed again to north east, but it had done its work in producing rain & this time it only made dense clouds floating about the summits of the highest inland mountains—Towards the sea on the contrary there was a clearness & purity in the air which I have not before seen even here, & the mountains beyond Cape Zaffarano (the eastern horn of the bay) had those delightful tints which one sees in pictures but seldom in nature. The sky was of a most perfect blue, like the blue of little openings Edition: current; Page: [353] in summer clouds with us. Goodwin improves on acquaintance: he really has knowledge & reading—he has read a great deal of Bentham & my father’s India⁸ with real profit, for he repeatedly cited, as things which had struck him, what are really their best & therefore extremely unhacknied thoughts. We called on Meynell—who lives with a wife & child in good but modest rooms in the top of a house in one of the suburbs. He has been living here a year & a half, as he says for his wife’s health who had found Madeira (where he first went with her) too relaxing. This climate she finds suits her very well but he dislikes the place very much on account as he professes of the people—the gentry that is—of whom he says that he could not have believed that Europe contained at this date a set of people so ignorant & so incapable of being made to understand anything they do not know, or anything like an argument—The Portuguese he says are far superior to them. I reminded him that the Portuguese had now had for many years free institutions & a free press: He said the higher classes here bitterly regret the breaking up of entails & make that & the introduction of the Code Napoleon (almost the only good things the government has done) their main grievances. This does not square well with what Goodwin told me, that the power which the present law (now in force a whole generation) gives of creating a majorat of a certain amount to be attached to a title, has only been used, I think he said in two instances, & one of these is by an Englishwoman, Lady Bridport, who has succeeded to some of the Bronte property.⁹ The Code Napoleon unfortunately does not mean cheap or speedy justice, for there are lawsuits which have been pending for many lives—& the stages of appeal are endless, the government favouring law expenses because a part of its revenues comes from law taxes. I don’t trust the post office here sufficiently to write such stories as I have heard about persons in office but one thing I will say—I hear nothing but the highest eulogiums on the leaders in the revolution,¹⁰ who did not even accept the salaries of office, & are now in exile without carrying with them anything—though like all persons out of favour, they are the subject of a thousand calumnies. There is a new public drive, now more frequented than the Marina, which was made during the revolution & a jardin anglais has been made on both sides of it since—but the road itself has not been continued according to the design, but ends abruptly in a common country road.—I see from the balcony behind the Edition: current; Page: [354] house that the town is illuminated again tonight—I suppose it is to last through the whole octave.

March 1st. Such an exquisite sunrise over Cape Zaffarano! & such a sky all the morning! with only clouds enough to make the variety agreeable. I went to the University—there are some fine pictures but none of the first rank—several by Morrealese, by the same hand evidently but not so fine as those I had seen. The metopes from Selinuntium are overpraised & are rather curious than fine—but there are about a dozen antique statues of which fully half are quite first rate—especially a colossal statue of Julius Caesar, the only fine one of him I ever saw except one at Naples—& the first which gave me a feeling of the majesty of the man. I paid my farewell visit to Goodwin. He told me (in answer to my question) that Meynell pays £30 a year for his rooms which are very pleasantly situated but at the top of the house, & rather smaller than we should like. He gave me a letter to the Vice Consul at Girgenti¹¹ & one to a Mr Ingham,¹² the chief of the greatest wine making establishment at Marsala—I did not want them but if I find it too troublesome to use them he evidently will not be offended. The present price fixed by authority for beef & veal I see, is from 2 carlini 6 grains to 3c. 2g for beef, & to 3c. 4g for veal the rotolo: the highest price being for filet. This is for the highest about 7d a pound, dear for such indifferent beef as it was the only time I have tried it. Here I have never been able to get anything but chicken: not liking veal or pork which are the things they propose. I start at six tomorrow morning so I must put this into the post today & shall take a walk afterwards. I am sure to get a letter at Messina if written within a day or two. And now adieu my own perfect. I expect such a fortnight’s journey for beauty & interest as I never had in my life before—& as much pleasure as I can have separated from her.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 2 [1855]

Alcamo

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

226.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Alcamo

,

March 2 [1855]

33

Yesterday afternoon my dearest one I took my last walk at Palermo—it was in an easterly direction; between the sea & the foot of the mountain which I partly climbed on the day of the fête. The sea was like a strong solution Edition: current; Page: [355] of indigo; & as smooth almost as glass; & the colours of the mountains were quite above my power of description. The illumination & ringing of bells went on just the same in the evening, but I went no further towards it than the balcony behind the house. I am obliged in the mule travelling to limit luggage as much as possible, therefore the larger portmanteau with all that I can spare is left in the care of Ragusa² to send to Messina by the weekly steamer. His charge for my two meals a day plus the simple, is 14 carlins, rather under five shillings. This cannot be said to be cheap. The room is 6 carlins, the same price as at Naples, and a much better room.—This morning I started with two mules & a pleasant muleteer. Though it is a coasting journey the road goes at first directly inland, through Morreale, the reason of which is shewn by the map—to cut off the mountainous peninsula or promontory north west of Palermo—accordingly we left the highest of the Palermo mountains. The beautiful cone I formerly mentioned (called Monte Cuccio) to our right, & passing up the hollow overlooked by Morreale (or rather along the hillside which bounds it) saw that this hollow becomes completely mountainous though spreading out rather wide above, but with no level space below. After winding up to a considerable height we reached a pass & then descended a regular mountain defile, uncultivated & rocky, with a torrent far below us in the hollow—& soon came in sight of the great bay or bight, of north western Sicily, bounded on one side by the mountains we were leaving, on the other by mountains equally high, projecting to a great length into the sea. As we advanced we saw below us, between the sea & the mountains, an apparently quite level & highly cultivated plain, with the town of Partenico in the midst of it looking like those beautiful towns in Lear’s Calabria.³ It looked poor & shabby enough however when we came to it. The day was fine but not so clear as yesterday, the wind having again changed to west or northwest & there were on a few of the highest mountains clouds which did not dissipate entirely the whole day. I began to be uneasy as to my prospects. I found mule riding, instead of a rest from walking, such a fatigue as I think I never had in my life. I rode to Morreale, then walked some miles, then rode again for a mile or so & was absolutely obliged to get down & walk the rest of the way, & arrived at Partenico completely knocked up. This was the midday stopping place. The only thing the muleteer & I could contrive was that I should seat myself on the luggage mule, as he had done a good part of the way, he taking my place on the other. This did better, but I found that the mule’s walk rivalled everything I ever read of the disagreeableness of the camel’s. Of the remaining 14 Sicilian miles I rode in this way about ten, then walked the last four, but arrived so excessively Edition: current; Page: [356] fatigued that I feel as if it would be days before I could walk again. Alcamo is in the same plain, or rather on a hill overlooking it, & you do not find out that it is on a hill till you have nearly arrived. The plain is bounded as I said on the east & west by high mountains, but on the south side, in the direction of the breadth of the bay, the heights mostly are gentler & cultivated to the top: some insulated bold mountains being interspersed, among others one rather high peak just above Alcamo, with a convent at the top. The name Alcamo, like so many other Sicilian words, is of course Moorish, & reminds me of Aydi mi Alhama. This however is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable. The plain, of stiff clay (which also overlies the calcareous rock at Palermo & even on the sides of some of the mountains) seems very fertile & is richly cultivated: among the rest vines abound: & occasionally a kind of ash which is much grown in Sicily & produces the manna of commerce. The approach to Alcamo is across a wide stretching hollow bounded by slopes without a single tree, all open & of a rich green with the young corn. On the way I saw several fields of lupins in full flower—a profusion of plum trees in full flower (chiefly in the upper hollow ascending from the plain of Palermo) & whenever there was a hedge (of anything but cactus or aloes) it was in full leaf. The aloes here as at Nice are somewhat of a delusion, being generally ragged & shabby about their base, but when this does not happen to be the case, they are most beautiful. I found my muleteer pretty much of the same politics as myself but (in his case) turning chiefly on taxation, the excess of which is certainly one of the great evils of this government. Bread for instance pays as he said three times; first on the land, next on the grinding, last on entering the town; & so of other things.—The inn at Alcamo is as good as to rooms & beds as the inns of the humbler class of French country towns, & there is capital milk—for provisions in general however my dependence is on the muleteer, who has provided everything which Ragusa has told him I eat—& I have my own tea, & made by the muleteer’s aid as to hot water, a splendid pot of it (he has even brought a teapot). It will be an incomparable excursion if only I am able to go on with it, by taking the shortest day’s journeys compatible with decent sleeping places. But even my seat on the luggage makes me unfit for walking through stiffness & fatigue—& I cannot walk the whole journey, & indeed this day has probably knocked me up for walking, for some time to come. My digestion has unluckily got wrong again—or rather wronger, for it had never got anything like right. I eat nothing but the wholesomest things, but I fancy I have been eating too much of them. Nous verrons.

March 3. Calatafime.⁴ The room & bed at Alcamo were very clean, the room a large one, with a bed in each of the four corners, the bedstead consisting Edition: current; Page: [357] of boards laid on iron trestles so that they did not look secure from falling down: the only defect I experienced was that I could not keep the clothes on. But I had very little sleep, from the impossibility of finding any position suitable to my aching limbs, & I got up hardly able to move. At breakfast I had my first experience (except once merely for trial) of the bread of the country. This is made of the hard wheat, of which nothing in England is made except biscuit; but it is the only kind of which they make macaroni & the bread has like that a slight tinge of yellow. It looks very much of the texture of biscuit, & has very little taste, but when toasted is like a kind of cake. Either it or the quantity I eat of it disagreed with me: it does not turn sour like the other bread, but feels heavy & uncomfortable with a slight tendency to sickness. I made myself as little uneasy as I could on the baggage mule till we reached the object of today’s journey, Segesta. The way to it was across the same sort of country as the last few miles before Alcamo: the rocks only appearing in the form of scattered & distant high mountains, or occasional upper parts of the principal heights in what if those upper parts were taken away would be a very rolling country as the Americans would say & is now of a lively green with the young corn. We got into a narrower tract of this as we approached Segesta. The temple, if such it be (for it is rather thought to be a Basilica, from the absence of all trace of that part of a temple which contained the altar) is seen for many miles round, where hills do not intercept; it is on a small platform on the ascent of a mountain & is seen to great advantage across a hollow, with a background of rocky mountain & a foreground of fine broken ground, partly cultivated & partly waste. It is extremely fine, quite equal to anything at Paestum—& has been very judiciously kept in repair so that nothing is wanting but the roof: the quadrangle of Doric columns with the pediments before & behind are complete (though with little vestige of cornice & none of frieze) & the columns are not so stumpy, & do not taper with the extreme rapidity of those at Paestum. The ground too within is perfectly level, green, & disencumbered of rubbish, which to me is a great improvement. I then ascended to near the top of a height facing the temple, where is a theatre, with the form & the steps almost perfect—of such however I have seen too many to care about them, but the perfection of this was in the view. The Greeks seem always to have had their theatres (which were not circles but semicircles) with a fine view when possible & therefore used to cut them out of the sides of hills as is done here. In front & across the green country I have mentioned were to the right the mountains of Palermo with the whole of the great bay, Partenico, Alcamo & all; exactly in front a mass of rocky & peaked mountain—to the left of that, beyond some cultivated heights, could be seen the top of Mount Eryx (San Giuliano). All this under the sky & with the temperature of a fine day in an English June. The whole earth Edition: current; Page: [358] covered too with flowers & bushes, among which last the palmetto or dwarf fan palm is one of the principal: its little fan like leaves arranged in circles. From the path which ascends to the theatre I could see, across the nearer heights, far to the south east over a wide tract of central Sicily, to the central range, the Madonie, or Nebrodes—the central part of the island seems to be of the character of that I was in, rather than of the neighbourhood of Palermo, & the Madonie themselves did not look comparable to the Palermo mountains in beauty of form & position.—Finding that I had managed to creep about at Segesta & that climbing was not worse for me than level ground I tried to walk the three or four remaining miles to Calatifima, but was obliged to give in before arriving there. I am sadly afraid the overfatigue of yesterday is going to deprive me of my strength for as long as the walk into Spezia did & that I shall have very little comfort in this tour. The mulepath to Calatafima was mostly along the side of a defile but the village itself is on the top of one of the hills bounding it—the place is cheerful, the inn clean, though untidy & very like that at Alcamo but a little inferior; the same sort of room, but smaller, less recently whitewashed, & with beds in only three of the corners, the door occupying the fourth. There are no fireplaces but I obtained pans of charcoal for drying the papers, & tonight also for warming the room & my feet, for which it was much required. You see very few labourer’s houses in the great tract of which Alcamo is the centre & when I asked my guide where the people were who cultivated all that land, he said they lived at Alcamo, & that very few poor people live anywhere but in towns. It is worth mentioning that a mounted gendarme or something like it was sent with me to Segesta (sometimes going a little behind, sometimes before) & the guide said, one is sent with all foreigners. I do not know if it is because they thought I should conspire with the old stones. My passport is sent for by the police every evening, & each time I have to pay a carlino.

March 4. Trapani. From an early hour this morning (Sunday) the street was full of country people, all males, standing talking, or standing doing nothing, not moving about at all. In their dark coarse woollen capotes I thought they looked not unlike Esquimaux. The capote is the only thing like a costume I have seen in Sicily. Everywhere in Italy & in most parts of France there are costumes, but in Sicily none—the dress of all ranks, even the lowest as far as their poverty admits of, is copied from that of Paris. The capote is very convenient, as by covering the head & neck it dispenses with all need of an umbrella. I was decidedly better today & performed the 26 or 28 miles journey in three walks interrupted by two rides on the baggage. The sky was covered but even so, the colour of the mountains which we left behind was something quite indescribable—the loveliest gray, looking like a sort of gray vapour. The road lay across the ravine, the side of which we Edition: current; Page: [359] passed along yesterday, & up a hollow intersecting it, among mountains which looked like ridges of the Malvern hills perched aloft, with rolling corn country forming their lower portion: until we reached a pass from which the western sea was visible & in it a rocky mountain-shaped island, one of the Aegates,⁵ where the Romans first broke the naval power of the Carthaginians. We then proceeded all the rest of the day’s journey with Mount Eryx right before us, down a gently declining champaign country widening out by degrees & at last losing the mountain character except that the northern coast kept up its superior picturesqueness by a line of peaks, of which Eryx seemed to form the termination. Eryx towards this side is cliff, ending below with a steep declivity at about the angle which would have been formed by fragments falling from the cliff above. As we drew near to its base Trapani came in sight; but by this time the day, which had been growing worse by degrees, turned to violent rain with gusts from the south west & on my opening out the waterproof to put it on for the first time, imagine the vexation of finding that it had been strapped on the mule in such a manner as to wear it completely into holes & that in several places: spoilt (in appearance at least) before it had ever been used. It is very annoying, for while this looked new it did not matter how shabby might be the coat under it—& mine has now grown very shabby indeed. In spite of the cape I got soaked as I have seldom been in the whole lower part of the body—& could see little of the approach to Trapani except that it ran parallel to the base of Eryx which seemed to slope very gradually towards the town from summit to base though steep towards the road. At about a mile from Trapani a large church stands alone with a very handsome tower & a Gothic door, but all the rest of the building like, it is saying nothing to say a barn, but like a prodigiously ugly barn. Nothing can exceed in ugliness (externally) the churches of South Italy & Sicily. They are a deformity instead of an ornament to the towns except when these are looked down on from a height, when the multitude of domes looks imposing. I shall say nothing of Trapani till tomorrow when I shall have seen more of it—having decided to stay here a day. There is a very decent carriage road all the way from Palermo here & I might have come thus far in a carriage: but that road does not pass Segesta: it is true I might have halted a day on the road & walked to Segesta: but Palermo was a much better place for getting muleteers, & on my plan of walking great part of the way the mule travelling seemed to suit me better: I never foresaw the utter impracticability of mule riding for me at present. There will soon be carriage roads to all the places where foreigners go: the landlord here tells me there is one completed as far as Marsala, & in progress from thence to Castel Edition: current; Page: [360] Vetrano, the halting place for Selinus, or Selinuntium as the guide books choose to call it. The inn, built by the landlord as he says two or three years ago, is very clean & has a number of rooms with one bed each—the beds are still of the same kind except that the trestles have, one a head, the other a foot attached to them. I suppose one could get a decent meal here, but I rely on my guide’s stock, having paid him to feed me, all inn charges included. In consequence I eat & drink just as I did at Palermo. In the green corn country I passed through today there was none of the vegetation characteristic of Sicily, but when I got to the foot of Eryx I came again among olives, aloes & cactuses. I saw a great deal of fallow land, & learnt from the guide that (except near Palermo where they have given up fallows) the rotation is exactly as in Goethe’s time, one year wheat, one beans & one fallow. But this is not so absurd here as it would be in England, for having no meadows, they use the fallow land (which is a natural meadow) to pasture their numerous cattle & sheep. The goats seem to feed higher up. The road passed through an avenue (as it may be called) of tall flowering asphodels & of thistles of which nothing is in general yet apparent but the gigantic spreading leaves like artichoke leaves.

March 5. The situation of Trapani is somewhat like that of St Malo: it is on a tongue of land which just out far into the sea, but more directly towards it than in the case of St Malo. This tongue gradually narrows, & then (like a serpent’s) divides into two very thin prongs, one of which forms a sort of natural jetty ending in a little castle, the other is much longer & continued into the sea by a line of rocks—having another insular tongue parallel to it. As the tongue on which the town stands is not strait but curvilinear or rather has a sharp bend on one side & a curve on the other, it has some resemblance to a scythe & its handle, from which the Greeks gave it its name, Drepanum. It is I think larger than St Malo, & very well paved with flat stones: it has a Grande Rue carried strait along the middle of the tongue, but of course from the crooked shape it cannot be carried the whole length. I went into many large churches, & sat for a while on the steps of the little castle at the end of one prong looking at the Aegates one way & Eryx another. The day was bright, but began with a watery look in the air: the sea however was its most perfect blue. The whole coast south towards Marsala is flat & low, with other tongues of land running out at intervals far into the sea. The isthmus connecting the town with the main land is occupied (all but a little bit) with salt pans, as I suppose they call those squares of salt water for solar evaporation—& the salt is piled up looking white, in the form of the eaves of a house. An aqueduct, not Greek or Roman however, reaches nearly from the foot of Eryx to the town. I was not well today: my digestion is as much disordered as it was in Tuscany, & I felt nearly as feeble—After Edition: current; Page: [361] going about the town I returned to rest for a time in my room which looks directly on Eryx, with the sea to right & left. After resting & reading Theocritus I went out again. I had intended to climb the mountain, which is often done—indeed within the last two years a carriage road has been made to the top: though it must be as high as Pellegrino which is about 2000 feet, there is a small town on the very top, as there was when the temple of Venus Erycina was there, & when Hamilcar⁶ held out there for ten years against the Romans. But the interior of the island being still overclouded by yesterday’s rain, there was no promise of a very fine view, & I was besides too weak to think of it. But when I went out in the afternoon, meaning to botanize about the roots of the mountain I was insensibly led into climbing & I scrambled over rocks to a minor height on which there is a small castle & which seemed to be about half of the whole height. From this I looked down upon a perfectly green plain, spotted here & there with patches of olive, & a little varied at some distance inland by hillocks which rose like the ripple of the sea—not more—& by two small towns, for there are no villages here. I felt despairingly as I sat looking at this view, simple as its elements are, how utterly impossible it is by words to give any notion of it, as it appeared with the flying shadows of clouds dotted over it—but it was not characteristically Sicilian: rather English: none of the peculiar tints, but an English June day: & I was greatly reminded of some of the views from the Surrey chalk hills, on their steep side. I could hear most distinctly all sounds below, even the carts moving along the road at a considerable distance from the mountain foot. The likeness to England was increased by a rookery—I heard yesterday, in coming, the cry of a large flight of choughs, but here there were rooks also, making their nests in the precipices of Eryx & emitting their accustomed cry. From this place I easily got to the carriage road which ascends on a different side of the mountain & which I could see winding all the way up to the town on the summit. I walked down the winding descent & so back to the town. It is curious that when I am too tired or weak to do anything else I can climb mountains: that is if they are steep enough, for a long ascending slope fatigues me greatly. I like to mount the steep part & descend by the winding carriage road, as I did here. I found many plants. I find that my botanizing at Palermo, aided by Gussone’s Sicilian flora⁷ (the very best local flora I know except Smith’s English flora⁸ & as good as that) has made me now perfectly familiar with the common plants of this country, at least those which are in flower now, & a good many that have not yet come into flower: so that it is not now a strange new world of plants, but I look out for Edition: current; Page: [362] fresh ones just as I should do in some new part of England. This is a pleasant feeling. I have seen a good many small birds, but none that I knew except larks, which abound, & though they fly singly, give their pretty twitter in crowds from their nests on the ground. I have heard a few birds sing very sweetly. In the chief street of Palermo there was a nightingale in a cage singing most beautifully, though the wild nightingales do not, I am told, begin earlier than they do in England. I shall put this in the post tomorrow before starting for Marsala. I shall probably send my next letter from Girgenti & the next but one from Catania where I shall probably stay a little while. I hope in my next to give a better account of my health. I must conquer somehow this indigestion. I tried today by dining only (& rather moderately) on macaroni, as I have done several times before, but I had a most decided indigestion after it & had to take magnesia to correct the acidity.—If the experiment had succeeded I meant to have substituted macaroni at breakfast for the bread of the country, the defects of which toasting does not correct as it does those of the other kind of bread. O my darling what a long time it will be before I get a letter again—but I shall find two I hope at Messina. I hope my sweetest one gets all my letters—I have numbered them quite regularly & kept all the dates. And now dearest it is considerably past twelve & I must say good night.

March 6. Marsala. I found on enquiry that as there is not a post to Palermo every day, this letter will reach Palermo quite as soon if sent from Marsala. The new carriage road to Marsala does not go near the shore, but near the beginning of the hillocks which I saw from Eryx—the olive grounds & corn with the trifling elevations on the left & the sea on the right made the country a good deal like some parts of the south of France. The road leaves Trapani by the salines & from curiosity I walked up to one of the piles of salt & found that it has no covering whatever or protection from rain. No wonder the rock salt in the earth escapes being dissolved: A little farther we reached a village—I beg pardon of Sicily for having said yesterday that it possessed no village. This is one, but does no credit to the island. The cottages are certainly not like Irish, for they seem solidly built, though I saw but one little grated window in the place—they have no light but what comes in at the door. But the foulness may well match Ireland: the outskirts of Palermo are already bad enough. Dunghills & all manner of refuse occupy all the space about the houses. They have no idea apparently of removing disagreeable objects out of sight or smell. I have been a good deal better today both as to digestion & strength—else this would have been a bad day for me. It is as well that there was little to see, for the weather, threatening from the first, soon came down in showers first light, then heavy, accompanied with gusts of wind, & neither in walking nor on the mule could I Edition: current; Page: [363] escape a still more thorough soaking than last time. I arrived early at a poorer inn than any of the others, but the people are very civil & desirous to do their best—as I find them everywhere. The place is not tempting & I shall not deliver my letter of introduction unless it is too wet tomorrow to go on. As I have hurt the thumb of my right hand, I think with thorns in gathering palmetto leaves, I am scarcely able to write & will say no more except all the loves & blessings that can be imagined.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 7 [1855]

Marsala

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

227.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

begun at

Marsala

March 7 [1855]

34

It rained heavy during the night & began again in a sort of determined way in the morning, & as it seemed undesirable to get wet a third time immediately I determined to stay here today. In consequence, to fill up the time, after reading till I was tired, the weather improving a little I delivered my letter of introduction to Mr. Ingham.² His place is about two miles from the town, on the beach, from which he ships his wine in lighters & tranships it again in the harbour of Marsala. It is a great square place, & has in its neighbourhood Woodhouse’s³ & several other similar establishments, English & Sicilian. I found him a totally uneducated Yorkshireman, the best thing about whom was, that he did not seem conceited or consequential. The only thing about his place that is curious is the long galleries of immense butts of wine. He makes but little wine himself, buying most of it from the peasants to whom in many cases he advances money, making them attend in return, to his ideas of cultivation &c. No doubt the wine making has been much improved by what the English houses, Woodhouse in particular, have done. He was very eager to make me take up my quarters with him from which I had great difficulty in excusing myself but I could not avoid staying to dinner. He has no wife or children & dines with his clerks (English) at half past one. I was afraid of this departure from my regular habits but the dinner has not disagreed with me more than my usual dinner does. What mainly determined my calling on Ingham was to find out a medical man to consult about my wounded thumb which had got much worse & more painful & has now evidently a gathering of matter forming. He sent his bookkeeper with me to a Edition: current; Page: [364] surgeon named Carlino⁴ who he says is the best & the one he consults—the said Carlino who by the way would not take any fee, advised to put on two or three leeches & then a poultice of lettuce & rice. As I am sure no English practitioner would advise more than a poultice for a thing which is (as he said this was) merely superficial, I have dispensed with the leeches & my muleteer who can do everything has made the poultice & it will be put on when I am in bed. I do not anticipate any hindrance to travelling from it. The weather remained showery till about three, when it cleared & as the wind has again changed from south east to north I hope it will not rain tomorrow. The town, walled rather than fortified, is small but built & paved in the stile of a large one save that the streets are narrower—it has the usual multitude of churches, some of them rather better looking than ordinary outside, but poor inside—the cathedral a great bare building. Between the town & the sea is a large cornfield of the most splendid green, ending in the promontory of Lilyboeum, a low flat rocky point of no length, but the extreme west point of Sicily to which therefore I went. There was a fine view of the three Aegates, & of Trapani across the intervening sea. The old harbour of Lilyboeum, formed by a ledge of rocks north of the town, was filled up by Charles V.⁵ because it served as a shelter for the Barbary corsairs, whom the monarch of half Europe could not prevent from harbouring in his own territory except by destroying his own fine port. Like all the other Sicilian towns I have seen this is full of convents, both of men & women & I am now quite accustomed to find one or the other attached to every church—as well as to see through open doors, the place where incomers talk to the nuns through a grating—which grating also sometimes opens into a church & I saw today a priest preaching to the nuns through one grating & two other priests receiving confession through as many more.

March 8. Mazzara. A short day’s journey to this place, which is all of which I am at present capable. The day was sunny, but like a fine day in a wet July—& there has been one shower but not till after I arrived. The road if such it can be called was at first within sight of the sea, but on leaving it to cut off a point, soon lost sight of it, so flat is the country. There never was a place where there was less excuse for the want of a road: it is not among hills & wilds, but through & between well cultivated fields, separated from the road by low walls—& the road is simply a slip of country left uncultivated, Edition: current; Page: [365] over which mules & carts go as they like or can. To make a good road it would only be needful to root out the bushes, break the bits of rock which stick out & lay the fragments on the remaining part of the ground. It was not possible to walk three steps in a straight line, on account of these hindrances & the puddles left by the past two days rain. After a while cultivation ceased, & the track was over a waste, wide as eye could see, covered with palmetto & asphodels which after a time gave place to heath rosemary & cistus. Over this, which lasted nearly to Mazzara, flocks of sheep & herds of cattle were thinly scattered. Finding myself pretty well & strong this morning, I walked a few miles without being tired & a few more a little tired, then mounted on the baggage & when I got down again about three miles from Mazzara was not only very tired but by the time I arrived at the inn & had sat down for a few minutes my state was not that of a tired person but of one just risen from a severe illness. It is very strange that mule travelling should have this effect—if it is the mule travelling—& that it should have it so much more some days than others. I could scarcely creep about the little town & went into every church I found open for a rest. The cathedral is large & handsomer than usual. The town which is about as large as Marsala, with very bad streets but a very good Place, is on the seaside just where a little river falls into the sea. I saw abundance of fish in the market. In all the towns of South Italy & Sicily even at Palermo with a very few exceptions, the shops are lighted from the door only; & generally go but a very little way back: here however going far back, either for rooms or cellars or I do not know what, the darkness at midday & vault like appearance of them is quite disagreeable. It is an object in these hot countries to exclude the light & therefore are the houses generally so ugly—great walls with few & small windows. And their architects have invented no sort of ornamental construction adapted to these conditions. The inn here is a trifle better than that at Marsala from which I have brought away quantities of fleas. The good humour & serviceable disposition of the people is the same everywhere though I have nothing to do with paying them except a buona mano⁶ not exceeding a carlino a day.—My sore finger drew very much with the poultice last night & though the place does not seem near breaking it has given me so much less pain & annoyance today that I shall not put on another tonight. The effect is visible enough in my handwriting, though not so bad as yesterday. The Marsala wine comes from all this country, which has not hitherto had much of the disease. The vines at this season are stumps, as in France. Everybody blesses the rain. I however am the sufferer. It rained out of season at Naples because I was there—it did not rain at Palermo in the season because I had not arrived, but began to rain out of season as soon as I came. How the nuns Edition: current; Page: [366] stared at the foreigner through their grating on the top floor of the convent adjoining the cathedral & overlooking the Place; where they stood in a row as thick as they could stand.

March 9. Castel Vetrano. Almost eaten up by fleas in the night from some dozens of which I cleared my clothing night & morning. The night was rainy & the day has been varied with sunshine & heavy showers—the state of the ground however did more to make the journey fatiguing. The track lay mostly over a wide waste like that we crossed yesterday—& such was the difficulty of finding a dry place or one where there were stones to step on that it answered better to walk up to my knees in bushes. Everything here which is not limestone is clay & the soft limestone of this country crumbles into a powder which makes a mud as heavy & adhesive as clay. Yet I walked nearly all the way, for anything is better for me than the mule travelling. When we had nearly reached a small town named Campobello, we turned off to the right to see some stone quarries three or four miles out of our road which people usually go to see: but this turn brought the wind nearly in our faces (it had till then been behind us) & a violent storm of rain & hail coming on, I gave the signal for turning back & gave up seeing the quarries. The few miles from Campobello here are over the same sort of waste. There is a carriage road making from Mazzara here, but wherever it is made it is either sharp stones or mud. I asked my guide how the people of Mazzara live, as all the country round seems waste, & he answered, they are almost all poor & almost all mariners. I wonder that of all who have made what is called the tour of the island I have met with none who have noticed how entirely devoid of beauty this south western part of it is. In finer weather perhaps the mere vegetation would be enough to interest one, but what is here seen of it is not fine & hardly characteristic. The fields of flax are in flower & I saw yesterday some barley in ear, but I am quite tired of a whole country covered with asphodels & palmettos. Homer talks of “meadows of asphodels”⁷ & I much fear the flowery meads of Enna from which Proserpine was carried off were mere wastes like the one I have just crossed. There are no meadows properly so called in any southern country except among mountains or where there is irrigation. The first change for the better was just before entering this cheerful little country town: when having gradually got up to something of an elevation, we looked down to the right on a plain covered with olives & some leafless trees, inclosed between this height, the sea & some Dartmoor-shaped hills in the distance, among which very far off was again a mountain—the top of which however was not visible. This inn is a degree better than any lately—which to be sure is not saying much. I am quite discouraged about Edition: current; Page: [367] this journey. The rain has been pelting against the window at short intervals ever since I arrived. It was all I could do by a succession of charcoal pans to keep warm this evening. I must be stronger than I felt this morning to have borne so fatiguing a walk. One comfort is that my digestion seems to improve.

March 10. Another flea hunt night & morning: this time there were rather fewer, & of those, fewer escaped. I believe I brought them all from the last two places—I should not believe there were any here if it did not seem impossible that they should not be continually brought here. (N.B. in the middle of this sentence I stopt & caught one.) It is usual to go from here to Sciacca seeing the ruins of Selinus by the way: but this route, which is near the seaside, implies fording a river, which at present from the rains is said to be unfordable; for which indeed Ingham prepared me. The only thing to be done was to see the ruins from here, & go tomorrow to Sciacca by another route which crosses the river by a bridge: this is a long day’s journey but it would have been so, though not quite so long, at any rate. Fortunately it was a fine day, though with a wet July look, & no rain fell the whole day. I had only the inconveniences of past without those of present rain. The road lay down into & along the plain I looked down upon yesterday, through the olive & pear trees, for such the leafless ones appeared to be: they are only beginning to shew signs of flowering. To have an idea of the road, imagine the worst lane you ever saw in some rocky part of England, after a long succession of rainy weather. One is more dependent on dry weather here than in England. No such quantity of rain as has fallen in these few days after a long dry season, would have made walking difficult in England: there would have been roads & clean footpaths which would have kept tolerably dry. The distance to the ruins is seven Sicilian, about eight English, miles, but it was nearly doubled by the ins & outs of picking one’s way, though stepping stones were put in the worst places: during a part of the way the road was a watercourse. At last we emerged on a kind of grassy ridge with a hollow on our right & soon saw the ruins in front at some distance. I could not have conceived that a mere mass of fallen stonework could have looked so imposing at a distance. Mrs Starke describes the place so as to give an entirely false idea,⁸ though I see her words do not exactly assert what they certainly suggest. I expected to find that the columns of these temples were cut out of single blocks of stone & that these had been thrown down unbroken: this would indeed have been a wonder. But the columns like those at Segesta were of one piece only horizontally: vertically they consisted of Edition: current; Page: [368] many pieces piled one over another: & on being thrown down (it is said by an earthquake) they broke precisely into those pieces which with square fragments of walls or pediments lie heaped over each other mostly with their angles uppermost like nothing but some very rocky & lofty sea beach. Many of the columns have a portion still erect, but only one a large portion: from this one can judge how gigantic the temples must have been, especially the first you come to (there are three parallel to one another & to the coast). You cannot think of comparing this column to anything but a tall lighthouse: you feel certain that there must be a winding staircase within it, that the lower part is inhabited & the upper inhabitable. These ruins are in the midst of corn & flax fields, entirely left to themselves (there is however a farmhouse not far off). The two extreme ones especially form by their piles of enormous blocks considerable hillocks, to scramble over which is not a very easy matter. When you can get upon a large block near the summit of either ruin, you see how the town must have lain—the plain I have spoken of is at some elevation above the sea to which it drops down here: the town must have been in the hollow to the right, & up the two sides of the hollow; along the summit of one of the sides stood these temples, visible from far at sea. Nothing can give me a greater idea of the wealth & magnificence of these Sicilian cities. The columns of the largest temple would have suited only a building of the size of our largest cathedrals—& the length which the pile of ruins of this one temple covers cannot be less than that of Westminster Abbey. It would be a fine study for a painter of Marius among the ruins of Carthage⁹—it is just the perfect wildness & perfect ruin & destruction of great magnificence, which one figures to oneself.—I walked to the ruins, & walked most of the way back, getting on the mule in the wettest part of the way. Goethe, strange to say, though he passed through Castel Vetrano, does not mention these ruins:10 he says a great deal about Segesta & Girgenti. Castel Vetrano seen from this side looks larger than Marsala or Mazzara do from any side: it has as large a cathedral, but differs from them in not being paved: being on the slope of a rocky hill it does not need paving so much. The inn is both cheerful & compared with the others, even comfortable, & I could stay here if necessary with more satisfaction than anywhere since Palermo. My digestion continues to improve—it is better than it has been since it first got wrong.

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March 11. Sciacca. As we had 35 Sicilian, about 40 English, miles to go today, the guide very reasonably proposed to start at seven: but after I was up & ready it was raining steadily & the sky was one mass of unbroken cloud, seeming to preclude our going any further today. However after I had breakfasted & read two idyls of Theocritus & a canto of the Purgatorio of Dante (I finished the Inferno, as well as Tasso, long since) there seemed some signs of clearing, the rain ceased & we started at half past nine, the mules receiving an extra feed to enable them to do the whole distance without stopping; & they arrived here, apparently not fatigued, at half past six. Of course I had to do a considerable part of this on the mule, but I certainly walked a good deal more than half, & under such difficulties as you may suppose. I never knew before what a country without roads is. I fancied there were mule paths like those at Nice or Sorrento: but those are made roads as much as turnpike roads are, & as well suited for the kind of traffic they are meant for as the ground admits. Not above five miles of the forty today were made roads, & that was where the soil was so dense a clay that it would have been totally impassable unless paved in the middle. Taught by experience I now knew that in so long a day’s journey there was nothing to do except to splash, not exactly through thick & thin, but through thin, reserving my efforts to avoid the thick when possible. When you consider that I had to ride on the mule for long distances with my feet in the state this implied, you will see that this mode of travelling would have been madness if I had been at all in the condition of a pulmonary patient. Evidently the pulmonary disease has long been arrested, & my digestion & general health are the things to be now considered, & the walk today with all its difficulties was not at all too much. I always got off the mule when my feet began to get cold. The day cleared very slowly & was tolerable at last, though there was one smart shower towards evening. The wind now a tramontana¹¹ & coldish, was behind us all the way.—A few miles from Castel Vetrano we emerged on a wide moor—I do not know what else to call it: there was no grass, (except in a spot here & there) except tufts of a very coarse tall grass such as we see on a hardy wet English heath. The place of heath was taken by palmetto & asphodel, with daphne, thistles, & the bushy root leaves of a large umbelliferous plant universal in Sicily, which the people call fennel but wrongly: it may be what used to be called fennel giant. This moor like many in England stretched & swelled into hills separated by ravines extending to the sea, which was almost always visible. These ravines grew deeper & hills higher & across them we had to make our way. About halfway we came to a town or village, called by the guide Membrici: it was a strange place—it had a main street I should think a mile long, & many short streets crossing it at right angles all perfectly straight, all neatly paved (though with cailloux) & all with raised Edition: current; Page: [370] trottoirs on both sides: while the houses (even in the main street) which had a story above the ground floor, were a small minority, & most of those looked as perfect hovels as the rest. The country now became more covered with green corn & the valleys not so deep. All day we had been coming nearer to the one mountain I saw two days ago & this, on which the sunshine & clouds made fine colours, now appeared to be the vanguard of many other mountains, yet only partially visible. One, much lower than itself, was between it & the sea, & at the foot of this lay Sciacca—itself on a height, just over the sea. The first view of this as we approached it from a height, shewed behind it a bay bounded by mountains, & it appeared that here at last the beautiful part of Sicily was to recommence: it will be provoking now if I miss seeing it properly, through the malice of the superior powers in putting off the rainy season till my arrival. We entered Sciacca just after dark: it was lighted with oil lamps & seems very neatly paved & clean—in the centre of it we came upon a scene of hurly burly, the main street forming a most noisy & crowded market by lamplight, of every conceivable (in Sicily) eatable thing—at one end of this is the inn & the window of my room overlooks & overhears it. It is too late now my precious to write any more tonight.

March 12. Montallegro. The market at Sciacca was as noisy this Monday morning as it was on Sunday night. Sicily is the only country I know where bread is commonly sold not in shops but in markets & at stalls in the street. There was an immense quantity of bread visible, & it was everywhere marked of three qualities, at 11, 10 & 9 Sicilian grains (only half the Neapolitan grains) the rotolo: about five farthings the English pound. It is very good bread, to be the common bread of the people: & I now find it agrees with me as well as any other. The morning at first promised fair, but when we started at half past eight it rained, & the whole day was a succession of heavy showers: each longer & coming after a shorter interval than its predecessor. It is hard to have the north wind & the rainy weather too. Dr Strange says the March winds are hurtful to pulmonary patients by their dryness. The present one has not that fault at least. But as our course lay not far from south, having the wind behind us during the rain was an advantage: if we had not I do not know what I should have done. The great inconvenience in walking today was the dense clay. The situation of Sciacca is beautiful, & as we advanced the bay shewed itself, resembling en petit the gulf of Salerno & with mountains round it looking like those of Antibes from Nice. To the left one after another of the mountains of the interior came in sight. We travelled over clay hills lying between these mountains & the sea. The heights were less steep & high & the ravines not so deep & narrow as yesterday: & we crossed successively three broad valleys, fording a river in each, which in the third (much swollen by the rain) could not from the rapidity of the current Edition: current; Page: [371] have been done if two men had not waded through holding the mules: though all three streams in ordinary times are very small. These valleys, & some of the other hollows with sloping sides are at present great fields of green corn without a building of any kind in sight. The intervening heights, except a patch here & there, are moor such as I described. When I came out on the height overlooking the second of the three valleys I saw a mountain scene, spread out before me from right to left, which though rain was falling on most of it I could see to be equal to anything I have seen in Sicily: it most resembles in variety of summits, heights & distances the Cumberland mountains seen from near Keswick. Every step now brought us nearer to these, & at last we put up at a real village—a little country village, just among the first of those mountains—& I felt as if just entering into the Alps or Pyrenees. I walked less today. Finding myself able to do so much yesterday, & setting out strong today I thought I had got over the hurtfulness of the mule travelling, especially as it is no longer painful as it was: but having remained on the mule about an hour to cross the first river & its valley (quite impassable from mud) when I got down afterwards I was in the same strange state as before—unable to walk, save at a creeping pace—the nervous energy completely gone, as if it were the beginning of paralysis. At this pace we should never have arrived & I had to get up again & be carried nearly all the rest of the way notwithstanding wet feet—though when they got very cold I tried to warm them a little by walking. The horrid weather, which gets worse every day, has entirely spoilt this tour, but though if I had foreseen this I should not have come, I am glad that I did come, since it has been good for my health (though my digestion has not quite kept up the improvement I mentioned). I have gained a knowledge of what this country is—& I have got many plants. I must look to the Greek part of the journey now for enjoyment. This day’s journey was 24 Sicilian or about 27 English miles. The room is bare enough but differs from those in the towns chiefly by having still less furniture. It has no glass to the windows: only shutters, & not always these. But the situation is charming. And now I must leave off, for the industrious fleas are so teazing every part of my body that I must begin the attack. They evidently get in every evening through the legs of the trousers.

March 14. Girgenti. Heavy rain again put off our starting: when we did start it was, & continued, lowering weather, but no more rain for some hours. The road & its vicinity can be compared to nothing but a ploughed field in the Weald of Kent after two months rain. We went first along a valley between two ranges of low rocky mountains, beyond one of which was the sea. In fine weather this, & all the journey of today, would be most beautiful. We again forded a river in the same manner as on the 12th & from its depth & rapidity it was evident that the much larger river of the 12th was by this Edition: current; Page: [372] time unfordable. We passed through a little gap & came out on the side next the sea, but soon diverged to cut off a point, passing up a valley to a little town called Siculiana. Here the rocky mountain paths on one side of the road, furnished for a short time firm footing. The rocks here are crystalline, some of them very beautifully, & I recognized these as gypsum. For a mile out of Siculiana (which seen from outside looked exactly like the towns in the old engravings with every house marked) the top of a stone wall afforded a footpath. Then the mud returned. We shortly reached the top of the pass & looked down on the Gulf of Girgenti—to which we soon descended. It looked as dark as muddy water could make it, with an immense rolling surf—the wind being now violent. The bay is overlooked by clay cliffs, like those at Boulogne along the base of which we passed—at the approach to the Port of Girgenti these are tapissé with a sort of ice plant. The port, though there seemed but little shipping, seemed well built & looked rather prosperous. It is one of the chief export places for sulphur. Caravans of mules & donkeys laden with lumps or cakes of sulphur preceded us from Montallegro. Girgenti itself is about four miles from the port & the road between them as good as an English turnpike road. The first sight of Girgenti though it was already raining was very striking. It spread out on a mountain about the height of Volterra, forming part of a basin of low mountains or high hills (which you please) grouped very finely & resembling on a larger scale some of the country at the foot of Dartmoor. The lower slope of the Girgenti hill is covered with cactuses of which we have seen few lately & the plain richly cultivated. By this time the weather had changed from sunshine at the port to a violent thunderstorm. I thought I had never heard thunder so grand: a tremendous crash at first, lengthened out by reverberation from so many hills at different distances that after the sound had partly died away it returned louder from some more distant hill, sometimes after it had quite stopt. (Before we had got quite up the hill it had ceased, but returned two or three hours after with the most brilliant sheet lightning.) A tempest of wind, hail & rain accompanied it. The inn is decent, better than any lately, though worse than anything one ever thinks of calling an inn. It has a splendid view from my window, across the narrow plain to the sea. The town seems ugly internally. My hurt thumb which even after the gathering broke, has never ceased to trouble me, is now evidently gathering again, & I poulticed it again last night, which is the reason I did not write till this morning. I shall now go to the post & next to the Consul¹² with Goodwin’s letter as he may possibly give me some advice about getting to Catania. I am not at all inclined in this weather to go on with mules, if I can get a carriage at all decent, & at a price not too extortionate: though the manifold capabilities of the muleteer who undertakes for provisions & does everything I need—in every way, are some weight on the other side. Today the weather Edition: current; Page: [373] is sunny after the storm but there is no appearance of a change—Reading this letter through I find it is all dry narrative without a word of the love I have been feeling & which is my comfort & strength. My darling will know that I am thinking all the time of her & that her existence & love are to me what the Deity is to a devout person—I feel through everything that she is the fond of my existence, all the rest plays on the surface. It is writing to her in the evening about the day’s incidents that makes them interesting. But I have not wished for her in any of these uncomfortable places, though I did constantly at Palermo. Adieu now my dearest angel—love me always.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

14th March [1855]

Girgenti

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

228.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

begun at

Girgenti

,

14th March [1855]

35

By the same good fortune in the middle of bad which I had at Selinus I had now one of the most beautiful of days for seeing the temples. They are by far the finest I have seen, taking situation into account: a bad situation is the great defect of those at Paestum. But these are not only in the very places to which one would go for the sake of the finest views that can be had, but also are seen from far on every side & are as strikingly beautiful from far as from near. They are on the plain, speaking comparatively with the present town (which is said to be on the site of the Acropolis of the ancient town) but really on a line of lower heights, separated from the town by a deep hollow, which is said to have been occupied by the old Agrigentum, the second in magnitude & power & the first in wealth & luxury of the Greek cities of Sicily. Nothing can exceed the view from the sloping road which descends the mountain eastward & exhibits the principal temples in many combinations & distances with the sea behind them. I then passed over the hollow filled with olives & larger almond trees than I ever saw, all in full leaf & with a summer aspect. The temples deploy themselves on a succession of decreasing heights. The first two, in the highest & best positions, are also the best preserved, especially the second, known as the Temple of Concord, but so called on no authority at all, neither did the Greeks erect temples to abstractions, though the Romans did. In this temple not only the row of columns, double in front, & single all round, with pediments & entablature are perfect, but also the walls of the inner recess or cella, of which at Paestum one only with difficulty traces the outline. Here the two long sides are complete (though some narrow round arches were cut through them in the middle ages when this temple was used as a church), also the front with the great Egyptian looking gateway: only the other short end, behind the Edition: current; Page: [374] altar, is gone: great part of the altar itself is preserved. Nothing almost is wanting but the roof. Within the wall adjoining the gateway is a staircase of 42 steps winding not round but square, which I went up & came out level with the tops of the columns: Of the temples of Hercules & Jupiter Olympicus, only ruins remain: in the latter nothing is erect, in the former only a broken column: but the entire outlines are shewn in what remains. In that of Jupiter Olympicus the blocks, enormous as they are, do not lie heaped on one another as at Selinus, as if the temple had just been thrown down, but merely lie about, most having evidently been removed: but it is striking from its amazing size: you know how small the interior of a house looks when in building or pulling down it shews only the ground plan—this on the contrary looks as large as the nave of St Peter’s & combining it with the immense dimensions of the portions of columns, capitals & pediments which lie on the ground, it must have been as imposing as the temples of Egypt. There are three other ruined temples close together, but the remains of two are trifling & the third nothing comparable to those I have mentioned. The old walls of the city went along these heights & are partly of the native rock—hollowed out everywhere into cavities for tombs—a really curious sight. Mrs Starke most absurdly disparages these temples on the ground that those which are more complete than Paestum are not so large, & those which are larger than Paestum are mere ruins.² I never knew rightly what a Greek temple was till I saw these, & I shall be surprised if anything I see at Athens is finer—not to mention the glorious situation. Returning to the city, whenever I looked back, the mountain line further on the coast towards Palma & Alicata looked indescribably beautiful in the late afternoon lights. I had put off my walk till afternoon by which I got the ground tolerably dry under the warm sun & drying wind: but the roads here are good. Before my walk I called on the Vice Consul, a Mr Oates, & presented my note from Goodwin—he had been expecting me for some days & Goodwin had very politely sent me a Galignani through him—of the 20th, the latest I have seen. This does not contain what has been heard through private letters, the resignation of some more of the ministers.³ But it says that then the frost was harder than ever in England & the Thames frozen over—how very unpleasant this is. I have no doubt there is some round about connexion between it & the untimely rains at Naples & here. Oates, an elderly quiet bland sort of man, was very civil without being obtrusively so. His son, a young man of about 20, offered to enquire for me about carriages to Catania—There are only two to let for hire in the town, & these do not go long journeys—the only chance is a return carriage & this young man thought one had arrived from Palermo—it had, but when I called on my return to learn the result, he said Edition: current; Page: [375] that the man demanded five days instead of three, & 35 piastres—all my conceptions of possible demand had not gone beyond double what I pay to my muleteer for board, lodging & all which for the same distance would be only 15 piastres or for three days only nine—& 18 was the utmost I thought would be even asked. If the weather looks well tomorrow—(& this evening as well as day have been fine & Oates thinks the thunderstorm has ended the bad weather) I shall go on with my muleteer, not to Catania but to Syracuse, which is not further by mules, & saves the journey thither from Catania. I believe it is also much finer country & the muleteer says the inns are fully better than those I have passed. I find no meaning or truth hitherto in Bartlett’s comparative estimate of the different inns. But they may have got better or worse since he passed, though that was only two or three years ago. Young Oates also offered to take me tomorrow to see the museum of Signor Politi,⁴ the great antiquarian of this part of Sicily. In return for these civilities I could not refuse to dine with them tomorrow, en famille, that is, father sons & a very common looking daughter.

15th. The morning broke fine but soon changed, & at one o’clock I was caught in a rain which lasted till dark. I wandered about in the vicinity of the temples, & particularly observed the two well preserved ones from the side next the sea. A mural ledge of rocks, which is so common at the top of limestone ridges, had been well taken advantage of by the people of old Agrigentum as a fortification for their city—& it is curious that in this they should have excavated their tombs. Before this I had gone with young Oates to Politi’s museum—he is a painter, an architect & much besides & a bland old gentleman but his vases, medals &c. are nothing remarkable to any one who has seen others. I went also to the cathedral, a large bare building with ancient columns whitewashed! there is a sarcophagus with very fine Greek alti relievi of Phaedra & Hippolytus which Goethe admired extremely.⁵ I dined with Oates according to engagement—he has ten children—all born at Naples or in Sicily: two sons are now in England & two daughters at Palermo: the rest live with him, including two married daughters with their pleasant looking Sicilian husbands & their young children the whole of whom dined at one table. He appears to have no wife alive. The daughters looked very vulgar English but the English they spoke, & the son likewise, was foreign in accent & often in idiom. I cannot manage to converse in Italian yet, beyond short sentences. Oates says the climate here is cooler in summer & colder in winter than Palermo—they have less of the scirocco. Living is Edition: current; Page: [376] dear, houserent dear, everything he says dear, from overtaxation & protecting duties. All provisions are dearer at little Girgenti than at great Naples as he knows, having lived at both. I do not much trust any general impressions however, for he said the country people are very badly off, but it appeared they earn 14 or 15 pence a day which to them cannot be great poverty. The lands in this neighbourhood are by his account all church property, held on cottier tenure. He seems to have a thorough hatred of the priests & he says nobody in Sicily cares one jot for them or the Pope—even the common people do not care for the Pope, only for the saints. At the first possible turn in Europe he is convinced that everything will go, Catholicism & all. He had just got Galignani up to the 23d. So the three ministers ran away from Roebuck’s investigation.⁶ It is believed all over Sicily that the Emperor Nicholas is dead—died suddenly on the 2nd of this month.⁷ If so there will soon be an end of the war. Meanwhile it pained me to see that the frost continued worse than ever up to the latest date. Oates’ is the best looking & best situated house in Girgenti but there were no fireplaces in it till he made them. There never are any, he says. He presses me to stay here till the weather improves but as he does not now think it will improve till the end of the month I cannot spare the time unless I give up Greece. I do not now expect to have any enjoyment of Sicily at all except five of the ten days at Palermo, & the first two of this journey. But after all it is but five mule days to Syracuse, where I come into good inns—& from Palermo here has been twelve days of which only the first two were free from rain or the still worse consequences of rain. If it does not pour tomorrow I shall go.

16th Palma. A fine morning & the day was uninterruptedly fine throughout. I therefore took leave of Oates & by starting about eleven (the day’s journey being short) gave the sun time to dry up the country a little: so that about half the way was walkable with more or less difficulty: the rest I was carried over. I had availed myself of my stay at Girgenti to replace my old trousers & boots which this journey has completely finished, by others of Girgenti manufacture which really look much better than I expected. The road for some miles had beautiful views of the temples, & of Girgenti itself for many more, each time that we crossed a height & we only finally lost sight of it when we crossed the mountain ridge which looked so beautiful the other evening. All the way the sea was near on the right & the range of low mountains on one of which Girgenti stands, on the left, but from this ridge we also saw across into the interior which was very mountainous, with one very fine peaked mountain, which the guide called the mountain of Camerata. Edition: current; Page: [377] Beyond this ridge the low range of mountains came still nearer & we soon came in sight of Palma a small town which like most others on this coast is on a height & dominates a narrow plain, only here the plain, included between two mountain ridges projecting out into the sea, is itself all hill & dale. This town like Siculiana looked exactly like the towns in the old prints—every house separate, & consisting only of what in those prints is taken as the smallest amount of detail which will do to represent a house—with low tiled roof & perhaps one tiny window visible. It was a comfort here & at Girgenti to see no domes—& the renouncing of those tiresome domes led at once to making a comparatively good front & towers to the principal church. The carruba trees are very fine hereabouts—they are the most spreading, luxuriant, clean looking & altogether finest trees I have seen in Sicily. The inn at this tiny place is decidedly better than the one at Girgenti: the whole house has been quite recently whitewashed, which is a good sign: & a propos, four men passed the window with quite clean cotton nightcaps on their heads, a sight which struck me with wonder. The inn had silver spoons too which I had not seen since Palermo, but I do not find a flea the less. The way I find is to attack these creatures early in the morning before they are awake, by which means I killed this morning about eight out of twelve which were asleep on my flannel waistcoat. The chairs here are of a kind I never saw before, the seats made of a network of packthread. The number of caravans of animals loaded with sulphur which we met today was very great.

17th. Terranova. I did the inn at Palma injustice, for I found but one flea on my clothes in the morning, & this probably was one of those I brought with me. Another splendid day from morning till night & there is now every appearance of the continuance of fine weather. We started a little before eight, & the morning lights in the valley of Palma were most pleasant, but the day soon grew & continued hazy, as I suppose must be expected during the drying up of wet. But the sun pitches in so strong that there was little difficulty in walking from wet ground in the morning & none in the afternoon. After getting out of the valley of Palma we crossed a ridge & descended into a wider plain with no village or buildings in it, & soon reached the beach & went some way along sand hills: then, to cut off a point, went along the foot of the ridge which bounded the plain on the further side & which was lovely with trees—though they were all olives & other fruit trees, but of immense size. We then crossed the ridge at a low point, & came out on a view of a great bay with the land beyond it heading away to the south, apparently high inland & low on the coast, quite to Cape Passaro, the southern promontory of the island: So at least the guide said, though I rather think from the map that what I saw must be Point Spinapesce, some distance short of Cape Passaro. This view of half the length of the longest of the three coasts of the Edition: current; Page: [378] island, brought back a feeling I had very strongly in the first two or three days of this excursion—that going round Sicily is very like going round the Isle of Wight. We passed through only a corner of the little port of Alicata or Licata, which is next to Girgenti as a port for the exportation of sulphur—several ships were in the offing waiting for it—Goodwin told me that 20,000 tons of sulphur are exported from Sicily every year. We then passed the river Salso, the largest river I have seen in Sicily, by a ferry, & having crossed the plain of Licata, the rest of our way was along the shore with generally clay (but occasionally gypsum) cliffs to our left. The clear sea horizon was most beautiful & a number of fishing boats out at sea stood up in front of it most beautifully. There is a very perceptible tide here—the breadth of beach which was left wet by the receding water was considerable: Whenever we could see into the interior, which was especially the case in crossing the last sandhill into Terranova, we could see beyond the rather large plain of that town, & mountainous country very wildly thrown about. Various bold points jutted out into the sea, with usually an old tower on them. This was a long day’s journey, 36 Sicilian miles (41 English) & we did not arrive till it was almost completely dark, & found, in this mostly unpaved town (which has a large, & for Sicily fine, cathedral) an evening market by lamplight as active as at Sciacca. This has not been a good day with me. I had an indigestion all day, but I walked a great part of the way. At last I knocked up from fatigue of the back & abdominal muscles, by sitting on the mule, & had to lay myself down on the side of a sandhill—but soon recovered by walking. The inn here is as clean & good as that at Palma & I have not perceived a single flea. Bartlett & every other book represented the inns between Girgenti & Syracuse as so much worse than any others that I thought that route at any rate must be avoided. On the contrary, coming to these from the others is like coming into a more civilized country. Here there is an attempt at all sorts of things like the regular inns of other countries. On a part of the sandhills there grows a beautiful white broom which filled the air with perfume like a fine bean field.

18th. As the next day’s journey was to be again a very long one, I thought it prudent after yesterday’s fatigue to give myself a day’s rest. The days when one halts are the pleasantest of all, but I grudge them, because each is the loss of a day in Greece. However I needed it, for I felt weak all day. The day was again splendid, & a south wind was gently blowing—the driest wind here, because coming from the neighbouring coast of Africa. The weather has apparently settled, & I am lucky in this that the rainy weather came when there was least to see. I left the town by the eastern gate, & was thinking nothing particular about the place but feeling the not disagreeable melancholy Edition: current; Page: [379] which a fine day in the country tends to give (when one is alone). I turned my eyes round, & there stood Aetna! there over a pass in the nearer mountains, against the cloudless sky, she stood, not looking so high as I expected, because the brilliant white colour made her seem only just behind the other mountains, & also because her vast base makes the ascent to the conical summit, as seen from here, rather gentle. All that was visible of the mountain, which seemed almost the whole, was one unbroken mass of snow, like the Jungfrau from Interlaken: across which, in the course of the day, light summer clouds sometimes flitted, seeming like dark spots on the white. But before evening it looked an immense height, because I had more realized the distance. Terranova is built on one of the sandhills (though it is clay at the base next the sea) & this being very steep & tolerably high the town looks down over the green plain, an unusually large one, to the amphitheatre of low mountains which bounds it. Down the hill, on the beach, is the little port, where I saw them shipping sulphur in lighters to take it to the ships further out. I wandered over the sandhills, & seashore, & botanized, not walking to any great distance, but seeking out places to sit down which best combined in one view the sea, the picturesque looking town, the coast & the mountains. The sun was almost too hot to walk but not too hot to sit down in, facing the breeze. In the evening I went out on the roof of the house, one of the highest in Terranova, from which the little town looks as well as so dirty & squalid a place can, & Aetna & the mountains are seen to perfection as well as the whole coast, to Alicata one way, & the cape (Passaro or not) the other. The woman who shewed it to me thought the plain of Palermo nothing to it—you should have seen her gesture in speaking of Palermo. In this I totally differed from her but this is very fine also though the mountains eastward are ridges & with these & all the others (except Aetna) low compared with those of Palermo. At Terranova there seems a very active manufacture of maccaroni, vermicelli & various other forms of paste, which are spread or hung out in the sun to dry—also much pottery, baking in the sun: here, as at Sciacca & elsewhere numberless amphorae & jars of the exact pattern of the ancients: as well as the large semicylindrical tiles of which the roofs are made. There has been ringing of bells, firing cannon & musketry, & military music at intervals all day, it seems on account of the feast of St Joseph which is tomorrow, & this the Sunday preceding it. I perceive the town is paved with small stones, but the accumulation of earth & rubbish on the pavement hid it from me in the twilight. There are plenty of fleas here, as I found this morning. Among the marks of civilization a comb & clothes brush (or rather hatbrush) were presented, one stuck into the other. A little way at the eastern gate is one immense column, in the Selinus stile, lying broken on the ground, capital & all: this is the only relic I saw of Edition: current; Page: [380] the ancient Gela, which stood close to this place. The present town was built by the emperor Frederic 2d.⁸

19th Chiaramonte. We started at half past seven & I was much more vigorous for my day’s rest. The sandhills drop down a little beyond Terranova into ordinary dunes. We crossed the green plain by a mere track to the flat hills on the east side of it. When we got among these the way lay over country which is like nothing so much as the very finest English commons: instead of the asphodel, bushes of different sorts—a yellow thorny broom in full flower & as brilliant as ours, ilex, juniper, two kinds of cistus of which one in flower (a large white flower almost as large as the gum cistus) quantities of phillyroeas & many pretty verdant bits of grassy pasture intermixed. We crossed valleys & heights of this character, occasionally seeing Aetna from the heights & the sea to our right diverging to a greater distance, for we were now going inland, to cut off the south east corner of the island. At last we turned up a cultivated valley directly from the sea, bounded by heights of the same description, & after a time ascended a ridge to the right, to a small town named Biscaro, commanding splendid views both ways. Here we saw before us the long line of high ground ending with Cape Passaro, which I had seen across the bay from the heights above Alicata. They were high hills rather than mountains, having a mere waving line of ridges instead of summits, & as we descended into the plainlike valley between, it seemed very like crossing Sussex to get to the South Downs: only these must be about three times the height. Aetna was visible all the way, at last with her breast hidden by clouds & only the great summit appearing above—but the clouds were only like a dark girdle. On the very summit are two or three permanently dark spots, probably precipices too steep for snow to lie. The shape of Aetna is not conical, for the outlines are curves, not straight lines: it is nearer to a hemisphere than a cone, & is in truth a very broad paraboloid. In front of us was the little town of Chiaramonte (where I am now writing) about halfway up the hill, & looking from a distance like the entrance to some old quarry on the side of a chalk hill: but this is before the folds of the hillsides display themselves. There is a long rather steep rise in the country before you get to the base of the hill itself. From every part of the ascent & from Chiaramonte itself the view is splendid—you see much further than Alicata, & the sea to a great distance: & all the ridges & inequalities in the country I have just crossed are so dwarfed by the distance & the superior height that the whole looks like one plain, extending to the central mountains. Certainly plains also are among the fine things in nature: especially when they are as diversified in colouring & character as this is, chequered with trees & varied with verdant cultivation. About Biscari were some Edition: current; Page: [381] immense trunks of old carruba trees. The day was magnificent, & remembering what Naples was in February, I did not wonder that in Sicily & in March it felt like a hot July day. But it is noticeable that one does not the less want a fire in the evening & I regularly freeze till I get my braciere.⁹ The inn here is the worst I have come to, & the only one which quite deserves the abuse of Sicilian inns—I mean as to comfortlessness & dirt: insects I have not yet observed. Today has I believe carried off (by the aid of medicine) the indigestion of the last day or two & I feel unusually well. I have been thinking lately that I am perhaps wrong in drinking no wine. My reason was to avoid increasing the feverishness which belongs to pulmonary disease: but I never have any of this now; I am never feverish, except now & then from indigestion (yesterday was the first time for months) & the stomach is the main thing which requires assistance. Now it is very possible that at my time of life the digestion needs to be aided by some stimulus, & we must remember that for many years I had not abstained altogether from wine, beer &c, as I now have for a year & a half. I feel sure that bitter ale or porter would have been good for me today, & I have felt so several times lately. While I seemed to digest well it was better to change nothing, but it is a different thing now when I cannot reckon upon my digestion: it is exactly a case for experiments. I get excellent provisions excellently cooked, thanks to my guide who provides the materials at the places where they are to be had & cooks them himself: my most unual dinner is soup, chicken & potatoes.

20th. Palazzuolo. A day to be long remembered for the extreme beauty of the journey through the highlands of south eastern Sicily. We started as before early, & ascended the remainder of the range of hills on the side of which Chiaramonte stands. The view behind us as might be expected was still finer than yesterday evening, for these hills which I said were three times the height of the South Downs, are nearer to being three times that of the Malvern Hills. We saw as far as to a mountain beyond Sciacca but the country about Terranova & along the coast were hid by cloud or sea fog on which looking down the effect was singular: looking on the upper surface of the clouds their inequalities resembled round bushes or clumps of trees. As we ascended we saw more & more of Etna (which the people here call l’Etina, a word I could not make out at first) & at last from a point on one of the principal heights it displayed itself in full grandeur; raised high by intermediate heights, & by the much greater portion which was visible, including a large dark region free from snow: & from this proceeded east & west the whole range of the Nebrodes or Madonie, beginning about the level of the dark part of Aetna, but rising here & there above that level, topped with snow, & one distant mountain quite covered with it. This range of mountains Edition: current; Page: [382] seemed to flow from Etna & one could fancy it a lava stream which had all come out of the crater. Some distance further on we came in sight of the view the other way—commanding a vast extent of country all in ridges & vallies strangely thrown about. You can imagine a great extent of hilly country, formed of rock & therefore angular, but of soft rock which wears away by water, & you know what an infinity of hollows of all sorts will be carved out by mere water power—so it was here. Certainly, whatever one sometimes thinks, the view of hills & mountains is not everything, the view from them is something quite peculiar—the vast multitude of distinguishable places & objects which the eye takes in at once, while one feels lifted out of all the littleness of it & conscious of a beauty which seems lent to it by something grander. Dieu merci there are views of this kind in England within a walk of dear Blackheath, which have affected me at times, in equally fine weather, quite as much as this; but not in the month of March. The remainder of the journey was through & among these hollows & ridges—hollows innumerable with several bold ridges stretching in different directions: & from every height there was the same view with variations—one in particular I remember, a long winding valley stretching far below us, we overlooking not only the valley but the gradually descending heights which formed it—as one fancies the valley in Tennyson’s Oenone,¹⁰ only that there is no forest or turf here: the valley ends in a plain & the plain soon terminates in the eastern sea. This way however there was a good deal of haze, while overhead there was a Nice sky, & all was bright & clear from the direction of Etna. There was a pleasant southerly wind, the much abused Scirocco, which brought some clouds to mitigate the really oppressive heat of the sun. The sunshine on the snow of Etna produced a peculiarly soft tint, quite unlike the white glare of snow, verging a little upon yellow. At last we came in sight of the sea in front, & at the same time saw Palazzuolo our sleeping place where we arrived by two in the afternoon. It is a village-like town, but of considerable size, & much more neatly built & kept than common in Sicily—standing round the end & near the top of one of the highest ridges. Although I was tired, having walked the greatest part of the way, I set out again soon to visit the remains of the Greek town of Acrae, which stood at the very top of this same ridge. There is the most perfect theatre I have yet seen, with the steps almost unbroken—& what is much more curious, an amazing quantity of tombs elaborately cut out in the soft rock, much more elaborate & curious than those at Girgenti. There was a museum here, which the owner, a Baron Judica,¹¹ allowed to be Edition: current; Page: [383] seen containing antiquities found in these ruins, but it seems his property is sequestrated for his debts & the museum cannot now be seen. From this summit I saw the eastern sea far & wide, & the celebrated harbour of Syracuse (though not the town) apparently quite near: with a fine view also of Etna. The inn is such as I have learnt to think comfortable: but at the place at Chiaramonte they gave damp sheets, & I could not bring myself to throw them off & lie between the horrid mattress & the more horrid coverlet, so I have caught a bad cold in my head—the first thing of the sort I have had, though exposed to nearly everything that could give it. In ascending to Palazzuolo we passed through a grove of real oaks—deciduous oaks—not yet at all green, though the buds seem ready to burst. But all vegetation is late on these high grounds. I have been worrying my self with the thought that I have no letter later than the 15th of February—but I have lost no letter by this journey, for the dates of the latest newspapers at Girgenti shewed that nothing could have been received of later date than a week after the 15th & you would not have written again in a week. It is very long to wait till Messina & yet I do not like to hurry past Catania & Etna & I am afraid to write to Messina for the letters lest they should miscarry—yet I am inclined to try.

21st. Syracuse. We started a little after seven & pursued our course through the same sort of country, only with a constant direction downwards. The day was not so hot, the scirocco having brought a considerable quantity of cloud, which however cleared off towards afternoon. The views we caught of Etna were only partial, clouds covering parts of the mountain & leaving others visible. At length we got into what I supposed was the plain of Syracuse; but even this, it appeared, was an irregular table land, rocky & in great part barren like the country about Montpellier, which in point of productions it resembled. Even here the asphodels were not yet in flower but there were most beautiful earlier flowers especially cyclamens, & a dwarf iris with large blue, sometimes blue & yellow flowers. When this table land begins to drop down into the real plain it does so by long gorges with precipitous walls of rock on both sides, about the breadth of the moat of a fortified town: some of these are very magnificent to look down into: we descended into one & went along it for some distance. We emerged at a little place called Fiorelle [or Floridia?]¹² after which we had about ten miles of real plain, & good carriage road, catching every now & then most magnificent views of the town with its grand harbour. The rich & fertile plain of Syracuse is very much larger than that of Palermo, & is bounded not by mountains but by the highlands I have just crossed, which though not angular or peaked have a splendid effect in these fine lights. I had the good luck to Edition: current; Page: [384] approach the town in a bright afternoon feeling & looking like the finest July day. The approach was from the side of the greater harbour, which was calm & glassy, & across it the large white buildings of the town shone brightly in the sun. You know the town is at present confined to the island, which was only one of five large quarters in the time of Syracusan greatness: but even now it looks, & is, one of the larger towns of Sicily. I do not think there is any town, not even Athens, which I have so much feeling about as Syracuse: it is the only ancient town of which I have studied, & know & understand, the localities: so nothing was new or dark to me. I cannot look at that greater harbour which my window in the Albergo del Sole looks directly upon, without thinking of the many despairing looks which were cast upon the shores all round (as familiar to me as if I had known them all my life) by the armament of Nicias & Demosthenes.¹³ That event decided the fate of the world, most calamitously—If the Athenians had succeeded they would have added to their maritime supremacy all the Greek cities of Sicily & Italy, Greece must soon have become subordinate to them & the empire thus formed in the only way which could have united all Greece, might have been too strong for the Romans & Carthaginians. Even if they had failed & got away safe, Athens could never have been subdued by the Peloponnesians, but would have remained powerful enough to prevent Macedonia from emerging from obscurity, or at all events to be a sufficient check on Philip¹⁴ & Alexander. Perhaps the world would have been now a thousand years further advanced if freedom had thus been kept standing in the only place where it ever was or could then be powerful. I thought & felt this as I approached the town till I could have cried with regret & sympathy. The present town is one of the most strongly fortified I ever saw: it has been made island within islands & when you have crossed the first drawbridge (there are several) & think you have arrived, you have to wind in & out through successive lines of defences—but (as the landlord here said) though there are fortifications, there are no guns. There is however a large body of Swiss who marched out as we marched in—I may judge them wrongly, but I thought I never saw so many bad faces: all that did not look stupid seemed to have something sinister. In Edition: current; Page: [385] the course of our windings we got to the smaller harbour, on the opposite side of the town, & looked across it at the side of the remainder of the ancient city. I certainly never saw any sea look so deep a blue as the sea did from this point. The streets of Syracuse are mean looking, the cross streets vile dirty lanes—but this seems to be, what it has long had the credit of being, a good inn; though a little Sicilian in some respects, not like the one at Palermo. When I asked if they had a good room with a fireplace, saying I had one at Palermo, the landlord said it was sometimes cold at Palermo but never here. I fear however the worse evil of gnats, which are buzzing about me. But O the splendor of the evening view from my window. Down immediately on the greater harbour over which boats, apparently pleasure boats, were moving—the softest lights over the plain & highlands; &, to the right, Etna which can be seen from nearly all Sicily. On enquiry finding there was a diligence (the mail) to Catania in ten hours, & that it would take my diminished luggage, I resolved to go by it & to stay in these comfortable quarters long enough thoroughly to enjoy the place. So I parted from my muleteer with great good will on my side, & apparently on his—If I go round Etna I shall miss him very much, but it would be too expensive to keep him on till then. The last six days, the fine weather part of this mule journey, have been delightful, but I am not sorry to exchange it now for going from place to place by diligence & taking walks from the places I stop at. I shall now write to Messina to have the letters which must be there sent to Catania, & darling, write next to Corfu—as I shall not return to Naples if I can get across with any endurable amount of sea. I can bear the unpleasantness or rather, real suffering, now I have found that it does not, as I thought in January, do me permanent harm—& every day saved for Greece, or enabled to be had here without abridging Greece too much, is worth going through something for. My cold seems going off—it was very bad for a few hours but has gone through its stages very quickly. How I long to hear from you. A thousand thousand loves.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 22. [1855]

Syracuse

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

229.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

begun at

Syracuse

,

March 22. [1855]

36

My first night at Syracuse was almost sleepless from mosquitoes which were as bad as they ever were at Nice: but the landlord on being told of it proposed to put up mosquito curtains, & has done so. On my expressing surprise at their beginning so early, he said that this wind (the scirocco) Edition: current; Page: [386] occasionally brings some even at this season. If it is the scirocco they should now disappear, for the wind has changed to west, & there have been (though the day was sunny) clouds of rather a rainy look. The day was spent in going over the ground of ancient Syracuse with Politi,² brother of the one at Agrigentum, who is Cicerone in chief here. I am sorry to say he does not know his business thoroughly, for he made several great historical blunders, & is evidently not only an ignorant but a dull man. He talks some French, but I get on better with him in Italian, for when being unable to express something in Italian I said it in French, I found he never understood me. He constantly reminded me of Meynell’s complaint about the Sicilians, that they never can understand anything—this man like a very dull Englishman was quite put out by anything like a mot & could only understand what was said with the utmost literalness. It would not interest you to go over minutely the historical ground, but I wonder no one who has written about Syracuse has said anything (that I remember) about the extreme beauty of the place. Every view of & from the town is fine; & the view from the heights of Epipolae is one of the most magnificent conceivable: not only the town, its two harbours, the sea & the southern highlands, but the other way two most charming bays, of Thapsus & of Agosta—Catania also, but not visible today from haze which also hid the whole snowy part of Etna, but for the first time the whole of the enormous base was visible. The clouds afterwards drew off, but we had then left the place from which the base was visible. There are few remains of temples or public buildings but many curious excavations of tombs in the rock, quarries used as prisons & portions of ancient fortifications: much however remains to be seen tomorrow. The cathedral is a Greek temple with columns like those at Paestum built into the solid wall, & the previously solid wall of the cella hollowed out into arches: as the moderns must have their colonnade or arcade inside the temple while the ancients had theirs outside. There is some most beautiful ancient sculpture, especially two boys supporting the holy water vessel. The fountain of Arethusa still gives a plentiful supply of fine water: I do not wonder the Greeks thought it came under the sea, for it is in the island, & close to the sea. We were rowed across the greater harbour & up the Anapus (the marshes beside which, now drained & covered with corn, were fatal to two besieging armies)³ in order to see one of the curiosities of the place—the Egyptian papyrus which grows abundantly there, & according to Politi nowhere else, for he says it is extinct in Egypt. I was wrong yesterday about the soldiers; Politi says they are all Neapolitans. I thought their uniform was Swiss & full half of them had light hair. I am glad for the sake of the Swiss that those faces do not belong to Edition: current; Page: [387] them. My cold is nearly gone & apparently does not mean to leave any cough; as you know all my colds used to do. But I am freer from cough or liability to it than I ever was before I had any pulmonary attack. Evidently the disease is checked. My digestion however has been very bad all day, but it was my own fault: the bread here is so good that I ate too much of it at breakfast. The honey here (I suppose Hyblaean) is very peculiar & very good. I am sorry to say the Albergo del Sole has fleas, & a cook who excites my displeasure. I find that I had realized everything at Syracuse except the immense size of the place (of the Greek town I mean). The distance from the island to Epipolae, the further extremity of the ancient town, is very much greater than I had any idea of. I should say fully three miles as the crow flies. Politi declared we must have walked at least 14 miles. I am so fond of the place that going from it to Catania or Messina seems a step downward.

23rd. The mosquito curtains were effectual, for I had no plague with them in bed, though they were buzzing about my face all the evening—as they are this evening. The mosquitoes here are remarkably stupid, for they let themselves be killed with scarcely an effort to save themselves. Perhaps however it is I who have become more dexterous, by practice in hunting a more nimble insect. Anyway it spoils the idea of Syracuse as a place to stay in—to live there one would never think of. The greater part of today I spent in going about with Politi: there is a poor amphitheatre, but a theatre (Greek) the largest known, as usual with a fine view, & with the seats all cut out of the rock: there are also catacombs, going an immense way underground, with tombs all along, but the most curious thing by far is the quarries, in which the Athenian & other prisoners were confined, & which are really most fantastical in appearance & often very strikingly picturesque—among them is that which contains the Ear of Dionysius, & one cannot doubt for an instant that the right place has been found, for there cannot be two places where there are such extraordinary effects of sound. I did not go into the Ear itself, to which it is necessary to be drawn up by ropes, but the manner in which sounds came back magnified from the recesses of the cavern below enable one to credit any story about its acoustic properties. Two other quarries have been converted into gardens, one by a convent of Capuchins, another by a Marchese something.⁴ The old city all came out of these quarries & they look as if nothing but palaces can have been cut out of them. The day was not bright, though very pleasant: there was a light vapour, over the sky, through which the sunshine penetrated, but which spoiled the distant views. There was considerably more wind too & the sea was rather rough. All these particulars of climate are worth noting. I am a curious object to look at just Edition: current; Page: [388] now, for besides being more sunburnt than I ever was in my life, the skin is peeling off my face. Grant⁵ used to say that a walking tour, or similar continued exposure to sun & air, always had this effect upon him, but it never before happened to myself. I have taken a banquette place for the day after tomorrow, to Catania, & tomorrow I shall wander about alone. I went out a little way after dinner today, along the great harbour as far as the mouth of the Anapus. Like, I suppose, almost all the rivers of Greek history, this surprises by its smallness. It is not broader than the length of the boat in which we went up it, & is not at all deep, but is certainly rapid. The town is less mean & poor looking than I thought it, in fact decent enough, better than Girgenti or Marsala though not equal to Trapani.

24th. A cloudless day, though by no means brighter than an ordinary fine day in England. An Italian sky appears to be fabulous, in Italy at least. I set out on a sauntering walk—partly to get plants, of which I never before in one day got such a harvest. My other objects were, first, to explore one of the localities of the siege of Syracuse, the place where Demosthenes made his unsuccessful attempt on Epipolae—of which the Ciceroni know nothing. I succeeded in making out the character of the ground as described by Thucydides.⁶ Secondly I knew that by going far enough in this direction I should have the view of Etna which I ought to have had from the top of Epipolae but was prevented by the clouds. Accordingly I had it, & the mountain looked like a mountain indeed. I saw the whole from summit to base—the dark part apparently about twice the length of the snowy part: but I think this week of fine weather has considerably diminished the snow. It seems to me that the snow line is not so low down as it was. But there was also a range of mountains extending eastward from Etna (or else coming out from behind it) towards Messina; & to my surprise, beyond & higher than these, was the toe of Italy, the mountain promontory of Calabria, behind Reggio, which I had never figured to myself as visible from Syracuse. It looked large & lofty & though the air near the horizon was anything but clear, I could see glittering in the sun, high up in the mountain, what seemed a large white building but no doubt was really a town, though what, I do not know. The sea between me & it was the darkest slate colour: near the town of Syracuse it was the deep blue of the first day. Going down to the cliff on the coast I struck directly & unexpectedly on the Grotta di Nettuno, a cave in the rock into which boats go as into the Grotta Azzura: I looked down on the entrance, but could not get in for want of a boat. In the afternoon there came from the mountains exactly what we call a sea fog. I at first thought it Edition: current; Page: [389] was raining violently. But when the fog reached Syracuse it was merely clouds: it lost even its character of fog.

25th. A very unfavorable day for my journey to Catania, for though the sun shone all day, there was a haze amounting to fog over the whole prospect, & instead of having the fine view of Etna & Calabria which I had yesterday, it was not only impossible to see anything but even to see that there was anything to be seen. There is therefore less to relate about this day’s transactions than I expected. The mail was a coach, well appointed as they all seem, & driven like all coaches here, with three horses abreast: stout & smaller than English coach horses, but well made as well as strong. We took about ten hours going: starting at eight. I expected the whole day’s journey would be over a plain, but after the first few miles we diverged from the sea, & crossed rocky ridges & the valleys between them as the mulepaths did. When they do make carriage roads here they make them well: the slopes are as well managed as by French engineers & the roads well macadamized. The ridges were sometimes waste, but oftener covered with olives & vines—the vines here are putting forth their first green shoots. After a while we slowly wound up a hill higher than the rest, entirely hid in cactus, at the top of which is Carlentini, from which we looked down on Lentini at the bottom (which has replaced the ancient Leontini) & saw as well as the haze would let us, the lake of Lentini, the largest (if not the only one at all large) in Sicily. The two towns are uninteresting, & they & the lake are said by Mrs Starke to be pestilential.⁷ We climbed a long slope on the other side of the valley & proceeded along a ridge from which the view must be magnificent when it is visible: to the right we could distinguish the sea, to the left a long vista into the interior; in front the plain of Catania, all flat corn land—though it is only seven or eight miles broad, I could not distinguish the town; but from this ridge I made out, through the fog, the now familiar outline of the globular top of Etna, looking so exactly like the other clouds that if I had not seen it before I should never have suspected that it was not one of them. The lower part was entirely concealed by murky clouds, & when we got into the plain the part I had seen became scarcely distinguishable & at last altogether invisible. We crossed a considerable river, the Simaethus, by a ferry & soon got to Catania, but until within some two miles of the town could not see it distinctly. I must have lost one of the grandest views in Sicily. The approach to Catania had on the right, between the road & the sea, what resembled coal black dunes more than anything else: this is ancient lava, which has now some vegetation on it. At the very entrance, similar lava appeared on the left. It was a strange sight, descending a long straight street, to see everything made of lava: a tall ornamental town gate is of black lava: the pavement is Edition: current; Page: [390] lava; every house, except where hidden by stucco, shewed itself to be either built of hewn lava or of rough lava stuck together with cement (sometimes alternating with small tiles) & looking the oddest pepper & salt. But when I got into the main streets & places I perceived that their ornamental architecture is with white stone, much of it marble. I think it is a very handsome town, but I shall know more about it tomorrow. This inn, formerly Abate’s, the Corona, is in a back street, but a cheerful one (a mistake, the entrance is in a side street, but the house stands also in one of the main streets).⁸ As it was Sunday, the streets were very crowded & lively, like Palermo.—I note as a curious fact, that when I asked for butter I was told none was to be had—that none is made at Catania. The butter at Syracuse was excellent: what I used on the journey the muleteer took with him from Palermo. A propos I never had any difficulty in getting the finest & richest milk (almost always of goats), that is, in the morning; at night it was often not to be had, but the guide usually managed to reserve some from the morning’s stock & I only three or four times had to drink tea without. Here too there is milk, though no butter. Honey was offered as a substitute, but the honey was commonplace, it had not the peculiar flavour of Syracusan. Yet this I suppose is Hyblaean, the greater Hybla (there are two) being close by. I have a large room with plenty of furniture & shall be comfortable I think as long as I stay. Ragusa sent my portmanteau as he undertook, & it is at the customhouse, from whence I shall rescue it tomorrow.—My seat outside the coach was rather cold latterly, as I perceived for the first time at Carlentini that a tramontana had set in. It was lucky that I had put on my overcoat, though I did so for convenience of carriage, not from foresight. If Etna looks as high when it can be clearly seen as it did through the cloud, it is really in some degree like one’s old idea of how a mountain looks.—It feels odd to be in a real town again.

26th. The fog yesterday & the change of wind had their denouement in a thunderstorm & torrents of rain by which I was waked in the night; this morning the sky was brilliant but I found on going out, as strong a south west wind as the north east was yesterday: It continued fine all day but does not look such settled fine weather as it did. My first proceeding was to go out of the town by the nearest outlet, which was the one opposite to that at which I entered; & have a long look at Etna from a place by the seaside. Etna however can also be seen down the main street, which leads directly towards it. I could now distinguish the woods. In the course of the day, when sunshine & shade favoured, the numerous small cones which rise out of the side of the lower half of the mountain formed by various eruptions & from which the most destructive eruptions have taken place, projected their black forms Edition: current; Page: [391] very curiously & finely on the body of the mountain. It looked extremely close to the town; & therefore, doubtless, not so high as it is: but it looked very like one of the highest Alps separated from the rest & set down at the Knockholt beeches.⁹ I observed a curious optical phenomenon which I do not remember to have seen or heard mentioned: after gazing awhile on the snowy mountain glittering in the sunshine, a shadowy form seemed to place itself in the air on the left side & another on the right, looking like ghosts of the mountain. I suppose, as after looking at any bright colour the eye sees objects of the colour supplemental to that, i.e. which makes up with it the complete white light, so when we have been looking at the white itself we see its supplement, which can be nothing but colourlessness—shape without colour. But what shall I say of the view in the other direction, along the coast! Black lava heaped up in the utmost confusion & reaching far into the sea. It is a kind of frightful sight, like a vast exaggeration of an English coal district with the idea of vast natural power superadded. I did what I had done the first day at Palermo, took a carriage by the hour to get a general notion of the contorni—it took me first southward high enough to see a large portion of the lava stream I saw yesterday on entering—it was the stream of the eruption of 1669, which destroyed the greater part of the town, & it winds & rolls like a snake, while it consists of enormous black blocks heaped together—then I made the driver take me in the opposite direction, north & this was across nothing but lava, one stream beyond another, sometimes large blocks, sometimes not larger than the clods of a ploughed field, but then looking like cinders. The ground is thrown about in the strangest hills & ridges between the sea & the volcano: they look green from a distance, but with cactuses, which will grow in the chinks of any rock: most of the lava is only dotted here & there with vegetation in the little hollows which of course abound. In the evening I walked & climbed over a good deal of the lava; it is hard walking, the lava having sharper points & edges than any other rock. The town I find is almost all [lava ?] except where it is marble: much of what I took for white stone is stucco, divided so as to look like masonry: There are a good many handsome buildings: the cathedral, which is seldom the case in Sicily, was finer outside than in, particularly fine & imposing in this light. The chief streets are very gay & cheerful but the unpaved lanes in which the common people live are very ugly & offensive. The neighbourhood is full of Saracenic water pillars like those at Palermo—they do credit to the Saracenic material civilisation but not to the Saracenic sense of beauty, for they might easily have been made beautiful, but are prodigiously ugly. Wanting money I called on the Vice Consul, Mr Jeanes,¹⁰ Edition: current; Page: [392] who is also a banker & Coutts’ correspondent, but he was out, & his people could not pay one of Coutts’ notes in his absence. I left the letter of introduction which Oates gave me, & shall return tomorrow. I need to ask his advice about the way to see most of Etna without climbing it, & the best way of getting to Messina. I have been very weak today. Yesterday, perhaps from the hardness of the seat, I was as much fatigued with my diligence travelling, & am as stiff after it today, as I ever was with a day of walking & mule riding alternately. My digestion is sadly out of order again—It is evident that I eat too much & I must take to the starving system again. That brought me round before, but it did so through an interval of great weakness & incapacity for exertion, which has made me hitherto unwilling to try it again sufficiently decidedly—but I think I must do so. I got my portmanteau from the custom house—they gave a great deal of bother, unfolded everything, & sent for somebody from the police to examine the books, which consisted of Sophocles & some botanical & guide books: he pretended to look very wise while he examined them, but evidently had not the remotest idea what any of them were, & I maliciously would not give him the smallest help. I went also to the post office, though there has not been time to send any letters from Messina, but I did it to break the ice with the post office people—who tendered to me a letter addressed to Miss Jane Mills.—There are no mosquitoes here & I have only discovered one small flea.

27th. A brilliant cloudless day, but I enjoyed it less than I might have done, from weakness & indigestion: however by abstinence I have made the indigestion a little less this evening. When I went to Jeanes I was told (what was not mentioned yesterday) that he is in England: & his substitute not there but had directed that I should be referred to another banker as Coutts’ notes can be changed everywhere. The other banker however refused on the reasonable plea of not being Coutts’ correspondent. I thought it a sign of something wrong: the principal absent, only one man competent to pay money & that one keeping out of the way: however I returned about four when the clerk had told me the manager might be in the house though the bank would be shut. He was denied to me, but I insisted, saying I was sure he was there, & was at last admitted, when he told me the house was not in a condition to pay: in fact had suspended payment. The inconvenience to me will be moderate because I have enough napoleons to take me to Messina, but gold loses immensely in the Neapolitan territories for some reason or other—I had to change several at Syracuse & lost two shillings on each: here I find I shall only lose about 1s.2d. I had already decided not to go round Etna, but to go tomorrow to Nicolosi, & climb the small lateral cone, Monte Rosso, from which the great eruption came,¹¹ & to be satisfied with what I Edition: current; Page: [393] could see from thence & from Taormina & the road to Messina—which evidently includes all the best points. There was little temptation when I was weak & tired to scramble about the lava, so I spent today in seeing the curiosities of the town. By far the greatest of these is the convent & church of the Benedictines, the same which the great eruption miraculously spared,¹² as may be read in Dryden & others—& certainly it does look very like a miracle, for the lava bank or stream, some twenty feet high, goes past the convent & parallel to it at the distance of not so many feet. The man who shews the convent candidly said that it was turned aside by a wall. One realizes by this the viscid nature of the lava, that it should have flowed at that height leaving a hollow between it & the building. The convent garden has been made on this lava, & nothing can exceed the splendor of the view of Etna one way & the sea the other. The convent itself is a palace—marble architectural staircases & the longest & finest & most numerous corridors: on my saying it must be very rich, the man said, tolerably so (bastante), (this is the strongest assent Sicilians usually give) that its annual income is 20,000 ounces, about £10,000—Pretty well for Sicily. The church is the finest in Catania, if not in Sicily, but spoilt by being whitewashed over every part, except the splendid lavas which decorate the different chapels. I fancy the Southern Italians & Sicilians admire whitewash because their associations of cleanliness take that direction—it gives them the unaccustomed pleasure of seeing something which looks clean. Accordingly I tried it on with a stranger Sicilian, remarking that it was all whitewash, on which his observation was, yes, it was perfectly pulito.¹³ The organ in this church, a magnificent one to look at, is very celebrated, though made by an inhabitant of Catania:14 it is one of the celebrated organs of Europe. In hopes of hearing it I went to an evening service, when however I found it was not played, but instead of it a full orchestra: the music was certainly good & well played, though too loud, not for the church but for the voices: & the great echo made the preacher almost inaudible, though he spoke very distinctly. The church was lighted with candles which looked like so many stars. Altogether the effect was fine. I went to the Museum of the Prince Biscari, of his visit to which & to its founder Goethe gives a pleasant account.¹⁵ It contains a little of everything that ever is in a museum; a great deal of the usual uninteresting antiquities; & a good many very fine ancient statues, found in Sicily. I forgot to mention that there Edition: current; Page: [394] is a Museum, a public one, at Syracuse, the only remarkable thing in which is a very fine headless Venus. I went to see the spring which the same Prince Biscari rediscovered under the lava, of which you perhaps remember the engraving in Bartlett:16 but the pleasantness of this is only in the idea: it is inside the town: & in one of the most squalid parts of it, the lava staircase which descends to it is given up to abominations & the basin into which the water flows is used as a common place for washing clothes. By way of comment on what is said of the extreme fondness of the Catanians for this spring, I remarked that the man whom the landlord sent to shew it to me did not know the way to it, but had to enquire. The same man took me to a much finer & perfectly clean excavation of the same kind, & in the same lava, in some ground belonging to monks to which he said the monks go on giorni di festa¹⁷ to enjoy themselves: if they do they have the very finest view which can be had in the town for they look clear over all the houses & see Etna to perfection. The hat I took from England being quite worn out, I have bought a sort of wide awake¹⁸ which the people here wear as a cappello di campagna¹⁹ as they call it: this is better for travelling, cost only a piastre, & will enable me to postpone buying a hat till I get to Corfu: if I had bought one here & worn it till then, it would by that time have been unfit to call on governors with. Jeanes’ predicament prevented me from seeing any Galignani’s, which was one of the advantages I expected from calling on him; however doubtless the Messina Oates²⁰ is provided with them. Vegetation here looks almost as green as it ever does, the few deciduous trees being half in leaf—but as a general rule, I have observed, neither climate nor an early season makes half as much difference in trees as they do in herbs & flowers.

28th. Though still equally weak, & having a painful indigestion after every meal, I made out my excursion to Nicolosi. By the aid of the waiter of this inn (who is the most complimented person in Sicily by everybody who writes in a very thick inn book) a carriage was hired for two dollars (plus a buona mano of 1s.4d). The day at first seemd bad for the view, as a thick sea fog obscured the coast. The road which rose rapidly to Nicolosi passed over nothing but lava; some of the lava however was old, & having crumbled into the black dust we know so well, is, I dare say, very fertile soil. But I confess I greatly prefer a Neptunian country:21 water & gravitation combined are much pleasanter agents in forming a country than fire. I prefer waving lines, interrupted by large fine crags & precipices, to these sharp, sudden fractious Edition: current; Page: [395] rapid ups & downs of black lava. Catania is not a place for walking—there is no getting out from beneath ugly walls made of piled up fragments of lava looking like cinders: generally however one can see over them. In the approach to Nicolosi, the various minor cones which stand out of the mountain side, become more & more distinct: the Monte Rosso which I climbed & which is close to Nicolosi is the nearest but one, & one of the largest, much the finest & most conspicuous from Catania. Like nearly all the others it has like Vesuvius two summits, a crater being between: I do not see why, as I should have expected a circular ridge with one outlet. These craters only serve once, none of them remains open after the eruption which formed it: the crater at the top of Aetna is the only permanent one. I took a guide from Nicolosi—The climbing was hard work, as much of it was through loose ashes, & if it had not been really a very light undertaking, I think I should have given it up: but I knew it would do me no harm after it was done, so I persisted. The mountain is nothing but a large deep crater, a smaller one close to it, & the wall which supports them: at the top you stand on a narrow rim or ridge. Though it cannot have taken more than half an hour climbing, the height was sufficient to make the very uneven country I had crossed from Catania, appear a flat, in which the newer & blacker lavas looked like the dark shadows of clouds. The day, though it never cleared completely, had sufficiently improved to make a most splendid view: the coast to Syracuse; Lentini, its lake & the south eastern range which I so lately crossed; a wide extent of sea; inland a whole sea of mountains towards Palermo: across the sea a clear view of the upper part of the Calabrian mountains, the lower being still obscured by clouds: nearer, we looked down upon the lower region of Etna & up to the higher: being still at a considerable distance from even the woody region which by the way does not as one fancied form a continuous zone round the mountain, but is much more sparse as the Americans say. The guide said it is three hours of horse riding to the top of the bosco & seven hours to the top of the mountain (from Nicolosi) of which only the last one need be on foot: it looks quite easy, the slopes nowhere very great & it must be easy when there is no snow, which the guide says is the case in summer. The snow already shews points & dots of black rock. The black marks I noticed near the top seem to jut out from the outside walls of the crater, of which the interior outline could be very well distinguished from this point. In the large broad spread out slopes from the foot of Monte Rosso to the commencement of the bosco, there is much cultivation but the only building I saw was a Benedictine convent, connected with the one in Catania. The excursion altogether occupied 7½ hours, from half past eight till four.

29th. Giardini. The waiter, Placido, found a voiture de retour for Messina, which would take me & my goods in two days for seven dollars, tolls & buona mano included. This was as little as I could expect. Finding however that the Edition: current; Page: [396] organ at the Benedictine church²² would be played today I would not go till I had heard it. It is a fine but not extraordinary instrument: & the organist introduced numbers of airs from the Trovatore,²³ the opera now in vogue: at least so said a neighbour of mine in the church. I started at half past eleven, & arrived at this little place, Giardini, at the foot of the mountain of Taormina, some time before dark. The day was splendid, a slight tramontana not sufficient for cold, but producing the contrary effect to that of yesterday, the sea being now clear, but clouds about the upper part of Etna. These did not completely draw off all day but tant mieux: they heightened the effect. The road, between Etna & the sea, passes considerably nearer to Etna than Catania is, & the base of the mountain is also steeper: being in the shade, too, & the upper visible ridges below the cloud many of them nearly horizontal, the effect was that of a gigantic wall, of the length & height of a range of mountains. At last, between Jaci Reale²⁴ & Giarra, the clouds divided a little & the head of the mountain appeared, & I can now say that I have once seen Etna looking grand. The height seemed really vast, & to climb it something quite beyond possibility; as no doubt it is, from this side. The sun shone brilliantly on the snow & was reflected from it & from the white clouds which still hung about the shoulders of the mountain, shewing enough & hiding enough to make the effect such as I could not have supposed from all I had seen before that Etna ever could produce. This day’s journey, the latter part of it at least, would even without Etna be one of the most beautiful I ever went. The sea was of every beautiful colour the sea can have, from deep blue to light grey: the Calabrian mountains, though very much obscured by clouds during the greater part of the day, were seen clearly towards evening of a very light grey colour: & a little beyond Jaci we came in sight of a beautiful range of mountains, coming out from behind Etna, quite to the sea, & then along the coast towards Messina. Several towns & villages were visible on salient high points of this range, & among others (rather low down on the mountain side) Taormina. Between this range & the heights which are the limit of the northern slopes of Etna, such a vista of a mountain valley! how I should like to explore it—& I would do so but I wish still more to see Greece. The northern part of the island is the most beautiful—it must be a delightful three days journey from Messina to Palermo by Cefalù, on the north coast. This day’s route was across lava, but soon got into old lava which had crumbled on the surface into the black powder. The people here will not admit anything to be lava which did not proceed from some known eruption, though it only needs eyes to see that the substance is exactly the same. It is very richly cultivated & fertile. The flax fields here are many of them out of Edition: current; Page: [397] flower, & fit to cut, while others are coming into flower—of course sown later. The barley fields are all in ear—there is much barley grown, as they give it to the horses & mules instead of oats. I passed some deciduous oaks, on which the new green shoots were oddly mixed with some remaining leaves of last year, not even turned brown. We crossed one of the usual plains, that of Naxos,²⁵ the earliest Greek town in Sicily destroyed, I think, by Dionysius, & of which the inhabitants built Tauromenium some way up the mountain side for better defence. We then reached Giardini, a poor village close on the beach, but with a decent inn, & I shall climb the hill tomorrow morning. Two places we passed through were remarkably neat looking for Sicily: these were Jaci Reale, a town of some importance with a handsome cathedral & churches, & Giarra, just on the descent into the plain. I should have enjoyed this still more but for my indigestion, which is as bad as ever: but I shall stay at Messina till I conquer it, even if by not eating at all. I have not felt quite so weak today: This day there was some, though not much dust: you remember how we were obsédé with it at Naples in February—this year, today is the first day I have had any. Mosquitoes the last two nights: not many the first, but enough last night to have made curtains desirable. However they did not keep me awake. I was obliged to have a box made at Catania to hold the plants.

30th. Messina. Taormina is quite the finest thing I have seen in Sicily: I mean the view from the theatre: the theatre itself, though more of it is preserved than of any other Greek theatre I have seen, is worth little in comparison. The point in the mountain side which had been chosen for it is a projecting, angular point, immediately over the sea: & on one side you see the coast to Syracuse, & Etna, on the other the range of mountains to Messina, the coast of Calabria & the Faro. It is quite in vain to attempt to describe it—Etna had a cloud on the very top, but both the gracefully sloping snow-covered shoulders were visible & as seen from here they slope symmetrically—& though the slope is gentle & the base looks vaster from this than from any other place, it does not make the height appear less, as might be supposed, & as I expected from the views of the mountain which I had seen. The other side was not less fine: the day though sunny & almost cloudless was hazy, & the Calabrian mountains were but dimly seen: it is remarkable that I have lost wholly or partially more fine views in Sicily by clouds or haze than I should have lost in England at the same time of year: so much for Italian sky. But the nearer objects, & what was seen of the more distant, were an ample compensation. The mountains close at hand also afforded a very pleasant view of mountain greenery. I should have enjoyed Edition: current; Page: [398] this perfectly but for an extreme feeling of nervous weakness, which did not prevent my climbing the mountain nor make me feel tired afterwards but made every step a labour & an oppression: nor were my sensations improved by the prolix talk of a custodi, who was unusually well versed in details & bored me with them. The road to Messina was all the way a beautiful Riviera—the mountains as high & as close to the sea, but the alternation of mountain & plain much more rapid & the plains very small—so that sometimes the broad flat bed of the torrent filled a great part of them. By degrees the sea narrowed into the Faro, & the Calabrian highlands became distinctly visible—they appeared indeed close at hand: their summit line is nearly strait & horizontal but they are so high that on the highest point, almost opposite Messina, there is snow. We passed Reggio which must have a splendid view of Sicily & Etna, & arrived at Messina, happily in time for the post. I found two of my darling’s letters— the one she first wrote to Messina, before she had written to Palermo at all—& her second to Palermo, which that post office had faithfully forwarded here—this gives me news of her a week later than the one I received at Palermo. These the Messina post office had not sent to Catania—& I am in a state of painful uncertainty whether or not they sent any. However I shall strive to find out. I am in hopes from her letter that she soon got rid of the remainder of the illness she had on first returning home. How like H.²⁶ that going off to America without paying—it is of a piece with his general conduct, than which his conduct in money matters has generally been better. You will tell me about the Bideford people²⁷ when we meet. I will not darling feel anxious again about letters as I see they are so liable to miscarry. In my last I asked her to write next to Corfu—I shall write again before I leave Messina, but I may say now, after receiving this write once to Athens, & once again to Corfu as I am sure to go back that way. I have to find out here what will be my wisest way of getting to Greece. I may however stay here longer than I intended, to get my stomach into order. I have now for several days eaten much less at breakfast, & nothing at dinner but a very moderate quantity of macaroni & milk, which seems to agree with me better than anything else—this morning I had hot milk instead of tea because instead of requiring bread it does instead of it; perhaps that was partly the reason I could not keep from dropping asleep in the carriage every minute in spite of the beautiful scenery: the same thing happened yesterday but not to the same degree. However my two daily indigestions have been much less violent today than yesterday—I came to the reputed best inn here, the Vittoria, but would not stay, because the landlord did not choose to let anybody dine, even on macaroni, except at his table d’hote—& did not have Edition: current; Page: [399] the honesty to say so at first, but his men told me lie after lie & kept me for an hour waiting in the belief that the macaroni was coming. So I had an explanation with the landlord (a dandified young German) & walked off. The inn I am now in is a very good one apparently, & looks, like the other, direct to the Faro & Calabria. The whole breadth of the coast which Calabria presents to Sicily hardly exceeds in length the base of Etna. From this place you see round the west corner of it, & see part of the west coast of Italy. It looks very inviting & I should much like a mule journey from Reggio to Otranto or Brindisi but I suppose there are not even such inns as those of the south of Sicily. I found a long letter from Hill,²⁸ as usual most friendly for which I must give him one in return. And now my precious precious love, the lovingest good night.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

March 31 [1855]

Messina

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

230.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

begun at

Messina

,

March 31 [1855]

37

This morning when I took No. 36 to the post I had the displeasure to be told that the mail only goes once a week & went yesterday—so that you will probably get this letter as soon as that. I saw another post office clerk, apparently the superior of the other who told me positively that they had not sent any letters to Catania. They seemed to intend to do it some time or other: I called on the Messina Oates² with my letter of introduction or rather was going to call on him when he was pointed out to me in the street. I introduced myself, produced my letter & found he was going this very day into the country—he offered anything he could do, said he would call on me, & did so. From what he told me, & the enquiries I in consequence made at the Austrian Consul’s, I found that the Austrian Lloyd steamboat goes direct to Corfu tomorrow, for the last time, being about to be taken off the line, & that there is no other way of getting to Corfu or Greece, except round by Malta or by Naples. As this steamer professes to go in 34 hours I should have much more sea going by Malta, & as much by Naples if I go there in the steamer, besides the long & expensive land journey to Brindisi with all manner of difficulties about luggage, as the mail (the only diligence) is limited to a very small quantity. Therefore, although I wished very much to stay a few days here & also to wait for another letter from my dearest one, the reasons seem Edition: current; Page: [400] so very strong for taking advantage of this opportunity that I have made up my mind to go. Judging from the last experience, the seasickness, wretched as it is at the time & for many hours after, does not do me permanent harm as I thought it did before: it is true I must expect a rough passage, as a violent wind has been blowing all day—a south east wind, which the people all thought would bring rain, & which did bring a cloudy day, but the clouds were partly blown away in the afternoon & I could see sunshine though none came where I was. Messina is a rather handsome town—the two principal streets, the Ferdinanda & the Corso, are nearly parallel to one another & to the quay which forms a third—they are broad & neat, & the houses on one side of the Ferdinanda look to the quay. There are some other tolerable streets. This town has no plain, like most of the others, but quite touches the foot of the mountains, which though not high just close to the town are very crowded & peaked. I took a walk for several hours among them & got into quite mountain scenery, with continual views continually varying of the Faro & the opposite coast of Italy. The Faro is longer than it seemed at first, though the Calabrian coast soon turns northward; the corner of the island for some distance bends round, crescent wise, to follow it, making the celebrated promontory of Pelorus, apparently a narrow tongue of flat land with a town or village on it. The Faro in its least wide part looks only like a broad & very fine river & if you conceive this flowing between splendid mountains, varied by headlands & bays, you are as near the fact as any description can make you. The beauty seemed of a most enjoyable kind & I enjoyed it, for I had not the same nervous weakness as yesterday—though weak at first I got on pretty well. I had my two daily indigestions but in a mitigated degree: and I may as well stop to cure myself at Corfu as here. The cathedral here is like all the cathedrals in Sicily. They are all large, all on the same plan, viz. the form of a basilica, therefore with two side colonnades much lower than the nave serving as aisles, & a semicircular apse at the end—but with a transept superadded, which forms no part of the plan of a basilica, & which some of the finest churches at Rome have got, e.g. S. Maria Maggiore. They all have a dome over the point of junction of the cross. Most of them have columns taken from some Greek temple or basilica (this has them of granite). Most have marbles or lavas, more or less fine. With all this, very few have any imposingness but that which size gives.—There is more shipping here than at any other port in Sicily, & the French steamers pass here on their way to the Levant. Oates said that this is a very healthy place & never had the cholera last year when it killed 22,000 people though it only lasted ten days. It is much the coolest place in summer, of all Sicily: the sea breeze is so cool that those who live on the Marina sometimes have to shut their windows even in summer to avoid chill. There are mosquitoes, but chiefly in autumn—He says Sicily abounds in bugs, of which I have seen Edition: current; Page: [401] none: but by his account summer is the time when they flourish. Some of the inns in the interior are, he says, quite as bad as Spain. I do not know whether I think this place or Palermo the most beautiful—but Palermo is the better of the two for winter & this for summer.

April 1st. In consequence of the rough weather, the steamer has not come in & therefore cannot leave till tomorrow at the earliest: but I gained nothing by the delay in opportunity of seeing the country, for it has rained soakingly from an early hour of the day. There is also a great deal of wind. I am very glad not to have started in such a rough sea, & equally so to have a chance of a letter before I go, for the mail is expected tomorrow. Pourvu que the bad weather does not keep that back too. I went to the Cathedral for the Palm Sunday service but left before it was ended. The music was very poor. I passed the rest of the day in putting in order my great accumulation of plants, & in reading Dante & the Handbook for Greece. Nothing is more likely to keep off seasickness than filling my brain with an exciting conception of what I am going to: I think I shall do in Greece the contrary of what I have done in Italy, that is, I shall take what opportunities I may have & even seek opportunities of conversing with the educated class of natives. I am curious about the mind of the leading people of Greece & feel that I have almost everything to learn about them. Doubtless my introductions to Finlay³ & Wyse⁴ will give me opportunities, & going in the first week in April I shall have a good deal of time. I am obliged to ménager the books I have with me to make them hold out. I am keeping Sophocles for Greece. Theocritus & the two minor Sicilian pastoral poets, Bion & Moschus, I have finished, & like the two last much better than the first, whom I think greatly overrated, & quite inferior to his imitator, Virgil. I have written to Hill.⁵ Not having received any letter from Pope⁶ I fear he has been too unwell to go abroad at all—or else he had left before my letter from Pisa reached London, & so has lost all trace of me & I of him. But I would now much rather make the tour of Greece alone, i.e. with a guide like my muleteer from Palermo, which I find by Murray is the proper way of going about in Greece. A companion must be very good if he is, to me, better than none, & besides the botanizing would be a bore to almost any chance rencontre of the kind unless he happened to be a botanist too.

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2nd. The wind has calmed down, & changed, in the middle of the day to the opposite quarter; nevertheless the steamer has not yet come in. Unfortunately neither has the post from England. I succeeded this morning in getting weighed, for the first time since Naples. It was done by a pleasant man who makes & sells weighing instruments. Oates (of Girgenti) explained to me the mystery of the rotoli:7 it is the Sicilian rotolo, which is 1¾ of an English pound: the rotolo of Naples is 1/7 more than that of Sicily, & is therefore two pounds. So that when I left Naples I weighed 10 stone 7 lb, being only 1 lb less than at Avignon. This morning I weighed 80 Sicilian rotoli, i.e. exactly 10 stone, just what I weighed when I left London, though 7 lbs more than when I left Rome. It seems I am never to get beyond 10 st. 8 lbs. I oscillate between that & 10 stone. That was the highest I reached in my last summer’s excursion & the highest I have reached in this & I have lost it all. But there is nothing in that discouraging, for it is accounted for by eating less, & being unable to digest as great a quantity as I then could. I feel getting better: I think the peculiarly bad indigestion of the last week has been owing to the bread of the country, especially as at Catania I could not get butter, which to me is I believe necessary to make any kind of bread wholesome. Here I get the ordinary bread of Europe, made with soft wheat (as at Palermo) & though I do not like this nearly so well, the indigestion it gives is acidity, which comes soon after eating, goes away in an hour or so & leaves me feeling very well, while the other (of which toasting does not correct the unpleasant properties) does not acidify, but in four or five hours I have a mass of far more uneasy sensations of indigestion & never feel light & healthy, as I do now for the greater part of the day. I think I shall soon be as well again as at Naples. I was in nearly my full strength for walking today & walked many hours. I started, in a tolerably fine morning, for the great point of view of the place, the telegraph, which is on the ridge of one of the highest of the near mountains: unfortunately rain came on before I had got far, but I persevered in hopes of a lucid interval & saw just enough to see what I had missed: I had a peep of the northern sea over a field of mountains, & the telegraph man said if it was clear I should see all the Lipari islands (Stromboli, Volcano & all). I went a great deal further, partly through the rain clouds; it must be most exquisite scenery, all of it, quite the finest region of the island I have been in. After I had nearly got back to Messina the day cleared up a little & I could see the Calabrian mountains, all but the highest tops: they were of the loveliest purple & rose colour, that is the front ones rose colour (owing to the colour of the soil) & the higher ones behind them purple. I have seen no fine effects of light since Palermo till these except the afternoon of the day in which I saw the temples of Girgenti. The sunny hazy weather I have had so much of is not favourable to these effects. The telegraph Edition: current; Page: [403] man admitted that Sicily is foggy, because he said it is so far to the south, a curious inversion of our notions. The Oates here said (in answer to a remark of mine) that when people talk of an Italian sky he thought they must mean in an Italian summer: in June, July, & August, the sky is always cloudless—when clouds would be agreeable. The sky of Greece I think must be clear: people rave so about its clearness, especially in Attica, & about the wonderful beauty of the effects of light & atmospheric colours. I shall soon know. Messina would be on some accounts the best place in Sicily for us to live in: it is I think still more beautiful than Palermo, & there is more life in the place, more foreigners come there & it is practically much nearer to England & France owing to the English & French steamers to Malta & the Levant which do not go near Palermo: it is strange therefore that there should be but one post in a week & I suspect there must be ways of sending via this or that in the intervals. Oates says the Galignani reaches him, sometimes, very quickly, by the French steamers. But I do not think we should like to live in so stagnant a place as Sicily, where one falls a month behind in news if one has not one’s own newspaper & meets no one who knows a single European fact. I however like the common people here very much, & the middle class too. Most of them will cheat you or rather overcharge you if you let them, but I have not met with one instance (except the master of the Victoria who is not a Sicilian) in any rank who has not been perfectly civil & desirous to oblige. It is true their curiosity is equal to the American, but they have no idea that so natural & universal a feeling requires to be suppressed. Even the officials I have had to do with are not insolent & presuming (as they sometimes are in other parts of Europe) & this even when they do not expect you to give them anything.

3rd. The steamer has even yet not come in, & as there is no bad weather to interfere with the 15 hours passage from Malta, the people at the office suppose it has waited at Malta for the steamer from Liverpool which may have had bad weather. They take letters from Malta & England to Corfu but not here, though they come here—because there is no postal treaty. Bad management somewhere. The post from England, via Marseilles has come in, & brings no letter. My hope therefore must rest on the post office people here & I hope they will be more faithful in sending letters to Corfu than to Catania. As soon as I had ascertained the state of the case I set off to walk to the other great point of view, The Point, viz. Cape Pelorus—The road, a good carriage road, is along the beach, round a large crescent, the mountains to the left declining into little hills & ending at last in a flat projecting triangular point forming the angle of the island, & this point curiously enough has a lagune in the middle of its triangle. There is a second lagune a little nearer to Messina. The day soon after I left looked more threatening than Edition: current; Page: [404] promising: though it did not rain where I was, the cape was immersed in violent rain & it was pleasant to watch the successive black showers pass along the Calabrian coast, covering & then abandoning successive headlands & bays. At last I saw the fine weather coming across the cape, as the rain had done before, & it became a beautiful sunny afternoon: though heavy clouds never left the tops of the higher mountains. There is a village at the point & the lighthouse in the very angle at the further end of the village & this or near it is the point of view—which I should be very sorry to have missed. You see both coasts of Sicily, the angle of crowded mountains which lies adjacent, & the Calabrian coast to a great distance just round the great bay of Palmi, also Stromboli, Lipari, & a great many more islands. The strait is here the narrowest, apparently very narrow, & immediately opposite is Scilla, exactly as I recalled it in Lear⁸—the rock in front, the town on a greater height behind & the little bay to the right of both, with the mountains behind. Considering how subject the country is to earthquakes, the disappearance of Charybdis is not surprising, but if it was, as the ancient poets represent, off this point, to pass between it & Scilla may have been with some winds & at some times of the current, a little difficult & troublesome. I enjoyed it much, though surrounded by begging boys, the most obtrusive & persevering of all beggars, who called me signor capitano twice in every sentence they uttered: they seem to call all Englishmen capitano, I suppose, because so few Englishmen came until lately except in trading ships. I have been several times so addressed: but here the whole village had their mouths full of it, wishing, in return for the bajocchi⁹ they wanted me to give them, that I might always have a good voyage with my ship. Perhaps the wide awake helped to give that idea. I have had very little indigestion today, & my stomach is certainly getting better. The quay here is not so fine as is represented, though a part of it is neat stuccoed houses with balconies to all the windows, four stories high & pillars stuck into the wall. It is not comparable to the quays of Rouen, Lyons or even Nantes—but then the view! The town is a great length in this direction, having a long faubourg along the coast at each end—& the Strada Ferdinanda must be a mile long, but there is no breadth, owing to the mountains. There is a French ship of war in the strait & this inn is full of Frenchmen; there were (the waiter told me) 35 of them today at the table d’hôte, and they make a great noise in this previously quiet house. By the way in the inn at Catania there were three nightingales in cages, & one or more of them occasionally sung beautifully.

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6th. Corfu. At last darling I have the pleasure of writing to my one precious one from this place: but I must take things in their order. The steamer came in the morning while I was at breakfast, & the agent hurried me on board with all my roba as the Italians call things in general, but when I got there at half past nine it appeared that it was not to leave till 4 which turned out to be 5. So as it was a fine day I employed it in going again to the telegraph. It was an hour and a half brisk walking, all climbing & the last half hour very steep. The view was indeed splendid: the whole north coast (which the Greeks called Calè Actè, the beautiful shore) as far as the long mountainous promontory which bounded the view this way from Palermo—so that though I have not travelled along this coast I can say that I have seen all of it. Six of the Lipari isles (& more could have been seen if the day had been clearer) among others Stromboli—the effect is curious of these little cones, sometimes like Stromboli blunted at top, dotted about the sea which they rise directly out of. About the middle of the visible part of the coast, a long tongue of land projecting into the sea, & on its isthmus the beautifully situated town of Milazzo. Inland, ridge behind ridge & height behind height shewing the excessive beauty of the whole north of the island, which if either Goethe or Mrs Starke had said anything about I certainly would not have given up my original intention of travelling this road. It is a most beautiful carriage road too; it winds over this very mountain, & I returned by it. There is a carriage road which passes just under the telegraph forming a real corniche for a cornice should be at the top, not the bottom—no part of the Riviera road is a real cornice except between Sestri & Borghetto. This beautiful corniche joins the road from Messina to Palermo by the north coast, at the sixth milestone (seven English miles) from Messina, & its corkscrew windings continue the whole of these seven miles: it is a fine piece of engineering & I should think must be about the most beautiful seven miles of carriage drive in Europe: the greatest variety of views of the Faro & the Calabrian coast, all round to the vast distance to which it was visible the day previous from the cape—When the view turned the other way it looked to the tops & into the hollows of mountains about the form & height of the higher ones at Nice, but much more crowded. The views towards the sea are finer than either those at Nice or the descent to Spezia, the Faro & its mountains being finer than even the Gulf of Spezia. The weather now suffered me at times to see again the snowy summit of the mountains opposite. The whole of these miles of road are planted on both sides with trees (still young), a spreading kind of poplar, & our common acacia: in the higher mountainous part these are still looking wintry; in the lower they are in full green, the leaves quite ductified, though not so large as they will be (some acacias near the beach the previous day were coming into flower) & mixed with them now & then a Edition: current; Page: [406] judas tree in the full richness & abundance of its flesh coloured flowers which astonished me by their gorgeousness. It was a delightful last day in Sicily, & I was very glad of the delay which enabled me to have it.—The steamer is a wretched one, large & good looking, but of only 60 horse power—& how we did creep along. It seemed as if any row boat could have passed us. Some Englishmen on board seemed to think the captain no better than his ship. Instead of 34 hours it took 48. It was dark before we got clear of the Faro—I then went into my cabin (a good one) & did not leave it till we were in the channel of Corfu. By lying quiet I kept off sickness till the afternoon of the next day—it was not so bad then as in either of the other voyages, & by the following morning actual sickness had ceased. The first time this ever happened to me—in consequence I have not had, since landing, the horrible sensations of sickness I had at Genoa & Palermo the day of arrival. This although it was a very rough passage, & the passengers say an actual storm the second night—those who were on the windward side of the ship were rolled out of their berths. I was luckily on the leeward & only felt the ship roll very much—perhaps I was asleep in the worst part of it. The captain at one time thought he should have to run into the Gulf of Taranto & reach Corfu by the north instead of the south channel. I was on deck soon after we entered the channel, but it was a hazy day & I did not see it to advantage. The mountains of Albania are not so high or so fine as I expected, & the south part of Corfu itself though angular & rocky looking is quite low: but the north channel is always said to be the fine one. The town itself looks very fine indeed, from the sea it is at an almost right angled turn in the channel, built round the two sides of the right angle, with the very finest looking imposing castle rock I ever saw, exactly in the corner: the town itself looks (from the sea) quite prepossessing, seeming to combine English neatness with continental height & architectural effect, & the immediate neighbourhood looks green, a colour I have not seen before since I left England (except in the upper region of the Messina mountains, where there is real grass, dotted over with the tree heath & a beautiful broom). At the custom house they did not even open my boxes. I found the inn said to be best, quite full. My luggage was at the very bottom of the hold & came up last so all the others were beforehand with me. I am at one which looks as good, the Hotel de l’Europe, but in a very tiny room; however I am promised a better at latest on Monday. This is Good Friday, but I suppose not so in the Greek church as they calculate Easter differently: but there was a grand procession by torchlight, which passed along the Esplanade just in front of the porch, of the details of which I could see little, but the music, wind instruments, a band of Greeks in fine dresses was really good, & the archbishop & priests looked very dignified & in very fine dresses. Among the passengers was one militia officer (you know the militia have come here to do garrison duty), Edition: current; Page: [407] several English travelling for amusement who seemed noisy schoolboys—how noisy the English are when they get together abroad—but I made the rencontre of a botanist, a Mr Perry,¹⁰ who lives in the south of Ireland, & of a well educated young man named Joyce,¹¹ who after tutoring for some years at Oxford grew tired of that & got an appointment in the commissariat, as total a change I should think as ever was made—he is to be posted to Cefalonia or Zante, for five years, & has brought lots of fresh books & of the English poets to be his companions for that time—consequently he & I have a good many topics of conversation, but I am afraid he will leave tomorrow. He is in this inn. I shall cultivate the botanist, & win his heart by giving him plants & helping him otherwise, for he has no proper books with him & I have: Sir H. Ward¹² I find is just going: his successor expected daily. However I shall send my card & Grote’s letter tomorrow morning.—It is a curious thing that this time after the seasickness I had in a most exaggerated degree the sensations which indigestion gives & which I am accustomed to call acidity—though the stomach was entirely empty when the sickness began & I fasted entirely for more than 48 hours. I supposed of course that this was an irritation of the stomach, caused by acidity & caused also by seasickness—but Joyce without my having mentioned the subject at all, advised from his own experience taking soda after seasickness, because (said he) there is acidity to be arrested & soda takes it away. Odd, is it not? what can the acidity be? a secretion from the stomach itself? My indigestion had almost entirely left me the last day at Messina. We shall see if it returns here. I was obliged this evening to eat not what I would have chosen but what I could get. It feels very odd to find English money used, & the people speaking English, French, or Italian: in general I understand their Italian best. The Greek faces are very noticeable already. I feel now beginning my travels again. I wonder if Greece will really be finer than Sicily. In the ennui of the ship I passed over in my mind all I have seen, & felt that the pictures I have carried away from Sicily are a perfect treasure of recollections for as much longer as I live—Palermo & Monte Pellegrino, Trapani & Eryx, the ruins of Selinus, Girgenti, Terranova, the views from the south eastern range, all the views of Etna, & more than all, Syracuse & Messina. And the places that can be gone to in a carriage are the finest—I should like to see them again with her. The view from Taormina is an exception for that unfortunately is not carrozzabile but perhaps it will be made so as there is a decided impulse towards road making. Living in Edition: current; Page: [408] Sicily however I do not think would suit us. Perhaps Corfu would do better. We shall see.

7th. Better this morning than I have been a long while. Another procession has just passed. I do think the Greek church manages these things better than the Catholic—the costume of the priests too is much more imposing—the long hair of the young ones, the long beards of the old. I was much struck with the deadly paleness of all the Greeks—not sallow or brown like Spaniards or black like Portuguese but white. Greek features seem confined to a few of the lower class—the middle are, here at least, ugly, & like any of the meaner races of Europe. I am just going out & shall put this in the post as it goes tomorrow early via Trieste, so I shall only say that this town as I see it from the window of the salle à manger at the top of the house, seems the most beautiful & the most cheerful I ever was in, so with this cheerful piece of information I say adieu for the present my beloved one.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

7th April [1855]

Corfu

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

231.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Corfu

2—begun

7th April [1855]

38

I am charmed with this place—although I have seen it today through so thick an atmosphere that the distant objects especially southward are scarcely visible. But it has been a sunny day, only too hot, like a fine July day with us. The town instead of occupying the two sides of a right angle as I thought, occupies three sides of a rectangular promontory: one side looks down the channel, one across the channel, & one northward, which would be up the channel if the channel were straight—but is much better, viz. across a large broad bay, the whole opposite side of which is formed by a ridge of mountains most beautifully shaped & in their highest part apparently as high as those of Calabria seen from Messina—these are called the mountain of San Salvador & there is a procession to the top of it on the day of the Transfiguration. The apparently narrow channel flows east of this mountain & so gives to all of the sea that is seen from that side of the town the appearance of an inland lake. On the only remaining side, the west, there are two inlets of the sea, so that the town is almost on an island. South west there is another beautifully shaped mountain though not nearly so high. In that direction you Edition: current; Page: [409] get to rich meadows covered with buttercups, then to groves of old beautiful spreading olives with rich green pasture under them instead of corn, & as there are no fences you can go all over the island freely—you come to splendid points of view. But the town itself is delightful. Along the south side of it, just within the castle rock, is the Esplanade, a space of green grass (at this season) planted with trees & partly laid out in a half shrubbery half flower garden, of which the most prominent feature was thousands of fine geraniums half as tall as I am, in full flower—The trees are all green, even a walnut tree coming into leaf. The two principal inns & the best houses look out on this esplanade, which at both ends meets the sea, except that the eastern end is partly occupied by the Government house or Palace as they call it, which looks like a very pretty Calcutta garden-house—the ground floor a colonnade at the top of a flight of steps, one long suite of apparently fine rooms above that, & one row of smaller windows still higher. When I saw this I still more envied the post of High Commissioner here. I left my card & Grote’s letter early in the morning, & went to buy a hat & look about me & when I came in I found a letter from the Chief Secretary, Bowen,³ saying that Sir H. Ward would be happy to see me tomorrow if I would call, & regretted that the confusion of his household, as he starts for Ceylon on Thursday,⁴ prevents his shewing me the usual personal attentions—meanwhile he, Bowen, also knows Grote, has much of the Logic almost by heart, would call this afternoon & hoped I would breakfast with him tomorrow. I had heard of this Bowen from Joyce who though much younger knew him at Oxford & says he distinguished himself there, was a Fellow of Brazennose [sic] & he told me afterwards himself that he was sent out here by Lord Grey to organize a University & was here several years after which the D. of Newcastle⁵ wanting a Colonial Secretary looked out for someone who knew the place & the people & made choice of him. He turns out to be the writer of the book called Mount Athos, Thessaly & Epirus.⁶ He came, & went out for a walk with me & Joyce & shewed us some beautiful points of view among which I recognized the one chosen by Lear⁷ in which St Salvador groups Edition: current; Page: [410] with the Acroceraunian mountains on the opposite coast: he also shewed us what remains of temples &c. there are, which are scanty, as there have been few excavations. He says nothing can exceed the beauty of the island & that I can have no idea of it from what I have yet seen. He seems a scholar & an instructed man. He says the English are not popular here though Ward whom he likes exceedingly, is so. The people of all ranks both in these islands & in Greece want to be Russian—or rather their grand wish is a Greek Byzantine empire under a Russian prince—in his opinion none except a very few instructed persons care about democracy or a constitution, the sympathy of religion is all in all with them—they say it is their religion which has kept them a people—that but for it they would have been absorbed by the Moslems which is true. He likes the Greeks however, says nothing can be more absurd than the way in which the English generally run them down—that they have exactly the qualities & defects of their ancestors. I asked him about the safety of travelling in Greece as one of the passengers in the steamer had heard reports of its being unsafe. He said it is utter humbug—that it is exactly the same now as at all times—that he has travelled in Greece more than any other Englishman & in all parts of it & never found or heard of the smallest danger though he was told all sorts of bugaboo stories even by consuls all of whom, & even Wyse,⁸ want always to make out a case against the Greek government & when Palmerston was at the Foreign Office⁹ were expected & required to do so. Besides he said the way is to engage one of the Athenian guides who for about a pound a day will undertake all expenses & you need carry no money at all—he, Bowen, once went from Athens all over Greece with only two zwanzigers in his pocket & brought one of them back—it is then the guide’s business to keep out of danger & he always knows how to do so. Bowen therefore encouraged me to go to places I should never have thought of going to without such advice from a person who must have the best means of knowing. The outskirts of the town, usually so untidy on the Continent, are here as neat as in an English country town—more so than the native part of the town itself which is like a small town in Italy, with arcades in some of the streets & a good many English shops. I went about the thronged market place looking at the faces—I saw very few with what we call Greek features, that is the Greek ideal, but hundreds of heads & faces like those lithographs of Palikari¹⁰ which we used to see everywhere at the time of the Greek revolution. All, of every rank, except so far as they are sunburnt or weatherstained, are of that deadly white I noticed at first. The provisions on sale were beautifully white rice & salt, a curious looking white cheese looking halfway between Stilton & cream cheese, many different Edition: current; Page: [411] vegetables, coffee, oranges, also macaroni & other pastes & a brown sort of bread. The processions last night & this morning were in honour of St Spiridion¹¹ [sic] who is the patron of the island & whose poor mummy they carried in procession & I sat in his church & watched the people come up in a stream to kiss with fervour the case which contains it (the mummy—not the church) & after multiplied crossing themselves & bowing sometimes quite to the ground, take their departure. This however is also Easter, which this year happens accidentally to coincide with that of the Latin churches, & they have been firing sudden jerking stunning explosions of small cannon all day in honour of it, which are censé to be fired at Judas Iscariot. A more ugly incident of the feast is that the town resounded in the morning with the bleatings of unfortunate lambs, which later in the day might be seen sacrificed, one at the door of each house, & in the poorer houses a cross made with the blood over the door, & sometimes on both sides of it too—so much that is Jewish remains in the Greek church—the long beards of the priests & the vestments of the prelates are also Jewish. The churches here do not seem very numerous & have little tall square towers like the north of Italy, which is quite a pleasure to see after those tiresome domes. Inside, to make amends for the absence of images, the two I entered are crowded with pictures, & if these are a sample, I must say there is great exaggeration in what is said about the stiffness produced by adherence to a conventional type—they are infinitely freer & more handsome than the Italian before Giotto, & remind me most of the early Venetian painters before Titian & his cotemporaries—as one would expect, the Venetians having had so much to do with Constantinople & having no doubt borrowed much of their painting as they did of their architecture from it. This place, Bowen says, is much less Greek than the other islands, being more Italianized: the higher classes even talk Italian among themselves. It was the official language till within a few years—Greek is so now. The names of the streets are still Italian. The inscriptions on the shops are often Greek & English, often Italian & Greek. The money of the island is dollars but the small change is English money, & they calculate in English money but in shillings, not pounds, the Spanish or Mexican dollar passing for 4s.4d & other dollars for somewhat less. Dollars are also one of the common coins of Greece. This is a very pleasant inn & the provisions excellent—only too tempting.

8th. The haze of yesterday resolved itself about midnight into violent rain, with some thunder, & today it has rained nearly all day, so that I have seen little new. Is it not curious how the rain follows me everywhere? Though Edition: current; Page: [412] here every one tells me I have come exactly at the best season. It seems doubtful if I shall have weather while I stay for the three excursions which Murray says are de rigueur if one wants to see the beauty of the island. A propos I soon found that Bowen must be the writer of Murray’s Greece, for he kept telling me things which I had just read in Murray. I breakfasted with him in his very nice rooms & took the opportunity of asking him about the eligibility of the place for living in, telling him my reason for being interested about it—that either my wife’s health or my own, or both, might very possibly make it desirable for me to fix in a southern climate. He gave the greatest encouragement—said it had often surprised him that so few English settle here, that it can only be because the advantages of the place are not known. He said the common idea of the English here is that you can live as well on £600 a year here as on £1200 in England, but that quiet & economical people can do much better: for instance his predecessor¹² as Colonial Secretary told him he never spent more than £500 though he had several children & kept a carriage & two or three horses. He asked me if I should like to be Resident of one of the Islands—saying that the work does not take above two hours a day to an energetic person as he has not to govern but to review the acts of the native government, all of which must be submitted to him in writing for his sanction—that the pay is £500 a year & a house, or rather two houses, in town & country, that the appointment is not with the Colonial office but with the Lord High Commissioner who is always eager to get better men than the officers accidentally in command of the troops, whom he is generally obliged to appoint for want of better & whose incompetence & rashness some times go near to drive him mad—that either Cephalonia or Zante will be vacant within a year; & that they are not bound to any representation except that they give a ball to the chief people of the island once a year on the queen’s birthday & a dinner to the members of the native government about twice a year. This is tempting, now when I see how much pleasanter at least Corfu is than most of the places we could think of going to: & if Ward had been going to remain I could probably have had the place for asking. The new man¹³ is the son of an India director¹⁴ but my having known him, as he died under a cloud, would not I suspect be much of a recommendation to the son. Bowen introduced me at the garrison library, the only place here where one can see English newspapers & periodicals—there Edition: current; Page: [413] I learnt for the first time Hume’s death:15 if all did as much good in proportion to their talents as he, what a world it would be! also that Lewis¹⁶ is Chancellor of the Exchequer & Vernon Smith¹⁷ at the India Board: this last I suspect will give me a good deal of influence there. At one oclock I called by appointment on Sir H. Ward: he was extremely & pleasantly civil, talked sensibly about Turkish & Russian prospects & about these islands which he extremely regrets leaving (in conformity to official routine) for another appointment—thinks Greece in a decidedly disturbed state & advises me to be guided by the advice of Wyse of whom he seems to think very highly—& ended by asking me to dine with him tomorrow en famille, which considering that he is to sail on Thursday, was certainly a greater degree of attention than he was in the least bound to shew. Bowen gave me two pamphlets of his own,¹⁸ one of them on the politics of these islands—a rather clever & on the whole practically sensible piece of political controversy but which shews no wider or better or more liberal ideas than the more liberal kind of Oxford people now universally have. If it is fine tomorrow I have fixed to go one of the three excursions with the botanist, Perry, who I am told is a great traveller & also a great yachting man: I do not much like him, but it is agreeable to get a companion to share the expense of a carriage who instead of being a restraint on botanizing, extremely desires some one to join with him in it. I like Joyce—he is a good specimen of a younger kind of Oxonian, seems very desirous to get ideas & is also well acquainted with the Logic.

9th. The rain went off before morning & the day became gradually fine. I had first a botanizing walk with Perry to a place called the One-gun battery (though there is no battery there now) in a most beautiful position overlooking the mouth of an old harbour (now a shallow salt water lake connected by a channel with the sea) & commanding the whole south coast of the island, & part of Albania. After this I went with him & two other fellow passengers in the steamer who are travelling with him, on a carriage excursion, one of the three recommended in Murray, over part of the highest mountain south west of the town, to the top of a pass just over the sea on the Adriatic side, in a ridge from which you see the whole of the view both ways. The details of the scenery going & coming are more beautiful than I Edition: current; Page: [414] can possibly describe—like the very finest things in Sicily & Italy in everything else, but having in addition a rich green from the flowery pasture which covers the country under the old olive trees—besides which the cypresses have that peculiar effect which one has often seen in views of Greece, something like but far exceeding the effect of a Lombardy poplar standing in front of a bank of trees, & where there are many they make the place look like a Turkish cemetery. The sparkle of the sea waves in the sunlight at this place can be compared to nothing but raining stars into the water. But what most struck me was the return view of the Albanian coast. I never before so completely realized what one loses here by a hazy day. The evening lights brought all the objects on the Albanian coast south of the island into prominent relief, & where I had seen only a rather tame mountainous coast I now saw deep openings going far into the interior, between ranges of mountains overlapping one another, & the peculiar disposition of ridges & angles with which views of Greece & Albania have made us familiar but which I never saw anywhere before in nature: the distant mountains north west from Nice as seen from the heights are something like it on a much smaller scale—& every ridge, every angle in a different light from every other. The town also even from the least attractive side, the land side, looked charming. The place grows upon me as all fine places do, but more than any other place I ever saw—Everybody here, I mean all the English I have spoken to, say they have felt & continue to feel the same, & the three English I went out with were as enthusiastic in their admiration of it as I was—especially Perry who says he shall certainly come here again next spring. He appears to be a man of fortune, unmarried, about forty, & to delight mainly in travelling & gardening, naturalizing foreign plants & so forth—a handsome man with a long narrow head & face, dark complexion, & decided Irish intonation. He is going to Athens & from thence to Constantinople. The new High Commissioner Sir J. Young arrived this morning, amidst firing &c, whereupon I thought it right to send a note to Bowen to, in fact, release Sir H. Ward from receiving me at dinner, saying that a stranger would be de trop, but received in return a more pressing invitation, so went & dined at seven o’clock with both the Governors, the remaining persons present being Lady Ward, a ladylike invalidish looking woman, two daughters & the husband of one of them a conversible military man aide de camp or something of the kind, Col. Lawrence¹⁹ the head of the police, who seemed the most capable person there, though with an impediment in his speech, a young chaplain & some youthful sons & daughters. The dinner was partly continental, partly English, including the largest boiled turkey I ever saw & some good roast beef—the only good beef since Montpellier (to be sure I have seldom tried the beef but never found it good). Sir J. Young seems a well bred quiet parliamentary Edition: current; Page: [415] sort of English gentleman, not at all Irish & not at all like a whipper-in of a ministry, which he long was. He said he hoped he should see me again before I leave Corfu. I gathered what information I could about the country—they say there are about three months of heat almost equal to the West Indies, because the sea breezes are not so regular & so much to be depended on here as there—but even then you can go out in the sun if it is to do anything, & if mind or body are occupied & strung up—but if you lounge, you are likely to have fever. The town & most parts of the country are healthy & free from malaria. The cholera has never been here though it was once in Cephalonia. Mosquitoes in some years a good many, in others few or none, except in marshy places. There are hardly any books to be had here (bought, I mean, there are some good ones at the Garrison Library, & others at the University, given by Lord Guildford²⁰ & others), no map of the island except one made by Lady Ward, no views of the fine scenery except her drawings: the Corfiotes, unlike the Greeks generally, very indifferent about reading & improvement. By the account of all these English they are quite Orientals as to lying & corruption—the judges bribeable; & perjury in courts of justice extremely common or rather always procurable by those who can pay for it—which however they attribute very much to the abominable government of the Venetians who used to send out the ruined nobles to recruit their fortunes here, from whom even licences to murder your enemy might be bought for ready money. Before I left rain had again come on: a great bore, but my usual luck.

10th. It rained much in the night, but in the morning it was fine after one shower, & I set off with the same party on the longest of the three carriage excursions recommended by Murray—to an old monastery called Paleocastrizza on the west coast of the island, 16 miles from the town of Corfu. The road began as if we were going round the great bay north of the town—until we seemed almost close to the foot of the ridge of San Salvador: it then went for some miles through a splendid forest of old olives, with green pasture under them & often as much brushwood & shrubs as in the more open kind of English woods: of which much is ilex, myrtle, lentisc & other evergreens, but there are also quantities of judas trees, hawthorns in full fragrance, green brambles & much else. At last we emerged on the top of a pass & descended from it to the seaside passing & overlooking what seemed an endless succession of rocky coves with deep-blue water such as I have seldom seen in the Mediterranean. I cannot describe the beauty & variety of the forms of rocks & mountains, the aerial tints, the glimpses of more distant views across the gulf, which we had both in going, & still more in returning, Edition: current; Page: [416] when distant objects were seen with more perfect transparent clearness than I have seen them in all this journey. Nevertheless almost ever since dark it has again rained violently. The character of the vegetation on the two sides of the pass differed nearly as much as on the two sides of the Appenines, the side towards the town being much less southern in character than towards the Adriatic, on which side also there was much less of the characteristic green of the island. If this green did but continue through the summer instead of drying up by June, the island would really unite the advantages of all climates. As it is I think it decidedly the most beautiful & agreeable little bit of our planet that I have yet seen & I do not at all expect to find anything better in Greece.

11th. The weather seems to have entirely broken up. It rained today not constantly but too often & too much for even a walk except about the town. I read books which I had got from Bowen, occupied myself with the plants, helped Perry with his, read at the reading room, called on Bowen & promised to dine with him tomorrow with the new High Commissioner. I had intended this day if it had been fine, for the finest excursion of all, which I had put off because no day yet has been fine enough for it. But it is doubtful now if I shall see the great view, or even have fine weather for the Gulf of Corinth. The place is full of soldiers: a third regiment of militia has arrived this morning for garrison duty, yet they continue to send here from England regiment after regiment of the regular army. Yesterday a frigate came from Constantinople which is to take away one regiment, but the weather is not good enough for them to sail today. This inn is clean, well kept & comfortably furnished, but the rooms are small & noise anywhere can be heard all over the house. There are larger rooms at the other inn, Carter’s; the Glub (not Club) Hotel. It seems a very poor place for shops, perhaps they are better than they look. But for neatness & cleanness no town I know in the South can compare with it. The worst is, the heat in summer & rain at other seasons—for Col. Butler²¹ the aide de camp says that he has found during his residence here a great deal of such weather as today. The Greek of inscriptions over shops, affiches &c is scarcely distinguishable from the ancient. In fact it is the ancient with a few vulgarisms, which they are gradually getting rid of. I go continually to the post office though I did not much expect a letter yet. I have told the Messina post office to send on the letters to Athens & have written to the office at Naples to do the same—& I suppose I shall not get your letter to this place except by leaving word to have it sent to Athens. But letters to Athens will reach me for a month to come, for while it is the first place in Greece I shall go to, it will also be the last, all excursions being from it. Therefore darling please direct there till further notice, especially Edition: current; Page: [417] as letters get there very quickly via Trieste—sometimes in six days if they hit the twice a week Austrian Lloyd steamers exactly, & if these have a good passage. Now on beginning the last stage of my journey I necessarily begin to think practically of getting home—is there any chance that my dearest one will be able & inclined to meet me at Paris, Strasbourg or any other of the places we talked of? If she could & would, how very delightful it would be—& do not think that it would abridge my time in Greece, for my leave of absence was in the terms of Clark’s certificate, for eight months, & even if these are counted from the grant of leave & not from my beginning to make use of it, this would extend to the 15th of July, so that we could in that case prolong the holiday at least till then. I shall certainly not outstay the month of June if doing so implies a longer separation, but I should feel quite differently if we were to pass the additional time together.—The Greek consul here to whom I took my passport today to be visé, says that one can safely go to any part of Greece that is worth going to, only it is well to go in a party of three or four & keep together.—I have written a short note to Peacock²² entirely about classicalities.

12th. Violent rain in the night & another showery morning: but I shall brave it by a long walk & then return to see the ex Governor depart. As tomorrow morning is post time & I may not have much time this afternoon, I shall close my letter now so adieu my own precious love. I shall write immediately from Athens.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April 14 [1855]

Corfu

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

232.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Begun at

Corfu

,

April 14 [1855]

39

Yesterday morning darling I had the happiness of getting both her letters together, the last of as late a date as April 2. The earlier one must have been here all the while, only the stupid man could not read it; I hardly expected one until today but if I had not received one today should have insisted on looking over the letters myself. I do not think many letters have miscarried—I am not sure of any but the one at Naples: many however have reached me late, & not at the place to which they were directed. I do not wonder that such a terrible winter should have given you an illness. Thank heaven it is over—the illness & the winter too—& though the last letter does not say Edition: current; Page: [418] how you are, the handwriting & its being in ink are encouraging. Respecting the dangers of travelling in Greece, my precious one will have seen by my last letter that I am quite attentive to the subject, & shall not run any serious risks. I shall be guided by Wyse who must know the state of the country. You might well say that some other person’s savoir faire was wanted “in addition” to mine—I could not help laughing when I read those words, as if I had any savoir faire at all. The English I have been going about with here are all going to Athens & some of them perhaps about Greece—if so we shall have a party ready made, & all the English one meets here are the class of experienced travellers. Perry seems to have gone almost everywhere, & a Mr Prebble,² just returned from Egypt, is still more practised—the other two are young men, one a nephew of Sir Frederic Hankey³ who was colonial secretary here, the other & pleasanter named Bruce:4 the young men are nullities, the other two not clever but tolerably & only tolerably well informed. All know a little ancient Greek, none much except Joyce who remains here—none know any modern Greek, but Prebble speaks French, German & Italian capitally. They all however talk of going to Constantinople but if they do I may very likely find at Athens still better companions. The regular guides taken from Athens are by all accounts quite trustworthy & clever at avoiding or getting through scrapes—the three good inns at Athens belong to three of them, so they are responsible people.—To resume my adventures—as happened at Girgenti, the moment I had written to you about the bad weather it ceased. The 12th was a beautiful day & I walked with Perry to the village of Pelleka, seven miles off through the olive forest on the top of a hill, having the best view of the town of Corfu & its immediate neighborhood & a splendid one of the Albanian mountains, which now covered with a great quantity of freshly fallen snow—(the more remote ridges I mean, with the nearer ones standing out dark in front of them) are brought quite near, & are one of the most magnificent spectacles I ever saw: but I had them still more finely yesterday in the great excursion to the pass of Pantaleone across the range of San Salvador. We had waited for the finest weather & today it was a real Corfu day, as splendid as the scenery. The pass commands one way all the objects which I had seen before in the island; & the other way what I had not seen at all, the northern division, separated from the rest of the island by this range—& several smaller dependent isles—& from a position a little below the pass on the north side, the range of the Acroceraunian mountains with their fresh snow—anything like this I never beheld. All the views of Greece & Albania in Lear⁵ & Edition: current; Page: [419] Wordsworth⁶ bear only the relation to it that a sketch does to a finished picture. The best attempts of landscape painters to imitate those tints are merely a faint shadow of the reality. Yet in returning when I saw again the southern Albanian mountains with one of the range of Pindus behind, as snowy as Ætna, all illuminated by the most glorious sun, & the strait between of the colour of a strong solution of vitriol, & the beautiful foregrounds which this island always gives, I thought it equal to the view from Pantaleone; & still more when I went out a little before sunset & saw it from the sea wall in the evening lights.—Sir H. Ward was to have gone on the 12th, but the Alexandria steamer from Trieste did not arrive soon enough & he went yesterday morning at 7. I paid my respects to him as many others did before his departure (on the afternoon of the 12th). One of his parting acts was to send me a little Homer as a present because when they were all talking to me of the beauty of Ithaca I had happened to say I wished I had revived my recollections of the Odyssey before coming. On the 12th I dined with Bowen to meet the new governor—there was not much good talk but I heard some Greek songs sung to the guitar by the writer & composer who wrote many of the songs sung in the Greek war of independence.⁷ The music was very good but completely Italian except one song which was almost Spanish. He sang well, and thus united the three offices of the ancient bard. There were a Mrs & Miss Wodehouse, staying with Bowen, the wife & daughter of Col. Wodehouse,⁸ lately resident in Ithaca & now going to Cefalonia: Bowen speaks of her as a very cultivated & strong minded woman who knows the Greeks better than almost any one & is more the Resident than her husband is—I saw nothing very particular in her, but it was pleasant to see an English person who had been in Corsica & Sardinia about which she talked more than about Greece. Bowen afterwards renewed the subject of the Residentship, said that Zante will be vacant this year: that it will be offered to Wodehouse & if he takes it Cefalonia will be vacant & that he is almost sure Sir J. Young has no one to whom he wishes to give it & seemed very desirous that I should think seriously about it. I told him I had not made up my mind to leave the India house but might very possibly be obliged to do so & that this opening would be a strong additional inducement. As one dinnering leads to another I found myself in for another dinner with Sir J. Young, yesterday: the only persons present were the Regent of Corfu (a Count something)⁹ & Col. Butler. I learnt a good Edition: current; Page: [420] deal & so did the Governor from the Regent, about the statistics of the island & had some talk with Sir J. Y. about the taxes. I was glad to see so much of him in case we should think in earnest about coming here. I do not believe there is a more beautiful place in the world & few more agreeable—the burthen of it to us would be that we could not (with the Residentship) have the perfectly quiet life, with ourselves & our own thoughts, which we prefer to any other, but if we have tolerable health there is not more of societyizing than would be endurable & if we have not, that would excuse us. This morning is the day for going to Athens, but the steamer has not arrived & I cannot tell when we shall get off. And now I must be off to take leave of Bowen & do some other matters.

Same evening. The steamer is not arrived yet & now will hardly leave tonight if even it arrives. When it appeared how the matter stood I set off with the same party for another excursion, to a place called the Ten Saints, a chapel on one (though not the highest) summit of the mountain south west of the town: the second highest mountain in the island. You will understand that in these carriage excursions there is much walking—& the cost among so many is trifling. The view both ways, but especially towards Albania was very fine, & part of the Acroceraunian group shewed itself over the pass of Pantaleone. But a great deal of the snow on the mountains has already melted & the view though always fine has lost some of its splendour—it was only when the late afternoon & evening lights came on it that it was again unrivalled. This country is the only one I ever saw where the peasantry seem really idle: you see them in groups lounging in the sun in the beau milieu of the day, or sitting in a circle, often playing at cards—even children do so. Meanwhile the country is not half cultivated: the olives, always a lazy crop, are here not even pruned, & the frequency of late frosts makes a good season very rare—Col. Butler has been here six years of which five were bad crops & one only middling. The vines, about which alone some pains seem to be taken, now fail: yet the island does not grow grain of all sorts more than enough for a third the consumption of its scanty population. These islands raise more than £20 000 a year revenue by a tax on imported corn. The only thing the country people seem to be occupied with is conveying horse loads of green forage along the excellent roads.—I am impatient to get to Greece now, having seen this island thoroughly & so as never to forget it: & it has seemed to me always more & more charming. All however say that the climate is extremely variable, much rain, a good deal of cold, & intense heat for three months. The post office here makes difficulties about forwarding letters to Athens unless they are paid for, but Bowen bids me tell them to send my letters to him & he will send them on under Wyse’s cover.—Bown Edition: current; Page: [421] tells me that Reeve¹⁰ is editor of the Edinburgh! it is indeed fallen. Who will consent to have his writings judged of, & cut & carved by Reeve? For us it is again a complete exclusion.¹¹

18th. Athens. It has taken three days to get here & I can hardly believe that I am here at last, though the three days have seemed like one very long one. A great part of it has been spoiled by the weather, for the rain pursues me here as it has everywhere else. However enough was left to make it very beautiful. The steamer came in the night of the 14th & on the 15th (Sunday morning) it set off about half past nine, but from its being en retard did not stop as is the custom both at Cephalonia & Zante long enough for passengers to land, nor at the Isthmus long enough for them to go to Corinth. Patras was the only place at which we landed—But to take things in order—We steamed down the channel between Corfu & the mainland of Albania, in a very fine day though less clear than the two preceding days, which were themselves far from clear. Greece hitherto has had no more of clear sky than Italy, & Prebble says as far as he has observed the Mediterranean is not clear between Christmas & the middle of April but he expects it to become so now. We passed Cape Bianco, the southermost point of Corfu, conspicuous by its white cliff. Further on the islands of Paxos & Antipaxos make a continued line with Corfu, & I hoped we should have kept the channel & passed between Ithaca & Cephalonia, but this is only done in bad weather. Argostoli the capital of Cephalonia is on the outside of the island, & as we were going to touch there we passed between Paxos and Antipaxos (two islands covered with olives but otherwise dry & bare) into the open sea. The coast also here recedes, past Parga, towards Prevesa & the Gulf of Arta & there was thus a great corner to cut off. This should have been the finest view of the coast, but heavy clouds had gathered over the mountains of the interior, & we only caught a brief view of a small part of the main snowy range of Pindus. South of the Gulf of Arta we were soon abreast of the island of Leucadia or Santa Maura, another of the Ionian isles, named from the whiteness of its rocks—it forms first a high mountain, then a long ridge towards the west & we saw from a great distance Sappho’s cliff looking very like Beachy Head,¹² sharply cut out, but with a long rise & slope above it. The wind gradually Edition: current; Page: [422] rose as we came in sight of Cephalonia & towards dusk I was a little sick, but went to bed & it went off, & I was not ill again in the next two days of narrow seas. We passed Argostoli in the night & soon after daylight were in the bay of Zante. I got up & saw it in the fine morning light, & most beautiful it was. A broad round bay with the town spread along the side of it, & mountains behind, something like the views of Macao. The place looked neat, with nice north Italian campaniles & there is a very beautiful mountain at the outer horn of the bay, but it was still finer as we receded from it & were able to take in more of it at a time—the long range or almost ridge of mountains extending from the town, which is far south to the northern point opposite Cephalonia. We had now for the sake of touching at Zante, gone far south of the Gulf of Corinth, & had to turn again northward & pass between the islands & the coast of the Morea. To the left we had Cephalonia & Ithaca, the highest mountain of Cephalonia being next to us & this is one of the finest mountains I have yet seen & the play of light on it was most exquisite. The western part of the Morea (Elis & Messenia) is very flat but even the flat parts of this country have marked features and the snow tipped mountains of Cyllene in the north western part of Arcadia were conspicuous beyond it, & far to the south east we could see the mountain of Navarino: by degrees, behind the long point on which is Castel Tornese (built by the crusaders soon after 1200). The vale of Elis opened itself out, & facing us were the scattered rocky isles of the Echinades, many of them now joined to the mainland of Acarnania by the great deposits of sand brought down by the Achelous. But as we passed these, a violent storm of rain formed itself over the mountains of Acarnania & Ætolia: we had to go below & saw nothing. It was still raining violently when after entering the outer Corinthian Gulf we put across & halted off Mesolonghi on the northern coast: I went on deck but could see little. When however in our zigzag course we reached Patras on the southern side, it was again fine weather. We here landed, & looked about us. The nearer slip of land between the mountains of Morea & the gulf is even narrower than I had imagined & what there is of land is by no means plain, but lower hills & slopes. We climbed to the castle & to another height above the castle. The mountains of Ætolia on the other side of the gulf were most exquisite. Patras is a very neat, quite new looking town—all the houses looking as if just built which indeed is the fact, both here & at every other town of Greece. The main street goes directly uphill from the sea & is more like an oriental bazaar than a street—it has arcades on both sides, a broad unpaved straight road; the fronts of the shops open & the men in their motley Greek costumes sitting, often oriental fashion, on raised boards at their work—many of them busy making their gaily ornamented clothing. The place looked thriving in spite of the failure of the current Edition: current; Page: [423] vine which is said to be its principal dependence—but these little Greek ports do an immense quantity of trading business all over Europe. There is a little port, Galaxidi, higher up the gulf, which maintains I was told nearly a hundred small vessels by carrying coals from England to Constantinople, Athens &c. After leaving Patras we soon passed into the inner gulph, through the narrow passage between two narrow tongues of land in which are the little ports called the Castles of Rumelia & of the Morea. It was dark soon after & as it was a cloudy night & no moon we lay off Vostitza or Ægium till half past two the next morning. I got up at five to find a rainy morning & all the finest part of the Corinthian gulf was in a great measure hid from us during the remainder of the day, which however gradually cleared, with occasional showers, very like an April day in England: we went up the bay of Salona which from the green mountains which bounded it, much resembled Switzerland or the English lakes: at the end of it begins the valley (known as the Crissean plain) which leads up to Parnassus & Delphi, & Parnassus ought to have been visible but was quite hid: further on however we saw at times parts of it through another opening, but never the summit. We continued, seldom seeing more than one side of the gulf uncovered at a time; & never the tops of the high mountains—but the lower mountains in front were so perfectly lovely that we could afford to lose much. The mountains on the north side were generally more peaked, those of the Morea more flat topped but which were finest I cannot tell—We endeavoured with what helps we could get to pick out Helicon, Cithaeron &c. but could get little help on board for it is astonishing how ignorant these people are of their own country. We never got much information but from the captain of the steamer on the other side of the isthmus who told us those localities very well: he was a Hungarian from Fiume & a very efficient & pleasant fellow. We had many Greeks on board, among others, Colicotroni, son or nephew of the hero of the revolution¹³ and who also distinguished himself in it—he was going to Athens it was said to answer for something he had done. He gave us some information but could speak only a very little Italian & French. The Lloyd company has made a road over the isthmus & sent us over it in carriages—it is about an hour’s drive or less, all the most beautiful green waste—we passed over it with the Acrocorinthus on our right & half a dozen other similarly framed rocks beyond, only differing from it in not being visible from so far off on the eastern side.—The mountains beyond, range above range, were the most splendid that can be conceived & the weather often Edition: current; Page: [424] allowed us to see them although there was often a gust of wind & an April shower which hid them for a time. The other steamer took us down between Ægina & Salamis to the Piraeus where we arrived just before dark, seeing, for some time previous, the Acropolis & the neighbouring hills right before us—the coast of Argolis past Poros quite to Hydra & Cape Sunium looking like an island far out at sea. Piraeus is a freshly whitewashed, quite new German looking town. We took a carriage & drove to Athens in the dark & put up at a very nice large clean inn, the Hotel d’Angleterre, kept by Elias Polychronopoulos¹⁴ one of the famous guides. I have not attempted any description of this route, for I felt all along that it would be quite in vain. You have seen good views of the finest things in Greece & they do not a bit exaggerate while they cannot give one tenth of the beauty. I shall feel bewildered in the midst of it for days. It will be very mortifying if I am not able to go about Greece. Everybody is talking of banditti who infest the Isthmus especially, who once robbed the mail, & even broke into the Government treasury somewhere & took away a large sum of money—it is said the irregular soldiers disbanded by the present ministry have turned robbers. Elias, who runs the chief risk if there be any, says there is no danger at all—that some English are touring in Greece at this very time—that the brigandage is all against the government & they do not molest foreigners—which quite agrees with Bowen. He says he will give me a guide who will take me anywhere & will answer for perfect safety. I shall hear Wyse’s opinion & be mainly guided by that. I suppose none of the English who have travelled with me lately will remain as they are all going to Constantinople. Prebble undertakes to make the bargains for us & it is rich comedy to see him do it—though neither clever nor a gentleman he always carries his point by a mixture of reason, determination & bad jokes which keep the enemy in good humour—he gets us through wonderfully cheap & we are to pay here only nine francs a day each for everything. Murray says ten shillings. It was a rich scene between him & Elias, who is a complete Greek, immensely insinuating & cajoling, officious beyond all reason, & who hugged & embraced him nearly all the time, ending with a most furious embrace. I was not able to write last night without sitting up too late, & today I must finish as the post goes out this evening. I shall try to give a better account of Athens in my next than I have given of the way to it. I hope by that time to have got my nerves a little more quiet & shall be able to tell you my plans. Be sure I shall not go anywhere without the fullest assurance of its being safe. I am now going to the post with this, & to ask for letters, then to leave my card & letter of introduction with Wyse, then to the Acropolis. Adieu with a thousand loves.

Edition: current; Page: [425]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

April 19 [1855]

Athens

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

233.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

begun at

Athens

,

April 19 [1855]

40

Dearest—

I have just returned from Wyse. I left my card & letter of introduction yesterday, & today on coming in I found his card, & he sent his Greek servant to invite me to tea this evening—I went, & found a considerable party of diplomates, officers &c—& their ladies, a niece of Wyse presiding²—for his wife,³ one of the Bonapartes, lives separate from him, & a daughter with her. He is pleasant, well informed & talks intelligently about Greece & he introduced me to the French minister, a M. Mercier⁴ (I think he called him) who is but lately arrived here, & who talked very sensibly about France & England, but of course is a Napoleonist par état. I was very happy to find that Wyse, though in Bowen’s opinion something of an alarmist about the safety of travelling &c, is not at all so in the present case, but takes exactly the same view of the matter as the landlord here (if I may call this slash-sleeved embroidered jacketed, cotton-kilted, ornamental gaitered flying about active young looking Greek by so humdrum an expression). He says, in the first place there are no brigands in the Morea, nor scarcely anywhere except about the Isthmus. In the next place, they do not molest travellers, least of all foreign travellers—they are simply making a factious opposition to the present ministry, by robbing the mails, breaking into treasuries & so on. To use his expression, they do not rob travellers but villages. This coming in confirmation of Bowen & of the landlord puts me quite at ease, & I shall start for Delphi & Thermopylae as soon as I have seen Athens. I take that part of Greece before Peloponnesus because the one is a definite excursion, the other an indefinite which may be prolonged or shortened as time allows & therefore should come last. I shall look out however for a companion, & have some prospect of one in the form of a young Englishman who has petitioned to go to Marathon in the company of our party as I may call the accidental conglomeration of fellow travellers that has come together at Corfu & here. I have made good use of the two days I have been here: yesterday I saw almost all the antiquities & went today to Eleusis. I have Edition: current; Page: [426] already got quite into the feeling of the place—With regard to scenery it is hitherto rather below my expectation, very inferior to Corfu & the Corinthian Gulf, the mountains though otherwise fine being arid & bare, & very like those of the south of France, while the peculiar beauty of this place, the bright & pure atmosphere, I have not had—both these days though sunny having been extremely hazy, so that I did not see the mountains half as well as on the rainy day of my arrival. Wyse says that Lord Carlisle⁵ had the same ill luck, & only had before his departure a few days of the brilliant weather. Nevertheless the view from the Acropolis was splendid. The temples rather surpassed my expectation than fell short of it though I had not fancied that so much of the Parthenon had perished. The beauty of it however is what no engraving can give any proper idea of, even independent of what all the buildings here owe to the excessive beauty of the Pentelicon marble they are made of. The temple of Theseus I have from my childhood been familiar with a print of. I should never be tired of looking at it. The interior has been made a museum for the sculptures they occasionally dig up & I was not at all prepared for their extreme beauty: there is one statue very like, & I think equal to, the Mercury or Antinous of the Vatican, & a number of sepulchral groups in which grace & dignity of attitude & the expression of composed grief in the faces & gestures are carried as far as I think mortal art has ever reached. It is of the happiest augury for the treasures of sculpture that may yet be found when the government sets in earnest to make excavations in the heaps of ruined temples. The modern town which is nearly all on the further side of the Acropolis, away from the sea (the street I live in points directly towards the Acropolis) pleases me very much, it looks so new & fresh, & consequently so clean—though the praise must be almost confined to the houses—the streets though mostly straight are made irregular by being badly levelled. The Palace, & the better class of houses, look like bits of Munich—the churches are of a very respectable old Tuscan stile of architecture—& the poorer houses clean & wholesome looking, & indeed even in the country I remarked that I never before saw any country in which were such clean new hovels. The gay Greek costume, always point-de-vice, & the strangeness of the Greek inscriptions in the streets make every step one takes an excitement. The way to Eleusis is across the properly Athenian plain, bounded by Mount Hymettus on the east, Pentelicus & Parnes on the north, & Ægaleos on the west, through which by the short low pass of Daphne we passed to the bay of Eleusis (formed out of the Gulf by the island of Salamis) which forms the southern boundary of the Thriasian plain now Edition: current; Page: [427] green with corn in ear & vines in full leaf. The hill at the foot of which Eleusis stands (still a rather large village) has an excellent view of this little plain & the mountains which bound it, Cithaeron & Parnes or at least branches therefrom. There is a good deal of dust today & a strong north wind, which however is not cold, at least when one walks—though returning from Eleusis in an open carriage it became coldish in the afternoon, about five. This is a nice inn, very clean, & everything very good—my darling would be quite comfortable in it & I do so wish she was here, for the good of being here is above all in the remembrances & I do not at all like having so many remembrances of beauty which do not belong to her as well—though to me the constant writing to her about the places from the places themselves, makes them strongly associated with her—but still it is not like her seeing them herself.

20th. Today I with the accustomed party saw most of the sights we had not already seen, which are nearly all outside the city—& walked to Colonos & the olive groves of the Academy which though hardly any remains subsist, is still the place where most of the gardens hereabouts are made, being the greenest part of this arid plain—very tolerably green at this season, being watered by the Cephissus, a river rather smaller than the Ravensbourne (as for the Ilissus it is even thus early a very small brook & later in the year is quite dry above the place where the fountain Callirhoe breaks into it)—at the foot of a little ledge of rock where the Ilissus makes a little cascade, very pretty, if the nymphs had not turned washerwomen. The views were extremely beautiful—the day less hazy, but cloudy with sunshine mixed, & a violent north wind which one can hardly stand against & which others call cold, but I do not feel it so, nor suffer from it in any way: nothing seems wrong with me but my stomach. The Acropolis with its four temples (though the Propylaea is not really a temple) combines magnificently with the hills about—& of the distant mountains, Pentelicus & the island of Ægina are the finest, except the group at the Isthmus which are glorious. What light it throws on Greek history to know that Acro Corinth is seen as a great object from all these heights—much larger & nearer looking than the Knockholt beeches⁶ from home. I think that corner of the Morea must be perfectly divine. The gulf or bay or narrow channel between Salamis & the mainland in which the battle was fought is just under our feet but I cannot realize the history of the place while I am looking at it—all the alentours are so different. I shall do that better in our drive at dear Blackheath.—The Pnyx where the popular assemblies were held is cut out of the side of a rocky eminence like a theatre; & the very bema or pulpit, also cut out in the rock, from which Demosthenes spoke his orations is as plain & Edition: current; Page: [428] unmistakeable as Stonehenge, but if the north wind blew as it did today (it is exactly en face) I wonder that anybody could hear them. No wonder the Athenians sacrificed to Boreas. That god carried off Oreithyia from one of these hills, which even in Plato’s time rationalizing interpreters explained to mean that the lady was blown over the cliff—as she might easily be. There is a gap in the mountains between Pentelicus & Parnes down which the god rushes directly at Athens. By the way the Phyle of Thrasybulus is plainly visible on the ridge of Parnes. One sees hardly any women here—they keep or are kept at home more than in Turkey, for they do not go about with veils. The few one does see are fat & ugly—but the young men are many of them extremely beautiful & the thorough freedom of motion which their common costume allows, makes them look their very best.

21st. A most beautiful day, perfectly cloudless, though still what we should call in England decidedly hazy: the same north east wind but much less violent. We made the best possible use of it by ascending Pentelicus. It is about two hours carriage drive to a monastery among the roots of the mountain & two hours more climbing among thickets. The approach to the mountain is at this season a green waste, grassy, bushy & flowery. The mountain, a very elegant broad based pyramid is wholly of the beautiful marble to which it gives its name—I never scrambled for four hours over blocks & fragments of fine crystalline marble before. We passed numerous quarries all the way up, some of them still worked; they have been wrought into marble cliffs rivalling in height & boldness those of the Simplon. All the way up the view grew more splendid & when at the top (more than 3000 feet above the sea) what a panorama! The Saronic Gulf exactly like a Swiss lake—range behind range in Attica, Megaris, Boetia & Peloponnesus ending with a high snowy peak which we mistook for Parnassus—the Acropolis undistinguishable from the plain—Lycabettus & the adjoining heights reduced to hillocks—Hymettus, nearly south of us, we saw far over as well as over the mountains of Ægina—the plain of Athens & the plain towards Sunium spread out green under our feet with the mountains about the peninsula of Sunium. In the opposite direction Euboea (one mass of mountains some of them capped with snow) from its southern cape to near the middle, with the beautiful blue channel of the Euripus between, & out of this the semicircular bay of Marathon, with its round treeless mountain-girt plain directly below us, & the bird’s eye view so perfect that those who were with me thought they had no need now to go to Marathon: beyond, several of the smaller islands of the Ægean; the most conspicuous being Ceos, the birthplace of Simonides;⁷ but in spite of haze we could make out Andros & even Scyros. I never saw any Edition: current; Page: [429] combination of scenery so perfectly beautiful & so magnificent—& the sunset & evening lights on the innumerable mountains in front of us returning were exquisite. The haze does not so much affect the beauty of the lights when the sun is low. The more than earthly beauty of this country quite takes away from me all care or feeling about the historical associations, which I had so strongly at Syracuse. That I shall have when I read Greek history again after becoming acquainted with the localities. I was not at all tired, except the hand which carried the plants, for the load which Perry & I brought in was quite painful to mind & body. I never felt so much the embarras des richesses. Determining them with imperfect books takes several hours in every 24: it is now past 12 & I have only determined about a third, the rest must remain in water & in the tin case till tomorrow—to be determined by daylight—nor have I been able to change a single paper. I am here in the season of flowers as well as of all other beauty. It is quite true that nothing, not even Switzerland, is comparable in beauty to this—but as in all other cases, other inferior beauty will be more, not less, enjoyable in consequence. If my darling beauty could but see it! it is the only scenery which seems worthy of her. Even Sicily recedes quite into the background. And it is but a fortnight since I thought nothing could be finer than Messina! I hope to give my darling an account of all the finest parts of Greece by the end of next month when I shall set out for home.

23d. Yesterday morning the wind changed to west, & it has ever since been hot, though not oppressive, & cloudless, till some clouds gathered over the Morea today towards evening: but still not clearer than before. I was engaged in determining the plants from breakfast to half past one when I went out by myself & climbed Lycabettus. This is a small mountain, at most 1000 feet, a mass of rock which rises close to Athens (behind the palace) & is connected with a range of two or three similar elevations collectively called Anchesmus which runs a little way northward in the centre of the plain: it is therefore an excellent station for looking round on the plain & its boundaries, Hymettus, Pentelicus, Parnes, Ægaleos with Eleusis & Mount Geranea beyond, & the gulf with its islands & mountainous coasts: also for looking down upon Athens, the whole topography of which is taken in at a bird’s eye view, made at once intelligible. I afterwards walked out on the road which leads due north & is the promenade of the people of Athens: today being Sunday there were numbers of people out, & it glittered with the variegated & bright coloured Greek costume as if the crowd had been soldiers in uniform. The costume is always the same, saving various degrees of richness—but full half were in the ordinary European dress, many of them no doubt not Greeks: a Greek looks particularly mean in that dress. The women I saw were I think mostly foreigners but I have not seen a single handsome woman at Edition: current; Page: [430] Athens & nearly all above the lowest class look sickly. Today we went, the party of five to Phyle—in a carriage to the foot of Mount Parnes, the rest I walked, though two horses were sent forward for those who wished to ride. The scenery & view were fine, but poor after Pentelicus: we ascended some of the deep rocky defiles of Parnes, very like the mountains behind Nice, & climbed to the fortress which Thrasybulus seized,⁸ of which there are large remains—walls which must have been a splendid piece of masonry—on an eminence overlooking a very high pass over Parnes to Thebes from which Thrasybulus came. At the foot of the mountain is a village which like most in Attica is peopled by Albanians—the demarchus or mayor addressed me most courteously in French & Italian, & went a great way with me unasked to point out the way. I found myself quite familiar with the dress of the Albanian peasantry—from pictures I suppose, though the Greek dress was new & strange to me. The Albanian dress is ugly, & the men not comparable to the Greeks in features though many were fine tall well made young fellows. You should have seen an old shepherd with a triangular woollen cap smoking a rude straight tube nearly as high as himself who sat unmoved & unnoticing while the others were chatting with us & our guide—very like a Turk—also a little child with her head adorned all over with gold & silver coins which will form her dowry when she marries—the way Albanian parents advertise for a proposal. The children here whether Greek or Albanian do not beg—nor do I believe any Greek begs who is not in actual want. They are too proud a people for a beggar’s life.

25th. Yesterday & part of today were again showery, but this afternoon & evening have been most beautiful, & though the mountains about the isthmus were still hazy, I have never but once (which was at the same hour—between five & six) seen the Acropolis in one direction & Parnes in the other with so beautifully clear & definite an outline. I went to no new places, but again to many of the old, especially the Acropolis & the Temple of Theseus: the last, as I expected, incomparably the best preserved of the remnants of Greek architecture, in fact almost complete—at a distance seeming quite so: No other temple here is nearly as well preserved as the one which is the best of those at Girgenti—but enough of the Parthenon is standing to make it, with its immense size, very imposing. Not having heard from Wyse who offered to go with me to Finlay⁹ & to write to fix a time for doing so, I left my card at Wyse’s & the next day (today) went to Finlay myself with my letter of introduction. He told me he had intended calling on me but that Wyse had said, no don’t, I will bring you together. I found Edition: current; Page: [431] Finlay a much older man than I expected, thin & white haired, & as Sydney Smith said of Macaulay,¹⁰ not seizing the distinction between colloquy & soliloquy: however his books shew that he is really a man of ability, & therefore as he knows Greece so well what he says about it is worth listening to. He talked to me for about two hours & would have gone on all day. He thinks the Greeks in a very low state, & worse instead of better in the last ten years, having returned to more & more of the bigotry & prejudices of the Byzantines—says that they are eager & anxious to shew that they do not belong to Europe & the West: that they like a Frank hardly better than a Turk—that there are no men of talent growing up, no one approaching to the men of the Revolution—that their very popular constitution is merely pour rire, or rather serves only to enable the whole upper & middle class to sell themselves to the government. He says that the bane of the Greeks is their self-conceit—that a Greek workman will learn from a German in one year to make what it took the German three years to learn, & that when he has learnt it & has made what he thinks a capo d’opera he never makes anything as good again, but is lost in admiration of his own skill & ceases to exert himself—insomuch that he, Finlay, has been obliged after much trial to go back to the German workmen. He told many curious things shewing the extreme indifference of the government, even the present comparatively good ministry, to all that goes wrong, which almost everything does—& the universal jobbing & peculation that goes on, but said there were two things to ground hope upon—one the universal desire of education which everybody remarks—there is no country where people expend so much in proportion to their means, for the instruction of their children—& their educational institutions are the best they have, especially the normal school. The other is the administration of justice, which though far from good is a great deal less corrupt & dishonest than anybody would expect—that it is not unfrequent for judges to decide against the government, & that there really is a bar which by decidedly throwing the weight of its opinion on the side of honesty keeps the judges in some order. This seems to me very encouraging, & the cause assigned is still more so than the result. But the ignorance, & absence of ideas in all classes he says is perfectly wonderful & there has never yet been a cabinet since the constitution was established of which every member could read & write.—When I came in I found a note from Wyse asking me to dine with him tomorrow without ceremony. It is very strange that I have had no letters whatever here. I infer from the dates & numbers of yours that you wrote a letter here between the two I received at Corfu. Edition: current; Page: [432] I teaze the office incessantly but they profess to put all the poste restante letters in the window & there is certainly none there for me: This worries me a little though I am not uneasy as I was at Naples—but I fear I shall either get none at all, or not till I return from my first excursion in Northern Greece. I have fixed to start on the 28th, with one companion certain & two as yet uncertain, but I shall know tomorrow. These are not the people who came with me from Corfu. Perry & the two young men are gone today to Smyrna & Constantinople. I gave him a great many Sicilian plants & we promised to write to each other on botanical matters. He is a gentleman, tolerably well informed, seems to know a good deal of physical science, in which he told me he took honours at the University (Dublin doubtless) makes now & then a sensible remark, the effect chiefly of his travels, but otherwise has nothing in him. Prebble is still here but goes to Nauplia & Argos on the 28th & to Constantinople afterwards. Who or what he is I cannot make out, nor could the others: he spoke of himself to one of them as a “literary man”: I sometimes suspect he has been a reporter or something of that sort. He seems to know a great deal about Greek & Greek matters very inaccurately, but I perfectly envy his power of speaking languages—very few people speak their own with as much power & command of expression as he does French—he can tell the drollest stories in French as only a good talker in France itself can tell them—& seems to have quite as great a command of German & Italian. But he never gives me the idea of either a highly educated person or a gentleman. He spends nearly all his time in hunting up antiquities & trying to make out sites &c &c. I suspect he means to write about them. He alone of these people seemed to know something about me—but whether much or little I cannot tell.—Finlay told me a good deal about the brigands who are a bad curse to the people of the country, living at free quarters on the villages, but he confirmed what all others say of their not meddling with foreigners. The government first disarmed the people, then disbanded a great part of their irregular soldiery, & these, together with the convicts let out of prison to go & revolutionize Thessaly, are the brigands.

27th, morning. Yesterday I went up Pentelicus again partly to shew it to Prebble (who was accidentally left out of the former party) partly to get better acquainted with my two probable travelling companions. Unluckily it was the haziest day of all since I have been here—though today is the clearest, & the view was much spoilt. It was however a pleasant excursion & I feel stronger than I have felt yet at all. At dinner with Wyse I met Finlay, General Church¹¹ & two or three more. The General is old & fort desséché Edition: current; Page: [433] at least physically—he spoke much more favourably of the Greeks than Wyse or Finlay—he thinks many of them care sincerely about liberty & a constitution & are no further Russian than as they wish well to any one who is fighting against Turks. He says there are more instructed men at Athens than in almost any town of Italy. I heard many amusing stories about brigands but not one of the persons present thought there was any imprudence in my going or in the least dissuaded me. Wyse will get me from the minister of the interior a letter to the civil & military authorities which will order them to give me an escort if I want it—the cost of which is a dollar a day. But Finlay says he would rather take the chance of being robbed than the bore of an escort: a sign that the chance is not great. My two probable companions are both youngish men which is so far a disadvantage: one is named Dawson¹² & is from Cumberland—pleasant mannered but apparently not a regularly educated man—with a decided preference for good opinions as far as I can yet see. The other is a young Frenchman about whose going there is some doubt. But Dawson for various reasons wishes much to go first to Nauplia, so we are all three going there with Prebble by the fortnightly steamer tomorrow to return by the Isthmus, being only away three nights, & the next day to start northerly. I did not like this plan so well as my own but thought it best to acquiesce & if the Frenchman does not find himself too much fatigued by the short journey he will join in the long one. The brigands on the isthmus are now it is thought dispersed. The wind though westerly was violent yesterday & has given me some face ache besides a swelled lip & inflamed nostril but in no other way do I suffer at all from it & I believe my lungs to be better than at any former time. Do not write again to Athens darling but write to Corfu—it is too bad not getting my letters here. When I return it will certainly be by Ancona, Florence & Milan & then either by the Splügen or the St Gothard, so a letter to Florence or Milan will be safe. Adieu my dearest dearest life. As the time draws nearer for meeting I seem to love her more than ever.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

May 2. [1855]

Athens

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

234.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Athens

May 2. [1855]

41

My precious love. I returned yesterday evening from the excursion to Nauplia, Argos & Corinth & I am obliged to write very briefly because the horses are ordered & the guide waiting for the northern excursion. To my Edition: current; Page: [434] infinite annoyance I still find no letters addressed to me here, but instead of them an answer from the post office at Naples addressed to J. S. Will, informing me that there are four letters there for me but that they cannot send them unless I direct some one there to pay the postage! I know nobody there & have no mode of sending the money to reimburse them if I did. So I have no choice but to lose the four letters. Nothing can be more vexatious. The excursion has been very pleasant & I am stronger & digest better after it. We went, a party of four, by the steamboat to Nauplia. We crossed the gulf, passed Ægina—by this time I was sick, but the sickness soon went off. We passed between the island of Hydra & the extremity of Argolis: Hydra is less sterile & bare than I expected, & the town, built round an amphitheatre of rocky hill, still more striking than I expected. We turned the point & steamed up the Argolic Gulf, passing between the mainland & the equally illustrious island of Spezzia. The mountains of the Morea are still finer than those of the Gulf of Salamis. We arrived at Nauplia in time to ascend to the lofty mountain-citadel (the strongest fortress in Greece) before dark, & the view from it round the head of the Gulf & into the interior was magnificent. In this four days excursion I could not conveniently take my writing apparatus so that I had to postpone all writing till now, & now I must cut it short. The next day was employed in the plain of Argos: this day & the day after were the clearest I have yet had in Greece. The plain about the head of the Gulf, with the mountains of Arcadia & Laconia on the further side, high range behind high range & the furthest covered with snow, was I think the finest sight I have yet seen in Greece. The Cyclopean walls of Tiryns & the Pelasgic walls of Mycenae (for there is a distinction between the two kinds) are quite worthy of their reputation & the first especially has made an indelible picture in my brain. The Gate of the Lions & the so called Treasury of Atreus which I believe to be a tomb, are both curious & beautiful. Nauplia is a small but busy & rather neat town, with a great many quite Turkish looking houses: Argos is like a large camp, or like the collection of sheds rather than houses which you may remember near where the Paddington railway station now is. The accommodation at the inn at Nauplia was as tolerable as one could expect. The next day we took horses & went to Corinth through the splendid pass in which occurred the most remarkable destruction of a Turkish army in the revolution:2 thence descending to the little narrow plain of Nemea, with the place where the Nemean games were celebrated very obvious, & considerable & fine remains of the Temple of Jupiter in the midst, then through another pass to the ancient Cleonae with a most glorious back view over the mountains of northern Arcadia (the range of Maenalus I believe) & when we got to the last height before descending to Corinth, we had all that we missed on our voyage up the Corinthian Gulf: Parnassus, Helicon Edition: current; Page: [435] & Cithaeron in their utmost beauty & grandeur with snow on Parnassus & on the Ætolian mountains—another high snowy summit among the mountains of Achaia—the isthmus & both the gulfs spread out in all their beauty under our feet. At Corinth we found there was no longer an inn as the proprietor of the only one had just died. Our guide took us to a café where we got an infinitely bad lodging but he had brought beds with him & found provisions. In the morning we mounted the Acro Corinth & had as splendid a view if not more so than yesterday’s—& then rode to the steamer station, Calamaki, & returned to Athens by the steamer. I found the riding would not do for me but we luckily met a party with horses belonging to the same owner & effected an exchange of my horse for one with a Turkish side saddle which is one of the recognized modes of riding here—& on this I was able to trot & gallop as well as any of the party, as indeed I had already done sitting sideways on my former horse with one foot in the stirrup—I was surprised to find it neither difficult nor dangerous, & am now quite at ease about the journey since after a day of 13 hours spent between this & walking, I was able to climb the Acrocorinth next morning early, with neither stiffness nor fatigue. This is a miserable affair of a letter darling, but you will like it better than none, & I shall not venture to send another till I return from my 13 days tour though I shall write it as regularly as I did in the Sicilian journey. I have made plenty of remarks but they must wait till I have time to write them. Adieu with the utmost love. dearest dearest angel. I go with only Dawson. Prebble & the Frenchman go to Constantinople. In coming down the gulf to Athens, the captain who has struck up a great friendship with Prebble, took us along the strait between Salamis & the mainland, over the very place of the battle.³ The beauty of the long winding strait is exquisite.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

May 2 [1855]

Tatoe (the ancient Deceleia)

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

235.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

begun

May 2 [1855]

,

Tatoe (the ancient Deceleia)

42

I have got thus far, my angel, & am now writing in a nice room of a very pretty maison de campagne in I should think the finest situation in Attica, belonging to somebody who was minister of war during part of the revolutionary period. It stands a little way up Parnes, on the side next Pentelicus, Edition: current; Page: [436] at a short distance from the place which the Lacedæmonians fortified in the latter part of the Peloponnesian war to take military possession of Attica. Where there are no inns, travellers are of course entertained in private houses. The owner of this is now absent. We form quite a caravan, having four horses & two mules, three for ourselves & the guide, three for the luggage & utensils, beds, provisions &c, also three muleteers & a cook: all this being provided for the 25 francs a day we each pay, which also includes the remuneration of the guide. The plain of Attica is a wide extent of country with cultivation here & there. The thiness of the population appears from the rarity of villages or houses. Towards the roots of Parnes as of Pentelicus it is a mere waste, of shrubs, chiefly arbutus & lentisk: but as soon as one gets into the gorges of the mountain one is among fine woods, generally rather dwarfish but sometimes high & strong—with considerable underwood & sometimes green pasture. Here on the terrace in front of the neat house we look directly on a large knoll covered with the richest green of cornfields & trees like the greenest scenery in England & forming a capital foreground to the vale of Attica as it lies between Hymettus & Ægaleos with the low line of Anchesmus & Lycabettus between, ending in the Acropolis & the city—& beyond, the gulf & the mountains of the Morea, these last from the haziness of the evening (a south wind having set in) not shewing to all the advantage they might do—but the variety of lights on the nearer sides of Parnes & on Pentelicus is most exquisite. The commencement of the journey is auspicious. I am writing this while waiting for dinner, on a table spread as neatly as at home & I have no doubt we shall dine as well & as pleasantly as at the hotel at Athens. Our guide, George Macropoulos,² evidently understands this part of his business, though he does not know the mountains from a distance & misleads us in the most absurd manner. I have hitherto found, much to my surprise, the Greeks a remarkably stupid people—the stupidest I know, without even excepting the English. I make every allowance for the fact that they & we communicate in languages which are foreign to both & which they know very imperfectly—but they do not shew the cleverness that French, Italians & even Germans do in making out one’s meaning, & they never seem able to find out what one wants. Invariably they do the very opposite of what one tells them, very much too conceited to say they do not understand. From Elias Polychronopoulos the master of the hotel down to the lad who drives a horse they are all alike both in their dullness & in their conceit: I mean all those with whom a stranger comes in contact. They seem however a very well behaved people; wherever we went in the Argos excursion a crowd assembled round us & stood with a fixed gaze, but never by word, act or gesture were in the smallest degree offensive, & if we spoke to them in the few words we could command, or examined their dress or anything belonging Edition: current; Page: [437] to them, they were evidently extremely delighted. Like other animals they like to be noticed. We heard in these woods some blackbirds which sounded quite like England. In the Argos excursion we heard numbers of nightingales & saw a large black fox, several tortoises as large as a man’s head, & quantities of lizards—one today of a beautiful yellow green must have been from 18 inches to two feet long. But the noisiest animals are the frogs, who cry four or five times louder than the loudest English frogs & with a much greater variety of notes, one of their cries exactly resembling that of the chorus of frogs in Aristophanes.³ My travelling companion Dawson is pleasant mannered & seems desirous of information but very little educated & even leaves out many an h—which one would not have expected from his appearance or the tones of his voice, or his general manner of expressing himself. One meets with strange English abroad—one young man came down the gulf in the steamboat with us this last time & went to the same inn, a white faced weakly looking creature the twist of whose mouth & lameness of one of his spindle like legs shewed that he had had a paralytic stroke—he was evidently a gentleman: he seemed to have gone about very much yachting & was now going to the Crimea—this young man after dining on the steamer dined again as soon as he arrived, talked of dining twice as if it were quite a common practice with him & of drinking a pint of rum & a bottle of wine by himself & talked in the exact mincing voice & manner which Punch is always laughing at.

4th. Achmet Aga, in Euboea. After leaving our pleasant lodging we ascended the very considerable height on which the old fort of the Lacedæmonians was built, some ruins of which remain: but the view was not finer than that from the terrace in front of the house. There was however a view the other way over the plain of Tanagra & the Euripus to Euboea. We soon got clear of the gorges of Parnes & descended into the plain or valley of Tanagra where we found already considerably more wood than in Attica, & some fine specimens of a kind of oak differing from ours by having its green modified by a slight grey downiness. The country is mostly uncultivated. This plain is bounded on one side by the main range of Parnes, on the other by a lower range which turns round from the east end of Parnes: after some time we ascended this & from its beautiful bushy height, saw in front the mountains of the north of Boeotia, to the left the snow clad Parnassus in the distance & to the right the beautiful channel of the Euripus, now stirred by a strong south wind blowing up it—beyond were the coast & mountains of Euboea & the little plain of Eretria. After passing through a gap in some low hills in front we came in sight of Chalcis, the Negropont of the Venetians, on the other side of the strait: but the Euripus which in this part Edition: current; Page: [438] abounds in inlets, makes here a deep broad bay in the Boeotian coast (the bay of Aulis, the scene of the sacrifice of Iphigenia) which for want of a ferry we had to go all round, often turning our backs directly on the place we were going to. We entered Chalcis by a bridge, like that over a very small river, under which the sea runs with a force greater than that of the Rhone—& reverses its direction every eight or ten hours, a curious fact which no one has satisfactorily explained. The country lies in so odd a way that we seemed to be crossing from Euboea into the mainland when it was really the reverse. Chalcis is a much better town than I expected, neat (for Greece) with some new looking large houses & a generally whitewashed look: several old Turkish mosques also, two of which we entered: one is now a Greek church & the gaudy ornamentation rather spoils the effect of the simple beautiful architecture of the mosque (which is always one & the same). Another is still used as a mosque by a few Mussulmans who still live here but though the minaret still stands, the call to prayer is not allowed. The town is strongly fortified & has a citadel besides. From the opposite coast it looks fine by its situation & striking by the vast solitude of the whole wide extended scene round it. Here also the inn which did exist exists no longer & our guide procured us a lodging in a private house, that of a marchand as he expressed it: & curious it was. The ground floor was wholly a courtyard, having the oven in one corner where the women were baking bread—the remainder being the receptacle for all manner of untidiness & worse. The house consisted of one floor resting partly on walls, partly on supports to which the ascent was by a partly stone partly wooden flight of steps, leading to an open wooden gallery—(the floors in Greece are always wood & not stone as in Italy & Sicily) & adjoining this were the rooms—apparently three besides the kitchen—one of which was made over to us. It was cleanly & freshly whitewashed but two swallows had made their nest in one corner of it & in the morning flew about the room. The swallows here go everywhere: they are a most beautiful breed, white on the under surface, with black heads & backs, larger & more svelte than ours & with much more of song. Of course cleanliness is impossible with such inmates & indeed to make these people cleanly the first requisite is that they should not live with their animals as they now do. This morning we first crossed a considerable plain on the banks of the beautiful Euripus, now perfectly calm & glassy. As the mountains of the north of Euboea came quite down steep to the strait, we had to go inland into the midst of them, through gorges covered more & more with pines, some of which had a peculiarly beautiful head-of-hair sort of look, & we came to more & more green trees, especially the oriental plane which we always have met with in Greece about the rivers or rather brooks. We wound up a high mountain, from parts of which the view back on Chalcis, the Euripus & the south of Euboea was magnificent while on the other side we Edition: current; Page: [439] looked over northern Euboea, the Locrian & Thessalian coast & the island of Scyros. We descended into the most beautiful deep ravines imaginable, in which the usual evergreens, much increased in size (especially a kind of arbutus with a red bark, much larger than ours & which flowers in spring) were mingled with ash, the common English oak, several other deciduous oaks, a fine sumach, the judas tree in the full beauty of its delicate green leaf, & above all the oriental plane. We continually crossed little bits like the wilder parts of a fine English park, set in a frame of mountains, & at last came out on a plain (surrounded by mountains) covered with magnificent plane trees which we were never tired of looking at. One noble tree in the full vigour of life & health must have been fully equal to & much like the castagno di cento cavalli.⁴ Here we again saw cultivation, which we had left behind in the plain of Chalcis: In the midst of this plain is a small village with the Turkish name of Achmet Aga, a village made entirely by an Englishman named Noel⁵ who for his reward has lately had his house actually gutted of everything worth removing, & the whole village plundered by a set of brigands. It is in his house we are lodged, quite unexpectedly, for the guide told us he had asked hospitality of a German named Emile.⁶ This is exactly like the ignorance & gross inaccuracy of their guides (this man is thought one of the best, & I have tried two others). The supposed Emile turned out to be Müller, Noel’s partner. Noel is very like William Adams⁷ in appearance & ways; & he welcomed us heartily. He is full of indignation against the government which never punishes brigands, continually amnesties them, & even appoints them to offices. He says things are going from bad to worse & he fears that after having given twenty years of his life to this place he shall be obliged to leave the country. He was here travelling at the age of 19 when the Turks were obliged to sell their land & leave the country: all Euboea belonged to them & finding that he could buy one of the largest & I should think quite the finest estate in Greece for £2000 he did so. He is now quite out of spirits. He says nothing could be more quiet than the country for the first 10 or 12 years & the people were well conducted & attached to the law: but they are now becoming demoralized by seeing men guilty of the most horrid Edition: current; Page: [440] crimes going about rich & often placemen. The brigands entered his house in the middle of the day, remained five hours, & if Noel had not had a large sum of money in the house which partly satisfied them he would no doubt have been tortured with boiling oil to make him disclose the supposed hiding place of his money. The people outside though armed made no attempt to resist, & a Greek according to him (except the regular soldiers) never will expose his body to an enemy: he will only fire from behind a tree or a rock. The authorities at Chalcis had full information of the intended raid, but neither took any measures to prevent it, nor gave the people in the island notice to take care of themselves.

5th. at a village in the north of Euboea where we are lodged very comfortably in an unfinished house, I should think the largest in the place. The day’s journey (though the weather was both hazy & cloudy) was the most splendid I ever had. We continued to descend the plain or valley in which Noel’s village stands—A clear mountain brook or river winds down in the midst among a perfect forest of the noblest plane trees—one, a single trunk (not several from one root like the one we admired yesterday) was the most gigantic tree I ever saw: Dawson measured it round with his outstretched arms & it took eight lengths. There is much cultivation in the valley, most of it by Noel’s tenants. The system here is metayer; the government tax of 10 per cent & the seed are first deducted, & the landlord takes in kind a third of the remainder. After a while we ascended another range, & all the rest of the day we passed in crossing or looking down upon deep broad ravines between mountains much clothed with trees, half of them at least (& sometimes the whole) deciduous: the plane, several kinds of fine oak, & various others. It is useless attempting to describe it. Whatever one picks out as the choice bits in any other southern country compose the whole of Greece, & here we have it mixed with much of what is finest in the northern countries. We often overlooked the Ægean on the eastern side of the island, with Scyros apparently quite near—a long mountain ridge: & at last came in sight of the Gulf of Volo in front with Othrys & Pelion behind it & the islands of Peparethus, Sciathos & others over against its entrance (in a clearer day we should also have seen Ossa & Olympus) making the divinest view I ever beheld. About the middle of the day we came to a large rich village where the people were assembled for the fête of their patron St George & we saw dancing of the most barbaric kind to truly Turkish music, a drum going like strokes of a blacksmith’s hammer & a sort of flute sounding like a bagpipe. There was general personal cleanliness & much fine dressing—they are an odd people like South Sea islanders I should think. Noel shewed us several of the cottages of his peasants—one large room, with an earthen floor, the fire in the middle & a hole in the roof above it for the smoke—one end of the room sometimes Edition: current; Page: [441] partitioned off, sometimes not, for all their animals, cows, oxen & all. In the midst of one of these stood the paysanne, a neat, still handsome woman, quite finely dressed for the fête, making the oddest contrast with all that surrounded her. At the dancing nothing could exceed the polite attentions we received from all the people. It is impossible to dislike such universally good humoured & courteous people but they are almost savages. They always consider & speak of themselves as Orientals, not Europeans. George, our guide, who has travelled a good deal & speaks French very well for a person of his condition, always says in answer to any criticism “cela viendra avec le temps”—it is to be hoped it will, but all the English here except General Church think things are going backward. In Greece it is not generally the custom to sleep in a bed: all but decidedly well off people spread a carpet or rug on the floor & lay themselves on that, with some kind of coverlids or without any, & I suppose without undressing.

7th. Stylidha, on the Gulf of Zeitun.—An hour’s walk took us to Xerochori, a large village, & the chief place in the North of Euboea, where we had a conference with the Eparchos or sous-préfet, to whom a functionary (the captain of the port of Limni) whom we met at the fête, had volunteered to give us a letter, to assist us in hiring a boat to cross to the mainland of Greece. We found the eparch, who is a Hydriot, something like a man of business, & I believe the islanders generally are decidedly more civilized than the Continental Greeks. He loaded us with civilities & invitations & sent a man with us to Oreos, the port of embarkation, two hours off, to speak to the captain of the port there. Oreos is a little village, which replaces a large town of ancient Greece & here we waited a great part of the day, there being only one boat in the roads large enough to take horses & the demand therefore being exorbitant. The captain of the port was unluckily absent but when he arrived he obtained some little abatement & we were obliged to close with the boat. It was a decked boat with two masts, but the horses so filled it that there was little more than standing room. If the wind had been good we should have made the run up the Gulf of Zeitun in three hours; but we were becalmed & it took us twenty one, not only losing a day, but obliging us to pass the night on board—& as it was perfectly impossible to go into the tiny hole below we had to make our beds on deck—a hazardous experiment you will say for me—but it was so serene & warm a night, without a breath of wind, that taking every possible precaution I sustained no harm. The day had been one of the haziest I ever saw in fine weather. The next morning though still hazy was somewhat better, & the scenery was beautiful, but in spite of landing our horses to lighten the bark, we made hardly any progress till after midday when a brisk wind sprung up. We passed between the north end of Euboea & the narrow strip of Greek territory which lies between this channel & the Edition: current; Page: [442] Turkish frontier & is known as Phthiotis: when we had passed Euboea & the entrance of the Euripus we entered the Gulf of Zeitun or Lamia which runs northwest. The whole way we had the mass of Parnassus visible on the left, much more clearly & nearer at hand than ever before, & the snowy tops of Œta & Othrys ahead. The range of Othrys forms the northern boundary of the Greek kingdom. Œta is some masses of mountain a little back from the gulf. The mountains come very close to the water’s edge, leaving in one place only the narrow pass of Thermopylae which we first saw from the water & shall see tomorrow thoroughly. Our guide wanted us to land at Molos on the south side, very near Thermopylae & not go to Lamia at all, & by this we should have saved a day, but as the dangerous part of the journey, if any, begins here, & we were told that there were only national guards at Molo, in whom we felt no confidence, we decided (as the Eparchos had advised) to land at Stylidha, the port of Lamia on the north side. There we waited on the civil & military authorities, presented our ministerial order, & are to have a guard of six regular soldiers or mounted gendarmes early tomorrow. To this we are legally entitled: what we give to them is bakshish—a word in much use here—in which form they will cost us about a dollar a day. We got, by the aid of the mayor’s deputy, the best & most spacious lodging we have yet had, in a newly furnished house—two very tolerably large though scantily furnished rooms (but we carry a table with us) from the balcony of which we look over the gulf full upon Parnassus, Œta & Thermopylae. The waters of the gulf abound in curious animals, especially the jelly fish which looks like a ring of seaweed—seen closer the ring is seen to be composed of muscular fibres stretched across from the inner to the outer circle, a gelatinous mass filling up the inner, & fibres like roots hanging down below—the thing moves by contracting its muscular ring. This day of inaction has fatigued me much more than the previous days of hard walking & riding—& I must hasten to bed. The handwriting of this letter testifies to my fatigue but I am better in health than usual—that is, I digest better—well as to digestion is no longer a word for me. But I have abundant strength & stamina.

9th. Topolia: We started from Stylidha with our six guards who however were not regular soldiers: but they only went with us to Lamia, three hours off, past the head of the gulf. Here the commandant gave us two non commissioned officers & eight privates, to whom the commandant of the following station of his own accord added two more: so we are well protected. The number makes no difference in what we pay. Some of them go before us & others behind & at the commencement they threw out vedettes to right & left but they left off this when they got into the narrow ways. At the head of the gulf there is a considerable plain, & the part near Lamia is better Edition: current; Page: [443] cultivated than any other part of Greece which I have seen. There is however a great deal of marsh round the head, as with the Lake of Como. After crossing this plain we entered the pass of Thermopylae, between Œta & the gulf: first crossing the Spercheius, a river of some size, the first real river I have seen in Greece. But Leonidas⁸ would not know the place again, for in the 2350 years which have since passed, the Spercheius has brought down so much soil that it has converted the narrow pass into a broad flat, partly marsh, partly covered with scrub, through which the river winds its course in a very slanting direction & at last falls into the gulf. The side of Œta rises very steep, but covered with copse. The place of the ancient pass is fixed by some hot sulphurous springs which now as then gush out from the foot of the mountain, & also by the tumulus which was raised to contain the sluice. The foot of the mountain is a perfect shrubbery of oleander, agnus castus, & wild vine in addition to the usual shrubs of the country. After we had sufficiently examined the place we climbed a part of the mountain & wound round its sides, catching an occasional fine view of the Gulfs of Zeitun & Volo, the north end of Euboea &c. but unfortunately the fine weather has disappeared, the day was showery, at last thunder came on, & lasted with most brilliant lightning nearly all night. We halted for the night at a village called Boudonitza, at some height up a pass in the range of Œta: we were lodged at a priest’s house, which was a queer place enough but I did not observe any bugs—the quite new house we lodged in at Stylida swarmed with them. In the morning we continued to ascend the same pass, the sides of which were covered with the most beautiful Alpine fir wood, to which the brilliant greenness of the young shoots gave the most attractive beauty. We were now completely in Swiss scenery. When we reached the top of the pass we looked down suddenly upon the great valley of Phocis, larger & broader than the Valais, & reaching from Boeotia to Thessaly—it lies between the range of Parnassus & that of Œta, the former of which was now spread out before us & the group of summits more particularly known by the name of Parnassus was exactly opposite. Clouds however hung on most of the tops & it soon begun to rain & rained at intervals all the rest of the day. The valley is very green at this season—the centre alone is cultivated, though the whole is evidently very fertile—the rest is waste or beautiful woods of oak & plane: several beautiful streams run down it towards Boeotia & I suppose all join lower down. But a village or two of few houses, just visible in nooks of the mountain, are all that remains to represent the twenty cities of Phocis. People talk of coming to Greece to see ruins, but the whole country is one great ruin. After crossing obliquely this great valley we entered the gorges of the opposite mountains, which are like Edition: current; Page: [444] very wild parts of the higher Alps, and nearly as verdant—with great richness of wood, both firwood & deciduous trees, & great affluence of water. An exceedingly long ascent followed by a much shorter descent brought us into another long green valley (much narrower however) which we followed to its head & ascended the long woody pass which terminates it, the rain gradually went off & gave us fine views of the mountains behind,—& finally we came out at an immense height above a long deep & broad valley reaching quite to the Corinthian Gulf, which we saw in the evening light of a blue like the blue Salvia, with the mountains of the Morea behind. The descent was very long to the village of Topolia, though this is still at a great height above the valley. We have now turned quite round Parnassus & have got to the west of it which it seems is the best way to Delphi. The road all day was the remains of an old Greek or Roman paved road, most of it however washed away & only enough remaining to shew what it once was: We are lodged at the neat looking house of the owner of the only shop (I suppose) in the village, but it is, for a village, a very large & fine shop—I do not think Chalcis, with its completely Turkish bazar can produce anything comparable to it. All this part of Greece is as unlike the aridity of Attica as the Alps are to the mountains about Nice.

10th. Delphi. A short day’s journay, only 4 hours; which & a good deal of walking about afterwards I did on foot. Leaving Topolia where we were almost eaten up with bugs, we descended into the hollow & made our way back into the great deep valley of Salona, the one into which we looked down yesterday evening but from which we had diverged in the twilight. Salona itself, a large village or small town, is some way up the opposite side of the valley, on the base of a very high snowy mountain approaching to the height of Parnassus—This valley is well cultivated, the cultivation even going a short distance up the mountains on both sides. After descending the valley for some time towards the sea we began winding up the eastern or left hand side of it, until we overlooked the Crissœan plain (hid before by a winding of the valley) quite down to the Corinthian gulf, or rather down to the bay of Salona into which I had come in the steamer—we saw the port of Galaxidi & the neighbouring heights well, but the mountains of the Morea were hid by the cloudy, & at last showery day. The plain of Crissa, formerly dedicated to the infernal gods for the impiety of its people (they had obstructed & pillaged the visitors to Delphi), & forbidden to be cultivated under the penalties of sacrilege, is now one of the greenest & richest pieces of cultivation in Greece, half of it being beautiful olive groves which also press into the narrow gorge up which lay the Sacred Way leading to Delphi. We looked down into this gap, but could not see quite to the bottom: it is immediately below very high & precipitous mountains, while the side on which we were spreads Edition: current; Page: [445] out at a certain height into a gentle slope, in which is a good deal of terraced cultivation, the whole resembling some of the upper parts of the lower valleys in the Pyrenees. At the higher edge of this slope is Castri, which has now resumed its name of Delphi & we have put up in a very humble private house. Delphi is one of the very few places in Greece of which the views in Wordsworth’s Greece⁹ give a more favourable idea than the truth: it is however fine, backed by a very precipitous cleft portion of Parnassus & looking down into the broad valley with a narrow gorge at the bottom of it, rapidly ascending from right to left. I dare say it was very imposing when it was a fine town with a magnificent temple: it seems to have been at that time entirely built on artificial ground supported by a solid wall along the mountain side, much of which (most splendid masonry) still remains. The Castalian spring is a humbug. The only bit of ground approaching to a level to be found near the town was also propped up by a wall & formed the stadium or racecourse for the Pythian games, the most important & celebrated in Greece next to the Olympic. The site of the temple of Apollo is now clearly ascertained & the foundations have been partly excavated: it is in the very middle of the modern village. Many fragments of reliefs & other sculpture & large pieces of broken column are lying about. But I think the most curious thing we saw was a very primitive mill for pressing the oil from the olives, which we saw at a small monastery close by, very nearly as wretched a place as the private houses.

12th. Lebadea (or Livadia). We set off from Delphi to climb as much of Parnassus as it is expedient to ascend at this season, namely to the Corycian cave where the Delphians of old used to take refuge from enemies & which served for similar purposes lately in the war of independence. After a steep climb up the part of the mountain which is immediately above Delphi, we arrived at a table land of some miles in circumference, very much resembling an ancient crater—round which rose many summits, the great mass of Parnassus proper with its snowy top being at the further extremity. The table land itself is very uneven & has a park like look from the firs & other trees scattered over it, intermixed with pasture & even cultivation. There is a considerable village on it further on, near the foot of the principal mountain; but we stopped short of this & climbed one of the minor ones to within a short distance of the top (about the most difficult ascent, & subsequent descent, I ever made, being entirely pathless, though not dangerous) when going in at a low entrance we found ourselves in a colossal subterranean hall, with a dark passage beyond it, great stalactites hanging down, & the stalagmites below looking in the dim light like gigantic figures of men & animals. The view from this mountain over the Corinthian Gulf was much Edition: current; Page: [446] hindered by clouds on the higher summits of the Morea but the day was very fine & the clouds gradually cleared off. We descended by a different route to a large village named Arachova which is higher up the Pyrenean-looking gorge overlooked by Delphi & overlooks it in the same manner, saving that it looks (owing to a turn in the hills) down & not across the gorge, direct towards the Crissœan plain. This valley is on the whole well cultivated; the sloping side of it is very generally laid out in vines & there are many olives in the lower part; but the mountains on the other side like the sides of Parnassus above are too precipitous to admit of any cultivation. Soon after passing Arachova we reached the summit of the pass & saw quite down to the Lake Copais & the plain of Boeotia; & of this we had better & better views as we advanced in our route; which was a rapid descent of two or three hours, till we met another valley ascending from the Corinthian gulf, in the part of it called the bay of Aspraspitia, & the abrupt sides of this valley forced us to turn to the left & ascend it—this fork being exactly the place fixed on by the Greek tragic poets as the spot where Œdipus met his father Laius without knowing him, & killed him in a fray.¹⁰ At the top of this second valley we wound over a mountain pass & came out at the head of the broad valley of Boeotia which comes quite up to the foot of Parnassus. At the root of the mountain is the ancient Daulis, now the village of Davlia (the scene of the tragic adventure of Philomela)¹¹ & here we put up for the night. Though it was a long & hard day’s work I was not the worse for the fatigue, but had all day the worst indigestion I have yet had—for some days I have had it worse & worse but now I must decidedly pull up & I put myself at once on regimen. In consequence I have had today a much less bad attack. Today has been a short day but a very fine one—the whole way along the plain. Parnassus & the other mountains round were most splendid in the cloudless sky & bright sunshine & Parnassus looked, even more than from any other place, his full height. The plain or valley of Chaeronea is surrounded by mountains, those on the east side being rather low—these separate it from the valley of Phocis & we saw across the low mountains (mistake: it is a lower part of the same valley)¹² the high ones which bound that: including the range of Œta which we passed over two days ago, & the snowy range of Othrys with one domelike summit, running east & west & closing the whole prospect on the north side. The plain of Chaeronea is a basin with only one outlet, & the aspect of the place, combined with the perfect flatness up to the Edition: current; Page: [447] foot of the mountains & the depth of the alluvial soil, shew that it was once a lake. In the middle of one side of it is the site of Chaeronea itself, of which the only remains are a theatre much of which is preserved: the battle was fought in the plain a little lower down, & on the spot are lying about the fragments of a colossal lion erected in honour of the Greeks who fell fighting against Philip¹³—this lion had quite sunk into the ground by its own weight & when it was found about 25 years ago was quite perfect, but the ignorant Greeks blew it to pieces with powder in hopes that it contained treasure. The only fragment recognizable is the colossal head which shews how imposing it must have been. At this place Plutarch¹⁴ lived, in the time of Trajan, & consoled himself for the fall of Greece by writing his lives, & much amiable philosophy. Instead of going round by the outlet of the basin we crossed a low part of the side of it, & entered into the larger basin containing the Lake Copais where we immediately saw before us, mounting up the side of one of the bounding mountains, the town of Lebadea. It looked from a distance like any of the villages we have passed, only larger. When we were in it, we found streets with Turkish bazar-looking shops, like Patras or Chalcis but on a still humbler scale. It is however the largest town in northern continental Greece. We put up, for the first time, at a Khan, that being the custom here: there were Khans in most of the places we have been at, but the private houses were supposed to be better. Here it seems you cannot get accommodated in private houses: the Khan however is much more roomy than the little holes we have been squeezed into & there is quite as much furniture, viz. two stools & a table. It is also quite clean—much cleaner than the last two, where the plague of fleas has been prodigious (as it is here), but, contrary to what might be thought, the only places where we have been tormented by bugs, or seen any, except a stray one or two, have been the only two really clean & new-built houses—rooms with clean washed boards & brilliant whitewash. This accords with the theory that bugs are a wood insect. We here parted with our escort, but are to have a fresh one tomorrow. No dozen people could be more well behaved or even well bred than these men, & the sergeant who commanded them is really a gentleman. We could converse little with them, being obliged to speak through the guide as an interpreter, but we could understand their courtesies. They are very gay & lively, & listening to their talk among themselves I continually caught words which notwithstanding the difference of pronunciation I recognized as ancient Greek—The cave of Trophonius was near this place & they shew something which they pretend to be it, but the better opinion is that it is Edition: current; Page: [448] blocked up by rubbish & has not been found. I have thought it better to rest & write this than go to see the sham piece of antiquity. Through the whole journey our fare has been as good as at a good inn & the mode of serving it as neat & well ordered as in an English household. Dawson is a very pleasant fellow traveller, sensible & right feeling in all practical matters—he knows no Greek, I think not even the alphabet & very little Greek history or rather none at all: his ignorance of it is such that I wonder at his coming to Greece—what he does know is some chemistry, & a little geology. He is of Cumberland, from the valley of the Duddon, & as he seems to have no profession & talked of somebody as a tenant of his, I infer that he has a small independence in that country of divided landed property. He is not a disagreeable or troublesome acquaintance to keep up, living at the opposite end of England.—After writing this in the open loggia of the Khan (which Khan I can compare to nothing so well as to the loft & rooms over an English stable) I went out & climbed to the ruins of the Venetian fortress above the town which stands on a height facing the perpendicular cliff of the mountain, from which it is separated by a deep & very picturesque gorge—& has a splendid view. Livadia is a wretched looking place.

13th. Plataea. We were off about six & rode or walked for twelve hours but as it was all on a comparative level I am less fatigued than in any former day. Our road lay at first along the roots of Helicon, raised a little above the great basin of the Lake Copais. The lake itself, owing to the stoppage of the Catabathra, or channels natural & artificial which formerly let out its superfluous water into the Euripus, has invaded much of the surrounding country & it is even said has submerged some of the numerous cities of Boeotia—it is now a mere swamp, ugly & pestilential & I was glad to hear from the commandant of Lebadea that there is a scheme for draining it which however has been put off for want of money. If there were security here & confidence in the government, a company could soon be formed in England to do it, indemnifying itself by the sale of the reclaimed land, the alluvial soil here being the richest in Greece. Across the low mountains which bound Boeotia along the north eastern coast we saw the beautiful mountains of Euboea nearly from one end of the long island to the other. We had the choice of two roads, one through Thespiae, the other over part of Helicon, much longer & more difficult but commanding fine views: not to make the last two days of our journey too long, we gave up the Helicon road, except making a detour to the fountain of Aganippe, formerly sacred to the Muses, which lies in one of the folds of Helicon, having an appearance very like an English mountain. The fountain like Castalia is a humbug & I cannot believe it to be the true one. Helicon however is a very fine verdant mountain consisting Edition: current; Page: [449] of a long unequal ridge like some great animal with a camel’s hump on the small of its back. Beyond this lies Thespiae on a small height, with a church into the wall of which are built some good ancient bas reliefs. It is a small village, now known by the significant name of Eremocastro or deserted encampment, & looks across the highly cultivated & broad plain of Thebes to the long range of Cithaeron which closes Boeotia to the south & being prolonged into Parnes, separates Boeotia from Megaris & Attica. Across this plain we passed, crossing the field of battle of Leuctra, a fine place for the manoeuvering of troops, in the midst of which is a large high tumulus for the bodies of the killed. Between Leuctra & the foot of Cithaeron runs westward a fine green vale to the mountains of the Isthmus. We passed very near the walls of the old town of Plataea, the enceinte of which is pretty complete, & arrived at the modern village, which is a little higher up than ancient Plataea & nestles under the foot of Cithaeron. The view from it is superb: all day when we looked back we had magnificent views of Œta & Othrys & especially Parnassus. We now look back over the broad green uneven plain of Thebes, along the beautiful line of Helicon to the left, terminating in the sea of summits which border on that side of Parnassus. We lost no view by not going over Helicon, as the day was hazy & the morning even foggy, though the weather is now extremely fine—indeed hot, but I have not found the heat oppressive anywhere in Greece, except a little at Athens. We are worse lodged tonight than ever before, being in a sort of Irish cabin (except as to size) quite as bad as that which Noel shewed us in Euboea: however for once it does not matter as the insects do not seem to be worse than elsewhere & our own beds & useables are always clean & comfortable. Notwithstanding the strictest regimen & the great quantity of exercise I have suffered much from indigestion today.

15th. Athens. My dearest dearest angel I have received this morning her letter to Athens—the first part would have made me perfectly miserable—the second leaves me only anxious—but it is well that the time for going home is nearly come, as I should henceforth have felt certain that no news was bad news, & should have been terrified whenever I did not get a letter at the time & place I expected. Thank heaven that she is so much better or rather less ill than she was & is again a little hopeful. I am so glad you have had Ferguson.¹⁵ We have the summer before us & must do whatever is best for enabling her to recover some health & strength. My plan is to return by way of the Morea & cross over from thence to Zante, there to join the steamer which leaves Athens on the 29th of May. By giving up the Morea I could go a week sooner, but as I am here & able to do it & am never likely to be Edition: current; Page: [450] here again, it seems a pity not to see some of the very finest things in Greece. The steamer will take me to Ancona where I shall find a diligence to Foligno & I hope from thence to Florence & I propose returning through Switzerland but as I do not think it would do for me to travel day & night the long distances, I may be obliged to go by voiture & even so to stop for a day now & then. From Bale to Strasburg or Paris is quick work by railway—still it will hardly be possible for me to be at Paris by the middle of June—but as I said in one of my letters, my holiday on the most strict interpretation does not expire till the 15th of July, so that if we met at Paris even at the end of June we should have a fortnight to spend there together. I will waste no time on the road & if my darling writes immediately to Florence I shall be almost sure to get her letter which will tell me whether she will be able to go to Paris & how soon. If she cannot tell in time to write to Florence, then to Milan. It is provoking that so many of my letters, all of which I paid, & generally a very high postage, should have been charged again. Of course the Sicilian post office officials embezzled the money, but those at Corfu I cannot understand. I shall pay no more till I get to Florence. To resume the account of my journey: at Plataea a disagreeable thing happened—the guide’s money bag, containing nearly 100 francs, was stolen. He charged the mistress of the hut & her daughter & carried them off to Thebes where Dawson & I had to go with him to the authorities to tell what little we could, but the chief of the police who held his court in a kind of dog kennel, very judiciously did not take our evidence as he had no one to interpret it but the guide himself. Dawson & I had previously each separately made up our minds that we would refuse to sign evidence so taken. As no fastenings of doors practicable here are effectual, I wonder nothing had been lost before. It is lucky for him & for our journey that it only happened the last day. Nearly the whole foundations & more of the walls & turrets of the old Plataea still exist, it lies on the slope up to the fort of Cithæron, overlooking the plain rather than valley of the Asopus & making the detailed account in Herodotus of the battle of Plataea¹⁶ very interesting & intelligible. We see from it the whole of Boeotia, bounded by Helicon, Parnassus, Othrys, Œta & the Euboean mountains, but not Thebes, which is hid by a rise in the intermediate undulating plain. This plain at least is a good specimen of cultivation. The present town of Thebes, a wretched place, & made more so through an earthquake two years ago, lies on the north east side of one of the undulations, turning its back to Plataea & looking over one of the finest of the smaller basins which form the basin of Boeotia. Our course from Thespiae to Plataea, from Plataea to Thebes & from Thebes to Attica was a complete zigzag. We crossed the Edition: current; Page: [451] plain or valley from Thebes to the port of Cithaeron, up & across which there is a really well made winding carriage road: but (cosas de Grecia) between Cithaeron & Thebes it is little but a track, & on the side next Athens it has been so left unrepaired & is so worn by rain & watercourses that it is hardly practicable for carriages. The view from the top of the ridge of Cithaeron is one of the finest in Greece—Olympus is said to be visible but the day was so hazy that we could not see it. All the distant views in Greece have been more or less spoilt for us by the haze—but happily the near ones are so splendid, one does not feel what one loses. At Eleutheroe, the site of a ruined fortress of the time of the crusades (an error. Gen. Church tells me it is Hellenic), at the foot of Cithaeron on the side next Athens, we met a carriage which I had ordered to be sent to enable me to gain an additional day’s rest at Athens. We went through the lower gorges of Cithaeron, among the dry wastes of Attica to Eleusis & thence to Athens. We left our escort at Eleutheroe—having heard nothing of brigands except that some had been taken near Chaeronea & Orchomenos. I shall now take three clear days of rest before starting again for which I shall be much the better, although I am not at all done up by the journey. I have been more fatigued some days than others, but not increasingly fatigued: when I have been able to take a long walk before riding at all, I have hardly been tired at all—& so when the country has admitted of much trotting or galloping. It is the sitting on horseback with my feet dangling that fatigues me when long continued: but I now recover myself by walking which I could not so well do in Sicily. My digestion is not quite so bad & I hope by degrees to bring it round. Probably now a perfectly regular life such as we have at home will agree better with it than travelling. But to all appearance the pulmonary complaint has derived the greatest benefit from this holiday. I called on Wyse this morning & saw him: he agreed in all I said about the Greeks, & told me many things, shewing the same brainless stupidity, & incapacity of adapting means to ends, in the acts of their government which I had observed in the common people. I now perfectly understand all I see in Greece, but I must say I now feel little or no interest in the people. Still if they get education they may improve. Wyse thinks the stupidity is in a great measure laziness but he admits them to be stupid. I began this letter the very day my darling wrote hers & it is only now going—the post being tomorrow—but I shall write also by next post before I leave Athens. Dawson writes every evening to somebody at a length which makes me quite ashamed of the shortness of mine. But whatever I have not written it will be delightful to say when the happy time of meeting comes. Adieu my beloved—with the utmost possible love & longing to see her again—adieu my dearest dearest wife.

J.S.M.

Edition: current; Page: [452]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

May 17 [1855]

Athens

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

236.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Athens

,

May 17 [1855]

43

My dearest wife,

having written so lately I have not much new to tell, but I do not like to set out on another excursion during which I shall have no good opportunity of despatching letters, without writing a few words to say how I am up to the last moment & what I am going to do. It is now settled that I go alone, Dawson having made up his mind not to go. This is disagreeable, as it increases the expense from 25 francs a day to 36, besides my having to pay the whole instead of half of the back fare, & the boat to Zante. It will not cost me much less than £2 a day for the 12 days it will take—but it is the only expensive part of my journey, which has not hitherto cost at an average above £1 a day or thereabouts. I feel quite capable of the journey, but in case I find it too fatiguing I can shorten it to eight instead of twelve days by omitting Sparta & Messenia—but as these by all accounts are the most beautiful parts of the whole country I shall not give them up unless obliged. There are few or no robbers in the Morea—Locock,² an attaché here, & his brother, have just returned from a tour there in which they took no escort, & nobody seems to think more than one gendarme desirable. I shall not take any unless where on enquiry from the authorities I find the roads are suspect. The authorities evidently always wish you to take an escort as the soldiers gain something & the government loses nothing. So there is no danger of their disguising risks. During the whole northern tour it was never either hot or cold, but delightful summer weather: At Athens however it must have been hotter—the barley (the only grain about here) is all ripe, & being cut, & the country is assuming its summer brown. Today however is the first really hot day. I am not afraid of heat in the Peloponnesus as I shall be in the midst of high mountains, & the plain of Arcadia is 3000 feet above the sea. As to health I am doing very well. The three days rest have quite refreshed me & my digestion has much recovered. It is curious that after dining out I always have either no indigestion at all or very little, although latterly I have on these occasions eaten much more than usual—which I can only explain from my drinking several glasses of wine. Yesterday was an example. I dined with Wyse, & saw many people, his salons having been opened in the evening—Church, Finlay &c as before, & among others Mavrocordato,³ Edition: current; Page: [453] & the minister of war Kalergi [sic],⁴ the man who headed the people in extorting the constitution from Otho⁵ & who previously had, though almost a boy, greatly distinguished himself in the war: he has the manner & appearance at least of a person of some character & strength, Mavrocordato that of a superannuated twaddler. I had some talk with the latter but of course it turned only on general subjects. Wyse is everything that is most polite & attentive, even to undertaking that his man shall see after my luggage which I intend sending by the steamer to meet me at Corfu. The steamers halt a day there on their way to Ancona & Trieste. I have been reading the English papers but there is nothing pleasant in them—the war seems likely to last many years, Palmerston as I expected has disappointed everybody,⁶ & all that relates to the visit of the crafty French despot⁷ exhibits the whole people of all ranks in England in the most contemptible & disgusting light. And who is there that thinks this or says it in England? We, & perhaps Grote—encore he probably thinks it & does not say it. I hope to find a letter at Corfu—after that I shall have none till Florence, but I shall be there I expect by the 7th or 8th of June. I have no thought of staying there longer than a day, for rest. Thank heaven I shall soon see her now, & thank heaven also that we have the summer before us—which I hope will set her up & Torquay, now that we know it agrees with her, is a resource in case of not liking to go further off. I look forward with the most pleasant anticipation to the quiet of two or three summer months at our dear Blackheath. I shall enjoy also resuming old occupations & beginning again to write something that may be useful after us. And now adieu my dearest wife from your

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [454]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

May 18. [1855]

Megara

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

237.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Megara

,

May 18. [1855]

44

My dearest love,

I am so far on my Peloponnesian tour, & am feeling in better health than I have felt for many weeks. I have had not only no indigestion but a return of the feeling of health which I used to have formerly. And it is curious that this has not been produced by abstinence, for in the three days I passed at Athens I ate & drank more than I had done for a long time. The first morning, not having dined the evening before but had tea & macaroni, I felt the unmistakeable sensation of wanting stimulus, so I had two small cutlets at breakfast, & this agreed with me so well that every morning since I have had the same, & two eggs besides diminishing the already moderate quantity of bread. I have eaten more at dinner & generally drank a little wine, & the day I dined with Wyse I did not restrain myself at all—well, I seem to have recovered my digestion. I have no doubt the wine helped, but I think the hot weather had a share too—I always used to have my best health when I took long walks in a hot summer day, & I felt today the very sensations. The day began really hot, but with some breeze; then it became cloudy & excessively pleasant. I walked to the Bay of Eleusis, rode to Eleusis & past, walked again then rode here. The road overlooks the straits of Salamis & is more beautiful than I can describe. Everything is made up of beauty here—the tamest bit of Greece would be thought unrivalled beauty everywhere else. The Athenian & Megarian plains have lost the little green they had (except olives & sometimes vines, which are now in full flower & deliciously fragrant). The corn is all ripe, much of it cut & some carried. Megara itself is a rather imposing looking village or small town, on the face of a hill, looking across a belt of country to the Gulf of Salamis. It lies on a neck of comparatively flat land between the two Gulfs: forming a broader isthmus outside the isthmus lying between the beautiful Geraneia (which is the mountain of the isthmus) to the southwest, & Cithaeron to the north east. I arrived ferociously hungry & only agreeably tired, at one of the best Khans I have seen, consisting of two empty rooms closed all round & a third open to the street on one side—an outside staircase leading to them. So many enormous loaves are ranged on a shelf along one side of the room in which I am writing, that it is evident the people who take care of the Khan are dealers in bread.—In about a month now it will be the real hot season in Athens, a time of which the English here speak with dread. The Wyses Edition: current; Page: [455] say that after many trials they find the best way is to sit up very late, & rise late: for from sunrise to noon is far the hottest time, a breeze springing up at midday & the evening being comparatively cool. The weather is still hazy. To judge by my new experience I should call Greece the haziest country I ever was in: & Wyse says it is only clear in winter; in spring & summer there is much hazy weather. From some peculiarity however the near objects are often seen with the most sharp cut outline when the distant mountains are quite dimmed by haze. I rather enjoy the change to travelling alone, or rather without a companion. Dawson I think wished when it was too late that he had decided to go with me, for he is quite doubtful about going to Constantinople after all, on account of cholera, quarantine, dislike of a long voyage, the expectation of bad & dear quarters, &c. He has shewn himself decidedly selfish, for by his compelling me to go with him to Nauplia first, or wait for him at Athens, or go the northern tour without him, he made me lose two days as he knew, five as it has turned out: he perfectly knows that this loss of time has embarrassed me much in planning my Peloponnesian journey, & obliged me to give up things I should like to see, besides causing me the extra expense of crossing to Zante instead of meeting the steamer at Patras: & he knows how much more expensive the tour is to me from not having a companion: these things being so, if he cared no more about going to Constantinople than it now appears he does, the balance should have been turned by the reparation due to me.

19th. Corinth. We started at seven & arrived about five, of which I did not ride above three hours, & walked the rest. I am not more than pleasantly tired, though not so well as yesterday, owing to my having returned to the old stile of breakfast. I propose henceforth to eat no bread, but breakfast on macaroni & tea, & dine on soup & chicken or meat. I think this diet has a good chance of agreeing with me. The weather is delightful, just hot enough and just wind enough: the road, a continuation of that most delightful route overlooking the gulf, with its deep blue waters, Salamis, Ægina &c & a last view of the tops of Pentelicus & Hymettus. By degrees the Acro Corinth raised its globose mass in front of us, & getting clear of the roots of Geraneia, we came on the comparatively level ground of the Isthmus, with its splendid views of both sides of the Corinthian Gulf: Parnassus, Helicon &c on the north, & the mountains of the Peloponnesus on the south, including the massive lofty & snowy summit of Olonos (as the guide says), Khelmos as I suspect, which rivals Parnassus in apparent height. I am much better lodged than last time, in an almost empty private house, which however can boast of two chairs & the same number of tables. The view from the wooden gallery in the evening is glorious. Tomorrow we make direct for the centre of Peloponnesus. Before starting in the morning I went about Megara looking Edition: current; Page: [456] at some fine headless statues which were standing about in various private houses. A Museum is much wanted to receive such things, & Wyse says he has at last succeeded in inducing the Greek Government to establish one.

20th. Valley of the Lake Stymphalus. This day last year I did not think I should be alive now, much less that I should pass my next birthday in Arcadia, & walk & ride nearly 14 hours of it. From Corinth we went some distance parallel to the sea, along the Corinthian & Sicyonian plain, with a fine though hazy view of all the northern mountains: those of Ætolia, Parnassus, Helicon, Cithæron & Geraneia. I have at last with great difficulty convinced my guide that Helicon is not Cithæron. On a low height at the further end of this plain is the modern village of Sicyon, with scattered remains of the old town, especially a theatre with two subterraneous passages cut through the hill, I suppose as outlets for the people. Sicyon looks across the plain at Corinth. Behind this height we came to a sudden descent into a very deep ravine, hollowed out by a small river in the very crumbly soil of this part of the Peloponnesus. The bottom & sides of this glen were beautifully green, though more with bushes than with grass. It was full of nightingales & blackbirds. I have heard no thrushes. After ascending the valley some distance we had a long climb up the heights which inclose it & which are, as it were, the legs of the table land of Arcadia: from the top we again saw Salamis, Ægina &c, & the mountains of Boeotia; the Corinthian plain in front looking quite brown & burnt up: while a few steps further on, all was the freshest green & the corn not even in ear. We found ourselves at the head of a green valley with a small lake at its further extremity in the midst of very high, some of them snow clad mountains, with fir woods scattered on their sides: one of them a massive, very precipitous mountain which we afterwards wound round the base of, quite the most beautiful mountain I have seen in Greece. We continued to pass over small heights from basin into basin, for the valleys of Arcadia have mostly no outlets, or only subterranean ones: their waters either evaporate or run underground & reappear elsewhere. These valleys, with few or no trees but often rich pasture, are inclosed by mountains which rise to a vast height even above this elevated base. I see that Arcadia is green through the summer or great part of it owing to its great elevation & the multitude of brooks that gush out of the mountains everywhere, & to this it must owe its pastoral celebrity, the cattle being driven up here from the arid burnt-up coasts. I am very glad not to have missed this as it is not only of a totally different character from all else in Greece, but the mountains finer. They run into so many intersecting ranges that I have not yet got to understand them, but we do seem to have now come up to a high barrier range running east & west. We are in a village at the end of the valley of the Lake Stymphalus, the lake completely fills up Edition: current; Page: [457] the space between the mountains in the lowest part of the valley, which rises both ways from it—they believe that the little river which I saw coming out through the rocks at Lerna near Argos (the place of the Lernaean hydra) is the outlet of the waters of this lake. There is a much larger & finer lake a little way off, the lake of Phonia, & we were going there, but were told by some people we met that the road had been blocked up by a landslip. We therefore turned off to this village in a nook of the highest mountains; I do not know its name.—My change of diet has answered; I had no indigestion today, save a very slight one, six hours after breakfast, which I attribute to having then drunk some water; which I find, at times, stirs up some wrong chemical action in the stomach.

22nd Vurlia, overlooking the valley of the Eurotas. I reckoned without my host yesterday: the macaroni breakfast did not answer yesterday, & a trial of chicken this morning has scarcely answered better. Still I am strong, & less & less fatigued, though thinner I think than I have ever been. Yesterday was a ten hours journey, today eleven: of which I walked most of the way, except the conclusion of yesterday. I find my only plan is to start walking, walk till I am really tired, ride for not more than an hour & then walk again: when I descend from the horse I am always intensely tired, but it soon goes off by walking.—We left the head of the valley of the Lake Stymphalus by a climb of about 2½ hours up a most splendid Alpine pass among fir woods (spruce) which here come down quite to the level of the valley. I call it a pass, but it is a hollow of the mountain, leading to one of the lower points of the ridge. From the top we looked down another fine deep green valley nearly to Argos, & presently came to the top of a ridge from which we looked directly down on a broad valley much more elevated than those we had come from, which the guide at first said was the valley of Tripolizza: across it we saw some of the highest mountains, peaked & snow clad, which I have seen in Greece, with their sides covered with firs: these I afterwards found to be the range of Maenalus, running north & south through the centre of Arcadia. These however we saw over the tops of other mountains, among which the valley seemed to wind. It must be the valley in which the Arcadian Orchomenus stood. In the further part of it there was water, which will be there till the summer dries it up. We went some distance down this valley or basin & then crossed by a low pass into another, at the foot of Maenalus: & went along that: both are highly cultivated, the whole bottom & the hollows of the mountains being covered with corn, most of it fully in ear but bright green. These Arcadian basins seem to be quite the best cultivated parts of Greece & we saw an unusual number of people in the fields. We left the second basin by a pass over a low slope of Maenalus itself & came out at the north end of the large broad valley of Tripolizza. Edition: current; Page: [458] The whole of the upper part was now a lake, the waters of winter & spring having gathered together, there to remain till dried up, after which maize will be sown there. In today’s journey we saw another such lake. Doubtless these valleys without outlets are common enough elsewhere, but in the north they become permanent lakes, being filled up to the level at which they can find a passage. We had to go a long way round this lake, which considerably lengthened our day’s journey. We came to the site of Mantinea of which nothing remains but the foundations of the walls, the circuit of which is complete. It must have been a large town, & I could not help thinking how different this valley must have looked when it contained two of the finest cities in Greece, this & Tegea. The roads through all these valleys are good for Greece, being grass instead of stones, & we rode at full speed from Mantinea to Tripolizza rounding by the way a prominent point of the mountains on the west side of the valley which point bore a conspicuous part in the battle of Mantinea in which Epaminondas received his death wound.² It also separates the valley into two dissimilar parts. The north part has round its head & along one side the lofty range of Maenalus & is completely a mountain valley though a very broad one; but south of the point it spreads out to nearly double the breadth & becomes a plain encircled by rather low mountains, low at least on this side, where their base is already so elevated. Over these low mountains appeared a snowy summit, not streaked with snow like Maenalus but covered with it like Ætna & shining in the evening sun: this I at once concluded was Taygetus, but (to shew you what the guides are) my guide said Taygetus could not be seen from here: I kept my own opinion but said little, knowing it by experience to be useless: but this morning from a height a little further on he shewed me the same mountain & said it was Taygetus. This man is reckoned one of the good guides, & is not by any means stupid for a Greek. After turning the point Tripolitza came in sight: near the western boundary of the plain, backed by low mountains, little more than hills, through which the passage must be easy into Western Arcadia. Tripolitza before the war of independence was a town of some 20 000 inhabitants, but was completely destroyed by Ibrahim Pasha³—it is now a small though longish town, looking from a distance like a pretty village—it is much intermixed with gardens & trees but quite Greek otherwise, which is not praise. The Khan however was a good & clean one. Up to this place we have taken no escort, even between Megara & the Isthmus where so lately the great robberies were—the post was robbed six days successively—but Edition: current; Page: [459] there are no banditti there now. Here, at Tripolitza, the commandant, who can make himself perfectly understood in English, said there were no robbers in his district, all having been killed or captured, but he had heard of three in Laconia & he insisted on sending two footsoldiers with us, though they are a great delay, for they cannot walk so well as the muleteers (with their fire arms) & want to rest & boire un coup continually. The plain of Tripolitza is finely cultivated like the other Arcadian basins but it is not so verdant, the mountains being more arid looking. All vegetation here is a full month behind even Pentelicus. We crossed the remainder of the plain, leaving the village which stands on the site of Tegea a little to the left; then crossed the low mountain barrier & descended into one of the gorges of Laconia. All the rest of the day we went from one of these to another, varying it with an occasional piece of uneven table land—generally descending, & at last very rapidly. This however though it would be admired anywhere else is altogether the least striking part of Greece, the forms of the mountains being more rounded than usual, & the whole a complete wild with a barren arid appearance—only fine when a glimpse is caught of Taygetus: but I was well rewarded at the last by the very finest view of Greece, at least made so by the lights of sunset, but it must always be one of the finest. This was in the descent to this village of Vurlia, (near the site of Sellasia) which is itself very high up in the mountains on the east side of the magnificent green valley of Sparta. The opposite boundary is all formed by the range of Taygetus on which this house directly looks—& which is as fine as any part of the Alps & much finer than Parnassus or any other mountain I have seen in Greece. The highest part is something like the Dent du Midi at the head of the lake of Geneva & at present brilliant with snow like that, but from that highest part it extends in a jagged ridge or series of peaks to right & left, falls to the length of the Mont Blanc group of mountains. Below it glitters the Eurotas—the valley immediately under the village is hid, but above & below it glitters like an emerald, as do also the sides of the mountains & the view northward to the mountains of Western Arcadia by the sunset lights was glorious—the mountains themselves very fine, especially one like an enormous dome with smaller domes to right & left for shouders. I shall see this valley tomorrow—unhappily time does not admit of my passing a night at Sparta & seeing the country in the way I should wish.

23rd. Khan of Georgitzi in Laconia. I walked to Sparta after breakfast, a three hours walk. The valley, like all other scenery, loses much by the glare of sunshine, but it does not disappoint the expectations it raised, except that the mountains on the opposite side of Taygetus are comparatively tame. The scale of the scenery is so great, that what seemed from above one great though uneven valley is partly made up of the buttresses of Taygetus—a Edition: current; Page: [460] range of green mountains projecting forward from the great range—behind & above these is the region of firs, & above that is the region of snow. There are besides lower hills along the middle of the valley so that the really level ground is narrow—until we reach Sparta where these intermediate hills appear to cease, & we see the mountains on both sides gradually decline into the long low ridges which form the two great southern promontories of Malea & Matapan. Sparta is a new, & comparatively neat village, built on the old site, laid out in broad streets which are not at all levelled, but left to nature: cosas de Grecia! The guide thought it right for me to call on the juge de paix, of whom I had heard both from Bowen & Locock, who likes all foreigners to come to his house & always lodges & entertains them, refusing all payment. I went & found a house externally very like the barns I am usually lodged in, but internally with an approach to civilization: it is true the floor of the principal room was boarded very much like a hay loft, but there were chairs, or something like them, & two sofas which bore marks of having been slept on. Few Greeks sleep in a bed; a carpet or rug on the floor is their only couch, & even in the well to do houses in the villages & country towns not more than a couple of wooden stools to sit on, with boards round part of the room in the Turkish fashion, spread with some sort of cloths or carpets. The judge was at his court, but came at once on being sent for—cosas de Grecia! I was entertained by his young ugly wife, his old strong looking careworn looking mother, & his seven or eight years old daughter by name Calliôpe, to hear which name cried about the house was very odd: I could exchange very little discourse with them, but they handed me, first a long wooden tobacco pipe as tall as myself—I contrived to inform them that I did not smoke—then a tray with a glass of very nice sweetmeat, a glass of water, & a stand with about twenty spoons that I might take as many spoonfuls successively as I liked—twenty apparently silver spoons being I suppose thought a better arrangement than one plate. After this came the usual little china cup of café neri which is the common Greek civility & is what a Greek gives to anybody at a café: as an American gives “a sherry cobbler”—so a Greek gives a coffee, which being never strained & being served boiling hot is always thick & the lower half undrinkable: this however being at a private house was better. The judge, Mr Phangara,⁴ presently appeared—he spoke French pretty well, better indeed than he understood it when spoken. He is a pleasant mannered man & seems to delight in the excitement of having foreigners in his house. I had not time to stay long. After this I rode to Mistra, the town which had taken the place of Sparta but is now being gradually abandoned for it: it is at the foot & partly up the side, of one of the green buttresses of Taygetus, on the summit of which buttress is its citadel, commanding what must be a splendid view. I Edition: current; Page: [461] had not time to climb it. The rest of the day I was walking & riding northward up the valley of the Eurotas, with frequent fine views of the snowy range which however was often hid as we wound our way among the hills which are in the valley: at every instant crossing a crystal rill or brook: it is truly a valley of sweet waters—& the Eurotas itself a beautifully clear mountain stream, about the size of the larger Devonshire rivers. I am writing this in a Khan which would be honoured by a comparison with the worst English hayloft, & the fleas are running all over me & biting me continually. But I have been well today & am not at all more tired than is good for me.

25th. Constantinos in Messenia. I am writing in the usual great hayloft, devoured by fleas—those in Sicily were nothing to them, these are so much more numerous & bite so hard. The people, alas, keep their rugs &c here, which ensures what I am suffering. Since I began the last sentence I caught one in the act of getting into my nostril. They make their way up from the floor much faster than I could catch them if I did nothing else. I have two days to relate. The ways from Laconia into Messenia are two: one up a gorge of Taygetus, & through a very conspicuous gap in the ridge, to Calamata: the English at Athens all recommended this route, which is the shortest, but the most difficult. The guide however said horses could not go—mules must be taken at Sparta & the horses sent round—which would cause expense & delay, & though I suspect the difficulty is of the guide’s own making, I gave up the idea. (The fleas are now attacking in columns, & firing into many parts of my body at once.) The other way is by rounding the extreme north end of Taygetus, & this we began on the 23rd & completed on the 24th: first among low hills, with frequent views of the range: at last the broad valley of Megalopolis began to open on the right—& from its spaciousness & its situation it well justifies the choice of Epaminondas when he induced the Arcadians to found a great city there as a curb to the Spartans. This valley is much of it covered not with olive but with oak wood: it goes round the end of Taygetus. We did not go quite round, but went through a low pass which cuts off the last hill, & contains the village of Leondari with a fine view both ways towards the valley, or plain. We then entered an oak forest exactly like an English wood, & after some two hours of this, partly across a corner of the plain, partly ascending some heights beyond it, came out at the upper end of a fine green descending gorge, part of the way down which we found our stopping place for the night, a village with the Turkish name Dervenia, from which we looked directly down on the plain of Messenia & right upon the mountain of Ithome opposite, the principal scene of the war between the Spartans & Messenians, & the site of the city to which Epaminondas brought the expelled Messenians back, i.e. their descendants, after two centuries of wandering. This place Edition: current; Page: [462] was the object of today’s employment, the pleasantest day’s work I have had, both from what I saw & because I felt unusually well. I seem to grow stronger & to be less tired every day. This morning we crossed the plain, or rather this side of it—it seemed a mere valley like that of Megalopolis, & a low ridge hid even its termination by the sea at Calamata—but in truth it goes round Ithome (which is an insulated high mountain projecting into it) & fills nearly all the south west corner of the peninsula. We went straight for the mountain crossing the river Pamisus, a real river & rapid, but not with the exquisite clearness of the Eurotas—then climbed a considerable height up & round the beautiful green mountain, through a fine wood, with oaks, fir trees, the usual arbutus, judas tree &c for underwood till we reached the top of a low pass on the shoulder of Ithome, connecting it with the heights which bound the basin on the side towards Arcadia. Here the walls of Epaminondas met our sight, & are one of the very finest things in Greece—the splendid Hellenic masonry, the finest in the world—the walls & many of the turrets still stand, to a very considerable height, with the edges as sharp almost as when first cut—looking as fresh as Waterloo bridge, the enormous blocks remaining fixed in their places by their own great weight without cement. This was the northern entrance of the city but the enceinte was immense—it went quite round the bulky mountain of Ithome—along the ridge of a smaller mountain which extends beyond Ithome & juts out into the plain—then crosses the valley to the top of the heights on the opposite side & goes along these till it returns to the gateway by which we entered & which is a circular corps de garde in excellent preservation. The town extended southward down a valley into the plain, with the Gulf of Coron (or Calamata) & the heights which bound it on the west, apparently quite close (though the day as usual was hazy). We passed into the great inclosure & made a complete tour of the mountain passing the little village of Mavromata which occupies a small corner, & returning over another pass between Ithome & the lower mountain beyond it to the south. From this the view both ways was one of the finest in Greece—south west the mountains of Coron & Modon (which stand quite isolated) the intervening plain of Messenia & the gap or outlet towards Navarino: on the other side the reverse of the former view of Taygetus, with the valley I had crossed in the morning extending quite to the sea, the town of Calamata at the foot of Taygetus close to its own beautiful gulf, & two beautiful promontories beyond, the further of which was the long jagged descending ridge of Taygetus terminating in Cape Matapan, the southermost point of Greece (islands excepted) which, & the sea beyond it, became finely visible a little lower down the mountain. In a beautiful part of this descent is the monastery of Mount Ithome, where we halted to rest the horses: the monks seemed decent, good sort of people, but very ignorant. I managed to have some little conversation with them in Edition: current; Page: [463] Greek, the only language they knew. After descending to the foot of the mountain we proceeded northward along the valley to the beautifully situated village in which I am now suffering. A hundred times since I began writing I have stripped my trousers up & my socks down when numbers of the enemy jump from their encampment—I am afraid they will consider my clothes as their permanent quarters & travel with me, in spite of all I can do, through the remainder of the Morea. I must now go to bed to get partially rid of them though I fear they have occupied that too. Good night, therefore my darling love.

26th. Andritzena. I never saw so many fleas in the whole of my precious life, as I found on my clothes & body on undressing last night. After chasing them one by one I laid the palm of my hand over six or seven at once. During the night they danced a saraband on my face, & I fancied I could hear the sounds of myriads of them jumping on the floor: but perhaps it was only the droppings of the swallows, for there are always swallows in these places; the people think them lucky: & they often fly about in the night, as these did. In the morning while I was sponging myself nearly a dozen of the enemy gathered on my legs & feet. What is worse, I have brought a colony of them with me to this comparatively clean place, & they are tormenting me worse than ever. One little rascal had the impudence to bite my hand to my very face. But to turn to a more agreeable subject; this was again a most delightful day. We went up this fork of the Messenian valley to its very end, & I admired its verdure, produced in great part by grass: we often trampled on a kind of camomile which raised a very pleasant lemon like smell, which I had noticed also in Corfu. Having got to the upper end of the valley we climbed the mountains at its head—about two hours of hard climbing in very hot sun. Ever since we entered Laconia it has been hot, the valleys being all open to the south, but there was always a wind which tempered the heat when our faces were towards it—a delicious south wind: & today when we were travelling northward the wind happily changed to north & met us when we reached the top of the ridge. We now had the most splendid back view: the gulf of Calamata, the mountains of Modon, Coron & Navarino, now apparent as a very large group of high mountains—the Ionian sea through a gap to the right of those: then Ithome, which I never understood till I saw it from here, blended into one with the smaller mountain attached to it, a mountain mass apparently rising isolated from the midst of the plain & lording it over the whole country. It seemed quite natural that the Messenians, when they could no longer defend the rest of their country, should have retired to this mountain & held out on it for ten years.⁵ In the opposite Edition: current; Page: [464] direction we looked down into the valleys of Western Arcadia which unlike those in which I had lately travelled, are not broad & flat but very narrow gorges deep sunk among high mountains—the reason no doubt why in antiquity there were none but small towns here. The sides of all these gorges are scattered with fine oaks & occasionally still finer planes but not so that they can be called well wooded. We descended by a very steep path, a descent nearly as long as the ascent, into the first of these, where we crossed the Neda, a beautiful mountain stream, & as we sloped gently up the opposite height, we could see the valley slant down & meet the Ionian sea: the guide pointed out the site of Phigaleia at a great height, further towards the embouchure on the same side, but from this we were separated by another deep glen: we turned up the side of this & went on mounting: mounting till we got as high I should think as the top of Ithome, & there, on a ridge just where the very top of one deep glen meets the side of another, stood the temple of Apollo Epicurius, called the temple of Bassae, built for the people of Phigaleia by Ictinus⁶ the architect of the Parthenon, & the best preserved temple in Greece, after that of Theseus: the Phigaleian friezes in the British Museum, said to be by the pupils of Pheidias,⁷ were taken from it. Nearly all the columns of all the four sides, together with their architraves, are still perfect—the inner pillars are all gone but one; & the curious bases of more, which (though I have not seen the fact noticed) project inwardly like a sort of feet of a table & are of a kind of bell shape. The ground is strewed with unbroken blocks sufficient it would seem to restore the whole building—these stones from their out of the way situation not having been taken to build other houses or broken up to make fences as has been done & is doing everywhere else. Besides the singular beauty of the temple itself, it has almost the finest view in Greece—looking over the tops of mountains, to Taygetus one way, down a deep green vale right over Ithome which looked really glorious—then another way to the Ionian sea, into which the Neda could be seen flowing & the plain of Cyparissia round the base of the corner group of mountains—in another direction the mountains of Tegea & Tripolizza could be seen—in short the whole southern half of the Morea—& when after staying above an hour here we resumed our journey & went about 100 yards higher to the top of the ridge, the northern half burst on us too, bounded by the snow topped range of Olonos in Achaia, in which are the falls of the Styx. By the bye in the ascent to Bassae we passed a fine waterfall, the first I had seen in Greece: I wonder there are not more in so splendidly watered a country as the south of Peloponnesus. We continued on alternate ups & downs along the sides of gorges, all of which fell into the Ionian sea at a little distance, & we had continual glimpses of that sea, which on this Edition: current; Page: [465] coast seems to wash the very roots of the mountains. At last we came out at the head of the long green valley over the sides of which is scattered this large village of Andritzena: it looks right north, across the valley of the Alpheus & a sea of verdant highlands tumbled about in every conceivable manner to the long peaked range of the Achaian mountains running east & west—the only considerable part of the Morea I shall not have seen. To the north west across the near hills, was spread out the plain of Elis, the same which I noticed from the steamer in coming to Greece & wondered to find so large a piece of the Peloponnesus so level. The sea beyond was not visible, but beyond that the island of Zante rose far in the distance. I am really glad to have reserved this part of Greece for the last. In three or four days I have had the four finest views in Greece—from Vurlia & the mountains of Sellasis above it, from Ithome, Bassae & Andritzena. I hardly think even Switzerland can furnish such a tetrad. I am sure Italy cannot—I have been very well today, & have found out how to manage myself. I now have cutlets or chicken & potatoes for breakfast, without any bread—replacing bread & butter by rice either slightly au gras which they here call pillaf, or boiled into a solid mass with milk. With this I drink tea, often without sugar or milk: I find the cause of my dislike for tea without milk was that I continued to take it with sugar: without either I have got to like even the taste for my stomach now so craves & requires bitters that this bitter tea when strong & hot is most grateful to it & helps it very much to digest. Of this breakfast I am able to eat much more than I could of any before—& with very little of uncomfortable sensation during digestion, & instead of being barely ready for dinner when I arrive at night, I am now hungry early, & when we stop about midday for the horses & men to eat, I eat a hard egg, & with a lemon which the guide takes with him & the fine mountain water of these regions, he makes me some lemonade which by means of a bottle of carbonate of potass I convert into a delicious effervescing draught—the gas penetrates one’s whole body, & the effect is like a slight intoxication by champagne & lasts several hours. The dinner lately is soup, chicken & stewed prunes & agrees with me perfectly. I get always stronger & shall be an excellent traveller by the time I leave off travelling, but I have had enough of it, and when once I get to Zante, shall only wish that I could cut off the return journey & reach Paris by a wish. A nightingale is singing delightfully outside, & the fleas inside are biting my whole body so unmercifully that I must try to get rid of them by going to my own clean bed. Adieu my dearest angel.

27th. Khan of Olympia. Another most delightful day. We gradually descended among woods & over fine grassy slopes into the valley of the Alpheus, & a great pleasure it was to see a real river in Greece—This one carries off nearly the entire waters of Arcadia, two branches joining near here, Edition: current; Page: [466] one of which comes from southern Arcadia & the other from northern. We forded them separately above the junction, for it is dangerous even at this season to attempt to ford below: as it was, the muleteers were up to their middle in both branches, & we crossed soon after another considerable stream which was on its way to join them. The Alpheus below the junction must have at least as much water as the Garonne at Toulouse & is like that extremely rapid. Unfortunately like other Greek rivers & most rivers in a mountainous country, it does not run between banks, but occupies part of a broad waste of stones & bushes which at other times it covers. This however is the only drawback from its beauty. When in the valley one can see no mountains except when looking towards the head, those on both sides being hid by very bold high hills. People say that Greece is arid: I have found all the Morea green, but the valley of the Alpheus & the hills inclosing it are as richly verdant at this season (almost June) as those of the Thames are at the same time: one continually walks in rich pasture half up one’s legs, partly grass & partly camomile & white clover. The hills too up to the very top of all one can see, are beautifully wooded. The day was a delightful combination of a hot sun & a cool breeze. The remainder of our way was along the valley on the north side of the river; but at one point we met with an obstruction characteristic of Greece. The villagers everywhere without scruple plough up the tracks called roads—we missed our way a dozen times today from this cause: on the other hand no one scruples to ride through standing corn: & we were informed that in consequence three villages had combined to prevent travellers from passing, by blocking up with wood the space between the unfordable river & the cliff. There is thus at present no road along this great outlet. We had in consequence to make a considerable circuit over the heights, which however as I was not tired I did not regret, since it gave me some further variation in the beautiful views. Passing along this lovely valley was one continuous enjoyment—but alas, every evening the plague of fleas begins as soon as I arrive & never ceases till I go to bed. I have been taking them off my legs the whole evening, but they are never fewer. Whether it is the more advanced season or they are a worse kind I do not know, but the fleas in Sicily were never half so troublesome & never bit painfully as these do. I cannot bear it any longer—they are tormenting every part of me & as it is a hot night & a close room I was afraid of being made feverish so left the window open & am threatened with mosquitos. Tomorrow will be the last of it however, for they cannot be so bad at Zante. I feel like a horse tormented by flies. Adieu my beloved.

28th morning. Alas the bed was no refuge this time. I could not sleep for one instant, for fleas & mosquitos, the fleas being by far the worst. The wretches hopped on the bed & on my face from all sides. This place is infinitely Edition: current; Page: [467] worse than any at which I have hitherto lodged. Finding sleep hopeless, at between two & three I determined to get up, & the guide being equally sleepless we made preparations for starting at dawn—which I hope we shall do & so get out of this hell. These khans are now private concerns & this one is inhabited by a crowd of peasants—the room I am in, which I chose as looking not quite so dirty as the others, is half full of Indian corn heaped up on the floor. There is another & the guide says a better—not world but khan—nearer to Olympia but it is shut up.

29th Zante. We did not get off till half past five, breakfast having to be got ready & eaten first. In about two hours riding & walking (walking in my case) we got to the site of Olympia: it is in the valley of the Alpheus—the place is utterly demolished, but some excavations have uncovered part of the foundations of the famous temple of Jupiter in which was the statue by Pheidias 60 feet high. The colossal blocks shewing the thickness of the columns give a great idea of what must have been the size of the temple. The place where the Olympic games were held is very obvious, there being an opening in the hills of just the right size & shape for a stadium. Below Olympia the hills got low & tame—the valley opens out into a plain & the Alpheus runs into the sea through as level & dull a delta as any English or French river—very well cultivated however & covered with the currant vine, through which we took our way to Pyrgos, a busy little place, very ugly but with many queer little shops & a few rather large, some even clean, as usual with wooden shades along both sides of the narrow street & the most deplorable pavement in the world filling the space between (save a dry grotto or ditch in the middle, to contain all & sundry). The English vice consul here,⁸ a Greek, has a brother at Athens, who is an acquaintance of my guide & at his request had written to the vice consul to ask him to engage a boat for us to Zante: this he had done & was full of politeness & attention—gave me a two hours sleep on his sopha which I needed much after my sleepless night—made me dine tête à tête with him (his family being at present away) in short treated me with the real hospitality which seems quite universal among Greeks. He too it seems likes all travellers to be brought to his house & takes no remuneration—I conversed for an hour with him in Italian & thought him a sensible man. In a beautiful evening I rode to the little port of Pyrgos called Katacolo. The country is of a rich verdure even close to the sea, with currant vines, figs & mulberries: In Laconia also there are many mulberries & much silk is made. The port is only a few houses & an open roadstead: the government has for some time been levying an extra tax on the trade to make a real port but has done nothing in it yet, though the customhouse officers said 100,000 drachmae had already been collected (a drachma is Edition: current; Page: [468] about 8½d.) There came in while I was here a Neapolitan fishing bark called The Souls in Purgatory, no larger than a Brighton one but it seems they fish in all these gulfs as far as Constantinople: who will say the Neapolitans are lazy lazzaroni? Our boat was a decked one with two masts & four great oars, & a hole below where there was just room for me to lie, & I turned in at dark: & though the fleas in the boat or in my clothes, or both, kept running all over me & biting me, my sleepiness made me sleep very sound though conscious of often waking & doing battle with them. When I finally awaked at half past five this morning we seemed almost arrived but as there had been an almost complete calm they had had to row all night. We did not arrive till eight. The inn here though a poor one is a perfect luxury after my late lodgings—I made myself thoroughly clean & comfortable, then breakfasted heartily from which I have since suffered not the smallest inconvenience, but it is so hot here that I have been very little out except to the banker’s. The air as usual was so hazy that the coast of Greece was invisible when I landed, but I shall perhaps see it from the castle hill which I propose climbing in the cool evening. People here say the summer has set in hot all at once. The banker here introduced me to the club where I saw the latest Galignani’s: everything both in England & the Crimea as unsatisfactory as ever. They were firing guns & ringing bells today for the arrival of the new resident Col. Wodehouse⁹—poor man it is no joyful time for him, for he will only have heard as he passed Corfu in coming out, the death of his only daughter whom I met at Bowen’s. It will be a blow to Bowen, too, for I suspect there was an attachment in that quarter (as the dowdy English phrase it). This town seems very large after those in Greece, it is very like a third rate Italian town—the north Italian high peaked towns look quite imposing after the toyshop looking Byzantine churches, which look like models of churches.

30th. I had my climb in the evening to the castle & saw the sun set from it about 7 oclock, so much shorter are the summer days in this southern latitude. The view is very fine. The promontory of Castel Tornese in the Morea was very distinct, & seemed quite near: the mountains behind Mesolonghi & those of Arcadia looked dim in the hazy distance. So goodbye beautiful Greece—more beautiful than I ever expected, but beautiful as you are I never wish to see you again¹⁰—for I do not wish ever again to go so long a journey without my beloved one, & the country will not be fit for her to come to while we live. What a pleasure it is to see again something looking like civilization—The bay, forming a semicircle, round which the town stands, is terminated at its two horns by two high hills, the Castle hill & Mount Skopos which Edition: current; Page: [469] is much higher. Behind these a plain extends from sea to sea, with neat white houses each in its garden or plantation, scattered all over it and backed by a long line of high rocky hills forming the longest length of this queerly shaped island: behind this there is plain again but invisible from this side. The plain is covered with olive grounds & the richest looking vines, both of the common & the currant kind, the island being famous also for its wines: but the disease having been particularly fatal to both has nearly ruined the island: they say it has already reappeared this year, & their sole consolation is the prospect of an unusually fine olive crop. The vines look however most beautiful & it is delightful to see the fine white roads meandering in all directions over the plain. Cephalonia is only separated by a strait which looks narrow but I remarked how much smaller the Black Mountain of Cephalonia looked after travelling in Greece. I had a drive out this morning, for it was too hot to walk—I went about the plain & went over the country house of a rich Zantiote family—It was very much the style of an Italian house, except that the floors of the upper story were of boards (not polished) the ground floor only being paved with marble. This place is certainly very hot, much hotter than I have found Greece, & the town seems much the hottest part of it. The heat seems to agree with me at present but I think it would be too much for me in the long run. The steamer from Athens or rather from Loutraki will not arrive till rather late in the evening & will get to Corfu tomorrow evening where it will remain till the next afternoon. I hope to find letters there. I shall close this & post it at Corfu as soon as I land (if the post office is open) to be sure of not losing a post. You will know by the postmark that I have got safely there & I shall write next from Ancona unless the immediate starting of the diligence should leave me no time. My dearest one will have written either to Florence or Milan, perhaps to both: write next darling Poste Restante a Bâle, Suisse. I am sure to go there but not sure by what route. After that I shall see her so soon that it will be needless to write more. She will get my letters now at shorter intervals as I am going towards her. Adieu my darling wife—bless her a thousand times.

31st Corfu. I have reopened this my darling to say that I found here two dear notes, that of the 8th & the one of the 11th to Athens which has been honestly forwarded here. My last from Athens will have told her all I can say about our meeting—I do not know how soon I can get to Paris because I cannot venture to travel by diligence, i.e. day & night more than a part of the way. But if I lose no time I do not think it can take me more than three weeks from Ancona to Paris—stopping a day at Florence & a day at Milan. I shall write to Paris poste restante in case you have left before this arrives—& all my letters hereafter except one from Ancona shall be to Paris. I got here after a prosperous voyage about 7 this evening, having by the way Edition: current; Page: [470] seen Argostoli the capital of Cephalonia which I passed before during the night: it is on a harbour like an island lake from which the sea is not visible: a smaller town than Zante, but pretty with a range of rocky hills behind, between it & the sea, & a range of mountains in front, along the opposite side of the harbour. I hear the Ionians are letting the good roads which the English made before giving them their liberal constitution perish for want of repairs. This island & town look more delightful than ever after seeing Greece—the town like a fine Italian town—the country still beautifully green. But the haze seems to get worse daily. The late cold spring in England like the cold winter is very unfortunate. I am so happy she liked my letters—they seemed to myself so poor & tame—but I look forward to delightful talks about these beautiful places. Goodnight my darling angel.

J. S. Mill

[PS] On reading your last letter again I find this will be too late to find you at Blackheath, so it shall go to Paris.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 4 [1855]

Ancona

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

238.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Ancona

June 4 [1855]

45

My darling wife—

I sent to you from Corfu poste restante Paris, the long letter containing the account of my journey in the Morea. From Corfu here I have had a prosperous though a long voyage—I dreaded it very much, but the sea was generally smooth & besides I seem to be getting used to it. I was not the least sick in the whole three days, eat heartily & digested apparently well. I left Corfu about two in the afternoon having breakfasted with Bowen who was as friendly as ever but evidently much saddened by poor Miss Wodehouse’s catastrophe.² There was no passenger on the steamer except several Greeks & the wife & two children of Saunders,³ the consul at Prevesa, a remarkable man, like two or three we have had in India, who by sheer moral influence has made himself almost king of this part of Albania, so that pashas beg for & value beyond most things, letters of recommendation to him. I saw him at the steamer but had no talk with him: his wife seems to be nothing particular. We went out by the north channel past the beautiful Acroceraunian mountains. When I awoke next morning we were at anchor in the harbour of Brindisi, looking on one of the flattest of all imaginable countries—& such it continued all the way to Molfetta where we Edition: current; Page: [471] halted just before dark—but the country seemed highly cultivated, quite green with olives, & very populous—dotted over with brilliantly white houses like the bay of Naples, & every now & then a brilliant white town down by the shore—mostly small towns except Bari which seemed rather large, & Molfetta moderate—Brindisi itself is rather small but has a fine landlocked harbour with a narrow entrance. It felt odd to think how impractically remote Brindisi had always seemed, & now it was one of the steps on the way home. Molfetta with two handsome Norman towers & several churches looked imposing from the sea—but indeed these high housed white Italian towns all look striking after those of Greece, & even of the islands, Corfu alone excepted. Beyond Molfetta the Monte Gargano projects far into the sea forming the sort of wen which you may have noticed in the map of Italy, on the right hand side of the stocking—but night soon hid it from us. The next morning we were out of sight of land, & did not see it again till we came in sight of another little mountain close to Ancona. We anchored off Ancona about ten in the evening, but the pleasant police regulations did not allow of landing till about seven this morning. I got through the custom house by payment of a zwanziger—the first place in the Pope’s territory where in this journey I have found the officers bribable. But alas, I find there is no diligence in the direction I am going till Friday, this being Monday morning—& I have been obliged to engage a voiture to Forli, two days journey through Romagna, from which they tell me there is a diligence that will take me the third day over the Apennines to Florence. This is disagreeable both by loss of time & expense—I am obliged to cut short, my darling one, because I start this morning by the voiture aforesaid. I shall write also to Blackheath in case she should not yet have left home. Adieu my darling love—your own

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 4 [1855]

Ancona

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

239.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Ancona

.

June 4 [1855]

My darling love,

I received at Corfu your two letters of the 8th & 11th, one of them forwarded from Athens—& as you said that the first week in June was the latest that you were sure of receiving my letters at home, I sent the long letter giving an account of my journey in the Morea to Paris, à Madame J.S. Mill, poste restante. I have also written there from this place, but in case you should not have left home when you intended I write also to our dear home to say all I can about my future movements. I have found Edition: current; Page: [472] the voyage here which I dreaded extremely, so easy that I wish I had not arranged for her letters to come by this route as I should otherwise have gone on to Trieste & should have reached Paris much sooner. As it is, the time is quite uncertain. To my great vexation I find this Monday morning that there is no diligence till Friday, so I am obliged to go by voiture to Forli, the ugly road, two days journey & on the third they tell me I shall get to Florence by diligence across the Apennines—I may be obliged to go all the way to Bâle in the same manner, so that it is impossible for me to say within a week at what time I shall be at Paris—I do not think in much less than three weeks from today—I shall go at once to Galignani’s & ask for the letter which will tell me where I shall find my beloved one. I fear there will be much difficulty in getting accommodated at Paris in the height of the exhibition,² but the essential is that I shall see her & be with her once more. I am full of only homeward thoughts. How much there will be for our nice home talks on Sundays & evenings. As this is only to give necessary information & she probably will not receive it I shall not add more but shall write again to Paris from Florence. Adieu my darling darling wife

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 7 [1855]

Florence

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

240.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Florence

.

June 7 [1855]

46

My dearest love,

I arrived yesterday evening in this stately gloomy town, & if it were not for one thing I should say that I am better than I have been for many months. I now digest almost perfectly though I eat heartily, but as this great improvement has been brought about by eating meat at breakfast as well as dinner & often drinking wine, this & the feverishness produced by travelling have had one bad effect, viz. that the appearance of blood in the expectoration instead of being quite exceptional has become very frequent & today in particular there is more of it than I at all like. I suspect it will not be prudent for me leave this place without consulting Clark’s Dr Wilson² not that there is anything to be uneasy about, but because I need some one to tell me how to keep this off, especially in travelling—& it will not be amiss to ascertain the state of my lungs which have not been examined since Strange gave such a favorable account of them at Naples. I shall not Edition: current; Page: [473] finish this letter without saying something more positive on the subject. I found her dear letter at the post office.—Now for the journey. If my dear one looks at the map she will see that it was quite out of my way coming to Florence at all as at Forli I was in the direct road to Parma & Milan—but the explanation is this. I knew that from Ancona I had the choice of two ways north, by Florence or by Bologna, & that the one by Bologna was the most direct. But I heard at Wyse’s that the roads about Bologna were not safe, that a diligence had been robbed, that there were bands of outlaws about the country & was advised to go by Florence. I then remembered that you had also mentioned something of the sort & this turned the scale in favour of Florence. Then I knew of but two roads across the Apennines from Ancona to Florence: one was by Bologna, of course therefore I chose the other, by Foligno. I knew nothing of the road by Forli, which is not in my map, & as the road was only made in 1836, probably the map is older. But at Ancona I learnt that there was not only a road but a daily diligence from Forli to Florence, & that by going so far on the Bologna road & turning off at Forli, I should save a day. This decided me. I mentioned in my last letter that I found there was no diligence either towards Rome or Bologna for the next three days, & that was the story told me not only by the vetturino whom of course I should not have believed, but by the commissioner of the inn—who also told me the padrone had gone out—so being anxious to get on I closed with the vetturino: but when I went to put my letter in the post, there stood the diligence for Bologna just ready to start. It was too late now—but I laid a complaint before the landlord against his commissioner & absolutely refused to go with the vetturino though I had signed a written engagement—I told him that having been obtained by fraud I did not hold myself bound by it but that if he thought he could enforce it & wished to go before the police I was quite willing to go with him & tell my story. I fully expected to be taken at my word, as I thought & still think that any tribunal was bound to decide against me, having a written document, & only my word against the man’s: however he did not choose to risk it, so he at all events gained nothing by his trickery—indeed lost something as he had sent on horses to Sinigaglia as a relai, which I told him would be his punishment & less than he deserved. I had to find another vetturino & to pay him the same high price—but there was no help.—Before I got clear of Ancona I had to fee two more sets of doganieri a zwanziger each, on pretext of its being a free port & therefore having custom houses on the land side. They tried it on again at the next town, but yielded to a mild remonstrance on the unusualness of examining the luggage at every town one came to. Though this road is comparatively through level country I was glad to see a little of Romagna. It was new too to see Italy in the full flush of summer—but the summer, thus far, is an English, not an Italian summer—clouds part of the day, never Edition: current; Page: [474] oppressively hot, & a fine north wind keeping the air fresh & cool. It was a treat also to see again these North Italian towns, with their large Places, tall houses & shady clean streets, so unlike Greece & even Sicily & southern Italy. The first day I passed through Sinigaglia & Fano & slept at Pesaro. The road was always close to the sea—the country the deepest richest green, from corn & mulberry trees, with an occasional bit of grass just cut, or being cut, & as green underneath as any in England. I saw no olives nor other southern productions. The country was nearly flat but there were sufficient low hills generally to hide the Apennines, though they were near—& when visible—looked much like the Welsh mountains from Shropshire or Cheshire. As I approached Pesaro I came to a longish hill which projects into the sea & walked up it: here the country began to be prettily varied & full of trees. I mentioned mulberries before, but they only began here. The maize is in its first fresh green. It was now nearly dark & I saw little more this evening, but was indemnified by myriads of fire flies—the air up to two or three feet above the ground (they do not rise higher) seemed full of little sparks of fire, dancing like wills of the wisp, & appearing to be alternate instants extinguished & lighted again. Next morning I was off at half past five & got first to Rimini. The country all the way was prettily varied & full of trees (mulberry chiefly). At Rimini I saw the cathedral which contains various things more curious than beautiful. There is a Roman triumphal arch, fine & well preserved, & a more remarkable thing, a bridge built by Augustus of fine square blocks of marble, over which the road still passes—probably the oldest bridge in existence which is still in working condition. There is a very good & wide view of the near Apennines from hence—the nearest mountain being that which forms the territory of the little republic of San Marino: the top is like a segment of a circle, with several prominences, on which are churches & fortifications, & (as is often the case in these limestone mountains) a high cliff forming the whole upper part of the mountain, & a green slope from the foot of the cliff, on which slope the town seemed to be. The other mountains near seemed mostly flat topped, like the breaking down of table land, but there were some peaks. At Rimini I had a mischance like the one near Stuttgard. I walked on before the carriage & took the wrong way but this time it was by following the directions of the vetturino who did not know his right hand from his left: had he said nothing I should have gone right, but he said, when you come to a parting of two roads prendite a destra—which I did, & went about five miles on the road to Ravenna, & had to walk back to Rimini & hire a carriage to run after the other. When I remonstrated it appeared he thought destra meant the left hand: dritta being the common expression & the one I always used, but he out of finery used the other without knowing its meaning. After this the fellow was dissatisfied Edition: current; Page: [475] because I gave him only a reasonable, or rather more than reasonable, buona mano. The road here slants away from the sea, passing through two small towns, Arcangelo & Savignano—in this last almost every house had on it in large letters, Evviva la Caracciolo³—Evviva Aspasia Dirik⁴—I found on enquiry that these were two actresses who had made furore this carnival at Rimini. Then came towns of note, Cesena, Forlimpopoli & at last Forli, which is a fine town with a splendid place & good streets. The next morning at five I was off by diligence to Florence—across the Apennines nearly all the way. They are not here particularly fine mountains—the rock is sand coloured & brittle & with its nearly horizontal stratification the cliffs it breaks into look like roughly put together brickwork made grey by time—but the valley gradually contracted into a narrow gorge—the mountains were green to the top with trees & pasture mixed—& the road at last by a six miles climb (which I walked up) went over not a pass but a low part of the main ridge of the Apennines: the descent westward from its rapidity, its length & the form & steepness of the mountain very nearly approached the descent of the Mont Cenis. The mountain view from the top was fine though hazy, & though the green mountains were like overgrown hills, I saw beeches this day, the first time, I think, since leaving England—& some oak & chestnut woods. We got to Florence about dark, & I came to the Hotel d’York, near the Place of the Cathedral, where I am very comfortable. Coming from the post office this morning I went into the cathedral, which with Giotto’s⁵ fine campanile & the baptistery, are finer outside than I remembered them. But inside the darkness & the extreme bareness of the cathedral—as there are no paintings nor side chapels & not above half a dozen statues—make it very gloomy, & to my feelings not fine. It was filling with people—I got into the very midst of the Fête Dieu which is kept here with great magnificence & a minor procession but still a very grand one (as such things go) has just passed the hotel. But the galleries are shut & nothing can be seen, except the churches.

Darling—I have just seen Dr Wilson: He thinks the tendency to hemorrhage quite accidental, no proof of any change for the worse in the chest, but thinks it is owing to the heat, combined with the change of diet & the travelling. He has prescribed something for it which I shall take & it will get right I dare say very soon. But here is a terrible coil about getting away from here. There are only two ways if I go through Milan—& the way I have been advised to take is to go by diligence to Mantua & there take the railway. I Edition: current; Page: [476] have just been to the office & find that the diligence goes tomorrow at six & does not go the next day but the day after. I had resolved to go at once & not see the gallery, vexatious as that was,—Parma & Correggio’s⁶ pictures I must lose at any rate. But behold, on account of the fête all the offices are shut & it is absolutely impossible to get my passport so as to leave tomorrow. I must therefore wait two days more, for though there is a diligence to Bologna the day after tomorrow, & one from Bologna to Milan by Parma, I find I should arrive as soon at Milan the other way by leaving here on the 10th as that way by leaving on the 9th. There is another choice—to go to Leghorn, thence to Genoa by sea & from Genoa to Milan: by this I should save about three quarters of a day but it is better than that to have the rest here & see the gallery. I am much tempted to go at once by sea to Marseilles & thence by railway to Paris—I should then be there as soon or sooner than my darling. But the sea again would be intensely disagreeable, besides that I should lose her letters to Milan & Bâle which may contain something important with respect to our meeting. The best I can do is to wait quietly here these two days & try to get rid of the bleeding which I am much more likely to do resting than travelling. I shall get to Mantua in the night of the 10th or early in the morning of the 11th & to Milan in the night of the 11th or early on the 12th. Remaining the 12th at Milan I do not think I need more than three days to get to Lucerne, viz the 13th, 14th & 15th, & one day from Lucerne to Bâle, the 16th: then by railway to Strasbourg the 17th & to Paris the 18th. Allowing two days for detention I do not think, unless I am unable to travel, that I shall be later at Paris than the 20th at night, which is sooner than I expected when I wrote from Ancona. But I then thought of going by the Splügen, not having reckoned how much shorter it is by the St Gothard. She will not have to wait very long for me at or near Paris & I shall see her in a fortnight at farthest. I look forward to it with delight—but ah darling I had a horrible dream lately—I had come back to her & she was sweet & loving like herself at first, but presently she took a complete dislike to me saying that I was changed much for the worse—I am terribly afraid sometimes lest she should think so, not that I see any cause for it, but because I know how deficient I am in self consciousness & self observation, & how often when she sees me again after I have been even a short time absent she is disappointed—but she shall not be, she will not be so I think this time—bless my own darling, she has been all the while without intermission present to my thoughts & I have been all the while mentally talking with her when I have not been doing so on paper.

Though Wilson talks about heat, it is not very hot, though hotter today Edition: current; Page: [477] than the former days—or perhaps hotter in this place than in the country. He says it is not so hot as usual at this season, & that there has been here such a winter & spring for cold & wet as he never remembers—they had fires in May. At Corfu where it was really very hot the day I landed there in my way homeward, I was equally told that it had been an unusually cool & damp season & that only the last two or three days had been summer—& certainly I found the place much greener than I expected, nearly as green as when I left it in the middle of April. Therefore perhaps my reports of the greenness & coolness of the Morea at the end of May are an incorrect representation of what usually happens. It seems to have been a strange season everywhere.—This is the third letter I have written poste restante to Paris: the first, from Corfu, contained the account of my journey in the Morea; the other was a short one, from Ancona, & I wrote also from Ancona to our home. I shall also write a short letter home from here, as she told me to in the dear letter I found at this post office. I cannot think of any place at Paris where she could hear of me, besides Galignani’s, better than the other English bookseller’s, Baudry,⁷ who used to be I think Rue de Coq—he is the man who publishes the French editions of English books. If par malheur I do not find your address at Galignani’s through any stupidity of the people (but as I shall know it is there, I shall not let them off easy) I shall leave mine both there & at Baudry’s. In that case too I shall go to the post office & see if there is a letter poste restante waiting there for me & perhaps darling they will let her leave her address at the post office that so the letters post restante may be sent to her through the postman—in that case I should find her address there.

Since writing this I have been a little about the town. By Wilson’s advice I did not go out in the hot part of the day, but towards evening I began looking at churches. At the Annunziata which she will recollect, I saw the Madonna del Sacco & the other famous frescoes by Andrea del Sarto & others, as well as some Perugino’s. The frescoes are fine but it requires a much greater painter to make frescoes please & satisfy one than to make oil paintings do so. Santa Croce was interesting to me because it contains the tombs of most of the eminent Florentines—Michael Angelo,⁸ Machiavelli,⁹ Galileo¹⁰ & others—& they have put up monuments to Dante & Filicaja who are Edition: current; Page: [478] not buried there—Alfieri also is buried there though not a Tuscan but a Piedmontese. But a thing which struck me was a number of frescoes by Giotto—quite lately uncovered from whitewash (what strange people the Florentines were for blotting out pictures) so lately, that only one of them had yet got into the Murray printed in 1853.11 It is wonderful that the whitewash can be so completely got rid of without damage to the picture: these which are some of the oldest, are about the freshest frescoes I ever saw—the whitewash has acted as a preservative: I wish the Cenacolo at Milan had been whitewashed. I never knew before what Giotto could do: they are like pictures of the time of Raphael, so free & flowing & telling their story so well. This church of Santa Croce like half the churches in Florence is a mere ugly mass of pale brickwork externally—& internally though there is plenty of light (unlike the Cathedral) the spirit of the place, that of gloom, is felt: I think the Florentine pointed arch of grey stone has a peculiarly sombre effect. Sombre the whole place is with its Newgate-like palaces of rough stone with their dungeon-like grated windows, a stile of architecture which the Tuscans must admire very much, since they paint their other houses externally to look like it. From the gloom I must except the view from the bridges—it seems as if the town had turned its gay side to the river—had shewn to it the only smiles it could put on. I have been puzzling myself to think what feature in the Tuscan character this character of the town represents, either as cause or effect: so decided an expression in what meets the people every hour of the day must take effect on them somehow: one would expect to find them of the traditional character of the old Spanish don, stately, grave, & sad. I have been reading English papers at a reading room: I perceive we have taken Kersch¹²—it seems a great advantage, reste à savoir if it will turn out as decisive a one as the newspapers expect. If it were not for the French there would be little hope, for the Russians will never be outgeneralled by English lords baited by the Times. By the bye will not the queen be at Paris at the very time when we are there? if so¹³ we may say goodbye to any prospect of lodgings—Tomorrow I shall see the gallery & probably call on Mr Pasquale Villari, my correspondent,¹⁴ though I almost forget what our correspondence was about. But I shall put this in the post first thing tomorrow (the post closed at twelve o’clock today) so tomorrow’s proceedings must wait for another letter either from here or from Milan. Addio con mille baci. your own

J. S. M.

Edition: current; Page: [479]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 7 [1855]

Florence

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

241.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Florence

,

June 7 [1855]

My darling love,

I arrived here yesterday evening & have written today a long letter to Paris being the third I have addressed there. I found her sweet letter at the post office & as she asked me to do, I write this to our home though I have no doubt she will have left it before this can arrive, unless, which heaven forbid, she should not be well enough to go. This being only to give necessary information, I will merely say that I expect to be in Paris about the 20th—I may be sooner, but cannot possibly, I think, be sooner than the 18th, for reasons which I have given fully in my long letter—& that is allowing no margin for stoppages from fatigue or diligences being full. I long for her dear sight & sweet society & hope never again to be so long separated. Adieu my precious wife. Your

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 8 [1855]

Florence

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

242.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Florence

—

June 8 [1855]

47

My dearest angel—

As I am detained here nolens volens I am at any rate making good use of my time. Wilson’s remedies have worked like magic & the bleeding has almost gone—without any other change of diet than not drinking wine, if that can be called a change, since I did not drink it every day before. So I have been going about all day & have seen much of this place—If Rome is as I hold it to be, the metropolis of art, this is certainly only second to it, at least as to painting & sculpture—I have been even more struck with the modern than with the ancient sculptures & I am more & more confirmed in the opinion that the Italian sculptors of the great age of art are quite equal to the Greek. It is not only Michel Angelo—but the great sculptors whose works stand in the public places here, Donatello,² Giovanni di Bologna,³ either of whom has produced many statues which if dug up out of the ground would be thought fine specimens of great masters—the bronze Edition: current; Page: [480] Perseus by Benvenuto Cellini⁴ which is in the great Place—the wonderful bas reliefs round the baldacchino at Orsanmichele, by Orgagna [sic]⁵ who was the chief painter of the Campo Santo at Pisa—many things of Baccio Bandinelli⁶—all equal to great Greek works, & I have now seen here about a dozen by Michael Angelo all as it seems to me equal to the greatest Greek. You remember the Bacchus—but I have now seen the chapel at San Lorenzo (which was shut up for repairs when we were formerly here) in which are the monuments of Lorenzo & Giuliano di Medici⁷—The four figures, representing Day, Night, Evening & Morning I do not much care about. I can see them to be fine statues, but the greatest artist cannot make allegorical subjects impressive. But the statues of Lorenzo & Giuliano themselves to my feeling equal any ever made by hands, & there is a marble Virgin & Child in the same chapel by M. Angelo almost as fine—though there is much nonsense written about it, as that the face of the Virgin expresses maternal affection: to me she seems to be going to sleep, but the statue is splendid. I went of course to the Gallery—The Niobe room I could not get into—it was shut up, & the only reason I could learn was that the custode was unwell. Of course no other person could open the door & see that nobody steals the statues. It is curious how in Italy everything yields to the convenience of the people in charge. On a fête day every place is shut up that the custodi may share in the fête. But I saw everything else, long & well, & sat a great while in the Tribune full of admiration. Not of the Venus de Medici, for decidedly I do not like her: I never liked the casts of her, & I do not like the original a bit better. I think her the poorest of all the Venuses. She is neither the earthly Venus nor the Urania. Of course she is a beautifully formed woman, but the head is too too ridiculously small, as if to give the idea of having no room for brains—& they may well say she does not look immodest, for the expression of the face is complete old maidism. At least these are very strongly my impressions & I am sure they are quite spontaneous—But there is a host of most beautiful statues & pictures there, though the statues not quite equal to the Vatican. There are enough to make one feel in an atmosphere of art—even to be among all those Roman emperors whom I have got to know like personal acquaintances. There are also so many fine statues & pictures all over Florence that I could soon get into the kind of feeling I had at Rome of being bathed in art. It is strange that the Florentines should have had so many great painters & sculptors—I suppose they are like the English, who though so unpoetical a people have had more great poets than any other country. I am convinced that the Florentines are a most unartistic, tasteless Edition: current; Page: [481] people. Who but such a people would let all the churches be masses of deformity which are a positive eyesore, and disgrace the city—like houses half built, of half burnt bricks—things in which no private person could bear to live—the only material exceptions being the Cathedral which has no front, & Santa Maria Novella which has nothing but a front. Then the number of fine paintings which they have whitewashed out, & are now first shamed by the opinion of Europe into taking away the whitewash or letting foreigners subscribe to do it—then their most celebrated pictures wantonly made invisible by curtains or screens shutting out the light—the celebrated frescoe [sic] by Ghirlandajo in the choir of S. Maria Novella which I very much wished to see, I could barely see to be fine, & nothing more. Then their constant practice of repainting their finest pictures which shews such a total want of respect for the great painters—to me most of the Raphaels & Correggios in the Tribune are spoilt in a great measure because they have so evidently been repainted. There is nothing fine in the architecture of the town externally except what is owing to two men, Brunelleschi⁸ who built the Cathedral & Giotto who built the beautiful Campanile. That tower of Babel, the townhouse, has nothing really beautiful in it—it is fine to us, because it recals the middle age, but it is not like the hotel de ville of Brussels, Louvain or Ghent, beautiful in itself. I have been trying hard to understand the extreme sombreness of the interior of all the churches—it is not the Tuscan pointed arch, for it is just the same at San Lorenzo where the arches are round, resting on Corinthian columns & the general plan that of a basilica. Still I think arches, which though pointed meet at so wide an angle that one sees no reason why they should not be round, & which often have nothing to give meaning to the angle as being the intersection of two curves, are always poor—though I know not why they should be gloomy—I think the gloom is mainly owing to the colour of the stone which is the very coldest grey I ever saw, & the Florentines with characteristic taste paint with the same grey colour whatever pillars or other things require painting. I marked that the large fresco by Bronzino⁹ of the martyrdom of San Lorenzo in the church of that saint is spoilt by being spotted all over with whitewash—they did not care enough about it to hang a cloth over it while they were whitewashing the ceiling above it. The town itself is a good deal more lively now when the shops are open, & I sometimes for a moment forget that I am not in a French town. I feel much more in Europe than I have done at any other town of Italy. I think I could feel quite at home here if our home was here—but according to Wilson it is a place quite unfit for pulmonary invalids, both in winter & summer. I called on Pasquale Villari but he was not at home. I left my card Edition: current; Page: [482] & he will most likely call tomorrow. This is a very pleasant good inn, cheap if I may judge from the good room on the ground floor which I have for four pauls—kept by a motherly sort of Frenchwoman: the people at the table d’hôte are half English, the rest French with a party of Greeks. There were a good many Greeks in the steamer going to Trieste—I suppose they are mostly traders. Among things I saw today I forgot to mention the Laurentian library, with the finest collection of manuscripts I suppose in existence—among them the famous copy of the Pandects brought from Amalfi & a most beautifully written & distinct manuscript it is. Some of the later, fourteenth century manuscripts are still more beautiful, but at that time, one is not so much surprised. There is a Cicero said to be of the fourth century, a most beautiful manuscript.

9th What I left undone yesterday I have done today, & have seen Florence itself pretty completely, though nothing of its environs. I passed a great part of the morning in the Pitti Gallery, the Grand Duke’s own, which is a still finer collection of pictures than the public gallery, & is the pleasantest to see of all I have gone to, from the convenience of the seats. It is a very large collection, mostly of good pictures, & many chefs d’œuvre. Those which struck me most were two of Perugino, which Murray in ten columns of notices does not even mention—one a Descent from the Cross, which when I had only seen the print of it I thought one of the greatest pictures ever painted—all the disagreeable of the subject taken away & nothing but a beautiful dead body & the most beautiful feelings in the numerous gracefully grouped spectators. The other is an adoration of the infant Jesus by the Virgin & some children—a small thing compared to the other but quite admirable by the naturalness & natural grace of the children—the Virgin also very beautiful. There are many fine pictures by Fra Bartolomeo & Andrea del Sarto, masters whom I admire more & more. I went again to the great gallery, but could not get into the Niobe room—again to S. Maria Novella & by bribing the custode got to see the Ghirlandajos again by a better light & the famous Cimabue¹⁰ which we saw together—to the church & convent of San Marco where I saw the finest set of frescoes by Fra Angelico which exist—he was a friar of that convent, as was Fra Bartolomeo & also Savonarola. Some of the frescoes were in the cells which seemed very comfortable for Italians—very like the inferior bedrooms in a good inn. I went to the Carmine church & saw the frescoes of Masaccio, another painter who like Angelico & Ghirlandajo cannot be known except at Florence: & who seems to me quite to deserve his reputation—the whole of the eminent names Edition: current; Page: [483] of the generation preceding Raphael seem to me well to deserve their fame. Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, Perugino, Fra Bartolomeo, Luca Signorelli—not to add Leonardo. Villari called after dinner & not finding me, followed me to San Marco & went with me to the Carmine—he took me also to a church I should not have gone to, the San Spirito, which is as he said & as I quite assent, the finest internally in Florence—built on the plan of Brunelleschi & begun by him—a perfect forest of fine columns but the same grey tint & consequent gloomy effect. San Marco is the only not gloomy church I have seen: curious that it should be the Dominican. I walked afterwards in the Cascine with Villari till the fireflies came out & he came & had tea with me afterwards. I like him much—we talked on the greatest subjects for hours with animation & he was either so quick or so well prepared that he understood à demi mot everything I said, & continually said it before me, or followed it up by the next thing. I feel sure we should like him & was glad to hear that he thinks of visiting England next year. He is a little dark man not distingué looking, & a Neapolitan, which I did not expect—all the judgments he expressed on men & things, without one single exception, seemed to me sensible. I did not expect anything half so good.—To complete the account of my day, I got myself weighed this morning, & weighed as nearly as possible ten stone—exactly the same as when I left London. I hoped for something very different when I set out, but could not reasonably expect it in the state my digestion has been in the greater part of the time. However I have no reason to complain of my digestion now, for the present at any rate.—Among things I saw I forgot to mention the celebrated Pharmacie or Spezieria of S. Maria Novella, (or rather of the Dominican Convent belonging to it) which is quite a palace, with splendid tables of Florentine Mosaic, the most beautiful material in the world, but the most perfect waste of human labour—the time it requires to make it is so enormous. As it is all pietra dura, natural stone & not a manufactured composition like Roman mosaic, they have to make holes in the principal stone, the matrix as one may call it, exactly to fit the pieces which have to be inlaid in it. But the beauty of some of these tables when executed after a fine design, as some are in the public gallery & the Pitti palace, is quite matchless. It was quite curious to find the same splendour in an apothecary’s shop. The building did not originally belong to the monks but was erected by the republic of Florence. The most splendid room however is quite new. The rich green of the cascine was most pleasant to the eye.

11th June. Verona. Here I am darling in this fine town, the finest I think in the North of Italy, & so completely at the foot of the Alps as to seem among them. I as little expected to write from here as she to be written to but Edition: current; Page: [484] the railway from Mantua is a branch which meets the main line at Verona, & I got to Mantua so late (past one in the afternoon) that there was no train direct to Milan except a night train: so I came no further than here, & shall have time to see the place before eleven tomorrow when there is a train that will enable me to get to Milan by night. I am extremely glad that I came this road—I have seen towns I wished to see, & the real Apennines, for the main chain is so twisted that the road crossed it three times & we were among snowy tops a great part of the day. I started by diligence at six yesterday morning & went by railway as far as Pistoja passing Prato: we did not however go through Pistoja, but kept outside the walls: I could see several fine looking church towers, especially a campanile, square & high like that of Florence, but with ranges of columns all round it like the leaning tower of Pisa. Nothing can look richer, more fertile & verdant than the Val d’Arno at this season—equal to the very richest green in England, the trees however being chiefly mulberries of which they are beginning to strip off the leaves. The valley is bounded on the south side by low mountains, on the north by rather high, beyond which a snowy summit could be seen even from the bridges at Florence. Pistoja is in (or rather near) a kind of elbow in this line of mountains to which we drove right up & at once ascended the main ridge without the pretence of a valley or gorge to take us into the mountain region before ascending. The road is beautifully made all the way, like the roads in Italy generally: from its windings there were splendid views over the Val d’Arno which had a most inviting appearance as one looked back—soon we could see over the mountains which bound it, to other mountains beyond. We soon got into the region of chestnut woods which cover the sides of the upper part of even this first ridge, & when we saw over to the other side, hardly anything but chestnut woods was visible—but as we got on & climbed other & higher regions, till there were great masses of snow drift by the roadside, & snowy summits all round us—fields of snow at last, not drifts—we came successively among beeches, larches, firs & beautiful flowering trees, mountain ash, another real ash with white flowers & laburnum growing out of the rocks in brilliant flower & delicious smell. A remarkable thing is that we not only often passed little villages, but were never long without passing some thriving looking farmhouse—& when I looked into these houses I almost always found a well & carefully tiled floor, tolerably clean, & a great number of good rush bottomed chairs, with mostly tables also. I take the Tuscan peasantry to be on the whole the best off in the world—the little I could see quite agrees with Sismondi’s account of them.¹¹ All the effect of a good tenure of land. These Apennines have a decided character of their own, not like the Alps, still more unlike the mountains of Greece—I Edition: current; Page: [485] really feel as if I had never seen anything so green as the whole north of Italy, for the plain of Lombardy is equally so. I of course climbed these high ascents on foot, & so escaped the extreme fatigue of a long carriage journey but not the other bad effects, for the heat & the travelling have quite brought back the bleeding (which had never entirely gone away). However I anticipate. Night found us still in the mountains. About four in the morning we got to Modena in the midst of the plain, & finding we were to stay an hour there, off I set to see the cathedral. It is extremely fine, in rather a dark stile, & with a feature I do not remember to have seen elsewhere—one ascends a great flight of steps to the choir, thus dividing the church into two different levels. The architecture is what they call Lombard in contradistinction to Gothic—I can only say it is much more what we mean by Gothic than any of the Italian Gothic churches—it most resembles the german cathedrals, like Aix la Chapelle. Though the light was imperfect I could see very fine sculptures. The tower is reckoned one of the four fine towers in Italy & is really fine. Modena seems to me the ideal of a residenz—the broad streets not too broad, the narrow not too narrow—arcades along almost all the principal streets but not low ones as at Bologna, making the place gloomy, but high roofed & stately, making it cheerful, & the houses lofty. We then crossed the plain to Mantua: there was little to see but rich cultivation, for the mulberry trees hemmed in the view: even when we ought to have seen the Alps, the extreme haze made the view imperfect as it did that of the Valdarno yesterday. We crossed the Po, here a broad rapid river, by a pont volant, & soon saw Mantua among the broad shallow lakes which almost surround it, & constitute part of its extraordinary strength as a fortress. One of the most curious things there is the Ponte dei Mulini, a kind of dyke which separates two of these lakes, of different levels, & lets the water of the upper one through to the lower in twelve places turning twelve mills—Along this dyke the road goes, forming a curious covered way. Mantua is a much larger town than I expected, but compared with others a mean looking town—the houses being mostly low: the central streets however are busy & bustling, & with their arcades look pretty well: I had time to see the place before going to the train. The architecture here is all renaissance, Giulio Romano having been employed to set everything to rights & to build or rebuild everything: the largest church, S. Andrea, is a sort of St Paul’s, & very like it though smaller—the cathedral inside is in the same stile, though outside one wall & one tower are still of the oldest darkest Lombard, contrasting curiously with the rest. I went over the old palace of the Gonzagas,¹² an enormous Edition: current; Page: [486] place, part of which is still kept up as a palace for the Austrian princes when they come here—the rest is given up to military purposes; it is full of frescoes by Giulio Romano, rather fine in their way but not such as I care about. There is another palace, the Palazzo del T, or Tè (for it is written both ways) a little out of the town, which is said to be still finer in the same stile, & with still more & better paintings by Giulio Romano: I had not time to see it & do not regret that I had not. I have not mentioned the people in the diligence with me: my companions in the coupé were a youngish Frenchman & his wife, who had been making a tour in Italy: they were chatty & good natured but not interesting people. There were two Italians, a German & four young Americans, whom one knew for such at the first sound of their voices. I never saw such complete John Bulls as some of them, they were the English of farces & I have no doubt such Americans often sit for a picture of English. They seemed however good fellows au fond, & one who spoke German & Italian tolerably seemed a decent sort of person. Their twang was exactly that of provincial English, yet there was something in the manner that made me know them instantly for Americans. But they or some of them must be of a class of Americans who I did not think travelled so far. I came on by railway to Verona, only an hour & a half’s journey & am much struck with the place—but I shall know more about it tomorrow. By the wayside there were rich meadows in the midst of an English hay harvest—& the view of the Alps with one great snowy summit extremely fine. You see dearest one of the two extra days I allowed myself for contingencies has already been needed, & I have no doubt I shall need the other if not more—for with this tendency to hemorrhage, long days of travelling, & night travelling by diligence, will not do, & I must take things easy. I shall get some more of Wilson’s medicine tomorrow morning.

12th Milan. I had breakfasted & was out soon after half past six & as there was much to see I did what I hardly ever do, took a valet de place—by means of whom at a cost of half a crown I was taken to every place in the best order for seeing most in a short time—I saw nearly every thing there is to see, without any hurry. Verona is a cheerful imposing looking town, with the Adige, here as large as the Seine at Rouen, running through it not like a mountain torrent but like a cataract. I feel sure that no small boat could escape destruction on it. The Amphitheatre is in a large Place in the middle of the town, like that of Nimes, which it much resembles but the interior is in complete repair, the steps perfect all round, & I should think exactly as they were at the time of the Romans, for then too they must have been often repaired. There is a day theatre which gives representations now in the centre of the arena, of which it occupies but a small part. The view from the top of Edition: current; Page: [487] the walls is fine, but there is a finer from the upper end of the garden of a Count something, which contains about 100 or 120 of the oldest & tallest cypresses—some as old as the garden itself, which was made in the 13th century. The upper end ascends the rocks which overlook the town, & you have a complete view of all Verona & the plain as far as Mantua. Not to mention a Roman theatre, triumphal arches &c. this town contains the greatest number of fine churches I have seen in any town except Rome. They are mostly in the Lombard stile though often touched up with a little bit of Palladian not enough however to spoil the effect. The churches though dark are anything but gloomy & sombre, though the pointed arches are at the same large angle as those at Florence—but then, in the first place the columns are generally much higher in proportion to the breadth of the nave: & next, instead of the ugly grey, there is a most beautiful material, the Verona marble, mostly of a variegated red colour & called bronzino from the metallic sound it gives when struck. These churches are full of fine pictures, many of them by beautiful painters hardly known out of Verona, especially Caroto.¹³ These local celebrities like that of Morrealese at Palermo & Piola¹⁴ at Genoa, are not uncommon in this country of great painters. There are also multitudes of fine frescoes by Andrea Mantegna,¹⁵ and an Assumption by Titian, very much superior as it seems to me, to the one at Venice—in fact the finest Titian I ever saw. There were not so many of Paolo Veronese¹⁶ as I should have expected, but there is one picture the finest I think I ever saw of that master who is not one of my especial favourites. I then started on the most beautiful railway journey I ever made—the first part of it at least—I was lucky enough to get a seat on the north side, looking to the Alps—also the shady side, it being a frightfully hot day—& we soon reached Peschiera & the lake of Garda—that lake does not like the others end in a narrow point, but in a broad triangular or rather crescent shaped base—& though heavy clouds hung over the Alps, letting only a few snowy summits come through, & preventing any sight of the mountains at the head of the lake, those round its base were so extremely fine that one felt no want. This is one of the pictures I have brought away & shall long retain in freshness. We passed Brescia of which I could only judge the situation: it is close under some smaller & greener mountains which here project south from the Alps. There is a break of between 20 & 30 miles in the line of railway a little beyond Brescia which we went over by diligence—we crossed the Oglio & the Adda, now foaming torrents of great size & reached Milan soon after Edition: current; Page: [488] seven, where I am at the Albergo Reale, a very nice inn. The cathedral as I passed it looked quite astonishing, like a vast palace built of stalactites, or of icicles—but I must think that a statue at the point of each icicle is a very bad mode of terminating it. Milan looks very gay & bustling & large—like a capital, & very like a French town. I saw some Galignani’s at the hotel—What tremendous rains there seem to have been all over France & especially in the south west. I read Lord John Russell’s disgusting speech¹⁷ on the impossibility of doing anything for Poland & the extreme desirableness of maintaining Austria in all her possessions—I felt a strong desire to kick the rascal—it is a perfect disgrace to England that he should be tolerated as a liberal (!) minister a day after such a speech. What with our sentimental affection for one despot & our truckling to the other great enemy,¹⁸ we are likely to have a precious character with all lovers of freedom on the Continent!—I do not know how I shall get away from this place, for the people here tell me that no voiturins yet go the St Gothard road—the diligence does, but I am really afraid of the feverishness of the long day & night travelling in this weather. I could engage a voiture to myself but the cost would be so enormous. I shall not close this letter till I can tell my darling what I am going to do.

13th. I have got her dear letter, bless her heart. After enquiry I find the best thing I have to do is to get to Lugano tomorrow which is on the St Gothard road & to which I can go by diligence—then get on by arrangements with the Swiss postmasters who the landlord here says are very reasonable & will not make me pay nearly as much as if I engaged a voiture to myself. In this way it may take four days instead of three to Lucerne & I may require a day’s rest—Should both these things happen I shall not get to Paris till the 21st, but as this bleeding does not go away, I must take great care not to overdo the travelling. In any case I shall write from Lucerne. I have been into the cathedral—let people say what they will, it is internally much the finest in Italy, & the only one which produces an effect like the great cathedrals of the north. There is inside no superabundance of ornament & the arches are pure Gothic while their immense height gives them the proper effect of Gothic—& the octagonal sort of temples with niches which go round the columns at the spring of the arch have a striking effect. Adieu my dearest angel—love your

J. S. Mill

Edition: current; Page: [489]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 14 [1855]

Milan

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

243.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Milan

June 14 [1855]

48

This letter, my darling love, which is probably the last she will receive before the happy moment of meeting, is the fifth that I have addressed poste restante à Paris. One was from Corfu, one from Ancona, one from Florence & one yesterday from Milan. I hope they all arrived as they contain the only notes I have kept of the journey. Yesterday I staid a good deal in doors reading on account of the heat (there was some rain in the afternoon which made it cooler) & the comparative quiet has been good for me—as the tendency to spit blood has again considerably diminished. So darling there is nothing in it to be uneasy about when once we are quiet at home (or even at Paris). I went however to the Brera gallery which we saw formerly. It is but a poor collection—good specimens of inferior masters & inferior specimens of good masters—except Luini,² of whom being the local painter there are many very nice things—also one fine Titian, St Jerome in the desert, & the early picture of Raphael of which one sees engravings everywhere, the marriage of the Virgin. Towards dusk there was a military (Austrian) band in the Place of the cathedral—I was surprised to find that the music they were playing was Balfe’s.³ He however has I believe a considerable reputation in Italy, & I fancy is quite equal to the present Italian composers. There has never once since I have been in Italy been an opera acted which I cared to see, therefore (except once at Rome) I never went: but here I found them at La Scala acting the Prophète⁴ & as I much wished to see that, I went. It is said that La Scala has fallen off because the Italian families no longer choose to go where the Austrians go—however the pit of that immense theatre was full & the boxes more than half full. The opera was got up in the most splendid stile & it is a very shewy opera, full of pomp & spectacle. I admired it exceedingly, much more than I expected as Robert le Diable⁵ always seemed to me much overrated. This I think is not—it is extremely original, full of melody though not of the tunes that one carries off at once—the accompaniments overflowing with fine music—& all extremely characteristic—not exactly expressive of feeling in which many composers excel him, but he seems at every fine situation, & critical moment, to have found music just suitable to the march of the incidents. It proves what I doubted Edition: current; Page: [490] before, that there is still a great musical composer living & not superannuated. It was also on the whole very well acted—the principal woman, Giulia Sanchioli,⁶ I think we shall hear of in England. By the bye how perfectly French the story is—the hero has concealed his fiancée with whom he is very much in love, from a grand seigneur who is searching for her, & he gives her up because the seigneur threatens if he does not, to kill his mother. All the interest of the story turns on the mother: the fiancée is quite an inferior personage to her. The theatre does not look so well as formerly, the colour being now red instead of blue & silver: I took my place for today to Lugano only but as there are two diligences a day & not many travellers now, I feel sure of getting on by diligence without hurrying or night travelling. The only fear is that I may not be able to get a place in front.

Lugano. The diligence went by railway to Camerlata which is a suburb of Como. There was no view of the Alps, as the day though sunny & hot at Milan was heavy with clouds which hid not only the high mountains but almost the mountainous country itself. However when we got into the mountains we could see the nearer ones, which was sufficient for beauty. I heard a nightingale at Monza (& several between Modena & Mantua): this seems as if they continued to sing later than in England, where they are seldom heard after the first week of June. We passed through Como, which looked more like a pretty country town than usual in Italy. It is shut in by green hills even on the side on which there are no mountains. In ascending one of these hills we had a good view of the lower end (a little bit) of the lake. We then went on among hills wooded to the top & becoming higher & higher, with walnut & other trees in the greenest of green vallies below—passing through numbers of little towns & villages with their tall towers which one always sees in views of these lakes—among others Chiasso, the first town in Switzerland—till we reached the extremity of one of the many legs, or arms or branches, or culs de sac of the lake of Lugano. The remainder of the way was along the edge of this beautiful lake, or just above it—the lake being first on the left, then on the right, for at one narrow part we crossed it by a sort of mole completed by a bridge. We arrived at Lugano by the way opposite to that we remember—the view from the neighbourhood of the town was glorious even under the unfavourable circumstances of weather (in the town it had evidently been raining hard) especially the view up towards Porlezza & the head of the lake was as grand as ever. Lugano is now full of great masses of houses like German bath houses & has two enormous & several smaller inns. One of the small ones, overlooking the lake, at which the diligence stopped, I for that reason chose—it is large absolutely though Edition: current; Page: [491] small comparatively & seems good. I had the mortification of finding that I had lost my botanical tin box—which has been most useful to me, holding an apparently impossible quantity of specimens & keeping them fresh in the hottest weather for 24 hours. It must have fallen or wriggled out of my great coat pocket in the diligence or railway carriage. I am much vexed at it. I have lost nothing else of consequence in this journey—nothing beyond a pocket handkerchief which I lost on Pentelicus & an old shirt which must have been kept by some blanchisseuse—though I hardly ever failed to count the things & compare them with the note.

16th. Airolo, at the foot of St Gothard. I have got thus far, & it is not clear when I shall get farther. I made my choice to come this way instead of the Splügen that I might the sooner rejoin my beloved one, though I was told at Milan that the road was not open yet for wheel carriages & that the highest points of the pass must be crossed in sledges. This has been the cause of frustrating my intentions. I had hoped as the diligence did not reach Lugano till half past eleven, to have a walk first, & got up at five oclock for that purpose, but before I had finished dressing it rained hard—After waiting two hours I got an hour’s walk during an interval in which it scarcely rained, but the rain immediately after came on violently & has lasted without intermission till now. I saw nothing of the Alps, except every furrow of the mountain sides streaming with foam & often making superb waterfalls, & the Ticino rushing like a boiling flood & continually receiving streams which seemed nearly as large as itself. I wound down a mountainside just over the head of the Lago Maggiore without being able to see it—& went through Bellinzona (a town of arcades like Lugano) & a great many villages till at half past eleven I arrived at this place, Airolo, a village close under the St Gothard. Today it rained worse than ever, but I took my place for Fluelen on the lake of Lucerne, & proceeded up the pass to the place where the sledging begins—& to my consternation found that the sledges, little things holding two persons each, were entirely open. Several passengers were as much surprised as I was, saying that on the Simplon & the Mont Cenis the sledges are covered, & that they should not have come if they had known—but to me it was out of the question going on, as I should have been thoroughly soaked & had a day in the diligence afterwards, which in my present state would have had a good chance of killing me. I had no choice, disagreeable as it was, but to get out bag & baggage, & go back to Airolo by the return diligence about an hour & a half afterwards, here to wait till the rain ceases, which may be by tomorrow morning, or in these mountains may not be for some time. The man at the office behaved very well & said I might go any other day without paying again, but my unlucky attempt to get home quick may make me longer than if I had gone the more round about way. I am Edition: current; Page: [492] not so well as I was—I had a bad indigestion all yesterday, as if it was only the heat which made me digest & my digestion went off as soon as the heat did—but the heat in going away has not carried with it the tendency to spit blood, in spite of my continuing to use Wilson’s medicines as regularly as the travelling allows, which is very irregularly. Altogether I feel vexed & uncomfortable. But it will all be right when I get clear of these cold damp mountains: I have not known a damp climate now for so many months that it upsets me at first.—The change is very great into a free country. It was almost a novelty to me in the salle à manger at Bellinzona to hear people discussing politics in the most animated tones—& the newspapers two of which are taken in this inn shew that the legislature of Ticino is most active in making reforms & improvements, & though it is a Catholic canton, has as bitter a quarrel with the Pope as the Piedmontese government. One of its recent acts is to give the people of the parish the electing of their own parish priest. They have also suppressed quantities of convents & have made a law excluding the clergy from the legislature. Everything here seems to be radical & democratic au dernier point. This village is at the head of the long valley of the Lago Maggiore, where it rises rapidly up the mountainside—& the village is on the level of the lowest firtrees. Mountains with a good deal of snow on their tops rise immediately above & no doubt the snow is much deeper & wider spread on the north side. As it is so uncertain when I can get on from this place (though I hope the best) I shall send off this letter at once & you see dear there may be time still for her to write to Bâle or Strasbourg telling me where she is that I may go there at once from the railway station. If I go tomorrow morning I may still arrive on the 20th. & now good bye my darling wife.

your

J.S.M.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

June 18 [1855]

Lucerne

Harriet Mill

Mill, Harriet

244.

TO HARRIET MILL¹

Lucerne

June 18 [1855]

49

Now at all events, my darling love, I shall be with her in three days—twenty four hours I should think after she receives this. My caution in not crossing the St Gothard on the 16th was justified by the fact I heard before night that some English people who had gone on had been obliged to stop at the Hospice—I suppose so completely soaked that they could not safely go on in their wet clothes. The next morning was happily fine—sunny though Edition: current; Page: [493] with flying clouds & I went. It was quite a sight worth seeing that high pass, one of the highest in the Alps which are regularly travelled, all covered with snow.—It is true the sledge travelling was anything but the easy motion one is told of, & which perhaps it is when the snow is hard—this was continual up & down of the roughest kind. The sledges are about the shape of the swings at a fair & just large enough for two opposite one another to squeeze in. The road in many places was only distinguishable by the posts which mark it out & we often went over the snow in some other place. It was a rapid ascent of a winding narrow gorge, hemmed in by very steep mountains on many parts of which of course the snow would not lie but wherever it would lie it was a complete sheet, saving where some torrent issued out from under the snow & after rushing or falling between high white walls, ran under the snow again. At the top of the pass is a little plain, with a sort of lake, as on the Mont Cenis, but both much smaller. We trotted down on the other side very quick, & soon came to the end of the sledging, for the enormous number of men with spectacles on, who were clearing away the snow from the road, had made greater progress on the north than on the south side. Even this short experience of a field of snow under a bright sun made me fully appreciate the necessity of the spectacles. We now trotted down the remainder of the very long descent, & among other things crossed the Devil’s Bridge but too rapidly to have more than the most unsatisfactory glance at it—especially as I had been obliged to take up with a place in the interior, & a middle place too. I therefore saw little except by moments. For full half the distance to the lake of Lucerne the valley continued a mere gorge, narrower than even that of Cauterets, with literally no room at the bottom for anything but the rushing foaming Reuss. The road of course was cut in the side of the gorge & had several galleries cut in the rock: in one place it was roofed over on account of the avalanches of which in that place there was visible proof. The remaining half was a flat valley full of the richest pasture & the greenest walnut trees, between mountains covered with green pasture & green firs, & now & then perfectly perpendicular—but the tops of which were never visible, & it came on to rain before we reached the lake. We passed through Altdorf the scene of Tell’s doings with Gesler,² which are represented in fresco on the outside of an old tower as well as by a very old-stile statue of Tell, in which ideal beauty certainly was very little considered—an ugly little man with a cross-bow, caressing the head of a very natural little boy playing with an apple. Fluelen the port of Altdorf on the lake is about a mile further on—I may now say in the lake, for the immense quantity of melting snow has so raised the level of the lake that it has flooded all the places on its banks, & the houses immediately on the lake Edition: current; Page: [494] at Fluelen, including the two inns, stand up to their knees in water, i.e. their ground floors are flooded & like the street in front can only be traversed by boards resting on supports. One is not used to lakes taking these liberties. When I arrived there was a steamer just starting for Lucerne but I felt afraid of going on directly, arriving at Lucerne at or after dark & going on next morning for another long diligence day. I was fevered by the inside journey & excessively needed a walk, the stoppage at Airolo having been entirely a lost day so far as the walking (which is my real rest) is concerned. So considering what I thought my angel would most wish me to do, I finally decided that a halt for walking should be made somewhere before Paris & that as a better walk could be had here than anywhere else on the road, this was the best place to stop at. Accordingly I stopped at a rather pleasant German country inn & had a five hours walk this morning in the valley & the adjacent mountains & fir woods. It was fine at first but got showery afterwards & very rainy at last so that when in the steamboat I passed all down the lake seeing very little. The walk has done me much good. My digestion seems to have recovered itself, though the cold & damp are greater than ever, & through these two last days I have returned to my former breakfast of eggs & bread, in which, on account of the tendency to spit blood, I shall persist as long as I find that I can digest it—but the proof that I can, is the most satisfactory thing as to health that has happened to me for a long time. The first thing I did on arriving was to take my place to Bâle for tomorrow—there perhaps I may find a letter. I shall ask both there & at Strasbourg. And now darling as we shall meet so deliciously soon I need not write anything more except the utmost possible love & blessing from your

J.S.M.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 11.1855.

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]

Wentworth Holworthy

Holworthy, Wentworth

245.

TO WENTWORTH HOLWORTHY¹

E[ast] I[ndia] H[ouse]

July 11.1855.

Sir—

I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your pamphlet entitled “War Notes”² & of a letter asking my opinion of certain parts of it. I entirely agree as every rational disinterested person must, in the object of your pamphlet viz. to get rid of the monopoly of all posts of power both civil & military by a particular class, & to open the service of the state to merit wherever found. Edition: current; Page: [495] At the same time I think the Adm. Ref. Assn.³ (with whom in this point you seem to agree) entirely wrong in their assumption that the middle classes of this country possess the eminent qualities which are wanting in the higher. I am convinced that any public matter whatever, under the management of the middle classes, would be as grossly, if not more grossly mismanaged than public affairs are now. As you ask my opinion more particularly of Fragm. 2, I will just say that the distinction you draw between two kinds of martial qualities, the one grounded only in the pugnacious instinct, the other in the higher moral attributes, the former tending to decay as civilization advances, & requiring to be replaced by the latter, appears to me perfectly just.

I am yrs faithfully

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

July 11. 1855

Blackheath

Montague Richard Leverson

Leverson, Montague Richard

246.

TO MONTAGUE RICHARD LEVERSON¹

Blackheath

July 11. 1855

Dear Sir—

Your note of the 22d of April has only just now come into my hands on my return from an absence of some months in the S. of Europe. Had I received it in time I shd have begged you to make any use of my letter which could have [conduced?] to your object as I hope you will do hereafter if as you seem to expect, a similar occasion should again occur.

I am yrs very faithfully

Edition: current; Page: [496]

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

le 13 juillet 1855

East India House

Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin

Enfantin, Barthélemy Prosper

247.

TO BARTHÉLEMY PROSPER ENFANTIN¹

East India House

le 13 juillet 1855

Mon cher Monsieur

Ayant passé tout l’hiver et le printemps au midi de l’Europe à cause de santé, je n’ai reç que depuis quelques jours votre lettre du 18 janvier. Pendant les six mois qui se sont écoulés vous aurez probablement obtenu d’autre part les renseignements que vous me demandez sur la statistique commerciale des deux routes du Cap et de l’Egypte.² Si pourtant ils vous manquent encore, veuillez me le faire savoir, et je ferai mon possible pour les procurer. Je n’ose répondre du succès, car la statistique dans ce pays-ci est tellement imparfaite, et les renseignements quelque nombreux qu’ils soient, sont tellement éparpillés, et si difficiles à trouver, que je ne sais pas trop où je dois m’adresser pour avoir ceux que vous désirez. Cependant je m’en occuperai dès que je saurai par un mot de vous, que vous en avez encore besoin.

Votre tout dévoué

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Sept. 20. 1855

East India House

Augustus de Morgan

Morgan, Augustus de

248.

TO AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN¹

East India House

Sept. 20. 1855

My dear Sir

The inclosed portion of a set of Logarithmic Tables has been sent to me with a note which explains the purpose of sending them. I suppose the peculiarity consists in their being calculated to a greater than the usual number of decimal places. The author, Mr Heppel,² was well known in the City and was once a candidate for the office of Chamberlain. I have no right to ask you to take any trouble in the matter, but you will probably be able by a few glances to satisfy yourself whether any use can be made of them Edition: current; Page: [497] and to give the best advice that can be given to his widow on the subject. It certainly seems a pity that so much labour should be wasted. Your opinion would of course be conclusive and I have no excuse for troubling you by asking for it, except that I know of no other so good.

I am dear Sir
very faithfully yrs

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Sept. 27 [1855]

East India House

Augustus de Morgan

Morgan, Augustus de

249.

TO AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN¹

East India House

Sept. 27 [1855]

My dear Sir

Many thanks for your two notes. I have no doubt the Inst. of Actuaries is the best, or the only, chance.² I will immediately write to Mrs Heppel. I am

very truly yrs

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Oct. 27. 1855

East India House

John Chapman

Chapman, John

250.

TO JOHN CHAPMAN¹

East India House

Oct. 27. 1855

Dear Sir

I do not think I have enough to say about Sir W. Molesworth² to afford materials for an article in the Westminster, in the absence of any writings of his to review. I am not acquainted with anything in his biography, apart from his public manifestations, which would interest general readers. Any Edition: current; Page: [498] facts which I do know I shall be happy if you desire it, to communicate to you. There are many errors in the few newspaper notices I have seen.

I am
Dr Sir
yrs very truly

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Nov. 1. 1855

East India House

John Chapman

Chapman, John

251.

TO JOHN CHAPMAN¹

East India House

Nov. 1. 1855

Dear Sir

I am afraid you imagine me to be in possession of more facts respecting Sir W. Molesworth than is the case. I am acquainted with little relating to him but what is generally known. I have no reason to believe that his life affords sufficient materials for an interesting biography. Mr. Woolecombe² of Devonport, his agent and confidential friend, who feels the strongest interest in his reputation and desire to do honour to his memory, might possibly assist you, and would be by far the best judge of what should or should not be written about him. He is, or was very lately, in town, and may be heard of at the Reform Club.

I am Dr Sir, yrs faithfully,

J. S. Mill

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Nov. 5 1855

Blackheath

252.

TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT¹

Blackheath

Nov. 5 1855

Dear Sir

As you requested, I have tried to put on paper something if possible, at once short and characteristic of our friend, and the few lines I inclose are the best I have been able to do. It strikes me that yours has the appearance of connecting him too exclusively with the single question of colonial self government,² and gives the idea of him as a man who devoted his life to that Edition: current; Page: [499] one object, and sacrificed his life to it—which, besides not being a true notion of him, is in reality a notion inferior to the truth.³ You will judge whether I have gone into the opposite extreme. It seems to me that as the inscription will say that he died Secretary for the Colonies, it is implied in the other things said of him that he did or tried to do important things for the Colonies.

The short line, which has a somewhat sententious air, is intended to imply, since it seems agreed not to express, that he held fast to other opinions than those mentioned. Is there not something monstrous in the fact, that in the case of a man universally applauded both for his public and his private life, yet his conscientious opinions on what all think the most important of all subjects, being diametrically opposite to the common ones, are not even permitted to be alluded to in any memoir or notice of him? Thus is buried with him his testimony to his most important convictions because they differ from those of the mob.

I am afraid I have no letters but I will look & see, & if I have I will send them.

I am, Dear Sir, yrs very truly,

J. S. Mill

[The epitaph:]

A laborious & thoughtful student from an early age,

both of speculative truth and of the practical questions of political life,

His opinions were his own.

He lived to see some of them triumphant

partly through his own efforts

and died as he had lived, faithful to them all.

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Nov. 9, 1855

253.

TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT¹

[After

Nov. 9, 1855

]

Dear Sir—

Almost the only biographical fact respecting Sir W. M[olesworth] which I am able to communicate beyond those which are known to Edition: current; Page: [500] the public is the history of his connexion with the Westr Review² which is both incompletely & incorrectly given in the newspaper notices.³ Early in 1834 some of those who had been writers in the original Westr & had not been connected with it under Col. Perronet Thompson’s proprietorship,⁴ had been forming projects for a new & better Radical review; which projects appeared to have come to nothing when M. of his own motion (& quite unexpectedly on my part) offered to me to start such a review at his own expense if I would either be the editor, or would at least take the control & direction of it, with an editor to work under me. Accordingly, the London Review was established on the second of the two plans mentioned; Molesworth himself wrote in it some very able articles, but it is not true as the Times said that he was his own editor. After four numbers had been published Molesworth bought the W. R. from Colonel Thompson & united it with the London under the title of the London & Westminster Review. He continued to support it for about a year & a half more, after which, it not paying its expenses, he, not being willing to lay out more money on it, gave it over to me as proprietor.

The papers are mistaken in saying that M. was acquainted with Bentham. Bentham died in the very year⁵ in which M. came of age, and I feel sure he never saw Bentham. These are the only particulars which I can think of likely to be useful to you. I understand that there is a big article in the J. des [Débats]⁶ on him which I have not yet seen.

Respecting the rights of women (not Woman) I need not say I wish you success. My opinion on Divorce is that though any relaxation of the irrevocability of marriage would be an improvement, nothing ought to be ultimately rested in, short of entire freedom on both sides to dissolve this like any other partnership. The only thing requiring legal regulation would be the maintenance of the children when the parents could not arrange it amicably—& in that I do not see any considerable difficulty.

Molesworth died a firm adherent of anti-religious opinions.⁷ On the day Edition: current; Page: [501] before his death he said to a friend: “You know my opinions on religion; they were adopted on conviction, & I have never concealed them. I rely on you for taking care that nothing whatever admitting of a religious interpretation shall be inscribed on my tomb.”

John Stuart Mill

Mill, John Stuart

Nov. 17. 1855

Blackheath

Augustus de Morgan

Morgan, Augustus de

254.

TO AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN¹

Blackheath

Nov. 17. 1855

My dear Sir

I did not send the MSS. but wrote to Mrs Heppel to do so.² I am glad to hear that you think so favorably of them. I have sent your note to Mrs Heppel and perhaps you will be kind enough to write to her when you have anything further to communicate. I am Dr Sir

very truly yrs

J. S. Mill

1.

For a similar expression to Cairnes, cf. p. 785.

2.

Professor von Hayek in his John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor (Chicago and London, 1951) published much, but by no means all, of the correspondence.

3.

In what follows the present writer has drawn freely on his own article, “The Autobiography and The Lady,” University of Toronto Quarterly, XXXII (April, 1963), 301-306.

4.

Helen to Lady Amberley, Sept. 11, 1869, published in The Amberley Papers, ed. Bertrand and Patricia Russell (2 vols., London, 1937), II, 311-12.

5.

Most of her letter is published in Packe, p. 474.

6.

Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, ed. Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe (2 vols., London, 1913), I, 400-401.

7.

C. W. Dilke, “John Stuart Mill, 1869-1873,” Cosmopolis, V (March, 1897), 629-41.

1.

MS not located. Published in Mrs. [Harriet] Grote, The Personal Life of George Grote (London, 1873), p. 187.

George Grote (1794-1871), banker, MP for London (1832-41), and historian of Greece; from 1819 a lifelong friend of both James Mill and JSM. Three letters to Grote are in Earlier Letters.

2.

JSM wrote two notices of Vols. V and VI of Grote’s History of Greece (London, 1849) for Sp., XXII (1849): in the issues for March 3 and March 10, pp. 202-203 and 227-28.

He also reviewed the other nine volumes: I and II, Sp., XIX (April 4, 1846), 327-28, and ER, LXXXIV (Oct., 1846), 343-77 (this last reprinted in Dissertations, Brit. ed. II, 283-334, Am. ed. II, 363-415). III and IV, Sp., XX (June 5, 1847), 543-44. VII and VIII, Sp., XXIII (March 16, 1850), 255-56. IX, X, and XI, ER, XCVIII (Oct., 1853), 425-47, reprinted in Dissertations, Brit. ed. II, 510-54, Am. ed. III, 193-237.

1.

MS at Yale. Addressed: Mrs. John Taylor/chez M. Fauché/Place Nationale 5/à Pau / Basses Pyrénées. MS fragment (see n. 15 below) in the possession of Professor F. A. Hayek. Portion up to n. 15 published in Hayek, pp. 131-33; at that time (1951) the MS fragment was missing.

Harriet Taylor, née Hardy (1807-1858), wife of John Taylor (1796-1849), wholesale druggist. JSM first met Mrs. Taylor in 1830 in the Taylor home at a dinner party at which W. J. Fox, J. A. Roebuck, and Harriet Martineau were also present. The two later fell in love, and in the fall of 1833 Mrs. Taylor went to Paris for a trial separation from her husband. Eventually a modus vivendi was arrived at: she remained nominally Taylor’s wife but had full freedom to see JSM at will. On a number of occasions she travelled on the Continent with him. Her husband died later in the year of this letter and in 1851 she and JSM were married. Only two of JSM’s pre-1849 letters to her have been found (Earlier Letters, Nos. 55 and 106), but many from subsequent years (see this edition).

Many of Harriet’s letters to JSM, and detailed accounts of her relation with him, are given in Hayek and Packe. But few of her post-1848 letters to him have been found; JSM destroyed them in accordance with her instructions.

2.

When they were away from each other, JSM and Harriet numbered their letters in sequence for the period of separation. This is JSM’s eighth letter to Harriet this month (see n. 3 below). The previous seven have not been found.

3.

Early in Jan., 1849, when Harriet Taylor and her daughter Helen went to Pau in southern France, JSM accompanied them as far as Paris and then returned alone to England.

4.

Harriet suffered from rheumatic pains and a form of paralysis.

5.

During the summer of 1848 JSM had fallen and injured his hip. Treatment for it affected his eyes, and he was lame and nearly blind for several weeks. The following year he was still an invalid.

6.

John Austin (1790-1859), writer on jurisprudence, and his wife Sarah, née Taylor (1793-1867), translator and miscellaneous writer, had been close friends of JSM since 1819, when they were neighbours of Jeremy Bentham and the Mills in Queen Square. For evidence of the long, friendly association, see many of JSM’s letters to them in Earlier Letters. Beginning about 1848, however, JSM’s friendship began to cool, partly perhaps because of diverging political views, but more likely because of Harriet’s dislike of Sarah Austin, and JSM’s impression that she had gossiped about his relation with Harriet. In the first draft of his Autobiog. (see Early Draft, pp. 147-48) he criticized Mrs. Austin severely, but eliminated that criticism from the version published after his death.

At this point the Austins had only recently returned from the Continent, where they had chiefly lived since 1839.

7.

André Michel Guerry (1802-1866), statistician, author of Essai sur la statistique morale de la France (Paris, 1833) and Statistique morale de l’Angleterre comparée avec celle de la France (Paris, 1864).

8.

Lt.-Col. William Henry Sykes (1790-1872), naturalist and soldier; served in the army in India, 1803-33, joined the Board of Directors of the East India Company in 1840, and served as Chairman of the Board in 1856; MP for Aberdeen, 1857-72.

9.

The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (London, 1832). Austin never completed his projected revised edition. A second edition was edited by his widow in 1859, and published in London (1861). See Letters 442 and 576.

10.

François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787-1874), historian and statesman. His new book was De la démocratie en France (Brussels and London, 1849). Guizot had recently arrived in England as an exile, and was befriended by the Austins, whom he had known when they lived in Paris.

11.

It should be noted that JSM regularly uses the words “communist” and “communism” to refer to the theory and practice of living in communities, not as words connected with the system associated with Marx, Lenin, and Soviet Russia.

12.

Sarah Austin.

13.

JSM had sent the Austins a copy of his Principles of Political Economy, published April, 1848. According to Packe (p. 323), this was one of a few gift copies which included a dedication to Harriet Taylor.

14.

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), essayist and historian. The first two vols. of his History of England had appeared in Dec., 1848.

15.

Professors Hayek’s MS fragment begins at this point.

1.

MS at LSE. Written on the last page of a letter by JSM’s mother to Clara and George Mill, then in Madeira.

George Grote Mill (ca. 1825-1853), JSM’s youngest brother, suffering from tuberculosis, had moved to the milder climate of Madeira in Nov., 1848.

2.

Jane Stuart Mill (1816?-1883), sister, who had married Marcus Paul Ferraboschi, an Italian banker, in 1847, and lived in Paris.

3.

Mary Elizabeth Mill (1822-1913), sister, had married Charles Frederick Colman in 1847.

4.

See n. 2.

5.

Clara Esther Mill (1810-1886), sister, who later (1860) married John Stephen Digweed.

1.

MS at Huntington.

William Edward Hickson (1803-1870), writer on education and editor of WR, 1840-52.

2.

See Letter 2, n. 10.

3.

See Letter 2, n. 5.

4.

Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868). Lord Chancellor, 1830-34. JSM refers here to Brougham’s Letter to the Marquess of Lansdowne, K.G., Lord President of the Council, on the Late Revolution in France (London, 1848).

5.

“The French Revolution of 1848, and Its Assailants,” JSM’s reply to Brougham’s Letter, in WR, LI (April, 1849), 1-47. Reprinted in Dissertations, Brit. ed. II, 335-410, Am. ed. III, 5-92, as “Vindication of the French Revolution of February, 1848; in reply to Lord Brougham and others.” Separate copies were printed at the time (see Letter 7).

6.

Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son (London, 1846-48). Mrs. Dombey, sinking to her death after the birth of her son, is repeatedly urged to “make an effort.”

7.

Identified as the Rev. James Martineau. The article, “Life of Channing,” WR, L (Jan., 1849), 313-48, which was a review of the Memoir of William Ellery Channing (3 vols., London, 1848), is reprinted in Martineau’s Essays, Reviews, and Addresses (4 vols., London, 1890-91), I.

1.

MS at Yale. Addressed: Mrs. J. Taylor / chez M. Fauché / Place Nationale 5 / à Pau / Basses Pyrénées. Postmarks: ?? / 19 FEB / 1849 and BOULOGNE-S-MER / 20 / FEVR / 49. Published in Hayek, pp. 134-36, and in part (see end of n. 3 below) in Principles, pp. 1027-28.

2.

JSM had begun preparation of a 2nd ed. of the Political Economy, since the 1st (April, 1848) was nearly sold out. He must have sent the first instalment of the revised proofs to Harriet early in February.

3.

The passage reads: “Those who have never known freedom from anxiety as to the means of subsistence, are apt to overrate what is gained for positive enjoyment by the mere absence of that uncertainty. The necessaries of life, when they have always been secure for the whole of life, are scarcely more a subject of consciousness or a source of happiness than the elements. There is little attractive in a monotonous routine, without vicissitudes, but without excitement; a life spent in the enforced observance of an external rule, and performance of a prescribed task: in which labour would be devoid of its chief sweetener, the thought that every effort tells perceptibly on the labourer’s own interests or those of some one with whom he identifies himself; in which no one could by his own exertions improve his condition, or that of the objects of his private affections; in which no one’s way of life, occupations, or movements, would depend on choice, but each would be the slave of all.”

This was replaced in the second and all later editions by a less harsh indictment of communism, which began: “On the Communistic scheme, supposing it to be successful, there would be an end to all anxiety concerning the means of subsistence; and this would be much gained for human happiness. But it is perfectly possible to realize this same advantage in a society grounded on private property; and to this point the tendencies of political speculation are rapidly converging.”

For the full texts of these changes see Principles, App. A, p. 978.

4.

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), reformer, social critic and anarchist. In his Qu’est-ce La Propriété? ou Recherches sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement (2 vols., Paris, 1841-48), he had remarked: “La communauté est essentiellement contraire au libre exercice de nos facultés, à nos penchants les plus nobles, à nos sentiments les plus intimes” (I, chap. 5, part 2, sec. 2, p. 284). For a discussion of Proudhon’s ideas on communism, see George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (London, 1956), pp. 48-51.

5.

Incorrectly quoted; see second sentence in n. 3 above.

6.

It appeared in April, 1849, nevertheless.

7.

This passage does not occur in any edition. For J. M. Robson’s conjectures as to possible places for which it was intended, see Principles, p. 1027, n. 8.

8.

Not quoted accurately from 1st ed., I, 250. For the correct text of the sentence, which was deleted in the 2nd ed., see Principles, p. 1028, n. 9.

9.

François Marie Charles Fourier (1772-1837), founder of the socialist movement that bears his name.

10.

Prosper Victor Considérant (1808-1893), economist, disciple of Fourier; one of the socialist leaders in the Paris uprising of 1848; advocate of the establishment of special communities (phalanstères), several of which were started in France and elsewhere. For a summary of Considérant’s opinions on the position of women, see Maurice Dommanget, Victor Considérant (Paris, 1929), pp. 164-66.

11.

William Johnson Fox (1786-1864), preacher, writer, and politician. Earlier Letters contains 22 letters to him.

12.

Followers of Robert Owen (1771-1858), wealthy manufacturer and pioneer socialist, sponsor of various communal experiments in England and America, author of A New View of Society (1813-14).

13.

Philippe Joseph Benjamin Buchez (1796-1865), physician, politician, and writer. Originally, with Auguste Comte, he had been associated with the Saint-Simonians.

14.

Etienne Cabet (1788-1857), writer, one of the socialist leaders in the 1848 uprising; founder of a socialist colony of French immigrants, called Icarie, in the United States. Later in this year JSM wrote a letter in defence of Cabet to the Daily News, Oct. 30, 1849, p. 3.

15.

George Sand (pseudonym of Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, Baroness Dudevant) (1804-1876), the famous novelist.

16.

Pierre Leroux (1797-1871), philosopher, journalist, and politician.

17.

Herbert Taylor (1827-190?), Mrs. Taylor’s elder son.

18.

George Grote Mill.

19.

See Letter 4, n. 5.

20.

Louis Blanc (1811-1882), historian and socialist politician, in exile in England 1848-70.

21.

The Times, Jan. 25, 1849, p. 5, reviewed unfavourably America Compared with England. The respective social effects of the American Systems of Government and Legislation, and the Mission of Democracy . . . (London, 1848), criticizing particularly the author’s “fanatic attacks upon religion” and “his licentious assaults upon the sanctity of marriage.” When the anonymous author replied (The Times, Feb. 7, p. 8) that he had made no such attacks, the reviewer in his rejoinder cited this passage from the book: “As to marital relations, no absolute right in one human being to the person of another will be recognized, but the husband and wife will be authorized to separate whenever incompatibility of temper or any other circumstance, may in the estimation of the community, and according to its laws, render a dissolution of the contract desirable.”

1.

MS at Yale. Published in Hayek, pp. 136-39, and in part in Principles, pp. 1028-29.

2.

See Letter 5, n. 3.

3.

For the new matter on Fourierism in the 2nd ed., see Principles, App. A, pp. 984-85.

4.

See Principles, note on pp. 84-86.

5.

Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-1873) led the Bonapartist party, and Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), poet and politician, the Republican party in the Assembly. Napoleon had been elected President of the Republic in Dec., 1848; the Assembly was to be elected in May, 1849. JSM’s optimism was not justified: the majority turned out to be monarchists.

6.

Rome was captured by France in June and returned to the rule of the Pope; Tuscany was recaptured by Austria; the Kingdom of Sardinia, however, remained a liberal outpost.

7.

The liberal newspaper founded by Louis Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877), historian and statesman, which in 1848 had supported Lamartine and the Democratic Republican party. For JSM’s association with the paper and its editors in the 1830’s, see Earlier Letters, esp. p. 54, n. 5, and pp. 194-95.

8.

Gabriel Jean Baptiste Ernest Wilfrid Legouvé, called Ernest (1807-1903), poet and dramatist. In 1847 he lectured at the Collège de France on the moral history of women; the lectures were published as Cours d’histoire morale des femmes (Paris, 1848).

9.

A political and feminist journal published from March to June, 1848, in Paris, founded by Eugénie Mouchon Niboyet (1801-1883), author and ardent feminist. For an account of the journal and its founder, see Léon Abensour, Le Feminisme sous le règne de Louis-Philippe et en 1848 (2nd ed., Paris, 1913), pp. 241-42.

10.

Presumably an early draft of what became her article “Enfranchisement of Women.” See Letters 28 and 35.

11.

Lord John Russell (1792-1878), whose first government held office from 1846 to 1852, reintroduced the subject of a Parliamentary Oaths Bill in the House of Commons on Feb. 19, 1849. In 1847 Baron de Rothschild had been elected to the Commons, but, as a practising Jew, could not take the oath required for every member of Parliament containing the phrase “on the true faith of a Christian.” In 1848 the House of Commons had passed Russell’s Jewish Disabilities Bill, but the House of Lords rejected it. Russell carried his 1849 bill also in the Commons, but it was again rejected in the Lords. Not until 1858 was a compromise reached with the Lords that permitted the seating of Jews in the Commons, and not until 1866 were they admitted to the Lords.

12.

The Chairman was Maj.-Gen. Sir Archibald Galloway (1780?-1850), who had served in the army in India, 1799-1841; as Director of the East India Company, 1840-48; and as Chairman of the Board, 1849-50. The Deputy-Chairman was Captain John Shepherd (1792-1859), who had been a director of the company since 1835.

13.

Nickname of Algernon (1830-1903), second son of John and Harriet Taylor.

14.

Herbert Taylor.

1.

MS at Huntington. Marked on verso in a different hand: W. E. Hickson Esq. / J. S. Mill / March 1849.

2.

To the article on Brougham’s attack on the 1848 Revolution (see Letter 4). In an appendix JSM included the French text of passages which he translated in his article. WR omitted these; they appear in Dissertations, Brit. ed. II, 411-20, Am. ed. III, 82-92.

3.

The appendix to the article includes passages as follows: “From the Manifesto of M. de Lamartine,” “From the Answer of M. de Lamartine to the Polish Refugees,” “From the Answer of M. de Lamartine to the Irish Deputation,” “From the ‘History of the Girondists,’ ” Dissertations, Brit. ed. II, 415-20, Am. ed. III, 87-92.

4.

“From the Speech of M. de Tocqueville,” Dissertations, Brit. ed. II, 411-14, Am. ed. III, 82-87.

5.

See Letter 4, n. 5.

1.

MS at Yale. Published in Hayek, pp. 140-43, and in part in Principles, p. 1029.

2.

Of Harrison and Co., St. Martin’s Lane, printers of the 1st ed. The difficulties with the printers were straightened out; see next Letter.

3.

John William Parker (1792-1870) had published the Logic in 1843 and the Pol. Econ. in 1848.

4.

The offprint of the article on Brougham. See Letters 4 and 7.

5.

JSM did send the pamphlet to Blanc (see Letter 12). Blanc also published four issues of his own Monthly Review in London, 1849.

6.

George Grote Mill, still in Madeira.

7.

W. J. Fox, Lectures, addressed chiefly to the Working Classes (4 vols., London, 1845-49).

8.

Ibid., IV, xix-xx.

9.

Quotations from Pol. Econ., Book V, chap. xi, sec. 9.

10.

Fox, Lectures, IV, ix.

11.

The Times, March 14, p. 8, printed from an American newspaper an account of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s lecture on England, delivered to the Boston Mercantile Library Association on Dec. 27, 1848. What JSM objected to most in Emerson’s lecture is difficult to determine: it may have been the praise of English culture (“they surpass all others in general culture—none are so harmoniously developed”) or of English individuality (“each man is trained to mind his own business. Personal eccentricities are allowed here, and no one observes them. Each islander is an island himself, reposing in quiet and tranquil waters.”).

12.

After defeating the revolutionists of 1848, the Austrian government granted a constitution for the whole empire on March 4, 1849. Never implemented, however, the constitution was abrogated in Dec., 1851.

13.

John Sterling (1806-1844), writer, for years JSM’s closest friend. There are 19 letters to Sterling in Earlier Letters. See also Letter 11.

Archdeacon Julius C. Hare in his introductory memoir to his edition of Sterling’s Essays and Tales (2 vols., London, 1848) had revealed that Sterling, once Hare’s curate, had lost his faith. This led to a vituperative attack in the religious press on the Sterling Club (of which JSM was a member) for bearing the heretic’s name (see Letter 11). The evangelical paper, the Record, started and maintained the attack for months, beginning on March 8, 1849. For an account of the cause célèbre see Tuell, John Sterling, chap. xv, “Sterling and the Religious Newspapers,” pp. 351-71.

14.

James Anthony Froude (1818-1894), historian, man of letters, biographer of Carlyle. The book referred to here is his novel, The Nemesis of Faith (London, 1849).

15.

Richard Hurrell Froude (1803-1836), Fellow of Oriel College, was an originator, with John Henry Newman, of the movement variously labelled as “Puseyite,” “Tractarian,” or “Oxford.”

16.

Sp., XXII (March 10, 1849), 228-29.

17.

See Morning Herald, March 6, pp. 4-5, March 9, pp. 4-5; and the Standard, March 6, p. 1, March 9, p. 4, and March 13, p. [2].

18.

According to Waldo H. Dunn in his James Anthony Froude (Oxford, 1961), p. 137, professors of University College, London, who had approved the appointment, in alarm over the stir created by Froude’s book, asked him to withdraw, and he resigned the appointment.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / Mrs J. Taylor / chez M. Fauché / Place Nationale 5 /à Pau / Basses Pyrénées. Postmark: ANG . . . / 18 /MARS / 49 / BOULOGNE. Published in Hayek, pp. 143-44, and in part in Principles, pp. 1029-30.

2.

By the contract with Parker, the publisher, JSM was to receive half the net profits, as for the Logic. Harriet had insisted this time that the publisher’s rights be confined to a single edition.

3.

See preceding Letter.

4.

“If there was any means by which Grecian independence and liberty could have been made a permanent thing, it would have been by the prolongation for some generations more of the organization of the larger half of Greece under the supremacy of Athens; a supremacy imposed, indeed, and upheld by force—but the mildest, the most civilizing, and, in its permanent influence on the destinies of human kind, the most brilliant and valuable, of all usurped powers known to history” (rev. of Grote’s History of Greece, Sp., XXII [March 10, 1849], p. 228).

5.

His article in answer to Brougham; see Letters 4 and 7.

6.

See Letter 6, n. 11. (JSM’s article appeared in Daily News, March 26, 1849, p. 4.)

7.

Eyre Evans Crowe (1799-1868), historian, editor of Daily News, 1849-51.

8.

Henry Fleming (d. 1876), permanent secretary of Poor Law Board, 1859-71.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / Mrs J. Taylor / chez M. Fauché / Place Nationale 5 / à Pau / Basses Pyrénées. Postmark: PAID / 21 MAR 21 / 1849 / and one illegible. Published in Hayek, pp. 144-47, and in part in Principles, pp. 1030-31.

2.

See Letter 5, n. 7.

3.

To what book JSM is referring is not clear. Perhaps the projected sequel to the Logic, never written, on “Ethology.”

4.

Mrs. Charles Buller died on March 13, 1849. Her husband had died on May 17, 1848, and her son Charles, JSM’s friend, on Nov. 29, 1848.

5.

Charles Fox, a printer, was a brother of W. J. Fox, who had been in Parliament since 1847.

6.

George Grote Mill, from Madeira.

7.

See Letter 9, n. 6.

8.

Of Pol. Econ.

9.

See Letter 2, n. 5.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / Mrs J. Taylor / chez M. Fauché / Place Nationale 5 / à Pau / Basses Pyrénées. Postmark: ANGL / 1 AVRIL / 49 / BOULOGNE-S-MER. Published in Hayek, pp. 147-50, and in part in Principles, pp. 1031-32.

2.

For the changes, see Principles, p. 368, and App. G, p. 1031, n. 15.

3.

JSM’s proposal for the creation of peasant properties on waste lands in Ireland was made in a series of 43 articles in the Morning Chronicle, 1846-47. See MacMinn, Bibliog., pp. 61-67.

4.

Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850) 2nd baronet, spoke on March 30 during the debate on the Irish rate-in-aid; his speech was praised in The Times on March 31, 1849, p. 5, as a bold plan to take over estates in arrears and turn them over to more efficient owners.

5.

V. P. Considérant, Le Socialisme devant le vieux monde, ou le Vivant devant les morts (Paris, 1848).

6.

The following passage begins on a new sheet of different shape from preceding portion, but appears to be a continuation of the letter.

7.

See Letter 8, last par.

8.

“Sterling and the Sterling Club,” Church and State Gazette, March 23, 1849, pp. 180-81.

9.

English Churchman, March 29, 1849, pp. 196-97.

10.

Sterling founded what was called originally the “Anonymous Club” in July, 1838. See his letter to JSM, July 14, 1838, in Tuell, John Sterling, p. 366. Thomas Carlyle’s Life of John Sterling (London, 1851), Part II, chap. vi, contains a list of the original members.

11.

Connop Thirlwall (1797-1875), historian and clergyman, Bishop of St. David’s.

12.

Samuel Wilberforce (1805-1873), later successively Bishop of Oxford and of Winchester.

13.

See Letter 8, n. 13.

14.

Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872), liberal clergyman and theological writer. For JSM’s assessment of him, see Autobiog., chap. v.

15.

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-1886), clergyman, later (1863) Archbishop of Dublin.

16.

John Pringle Nichol (1804-1859), astronomer. There are 12 letters to him in Earlier Letters.

17.

Nichol spent the winter of 1848-49 in the United States, where he delivered several courses of lectures. He seems never to have completed his book on America.

1.

MS at Bibliothèque Nationale.

2.

See Letter 4, n. 5.

3.

For an earlier expression of JSM’s sympathy with Blanc and the February revolution of 1848, see Earlier Letters, No. 531.

4.

For JSM’s revised views on socialism in the 2nd ed., see Principles, App. A.

1.

MS at Huntington. Addressed: W. E. Hickson Esq. / Hotel Bedford / Rue de l’Arcade / Paris. Postmark: ANG . . . / BOULOGNE-S-MER / 16 MAI 49.

2.

Edward Lombe (1800-1852), wealthy Norfolk gentleman, High Sheriff of Norfolk, retired and living in Florence. A follower of Comte, he supported the WR under Hickson, and on occasion paid for and placed certain articles in it.

3.

England and the United States had signed a treaty in 1842 providing for joint maintenance of squadrons on the west coast of Africa to suppress the slave trade.

4.

On about April 20, JSM joined Mrs. Taylor and her daughter in the south of France, and they travelled slowly to Paris; he returned to London about May 12.

5.

See Letter 2, n. 5. In a letter of March 30, 1849, Harriet told her husband that JSM had been ordered to have a complete rest to save his sight (Hayek, pp. 150-51).

1.

MS draft at LSE. Labelled in JSM’s hand on verso: Dr Ward—Nov2 1848 / and reply in the spring of 1849 / For publication / J. S. Mill. Published in Elliott, I, 140-47. Extensive excerpts from Ward’s letter of over thirty pages (MS not located) are published in Wilfrid Ward, William George Ward and the Catholic Revival (London, 1893), pp. 21-30.

William George Ward (1812-1882), Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher, had met JSM in the fall of 1848; he had earlier pleased JSM with a very favourable review of the Logic (British Critic, XXXIV [Oct., 1843], 349-427; see Earlier Letters, pp. 603 and 664-65) and had also reviewed Pol. Econ. for the Tablet in June, 1848. The editor of the Tablet, Frederick Lucas, arranged the meeting, which appears to have been the only such meeting, though the two continued to correspond from time to time over the years.

2.

Ward’s letter had been written shortly after their meeting.

3.

In his letter Ward offered explanations for his having used “severe language” in regard to JSM’s character in his Tablet review of Pol. Econ.

4.

JSM’s Malthusian views on population had been the chief point of attack in Ward’s review of Pol. Econ. See Wilfrid Ward, William George Ward and the Catholic Revival, pp. 21-22.

5.

Book III, chap. xxv, sec. 2.

6.

Vespasian, after consulting with his physicians, was persuaded that he as Emperor might be the minister of the divine will and so was able to perform miraculous cures of a blind man and of a cripple. See Tacitus, The Histories, Book IV, sec. 81.

7.

William Paley, Horae Paulinae, or the Truth of the Scripture History of St. Paul evinced by a Comparison of the Epistles which bear his Name, with the Acts of the Apostles and with one another (London, 1790).

8.

See the Laws, Book II, 663-64; Book V, 747e; Book X, 888, 890-91.

9.

Ward in his letter had asked JSM’s opinion whether the poor were better off in Queen Elizabeth’s time than in the present, and recalled a passage in Macaulay that dwelt on the alleged fact that “fish was a luxury to the poor in old times, and is rejected by them now as insufficient.” The reference is to Macaulay’s “Southey’s Colloquies on Society,” originally published in ER, L (Jan., 1830), 528-65.

10.

Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil: Or, The Two Nations [the rich and the poor] (3 vols., London, 1845).

11.

Jean Baptiste Biot, Traité élémentaire d’astronomie physique (Paris, 1805).

12.

Pierre Simon, marquis de Laplace, Traité de la Mécanique Céleste (16 vols., Paris, 1799-1825).

13.

Philipe Gustave Le Doulcet, comte de Pontécoulant, Traité élémentaire de physique céleste . . . (Paris, 1840).

14.

Quoted from Ward’s letter, Ward, William George Ward and the Catholic Revival, p. 25.

15.

See Logic, Book II, chap. v, sec. 5.

16.

Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (London, 1736).

17.

See James Mill, A Fragment on Mackintosh (London, 1835), pp. 63-119, 383-406.

18.

See Letter 13.

1.

MS in the possession of W. Rosenberg, University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Henry Samuel Chapman (1803-1881), commission agent in Canada, 1823-34; with Samuel Revans founded first daily newspaper in Canada, the Montreal Daily Advertiser, 1833-34; returned to England, 1834, as parliamentary agent of the Assembly of Lower Canada; closely associated with WR under JSM; in 1843 emigrated to New Zealand, where he became a judge of the Supreme Court. There are seven of JSM’s letters to him in Earlier Letters. For a detailed treatment of Chapman see R. S. Neale, “H. S. Chapman and the ‘Victorian’ Ballot,” Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand, XII (April, 1967), 506-21.

2.

Probably “The Polynesians and New Zealand”, ER, XCI (April, 1850), 443-71, tentatively identified as by Chapman in the Wellesley Index.

3.

Macvey Napier (1776-1847), editor of ER from 1829 until his death. There are 23 letters to him in Earlier Letters.

4.

William Empson (1791-1852), editor of ER, 1847-52. JSM’s relations with him may well have been strained, since Empson’s article on Bentham in ER for Oct., 1843, brought a reply from JSM in Jan. 1844. See Earlier Letters, Nos. 405 and 407.

5.

Charles Buller (1806-1848), liberal politician, long a friend of JSM; MP for Liskeard from 1832, Judge-Advocate General in 1846, and chief poor law commissioner in 1847 in the Russell ministry. In the fall of 1848 Buller underwent an operation by an unskilful surgeon, which led to an infection and his death on Nov. 29, 1848.

6.

Nassau William Senior (1790-1864), economist, and a frequent contributor to ER.

7.

In 1852 Chapman was appointed Colonial Secretary in Van Diemen’s Land.

8.

Sir Henry George Grey, Viscount Howick and 3rd Earl Grey (1802-1894), statesman, Secretary for Colonies in the Russell cabinet, 1846-52.

9.

No such letter appears to have survived, but Chapman’s journal of the earthquake, kept from Oct. 16 to Dec. 18, 1848, is reprinted on pp. 395-406 of the article “Earthquakes in New Zealand”, WR, LI (July, 1849), 390-408.

10.

The Emperor of Austria, the Tsar of Russia, and the King of Prussia.

11.

The Revolution of 1848 led to the adoption of the liberal constitution of 1850 in Germany.

12.

The Roman Republic under Mazzini lasted until the end of June, 1849. After that only the Kingdom of Sardinia remained liberal in Italy.

13.

Austria invaded Hungary in Dec., 1848, to put down the Revolution. Russia came to the aid of Austria in June, 1849, and after much bloodshed, Hungary surrendered in August.

14.

The Republic of Cracow, last independent Polish state, had been taken over by Austria in 1846.

15.

In the election held Dec. 10, 1848. JSM exaggerates; Louis Napoleon received approximately 5,400,000 votes; Cavaignac (Democrat), 1,400,000; and Ledru Rollin (Socialist), 370,000.

16.

Louis Eugène Cavaignac (1802-1857), general, who served as chief of state for the Constituent Assembly in the latter half of 1848.

17.

The Revolution of 1848.

18.

The Monarchists, a league of three parties (Orleanist, Legitimist, and Roman Catholic), supported Louis Napoleon.

19.

Louis Napoleon did make himself Emperor in Dec., 1852.

20.

The Monarchists elected 500 to the Legislative Assembly; the Montagne (ultra-revolutionists) elected 180; the Moderate Republicans, 70.

21.

In June, 1848, extremists of the left had attempted to overthrow the new government.

22.

The Republican Government of 1848, under Cavaignac, had proposed free compulsory education, but the Assembly did not approve.

23.

John Arthur Roebuck (1801-1879), politician. One of JSM’s close friends in the 1820’s and early 1830’s, but estranged long since, probably because of Roebuck’s disapproval of JSM’s attachment to Mrs. Taylor. Years later Matthew Arnold in Essays in Criticism (1865) and Culture and Anarchy (1869) attacked Roebuck’s smug satisfaction with things English.

1.

MS at NLW. Endorsed in another hand: Mr Mill / 13 June / 1849.

George Cornewall Lewis (1806-1863), statesman and author, later (1852-55) editor of ER, at this time Undersecretary for the Home Department.

2.

Andrew Bisset (1803-1899?), barrister and historian. At JSM’s request Bisset had written the biographical sketch of James Mill that appeared in the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, 1837. He was a contributor to JSM’s WR.

3.

Charles Pelham Villiers (1802-1898), liberal statesman. JSM had known him as early as 1825 (see Autobiog., pp. 75-77).

4.

Walter Coulson (1794-1860), barrister; once an amanuensis to Jeremy Bentham; editor of the Traveller when JSM’s first published writing appeared: “Exchangeable Value,” Dec. 6, 1822, p. 3, and Dec. 13, 1822, p. 3.

5.

PresumablyThomas Jarman, A Treatise on Wills (2 vols., London, 1844), but no edition by Bisset has been located.

1.

MS at Huntington. Endorsed in another hand: J. S. Mill / July 9 / 49.

2.

Edward Lombe had evidently wanted to continue discussion of the abandonment of the anti-slavery blockade. See Letter 13.

3.

Unidentified. The reference is to the article “Poems of Alfred Tennyson,” WR, LI (July, 1849), 265-90. The discussion of “The Palace of Art” begins on p. 284. The article is signed Is. Is.

1.

MS draft at Leeds. Published in Elliot, I, pp. 147-49.

William Conner, political writer and Irish landlord, who took the side of the peasant on the problems connected with landholding in Ireland. For accounts of his life and work, see R. D. Collison Black, Economic Thought and the Irish Question, 1817-1870 (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 24-25, and George O’Brien, “William Conner,” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, XII (June, 1923), 279-89. JSM later called him “the earliest, most enthusiastic, and most indefatigable apostle” of land reform (The Irish Land Question [1870], p. 88).

2.

Probably a bound volume containing some of his pamphlets. J. M. Robson (Principles, p. 1106) notes that JSM’s own collection of Conner’s pamphlets on the Irish land question is now in the Goldsmith’s Library, University of London; it contains A Letter to the Right Honourable the Earl of Devon . . . on the Rackrent System of Ireland . . . (Dublin, 1835), and Two Letters to the Editors of the Times, on the Rackrent Oppression of Ireland . . . (Dublin, 1846).

3.

Professor O’Brien lists ten letters, speeches, and pamphlets in the article cited in n. 1 above.

4.

For JSM’s approval of Conner’s ideas, see Pol. Econ., Book II, chap. x, “Means of Abolishing Cottier Tenancy,” Principles, p. 328.

5.

The Pol. Econ.

6.

For a discussion of these problems of the Irish peasant, see Pol. Econ., Book II, chaps. ii, ix, and x. JSM had also written a series of articles for the Morning Chronicle in 1846-47 on Irish problems. See MacMinn, Bibliog., pp. 60-67. For a recent study of JSM’s views, see E. D. Steele, “J. S. Mill and the Irish Question,” The Historical Journal, XIII (June and Sept., 1970), 216-36, 419-50.

7.

The Irish Poor Relief Bill was passed on July 31, 1838, on the model of the English law of 1834, the English Commissioners acting for Ireland until 1847, when a commission for Ireland was established.

1.

MS not located. Published in Secular Review (Dec., 1877), p. 405.

William Maccall (1812-1888), author, journalist, and public lecturer. For accounts of his relation with Carlyle and JSM, see Francis Espinasse, Literary Recollections and Sketches (London, 1893), pp. 247-55, and D. A. Wilson, Carlyle at his Zenith, 1848-1853 (London, 1927), pp. 65-67. JSM in his Autobiog., p. 152, mentions Maccall’s Elements of Individualism (London, 1847), as a precursor of his On Liberty.

2.

Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498), Italian monk and martyr; political and religious reformer.

1.

MS draft at LSE. The date appears in JSM’s hand on the last page. Published in Elliot, I, 149-51.

Fox had been elected to Parliament for Oldham in July, 1847.

2.

Probably Fox’s draft of the bill to promote compulsory secular education in England and Wales which he introduced in the House of Commons in a speech on Feb. 26, 1850. The bill was finally lost on a motion for a second reading on June 5.

3.

The Irish National Schools were created through the initiative of Edward George Geoffrey Smith Stanley, later 14th Earl of Derby (1799-1869), when he was Chief Secretary for Ireland. A central board of education was organized in 1831, which supervised primary schools. By 1845, there were 3,426 schools, open to both Roman Catholics and Protestants, with a total enrolment of 432,844 children.

1.

MS in the possession of Professor John M. Robson.

John Forbes Royle (1799-1858), botanist and teacher of materia medica; superintendent of the East India Company’s botanic garden in the Himalayas, 1823-31; professor of materia medica, King’s College, London, from 1837; from 1838, head of the East India Co. department of correspondence relating to vegetable productions; author of a number of works on the botany of India.

2.

Robert Holden Webb (1806-1880), rector of Essenden, Herts, till his death; author, with Rev. W. H. Coleman, of Flora Hertfordiensis; or, a Catalogue of Plants found in the County of Hertford . . . (2 pt., London, 1849; with supplements, 1852 and 1859).

3.

Probably William Wilson Saunders (1809-1879), underwriter at Lloyd’s; author of botanical and entomological works.

1.

MS in the possession of Professor John M. Robson. Watermark: 1849.

2.

See preceding Letter, n. 2.

1.

MS in the possession of Professor Joseph Hamburger of Yale University.

2.

Francis William Prideaux, an assistant examiner in JSM’s department at the India House; later, Revenue Secretary in the India Office.

3.

JSM and Prideaux were presumably reading proofs of one of Royle’s books, probably his On the culture and commerce of cotton in India, and elsewhere; with an account of the experiments made by the Hon. East India Company up to the present time (London, 1851).

1.

MS at LSE. Published in Hayek, pp. 165-66.

2.

During this time, 1850-51, JSM published many letters and newspaper articles about various incidents of social injustice, which he often described in his notes as “A joint production” or “Very little of this was mine.” See MacMinn, Bibliog., pp. 72 ff.

1.

MS in the Osborn Collection, Yale; MS draft at Leeds. Published in the Constitutional, May 1, 1850, pp. 45-46, and, with omissions, in Elliot, I, 151-53.

Edward Herford (1815-1896), solicitor; coroner of Manchester, 1849-96; a founder and later (1861-63) president of the Manchester Statistical Society. Papers given by him are listed in T. S. Ashton, Economic and Social Investigations in Manchester, 1833-1933 (London, 1934), p. 170. He also established a cheap monthly magazine The Church of the People, 1853-68 (thereafter with varying titles to 1877). Herford had written to invite JSM to join a Poor Law Reform Association, formed with the support of Carlyle, Poulett-Scrope, and others, to combat the notion that enforced labour of paupers should be made as unproductive as possible.

2.

For a brief account of the principles of the Poor Law of 1834 and its actual operations, see E. L. Woodward, The Age of Reform, 1815-1870 (2nd ed., London, 1962), pp. 451-55.

3.

JSM’s understanding was correct; see R. Dudley Edwards and T. Desmond Williams, eds., The Great Famine (Dublin, 1956), p. 228, and Eric Strauss, Irish Nationalism and British Democracy (New York, 1951), p. 86.

4.

Ateliers nationaux (National Workshops) were proposed by Louis Blanc, in L’Organisation du Travail (Paris, 1839), and attempted by the French republican government between Feb. and July, 1848. See Donald C. McKay, The National Workshops (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), pp. 89-90.

5.

The segregation of the sexes.

1.

MS at Cornell. MS draft at Leeds. Published in Elliot, I, 154. A sequel to the letter of Jan. 22.

2.

See preceding Letter, n. 3 and n. 4.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

William Thomas Thornton (1813-1880), author; from 1836 an employee of the East India Co.; long a friend and adherent of JSM. He had thus far published: Over-Population and its Remedy . . . (London, 1845), and A Plea for Peasant Proprietors; with the Outlines of a Plan for their Establishment in Ireland (London, 1848). For JSM’s references to these volumes in Pol. Econ., see Principles, pp. 1148-49. The article by Thornton sent to Hickson may have been “Equity Reform,” WR, LIII (April, 1850), 100-12, signed T.

3.

Stephen Edmund Spring-Rice (1814-1865), later deputy chairman of the Board of Customs; son to Thomas Spring-Rice, first Baron Monteagle of Brandon.

4.

No such article appeared in WR.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

See preceding Letter.

3.

For JSM’s views on Irish Poor Laws see his unheaded leaders in the Morning Chronicle for Oct. 5 and 7, Nov. 3 and 9, Dec. 16 and 18, 1846, and March 17, 1847.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

For some time JSM had been urging Mrs Taylor to complete her projected paper on the disabilities of women (see Letter 6), and the article that appeared in the following year (“Enfranchisement of Women,” WR, LV [July, 1851], 289-311) was the result of their collaboration. During Harriet’s lifetime JSM led Hickson and others to believe that the article was his; when in 1859 he included it in his collected essays (Dissertations, Brit. ed. II, 411-49, Am. ed. III, 93-131), he attributed its authorship to her, “my share in it being little more than that of an editor and amanuensis.”

1.

MS at UCL.

Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871), professor of mathematics at University College, London, 1828-31, and 1836-66.

2.

“On the Symbols of Logic, the Theory of the Syllogism, and in particular of the Copula, and the application of the Theory of Probability to some questions of Evidence,” read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society, Feb. 25, 1850, published in Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, IX (1850), 79-127, and reprinted in part in De Morgan, On the Syllogism and Other Logical Writings, ed. Peter Heath (New Haven, 1966), pp. 22-68.

3.

De Morgan’s Formal Logic; or, The Calculus of Inference, Necessary and Probable (London, 1847). See in Appendix of the present edition, JSM’s letters of May 10 and Sept. 13, 1847, to De Morgan. JSM’s use of De Morgan’s work may be seen in the Logic (8th ed.), I, 162n, 195n-196n, 198n, 238n, 275n; II, 128n, 387n.

4.

James Robert Ballantyne (1813-1864), orientalist, principal of college at Benares, 1845-61; author of Lectures on the Sub-division of Knowledge (3 pts., 1848-49); librarian of the India Office Library, London, 1861-64.

1.

MS at LSE. Published in Hayek, pp. 166-67.

2.

At Salem, April 19 and 20, 1850.

3.

At Akron, May 28 and 29, 1851.

4.

At Worcester, Mass., Oct. 23-24, 1850.

5.

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), abolitionist, reformer.

6.

Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), orator and reformer, abolitionist.

7.

Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895), abolitionist, orator, journalist.

8.

New York Tribune for Europe, Oct. 29, 1850.

9.

They planned to be married the following spring.

1.

MS at Brit. Mus. MS draft at LSE. In reply to Furnivall’s letter of Nov. 13 [1850], at LSE.

Frederick James Furnivall (1825-1910), later a prolific literary scholar and editor, and founder of a number of literary societies, including the Early English Text Society. He was called to the bar in 1849 and in that same year opened a school for poor men and boys. An active Christian Socialist, he published as his first work, Association, a Necessary Part of Christianity (London, 1850), in support of trade unions.

2.

Furnivall had written to ask for an explanation of a passage in JSM’s evidence before a parliamentary committee (see n. 3 below) in which he stated that a capitalist has the right to keep his profits as a necessary consequence of the law of property.

3.

The Slaney Committee, a Select Committee of the House of Commons. JSM’s evidence was published in “Minutes of Evidence taken before Select Committee on Savings of Middle and Working Classes,” Parl. Papers, 1850, XIX, 77-90, reprinted in Collected Works, V, 405-29.

1.

MS draft at Yale. Published in Elliot, I, 155-57.

2.

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), clergyman and novelist, “The Agricultural Crisis,” North British Rev., XIV (1850), 85-121; reprinted in his Miscellanies (2 vols., London, 1859), II, 143-98.

3.

David Low (1786-1859), professor of agriculture at the University of Edinburgh. In his article Kingsley attacked Low’s book Appeal to the Common Sense of the Country regarding the present condition of the industrious classes (Edinburgh and London, 1850).

4.

The Corn Laws had been repealed on June 25, 1846; thereafter only nominal duties on wheat, oats, and barley were exacted.

5.

See pp. 88-90 of Kingsley’s article.

6.

For Kingsley’s connection with Christian Socialism, see C. W. Stubbs, Charles Kingsley and the Christian Social Movement (London, 1899), and R. B. Martin, The Dust of Combat (London, 1959).

7.

Kingsley in suggesting the possible application of co-operative association in industry had quoted from “On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes” in Pol. Econ., Book IV, chap. 7.

8.

P. 120, n. 2. Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), miscellaneous writer. JSM had long been critical of her views on political economy (see Earlier Letters, pp. 140-41, 152, 342, 351-52, 389).

1.

MS at Brit. Mus. MS draft at LSE. In reply to Furnivall’s letter of Nov. 23, at LSE.

2.

Furnivall asked JSM for the grounds of the conclusions he presented in Letter 31.

3.

Furnivall had written, “Could not the working classes be made by law partners with the richer class in works carried on by them both together?”

4.

Edmé Jean Leclaire (1801-1872), author of De l’organisation du travail (Paris, 1848). Leclaire was a house painter, in business for himself, who put into effect a system of profit-sharing with his workers. He initially described his system in a pamphlet Des Améliorations qu’il serait possible d’apporter dans le sort des ouvriers peintres . . . (Paris, 1842), an abstract of which JSM saw in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, n.s. III-IV, (Sept. 27, 1845), 193-96. JSM refers to Leclaire’s enterprise in his Pol. Econ., Book IV, chap. vii, sec. 5, 1st ed., and brings the reference up to date in subsequent editions (see Principles, pp. 772-73).

1.

MS at UCL.

Edwin (later Sir Edwin) Chadwick (1800-1890), sanitary reformer, lifelong friend and correspondent of JSM. Twenty letters to him are in Earlier Letters.

2.

Chadwick’s On the Supply of Water to the Metropolis (London, 1850).

3.

Chadwick had forwarded to JSM a letter from the recently (1850) formed Metropolitan Sanitary Association with a request that he should write a reply for publication. The MSA letter and JSM’s reply, dated Feb. 15, 1851, appeared as: Public Agency v. Trading Companies. The Economical and Administrative Principles of Water-Supply for the Metropolis. Correspondence between J. S. Mill . . . and the Metropolitan Sanitary Association on the Proper Agency for regulating the Water-Supply for the Metropolis, as a Question of Economical and Administrative Principle (London [1851]). JSM’s letter is reprinted in Collected Works, V, 431-37. This was submitted as a Memorial to the Home Secretary by the Association. For a discussion of the matter, see Pedro Schwartz, “John Stuart Mill and Laissez-Faire: London Water,” Economica, XXXIII (Feb., 1966), 71-83.

4.

The Economist, Jan. 19, 1850, pp. 61-62, had attacked the proposal for public management of the water supply.

1.

MS at Huntington. Published in Hayek, p. 167.

2.

See Letters 28 and 30.

3.

On women’s rights, held at Worcester, Mass., Oct. 23-24, 1850. Harriet’s article was ostensibly a review of the report in the New York Tribune.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

See Letters 28 and 35.

3.

JSM had transferred the proprietorship of WR to Hickson and Henry Cole in 1840 (see Earlier Letters, Nos. 275-80), but it was Hickson who assumed the editorship. In 1847 he combined with it the Foreign Quarterly Review, and for the next four years it was entitled the Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review. Later in 1851 Hickson arranged for the transfer of the Review to John Chapman (see Letters 49 and 53).

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

See Letters 28 and 35.

3.

Although Hickson retained the proprietorship of the Review until the end of 1851, he had entrusted the editorship for a brief period to Henry James Slack (1818-1896), a Unitarian author and journalist. See Letters 36, 45, 46, 50.

1.

MS at NLI.

Charles (later Sir Charles) Gavan Duffy (1816-1903), a prominent politician both in Ireland and in Australia, to which he emigrated in 1856. He helped to found the Nation in 1842, the organ of the Young Ireland movement. Duffy had obtained from Carlyle an introduction to JSM (see Duffy’s Conversations with Carlyle [New York, 1892], pp. 166-74). His account of the attempt to persuade JSM to run for Parliament is in his autobiography, My Life in Two Hemispheres (2 vols., New York, 1898), II, 38-39. For JSM’s account of the episode, see his Autobiog., chap. vii.

1.

MS at NLI.

2.

The next Letter.

1.

MS draft at Leeds. Published, except for last par., in Elliot, I, 159.

Frederic Lucas (1812-1855), Roman Catholic journalist and politician, MP for County Meath (Ireland) in 1852. He was founder and proprietor of the Tablet, a weekly newspaper published at first in London and later in Dublin.

2.

An organization led by Lucas and Charles Gavan Duffy, the Tenant League (The League of North and South) attempted between 1850 and 1854 to unite the Presbyterian tenants of north Ireland and the Catholic tenants of the south in securing their rights, including tenure in landholding, compensation for improvements in the holdings, and remission for arrears in rents not paid during the famine years 1846-49. See Eric Strauss, Irish Nationalism and British Democracy (New York, 1951), pp. 143, 148, and Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, The League of North and South, An Episode in Irish History, 1850-1854 (London, 1886).

3.

See Letter 18.

1.

MS not located. Printed in Catalogue 1941, No. 122, of Elkins Mathews Ltd.

2.

JSM lived with his family at 18 Kensington Square until this date. The letter now cannot be dated more precisely.

1.

MS not located. Excerpt published in Bain, JSM, p. 93.

2.

As a result of the uproar caused by the so-called Papal Aggression of 1850, Lord John Russell introduced the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill in Feb., 1851, a measure forbidding the assumption of territorial titles by Roman Catholic priests. A few weeks later the government was defeated on another issue, and Russell resigned on Feb. 22, but resumed office when no one could be found to head a new government. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was finally passed, though never enforced, and was eventually repealed. The Russell ministry fell in Feb., 1852.

3.

Sir James Robert George Graham (1792-1861), statesman.

4.

George Hamilton Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen (1784-1860), statesman. Both Graham and Aberdeen attacked the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill as intolerant and reactionary.

1.

MS draft at Yale.

2.

JSM seems to have informed his family only shortly before this of his intended marriage.

3.

Mrs. Taylor and her two younger children went to Melcombe Regis in Dorsetshire in March to take up the temporary residence required by law. JSM followed to make final arrangements for the marriage, and returned to London soon afterwards.

4.

The ceremony was performed by the local Registrar in Melcombe Regis on April 21, with Algernon and Helen Taylor as witnesses.

5.

Rev. Joseph William Crompton, at one time minister of the Octagon Chapel, Norwich, a classmate of James Bentham Mill at University College, London, presumably one of the trustees of Jane’s property (see Letter 3).

6.

To the home of his mother and two unmarried sisters at 18 Kensington Square, where he would no longer be living.

1.

MS draft at LSE.

Wilhelmina Forbes (“Willie”) Mill (1808-1861), JSM’s eldest sister. She married a young physician, a Dr. King, who “soon left her a widow” (Bain, JSM, p. 43).

2.

See preceding Letter, to Jane Mill Ferraboschi.

3.

Mrs. James Mill, née Harriet Burrow (1782?-1854) continued to live at 18 Kensington Square after her husband’s death in 1836.

4.

In addition to what she was left by her husband, Mrs. Mill inherited from her mother, Mrs. Harriet Burrow, a sum later estimated by JSM as between £2800 and £3500. See Letter 170.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

See Letter37, n. 3.

3.

“Martineau and Atkinson on Man’s Nature and Development,” WR, LV (April, 1851), 83-92; a review by James Martineau of H. G. Atkinson and Harriet Martineau (James’s sister), Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development (London, 1851).

4.

A review of Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics (London, 1851), WR, LV (April, 1851), 268-69.

5.

See Letter 35.

6.

See Letters 13 and 17.

1.

MS at Huntington. Dated on the verso in another hand: J. S. Mill / April / 1851.

2.

See next Letter.

3.

See Letter 37, n. 3.

4.

Presumably on his marriage to Harriet Taylor on April 21, 1851.

1.

MS at Huntington. See preceding Letter.

2.

The rest of the letter is missing.

1.

MS draft at King’s. Bears note in JSM’s hand: To Sir George Grey/May 15 [sic]. 1851/(only officially acknowledged)./For publication/J. S. Mill. Published in Elliot, I, 160-62.

Sir George Grey (1799-1882), statesman, lawyer, Home Secretary at this time.

2.

A government bill for regulating the sale of arsenic had first been introduced in the House of Lords on March 10 by the Earl of Carlisle, and additional clauses were added by him during the third reading on March 24, including one restricting the sale to adult males. The amended bill was passed in the Lords without debate. The Bill then had its first reading in the House of Commons on April 7, and was passed without debate on May 23, 1851.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

See Letter 36, n. 3.

3.

John Chapman (1822-1894), physician, author, and publisher; proprietor and editor of the Westminster Review, 1851-94. The first issue under his direction was that of Jan., 1852.

4.

Presumably Hickson’s plan to reclaim the editorship from Slack, who had done the April issue. See Letters 37 and 46.

5.

Apparently no such article was written.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

See Letters 36, 37, and 46.

3.

Presumably Henry James Slack, who may have supplied material to Francis Espinasse for the gossipy article on the WR in The Critic, X (Aug. 15, 1851), 371-72.

4.

Probably “Organic Reform,” signed “R.”, WR, LV (July, 1851), 472-503.

5.

“Enfranchisement of Women.” See Letters 35 and 36.

6.

This was apparently not written.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

Unidentified.

3.

The article appeared as “Gregory of Nazianzum,” WR, LVI (Oct., 1851), 101-24; it is a review of Dr. Carl Ullmann, Gregory of Nazianzum, trans. by G. V. Cox (London, 1851).

4.

John Hill Burton (1809-1881), Scottish historian, had helped Bowring edit the works of Bentham. His Political and Social Economy (Edinburgh, 1849) was published as a part of Chambers’s Instructive and Entertaining Library (19 vols., Edinburgh, 1848-52).

5.

See Letter 45, n. 4.

6.

No such article appears to have been written.

1.

MS at LSE.

2.

See Letter 49, n. 3.

1.

MS at LSE. MS draft at Yale. Published in Elliot, I, 162-64.

2.

Chapman, who had recently acquired proprietorship of WR (see Letters 49 and 52), had drafted a statement of the future purposes and policies of the Review.

3.

JSM called the London and Westminster, which he had edited from 1836 to 1840, “the representative of the philosophic radicals” (Autobiog., p. 120). See also Earlier Letters, pp. 369-70.

4.

In the first ten years of Chapman’s ownership JSM published in the Review only one article: “Whewell’s Moral Philosophy,” WR, LVIII (Oct., 1852), 349-85, reprinted in Dissertations, Brit. ed. II, 450-509, Am. ed., III, 132-92, and in Collected Works, X, 167-201.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

“Enfranchisement of Women.”

3.

See Letter 51, n. 3.

1.

MS at King’s.

2.

For some of JSM’s comments on Christian Socialists, see Letters 32 and 125.

3.

In 1850 the Christian Socialists had established a Society for Promoting Working Men’s Associations.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

See Letter 51, n. 3.

3.

Letter 52.

4.

Letter 53.

5.

F. W. Newman, Lectures on Political Economy (London, 1851); reviewed by JSM: “Newman’s Political Economy,” WR, LVI (Oct., 1851), 83-101, reprinted in Collected Works, V, 439-57.

Francis William Newman (1805-1897), scholar and writer on many subjects, younger brother of Cardinal Newman.

6.

See last par. of Letter 51.

1.

MS at NLI. A portion was published in Duffy’s My Life in Two Hemispheres, II, 17.

2.

A prospectus of Duffy’s plan to establish in Ireland a Small Proprietors’ Society to enable tenants to purchase their farms. For a letter by Carlyle to Duffy on the pamphlet, see Duffy’s Conversations with Carlyle, pp. 171-74.

1.

MS at LSE.

2.

See Letter 53. Advertisements in the Examiner, Dec. 20, 1851, p. 816, and the Spectator, Dec. 27, 1851, p. 1247, announced the new policies and management.

3.

See Letter 66.

4.

The Westminster had been founded in 1824 by Jeremy Bentham and his disciples, including James Mill.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

See Letter 56, n. 5.

3.

See Letter 51.

4.

Unidentified.

1.

MS draft at LSE.

2.

On May 20, 1851, George Mill had written from Funchal, Madeira, the following letter to Harriet (MS at LSE): “Dear Madam, / Though I have only heard at second hand, of your recent marriage with my brother, and know nothing certain except the bare fact, I will not pass over such an event in silence. My brother wrote to me a letter by the mail of April 9th [Letter 42] but not a word wrote he then, had he written before, or has he written since of what I can only conclude he must have thought me either uninterested in, or undeserving to know. I don’t know therefore what changes your union will make in your mode of life, if any. It would give me the greatest pleasure to hear that J. was free of the tether which binds him to the City & you to the neighborhood of London. Twenty-five years work at the I. House, believe me, is as much as any man can well bear. I fear his generosity in money matters, has made his leaving the office difficult, but surely with his power of work & established reputation, he could earn enough money by writing for the press much more easily & with much greater advantage to others than by his present employment. I believe his work already published would have given him an income if he had not made such easy bargains with his publishers.

“I have not heard how your health is since I saw you in person & though I then thought you looking much stronger than when I had seen you last, you complained of it: pray let me hear sometime or other. If you feel in me any part of the interest which I feel in you all, you will not leave me in entire darkness.

“My own health continues pretty good. I am prosecuting the silk business, though it advances slowly towards a profitable conclusion. In the meanwhile I am endeavoring to earn a little money by writing. I have a long art. in the last No. of the British Quarterly (on volcanos and earthquakes) but there is nothing original in it.

“Believe me / dear Mrs. Taylor (I can’t forget the old name) / Yours affectly / Geo G. Mill

“As I don’t know your present address I send this to Cross St. I am writing to Hadjy. / Kind regards to Lily.”

Accompanying George’s letter was apparently one of similar purport to Harriet’s son, Algernon (“Haji”), long a friend of George, a letter which has not survived. Hayek, pp. 176-77, prints the draft of an answer by Harriet dated July 5, 1851, which may not have been sent. The tone of it is similar to that of JSM’s letter.

George Mill had evidently supposed that Harriet had been opposed on principle to the institution of marriage, as is shown by the following excerpt from his letter to Algernon Taylor of Sept. 27, 1851 (MS at LSE, published in Hayek, pp. 179-80): “Believing that your mother would generally rather discourage than encourage the marriage of others I certainly was at first surprised to find her giving so deliberate an example of marriage in her own case; in which moreover there seemed to me less to be gained than in almost any marriage I could think of. . . .” There is no evidence of any further correspondence by JSM with his brother, who committed suicide two years later in the final stages of tuberculosis.

3.

The following, perhaps a preliminary draft of this letter to George, is at LSE: “Though I thought anything but highly either of your good sense or good manners I had not so bad [the word “low” is written above “bad”] an opinion of your feelings as to think you capable of the insolent impudence of your letters to my wife & to Haji. I can even now only suppose that you do not know what insult is, & you certainly cannot know that anyone resents or is made indignant by it—for you actually seem to suppose that you can write two such letters as those & be as good friends [the phrase “on as friendly terms” is written above “as good friends”] as ever with the persons to whom & of whom they are written. Because you think fit, God knows why, to be in a rage with me, you write a page of gross insults to my wife, setting up yourself truly as a judge whether she has acted according to her principles—which principles you say you do not know—& you crown the whole by selecting Haji as the person to whom to address insults to his mother. Let me inform you, that a person may be much superior to you, and yet too immeasurably below her, to presume even to have an opinion on any action of hers—& that no one but an inflated fool in a passion, incapable of conceiving either what she is, or what he is himself would have had the insolence to write that series of queries.”

1.

MS draft at Johns Hopkins. In reply to her letter of Aug. 12 (also at Johns Hopkins) praising the article “Enfranchisement of Women” (by Mrs. Mill) and requesting permission to call upon him. The same folder at Johns Hopkins contains another congratulatory letter on the article; dated July 31, 1851, it is signed “Erinna.”

Anna Blackwell (ca. 1817-1900), sister of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, pioneer woman doctor; translator of George Sand’s Jacques (London, 1847), author of Poems (London, 1853), and of various works on spiritualism. She was one of the signers of Barbara Leigh Smith’s petition for a married women’s property bill, presented to Parliament on March 14, 1856.

1.

MS not located. Excerpt published in Alexander Bain, Autobiography (New York, 1904), p. 231.

2.

President Louis Napoleon and the Assembly were in bitter conflict throughout 1851; in July the Assembly defeated a Bill to permit the re-election of a President; in a coup d’état in Dec. Napoleon dissolved the Assembly and proclaimed himself Emperor.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

JSM and his wife were on holiday in France and Belgium in Sept., 1851.

3.

See Letter 56, n. 5.

4.

Oct. 1851 was the last issue of WR to appear under Hickson’s direction. See Letter 36.

1.

MS at LSE.

2.

Francis Place (1771-1854), master tailor and politician, friend of Bentham and James Mill, was behind the scenes a very important leader in reform movements down to the late 1830’s. For four of JSM’s letters to Place, see Earlier Letters.

3.

Auguste Comte (1798-1857), pioneer sociologist and founder of positivism, with whom JSM conducted an extensive correspondence between 1841 and 1847, though the two never met. See Earlier Letters. The work referred to here was probably Comte’s Cours de philosophie positive (6 vols., Paris, 1830-42), but possibly the Système de politique positive, the first volume of which appeared in this year.

4.

See Letter 66.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

“Life and Immortality,” WR, LVI (Oct., 1851), 168-228, by Hickson. The article contains four allusions to JSM’s Logic.

3.

See Letter 51.

4.

See Letter 56, n. 5, and “Textual Introduction,” Collected Works, IV, xlix-1.

5.

“Reason and Faith,” WR, LVI (Oct., 1851), 64-83. The criticism of Bentham appears on p. 82.

6.

Edward Lombe (see Letters 13 and 17). A disciple of Comte, he had once thought of translating Comte’s writings. Upon learning from John Chapman that Harriet Martineau was planning to translate Comte’s Cours de philosophie positive, Lombe sent her a check for £500. She used only part of it and invested the rest; later she divided the profits among Comte, Chapman, and herself. Lombe died before Miss Martineau’s translation was completed. It was published as Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte freely translated and condensed (2 vols., London, 1853).

7.

The Globe and Traveller, Oct. 6, 1851, p. 2. The occasion was JSM’s review of Newman’s book on political economy. See Letter 56, n. 5.

1.

MS at LSE.

2.

See Letters 53 and 58.

3.

For Jan., 1852.

1.

MS not located. Published in Elliot, I, 165-67.

Henry William Carr (d. 1885?), Fellow of Durham University, 1849-59, curate of Holy Trinity, South Shields.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

In the autumn of 1851 the Mills had leased a house in Blackheath Park, a suburb seven or eight miles out of London. Years later Charles Eliot Norton described the house in a letter to Chauncey Wright (May 1, 1869): “The house itself is a square, plain, brick house, in a little plot of ground, of about the size of one of the Kirkland Street places [in Boston], but with a characteristically English air and look in its seclusion behind a wall, and trim thick shrubbery, and the ivy covering one side and affording a shelter for innumerable twittering sparrows. Over the way is a wide open space bounded far off by a blue outline of distant hills.” Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, ed. Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe (2 vols., Boston and London, 1913), I, 329-30.

3.

Dated on the verso in another hand: Jany 17 / 53. The preceding year is a more likely date, however.

4.

Possibly referring to the article “Septenary Institutions,” WR, LIV (Oct., 1850), 153-206, in which the Latin term in question is used a number of times. The article was reprinted as a pamphlet in 1851.

5.

The Roman ninth day, which was employed as a kind of market day for country people and as a day for attending to public and religious affairs.

6.

See Letter 63, n. 4.

1.

MS copy at LSE. Bears note: Written in pencil in Mill’s house, almost illegible. Published in Packe, p. 355. In reply to a letter of March 3 from his unmarried sister Clara (published in Hayek, pp. 180-81), sorrowfully breaking off relations. Hayek (p. 181) suggests that this letter may not have been sent, and that JSM sent instead the following letter to his mother.

1.

MS draft at LSE. Published in Hayek, p. 181.

2.

MS torn.

3.

A former contributor to LWR under JSM’s editorship (see Earlier Letters, p. 430).

1.

MS in the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

2.

The 3rd ed. was published in the spring of 1852.

1.

MS at King’s.

2.

See Letter 9, n. 2.

1.

MS at Haverford College.

2.

See preceding Letter.

3.

Gilbert Urbain Guillaumin (1801-1864), publisher.

4.

Translated by Hippolyte Dussard and J. G. Courcelle-Seneuil (2 vols., Paris [1854]). A second edition was published in 1862, and a third in 1873.

5.

See next Letter.

6.

Francesco Ferrara (1810-1900), economist and politician, professor of political economy at the University of Turin, 1848-59; his translation of the Political Economy appeared as vol. XII in the series Biblioteca dell’economista (Torino, 1851).

1.

MS draft at Yale. Published in Elliot, I, 167-68.

Adolf Georg S. Soetbeer (1814-1892), political economist. His translation of JSM’s Principles of Political Economy appeared as Grundsätze der politischen Oekonomie nebst einigen Anwendungen derselben auf die Gesellschaftswissenschaft. Uebers. von Adolf Soetbeer (2 Bde., Hamburg: Manke, 1852). This edition is more than a translation; it is an elaboration, with contradictions discarded or reconciled. It includes an appendix, an extensive bibliography, and statistical tables. In revised form it appeared as vols. V-VII in the collected edition of JSM’s works (Leipzig, 1869-80), edited by Theodor Gomperz.

2.

JSM’s revisions of the third (1852) edition were especially extensive in these two chapters (Book II, chap. i, and Book IV, chap. vii); they reveal him as far more sympathetic towards socialism than hitherto. For the revisions, see Principles.

1.

MS draft at Yale. Published in Elliot, I, 168-70.

Karl David Heinrich Rau (1792-1870), distinguished political economist and professor at Heidelberg.

2.

As a result of his visit to London in 1851, Rau produced a detailed report on the agricultural implements displayed at the Great Exhibition, Ueber die landwirthschaftlichen Geräthe der Londoner Ausstellung im Jahre 1851 (Berlin, 1853).

3.

Pol. Econ., Book I, chap. ix, sec. 4; Book II, chap. vii, sec. 4 and 5.

4.

Lehrbuch der politischen Oekonomie (4 vols., Heidelberg, 1826-37). The work was often revised and enlarged, and went through many editions and translations.

5.

Traité d’économie nationale . . . Traduite par F. de Kemiter. Première partie, Théorie de l’économie politique (Bruxelles, 1839). See Principles, pp. 150, 288n, 292.

6.

JSM was also acquainted with Ueber die Landwirthschaft der Rheinpfalz und insbesondere in der Heidelberger Gegend (Heidelberg, 1830). See Pol. Econ., Book II, chap. vi, sec. 4. See Principles, pp. 265, 266, 291n, 1137.

7.

John Ramsay McCulloch (1789-1864), writer on political economy for the Edinburgh Review, comptroller of H.M. Stationery Office from 1838 to 1864, author of numerous books, and professor of political economy in University College, London, 1828-32.

8.

The Literature of Political Economy (London, 1845). The book was reprinted only in 1938 by LSE, as No. 5 in a series of reprints of Scarce Works on Political Economy.

9.

The 3rd ed. (1852). See preceding Letter, n. 2.

10.

See ibid., n. 1.

1.

MS draft at Yale. Published in part in Elliot, I, 170-71.

Probably Henry Green, Superintendent of Government Schools in Gujarat, a district somewhat north and west of Poona and Bombay, author of a pamphlet The Deccan Ryots and their Land Tenure for the Bombay Gazette (Gazette Press, Bombay, 1852).

2.

Edward Cowper (1792-1852), inventor.

3.

Not found.

4.

See Letter 56. Green’s articles have not been located.

5.

David Ricardo (1772-1823), political economist; friend of James Mill; author of the influential On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (London, 1817).

6.

See Letter 74, n. 2.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

On April 6, 1852, George Thompson (1804-1878), the anti-slavery advocate, and MP for Tower Hamlets, introduced a Bill that would extend to the ballast heavers of the Port of London the same protection granted to the coalwhippers under their Act (see n. 3). A select committee to investigate the employment of ballast heavers was proposed, but not appointed, and the Bill never came to a second reading. See Hansard, CXX, cols. 783-92.

3.

An Act for the regulation of the employment of coalwhippers (longshoremen who specialized in unloading coal) in the Port of London was put into effect in 1843, re-enacted in 1846 and again in 1851, each time with modifying amendments. A registry office was one of the provisions. See M. Dorothy George, “The London Coal-Heavers: Attempts to Regulate Waterside Labour in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” in Economic History (a supplement to the Economic Journal), I (1926-29), 229-48.

1.

MS copy in Holmes’s hand in a letterbook of his in Duke University Library.

George Frederick Holmes (1820-1897), American historian, educator, author.

2.

Holmes published a series of articles on Comte and positivism in the Methodist Quarterly Review between 1851 and 1854. A MS entitled “Spirit of Positivism” in the Holmes Papers in the Library of Congress and marked “Written for Edinburgh Review, 1853” may be another version of the article he submitted to WR. The “Spirit of Positivism,” apparently never published, was a summary of his earlier Meth. Q. Rev. papers. See R. L. Hawkins, Auguste Comte and the United States, 1816-53 (Cambridge, Mass., 1936). The Wellesley Index attributes to Holmes an article on “Auguste Comte and Positivism” in the North British Rev., XXI (May, 1854), 247-95.

1.

MS draft at LSE, in reply to Lalor’s letter of June 18, 1852, also at LSE.

John Lalor (1814-1856), journalist and author. He was one of the editors of the Morning Chronicle until 1848; in 1844 he became editor of the Unitarian weekly, the Inquirer.

2.

Lalor had suffered several years of ill health.

3.

Preface to Lalor’s Money and Morals (London, 1852). Lalor praises JSM highly in his Preface (pp. xxvi-xxviii), though the book is inscribed to Carlyle.

4.

Lalor had sent proofs of his book to JSM; in view of the hostility to John Milton, Lalor presumably deleted the quotation, for it does not appear in the book as finally published.

5.

Thomas Chalmers, On Political Economy in Connexion with the Moral State and Moral Prospects of Society (Glasgow, 1832). Chalmers (1780-1847), preacher and theologian, was professor of theology at Edinburgh University, 1828-43; after the Disruption, principal and divinity professor, New College, Edinburgh, 1843-47.

6.

Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi (1773-1842), Swiss historian, political economist. Author of Nouveaux principes d’économie politique (2 vols., Paris, 1819) and Etudes sur l’économie politique (2 vols., Paris, 1837-38).

7.

“It is admitted by Mr. Mill, and is indeed notorious that, owing to agricultural improvements, the law of diminishing fertility of land may be and has been practically suspended for a long series of years” (Money and Morals, p. 57).

8.

The third edition of Pol. Econ. was published in the spring of 1852. JSM in subsequent editions made no revisions on this point in Book I, chap. 12, “Of the Law of the Increase of Production from Land.”

9.

Lalor, Money and Morals, p. xvii.

10.

Ibid., p. 3.

11.

“Chalmers began that baptism, so to speak, of political economy into Christianity, which was the main thing needful to bring about its regeneration” (ibid., p. xvii).

1.

Text from photocopy supplied by Dennis O’Brien of Queen’s University, Belfast, of the original in the papers of Lord Overstone.

Samuel Jones Loyd (1796-1883), created first Baron Overstone in 1850, banker and leading authority on finance. From 1831 a member of the Political Economy Club. At his death reputed to be among the wealthiest men in England.

2.

Not identified. Possibly a cousin, a member of the Burrows family.

1.

MS at LSE, in reply to Lalor’s letter of June 30, 1852, at LSE, as is also Lalor’s reply of July 5. On the verso in JSM’s hand: Letters from & to Mr. John Lalor respecting his book entitled Money & Morals, June-July 1852.

2.

See Letter 79, n. 11.

3.

John Ramsay McCulloch.

4.

Adam Smith, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Jean Baptiste Say, David Ricardo.

5.

“It [JSM’s Political Economy] has indeed effected, scientifically and conclusively, that subordination of the doctrine of wealth to the doctrine of human welfare, which was the object so earnestly desired by Sismondi and Chalmers” (Lalor, Money and Morals, pp. xxvii-xxviii).

6.

Ibid., p. 133.

7.

See Letter 27, n. 3.

8.

Thomas Tooke (1774-1858), economist. See his Inquiry into the Currency Principle and the Connection of Currency with Prices (London, 1844).

9.

“On the Definition of Political Economy,” LWR, XXVI (Oct., 1836), 1-29; reprinted in Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (London, 1844) and in Collected Works, IV, 309-39. A sentence in JSM’s Preface to his book probably misled Lalor about the date; in his MS bibliography of his writings JSM says the essay was written in 1831 and rewritten in 1833 (MacMinn, Bibliog., p.47). Lalor corrects this in his text with a footnote to his Preface, p. xxvii.

1.

MS draft at LSE. Published except for last par. in Elliot, I, 171-73.

2.

JSM added information on the co-operative movement in England, including an account of the famous Rochdale Pioneers, for the fifth (1862) edition of Pol. Econ., Book IV, chap. vii, sec. 6. For the changes and additions see Principles.

3.

On June 6, 1850, JSM gave evidence before a Select Committee on Investments for Savings of the Middle and Working Classes, printed in Parl. Papers, 1850, XIX, pp. 77-90 (see Letter 29, n. 3), and reprinted in Collected Works, V, 405-29. As a result of this committee’s work and that of the Select Committee on the Law of Partnership, 1851, largely through the efforts of Robert A. Slaney (1792-1862), MP, the Industrial and Provident Societies Act of 1852 was passed. It provided for settlements of disputes among partners without recourse to Chancery, and further protected and encouraged co-operative societies. For JSM’s comments on the act, see Pol. Econ., Book IV, chap. vii, sec. 6, and Book V, chap. ix, sec. 7. For further details and information on other acts of Parliament which protected and encouraged co-operatives, see P. N. Backstrom, Jr., “The Practical Side of Christian Socialism in Victorian England,” Victorian Studies, VI (June, 1963), 305-24.

4.

Royal assent was given to the Industrial and Provident Societies Act on June 30, 1852.

5.

JSM has substituted the word “Partnerships” for “Societies.”

6.

For JSM’s account of the co-operative movement in France, see Pol. Econ., Book IV, chap. vi, sec. 5 and 6. For a general history, see Jean Gaumont, Histoire générale de la Coopération en France (2 vols., Paris, 1923-24).

7.

Louis Napoleon, proclaimed Napoleon III on Dec. 2, 1852; shortly thereafter he issued decrees suppressing the co-operative associations. Many survived this suppression, however. See Pol. Econ., Book IV, chap. vi, sec. 6.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Mrs J. S. Mill/Blackheath Park. Published in Hayek, 169-70.

2.

No such remarriage appears to have taken place.

1.

Text from photocopy supplied by Dennis O’Brien, of Queen’s University, Belfast, of the original in the papers of Lord Overstone.

2.

Mrs. Sibella (née Stone) Norman (1808-1887), wife of George Warde Norman (1793-1882), a director of the Bank of England, 1821-72. He was a writer on finance, a close friend of the Grotes, and an original member of the Political Economy Club. The Normans lived in Bromley.

1.

MS in the Library of the University of Texas. Both signatures are in JSM’s hand. Correspondent not identified by JSM, but he earlier had asked his publisher, John William Parker, to forward the sheets of the third edition of Pol. Econ. to Guillaumin, the publisher of the French translation. See Letter 73.

2.

Dictionnaire de l’Economie politique, contenant, par ordre alphabétique, l’exposition des principes de la science, l’opinion des écrivains qui ont le plus contribué à sa fondation et à ses progrès, la bibliographie générale de l’économie politique par noms d’auteurs et par ordre de matières, avec des notices biographiques et une appréciation raisonnée des principaux ouvrages, ed. Charles Coquelin and Gilbert Urbain Guillaumin (2 vols., Paris, 1851-53). Issued in parts.

3.

Used for the biography of JSM in the dictionary listed in n. 2 above. See II, 177.

1.

MS at Indiana. Endorsed: J.S.Mill/Oct.7.1852.

2.

His article, “Whewell’s Moral Philosophy.” See Letter 53, n. 4.

1.

MS at Indiana. Endorsed: J.S.Mill/Aug.9.1852.

2.

See preceding Letter.

1.

Text from photocopy supplied by Dennis O’Brien, of Queen’s University, Belfast, of the original in the papers of Lord Overstone.

2.

The year has been supplied by Mr. O’Brien from evidence in a correspondence between Overstone and Lord Napier, then British minister in Moscow.

3.

Edward Thornton (1799-1875), writer on India, long an employee of the East India Co.

1.

Text from photocopy supplied by Dennis O’Brien, Queen’s University, Belfast, of the original in the papers of Lord Overstone.

2.

See preceding Letter, n. 3.

1.

MS in the possession of Co-operative Union Ltd., Holyoake House, Manchester. The year 1868 has been pencilled in with a question mark, but the internal evidence suggests 1852 as the proper date. See Letter 85.

George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906), free-thinking publicist, bookseller, publisher of the Reasoner and other periodicals, and a leader in the development of the co-operative movement.

2.

Probably Louis-Léger Vauthier (1815-1901), French engineer and politician; in exile from 1849 to 1870; author of De l’impôt progressif (1851) and other works.

3.

The two-volume translation by Dussard and Courcelle-Seneuil was published by Guillaumin in 1854.

1.

MS not located. Excerpt published in an obituary notice of Walsh in Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Part XXI (June, 1862), p. 182.

Richard Hussey Walsh (1825-1862), Irish political economist.

2.

Presumably Walsh’s An Elementary Treatise on Metallic Currency (Dublin, 1853). Walsh had been appointed Whately Professor of Political Economy in Dublin in 1851.

1.

MS at LSE. Watermark: 1852. No indication of person addressed. Dated on verso in another hand.

1.

MS not located. Published in Elliot, I, 173-75.

Thomas Spring Rice (1790-1866), first Baron Monteagle of Brandon (1839), a contributor to ER; MP, 1820-39; Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1835-39.

2.

James Garth Marshall, Minorities and Majorities: their Relative Rights, A Letter to the Lord John Russell on Parliamentary Reform, published later in this year. Marshall was a son-in-law of Lord Monteagle. See Letter 112. Elliot mistakenly identifies the pamphlet as by Monteagle.

3.

JSM’s ideas on representation for minorities and other problems of representative government were later set forth in Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (London, 1859). Shortly after, he became an advocate of Thomas Hare’s plan for proportional representation. See Letters 365 and 373, and Rep. Govt. (3rd ed., London, 1865), chap. vii, 138 ff.

4.

The sentence is printed on the title page of the second edition (1854) of Marshall’s Minorities and Majorities and attributed to JSM.

5.

See Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform in Dissertations, Brit. ed., III, 30-32, Am. ed. IV, 22-27, in which he argues for a voter’s being permitted to cast all three votes, if entitled to three, for one candidate.

6.

Lord John Russell in 1854 sponsored for the Government a new Reform Bill, but it was withdrawn because of the Crimean War. Not until 1867 was a reform Bill finally adopted.

7.

Once an advocate of the secret ballot, JSM had by now come to oppose it. See Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform in Dissertations, Brit. ed. III, 32-44, Am. ed. IV, 36-48.

1.

MS at LSE. Dated on verso in another hand.

2.

James Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (2 vols., London, 1829), of which JSM published an annotated edition in 1869 (see Letters 1150 and 1153). The first two vols. of Dissertations were published by Parker in 1859.

3.

The volume of essays which he was planning at this time, including “Nature” and the “Utility of Religion,” which were eventually published posthumously in 1874 in Three Essays on Religion. See Letter 103.

1.

MS at NLW. Endorsed in another hand: Mr Mill / 4 May / 1853.

2.

For his reviews of various successive volumes of Grote’s History of Greece, see Letter 1, n. 2.

1.

MS draft at LSE. Published in Elliot, I, 175-76. In reply to Molesworth’s of May 14, MS at Johns Hopkins.

Sir William Molesworth (1810-1855), one of the active philosophic radicals. He served as MP 1832-41 and 1844-55, as first commissioner of works 1852-55, and as Secretary for the Colonies in 1855. Out of admiration for JSM, he provided financial backing for the London Review of 1835 and bought the Westminster Review to merge it with the London in 1836. See Earlier Letters, and see Letters 250, 251, 252, and Appendix to present volumes.

2.

Molesworth had asked JSM’s opinion of the subject of inheritance taxes on land; Disraeli in the Commons on May 2 had claimed “the whole principle of succession taxes unsound, especially as to land, because they led to a partition” (Examiner, May 7, 1853, p. 296). For other accounts of the debate on taxes, see ibid., May 28, p. 344, and June 18, 1853, pp. 392-93. For JSM’s views on partition, see Pol. Econ., Appendix to Book II.

3.

For JSM’s opinions on taxes, especially those on inheritance on land, see Pol. Econ., Book V, chap. ii, sec. 3.

4.

William E. Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, had presented his budget and financial statement in April; he proposed to reduce the income tax and extend the legacy duty to real property.

5.

JSM was undoubtedly referring to the Saint-Simonians. See Earlier Letters for correspondence with Gustave d’Eichthal. The Saint-Simonians believed that eventually the state would inherit all property; see C. Bouglé and Élie Halévy, eds., Doctrine de Saint-Simon, Exposition première année, 1829 (Paris, 1924), p. 248.

1.

MS at NLW. Endorsed in another hand: Mr Mill / July / 1853.

2.

By the Bill adopted in Aug., 1853, the charter of the East India Co. was renewed for the last time, not for a definite term, but at the pleasure of the Government. The Constitution of the Court of Directors was improved, the civil service was thrown open to competition, and power was reserved to appoint a separate provincial government for Bengal. JSM had given evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Lords on India affairs the previous year (Parl. Papers, 1852-53, XXX, 300-332), and had published two letters on the pending bill (“The India Bill,” Morning Chronicle, July 5, 1853, p. 5, and July 7, 1853, p. 5). Five years later, in 1858, a new Act made the final transfer of the East India Company’s powers to the Crown.

1.

MS draft at Yale. Published in Elliot, I, 176-77. Hobart’s reply of Aug. 12 is at Yale.

Vere Henry Hobart, Lord Hobart (1818-1875), statesman, writer on political and legal problems, later (1872) Governor of Madras.

2.

Lord Hobart, Remarks on the Law of Partnership Liability (London, 1853).

3.

For JSM’s views on the laws of partnership, see Pol. Econ., Book V, chap. ix, sec. 6 and 7, in which the arguments in this letter are amplified. See also Letter 82.

1.

MS at NLW. Endorsed in another hand: Mr John Mill / Aug / 1853.

2.

See Letter 95.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Mrs J. S. Mill / Post Office / Sidmouth / Devonshire. In letters to Harriet JSM invariably omits both salutation and signature.

2.

In late August JSM had taken his wife to Sidmouth for her health; he returned to work at the India House.

3.

Probably William Benjamin Carpenter, Principles of Human Physiology (4th ed., London, 1853), 1140 pp.

4.

Their cook.

5.

His review of Grote’s History for ER. See Letter 95.

1.

MS at LSE.

2.

His botanical collection.

3.

JSM was showing signs of serious illness, which proved to be chronic tuberculosis.

4.

Charles Bowyer Adderley, later 1st Baron Norton (1814-1905), statesman. A Tory MP, 1841-78, he favoured colonial self-government and had been secretary of E. G. Wakefield’s Colonial Reform Society.

5.

See preceding Letter, n. 4.

6.

See ibid., par. 2.

7.

For a description of this outing, see next Letter.

8.

A tradesman.

9.

Harriet’s mother and her sister Caroline.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

“The great comet of 1853” attracted general attention during the last ten days of August, when it was clearly visible in the western sky. A few days before the perihelion on Sept. 1, just before sinking below the horizon, the comet’s “head was brighter than stars of the first magnitude,” its tail—in England—extended 8°-10°, only “a few degrees from the sun’s place.” See “Report to 34th Annual General Meeting,” Memoirs of Royal Astronomical Society, XXIII (1854), 104-105.

3.

Rev. Henry Solly (1813-1903), Unitarian minister. He had been a classmate of JSM’s brother at University College, London, and visited the Mill family in the summer of 1830. See Solly’s autobiography, These Eighty Years (2 vols., London, 1893), I, 147.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Mrs Mill / at Mrs Wheaton’s / Marlborough Place / Sidmouth / Devonshire. Published in Hayek, pp. 184-85. This is one of the very few letters to his wife that JSM signed.

2.

The MS is dated Aug. 29, but internal evidence from this series of letters indicates that the correct date is Tuesday, Aug. 30.

3.

See Letter 100, n. 3.

4.

See Letter 94, n. 3.

5.

See Letter 100, n. 5.

6.

The article was not written. See Letters 97, 133, and 137.

7.

This probably refers to the volume of essays which was to include “Nature.”

8.

Pierre Etienne Dumont (1759-1829), Swiss publicist and jurist. During his exile in London, 1793-1814, he became a friend and disciple of Jeremy Bentham. For many years Dumont edited and translated Bentham’s works, bringing order out of the chaos of his papers, and acting as official interpreter of Bentham to the world.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Mrs Mill / Mrs Wheaton’s / Marlborough Place / Sidmouth / Devonshire.

2.

William Coulson (1802-1877), surgeon, brother of Walter Coulson.

3.

Golding Bird (1814-1854), physician. He had carried on the work of William Prout, but partly retired on August 4, 1853, because of ill health.

4.

William Prout (1785-1850), physician and chemist.

1.

MS at NLW. Endorsed in another hand: Mr Mill / Sept / 1853.

2.

See Letter 99.

3.

See Dissertations, Brit. ed. II, 531, Am. ed. III, 214-15.

4.

See ibid., Brit. ed. II, 518-20, Am. ed. III, 202-203.

5.

See next Letter.

6.

Sept. 24. Since the health of both JSM and his wife was clearly deteriorating, their doctors had advised their going abroad. Both were suffering from fairly advanced cases of tuberculosis. JSM was given a three-month leave of absence, which he and Harriet spent at Nice.

1.

MS at NLW. Endorsed in another hand: Mr Mill / Sept / 1853.

2.

“Public Works in the Presidency of Madras,” ER, XCIX (Jan., 1854), 130-57. Its author is identified in the Wellesley Index as Humphrey B. Devereux (1812-1880) of the East India Company.

3.

For JSM’s views on the ryotwar system in India, see “Of Cottiers” in Pol. Econ., Book II, chap. ix, sec. 4.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: A / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmieres / a Hyeres / Va [—?]. Postmark: ARLES-s-RHONE / 29 / Dec / ??.

JSM and his wife and stepdaughter had left England on Sept. 24 on the recommendation of their physicians. He had been given a three-month leave of absence, which the three spent at Nice. There Harriet suffered a severe haemorrhage, of which she nearly died. JSM’s own condition did not improve, but after moving Harriet to Hyères, where she remained until spring, he began the return trip to London several days after Christmas. This is the first of a series of 38 letters extending to April 11, 1854.

2.

Not identified.

3.

The two inns recommended by Murray, Handbook for Travellers in France (3rd ed., London, 1848), p. 490.

4.

The proprietor of the place where Harriet was then staying at Hyères.

5.

The family name for Harriet’s daughter Helen.

6.

Their cook at Blackheath Park.

7.

Galignani’s Messenger, a daily English paper published in Paris, founded in 1814.

8.

Palmerston was Home Secretary in Aberdeen’s cabinet, formed Dec., 1852, and Sir James Graham was First Lord of the Admiralty. Palmerston resigned on Dec. 14, 1853, because of differences over Lord John Russell’s Reform Bill, although his action was ascribed to differences over the Turkish question. He withdrew his resignation on Dec. 24, and remained in office until he became Prime Minister in Feb., 1855.

9.

Fox Maule (1801-1874), 2nd Baron Panmure and later (1860) 11th Earl of Dalhousie.

10.

George Hamilton Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, Prime Minister, Dec., 1852-Feb., 1855.

11.

The Sultan of Turkey had declared war on Russia on Oct. 4, 1853. The English tried to preserve peace, but on Nov. 30 the Russians destroyed a group of Turkish ships. Aberdeen was accused of cowardice, but on Dec. 22 he agreed to co-operate with France in protecting Turkey from Russia and keeping the Russian fleet at Sevastopol.

12.

Dr. Henry Cecil Gurney (1819?-1879), an English physician at Nice who had saved Harriet’s life after a haemorrhage of the lungs. See also Letters 327 and 333.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope Addressed: A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmark: AVIGNON / 30 / DEC / 53. This was JSM’s first visit to Avignon, where he was to spend so much of his later life. The Hôtel de l’Europe, at which he stayed, was to become the place of Harriet’s death on Nov. 3, 1858.

2.

See preceding Letter, n. 8.

3.

Commenting on reports of undue interference of the court in the cabinet, the Daily News (second leader, Dec. 24, 1853, p. 4), had said in part: “Should it indeed prove true that human frailty had so far prevailed with a high personage who has won golden opinions by his abstention from party and political contests, his cultivation of the graces of domestic life, and enlightened patronage of art and letters, as to induce him to stoop to convert these opinions into an element of vulgar power—and should the influence of a husband prevail to undo the work of sixteen happy years, the grief of the devotedly loyal would be great, but the hazard to all parties infinitely greater.”

4.

“The Court of England has been doing more to render him [Tsar Nicholas] popular than his own best efforts . . .” (letter by Walter Savage Landor in Examiner, Dec. 24, 1853, p. 919).

5.

See preceding Letter, n. 11.

6.

On Aug. 22, 1853, the Crown Prince of Belgium, later Leopold II, married Maria Henrietta, daughter of Archduke Joseph of Austria. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were often accused of being unduly influenced by their uncle, Leopold I of Belgium.

7.

Perhaps a private reference based on the title of Notes and Queries, a periodical started in 1849 for the purpose of communication among those interested in special points of literary and antiquarian interest.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmark: CHALON . . . . / 2 / JANV / 54.

2.

Sic. For Montélimar.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmieres / à Hyères / Var. Postmark: BOULOGNE-S-MER / 5 JA? / 54.

2.

A. and W. Galignani, Traveller’s Guide through France (Paris, 1819, and many editions thereafter).

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: ANG / 7 JANV / 54 / CALAIS and HYERES / 10 JANV / ??. An excerpt published in Hayek, pp. 186-87.

2.

David Hill, who ranked just above JSM in the Examiner’s Department of the East India Co.

3.

William Thomas Thornton.

4.

Russell Ellice (1799-1873), partner in the bank of Roberts, Lubbock and Co.; a director of the East India Company, 1831-73, Chairman, 1853-54.

5.

William Henry Sykes.

6.

Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), novelist; head of the Examiner’s Department at the East India House, 1836-56.

7.

James Bentham Mill (1814-1862), JSM’s younger brother, recently retired from service for the Company in India.

8.

William George Prescott (1800-1865), George Grote’s partner in their banking firm.

9.

The review of the last three volumes of History of Greece; see Letter 99.

1.

MS at King’s.

James Garth Marshall (1802-1873), textile manufacturer, MP for Leeds, 1847-52, son-in-law to Lord Monteagle of Brandon.

2.

See Letter 93.

3.

A second edition had appeared before the end of 1853.

4.

Letter 93.

1.

MS at LSE.

Henry (later Sir Henry) Cole (1808-1882), official and editor, was a member of many commissions dealing with public exhibitions. He had been a friend of JSM since 1826; Earlier Letters contains 13 letters to him. See Anna J. Mill, “Some Notes on Mill’s Early Friendship with Henry Cole,” The Mill News Letter, IV (Spring, 1969), 2-8.

2.

Cole’s note probably accompanied the “application from the Soc. of Arts” which JSM refers to in Letter 114. Cole was Chairman of the Council of the Society, 1851-52. See ibid., n. 7.

3.

Perhaps the pamphlet by Cole and R. Redgrave, Addresses of the Superintendents of the Department of Practical Art (London, 1853).

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmark: AF . . . / JA 9 / 1854. A part published in Hayek, pp. 187-88.

2.

The butcher.

3.

Letter 112.

4.

William Pollard Urquhart (1815-1871), writer on history and political economy; MP for Westmeath, 1852-57, 1859-71.

5.

“The Irish Tenant-Right Question,” Fraser’s, XLIX (Feb., 1854), 234-44.

6.

See Letter 116.

7.

The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Commerce and Manufactures; a society “of popular and educational intention” founded by William Shipley in 1754. See Letter 113.

8.

From his family, who lived in Kensington.

9.

See Letter 111, n. 9.

10.

William Rathbone Greg (1809-1881), writer on political, economic, and social questions. His article was “Parliamentary Purification,” ER, XCVIII (Oct., 1853), 566-624. Greg had published two previous articles on similar subjects in Jan. and Oct., 1852.

11.

Letter 93.

12.

See Letter 112.

13.

Probably JSM’s Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (London, 1859), in good part written some years before it was published.

14.

John Chapman had asked JSM to review Harriet Martineau’s abridged translation of Comte’s Philosophie positive. See also Letter 65.

15.

A chemist.

16.

Dr. William Coulson.

17.

Dr. Golding Bird.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: . . . / JA —12 / 1854 and 13[?] JAN / 54.

2.

William Leader Maberly (1798-1885), joint secretary of the general post office, 1836-54.

3.

JSM had begun a diary on Jan. 8 as an experiment to discover (entry for that day) “what effect is produced on the mind by the obligation of having at least one thought per day which is worth writing down. . . . It must either relate to life, to feeling, or to high metaphysical speculation. The first thing which I am likely to discover in the attempt is that instead of one per day, I have not one such thought in a month; but only repetitions of thoughts, to us so familiar, that writing them here would only expose the poverty of the land.” The diary, which was terminated on April 15, is published in Elliot, II, 357-86.

4.

To his will.

5.

Macvey Napier, Jr., and Edmund D. Bourdillon, clerks in the Examiner’s Department.

6.

Sir James Clark (1788-1870), physician-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria.

7.

The French word benêt.

8.

A French banknote.

1.

MS at LSE.

John William Parker, Jr. (1820-1860), editor and publisher, eldest son of John William Parker; worked in father’s publishing house from 1843 until his death.

2.

William George Prescott.

3.

See Letter 114, n. 4.

4.

The Life and Times of Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan (2 vols., Edinburgh and London, 1852).

5.

Essays on Subjects of Political Economy (Aberdeen, 1850).

6.

See Letter 114, n. 5. Fraser’s was edited and published by John W. Parker from July, 1847, to Dec., 1850, and by John W. Parker and Son from Jan., 1851, to Dec., 1860.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: BK / 14 JA / 1854; . . . ANGL / 15 / JANV / 54 / CALAIS; and HYERES / 18 / JA / . . .

2.

See Letter 103.

3.

Tradesman, as are the others mentioned next—Webster, Roberts, Chapman, and Todman.

4.

Banker, as is Massey just below.

5.

East central part of London.

6.

Tradesman.

7.

William Thomas Thornton, Zohráb: or, a Midsummer Day’s Dream, and other poems (London, 1854).

8.

“To John Stuart Mill, Esq. In Imitation of an Epistle of Horace to Maecenas,” ibid., pp. 132-49, with the Latin of Horace on facing pages.

1.

MS at Yale. Part published in Hayek, pp. 188-89.

2.

Frederick Sinnett (1831-1866), business man, journalist; a friend of Algernon Taylor, who emigrated to South Australia in 1849.

3.

See Letter 111.

4.

The Mills believed that Mrs. Grote had gossiped about them in the years before their marriage.

5.

J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques italiennes du moyen âge (16 vols., Paris, 1809-18); the English translation, A History of the Italian Republics, being a view of the origin, progress and fall of Italian freedom (London, 1832), appeared as part of Lardner’s Cabinet Encyclopedia (133 vols., London, 1830-49).

6.

That he review Harriet Martineau’s translation of Comte. See Letter 114, n. 14.

7.

In Logic, Book VI, “On the Logic of the Moral Sciences,” and passim, esp. in the 1st ed.

8.

Harriet Martineau’s translation of the Philosophie positive. See Letters 65 and 114.

9.

George Jacob Holyoake.

10.

W. P. Urquhart. See Letter 116.

11.

Letter 112.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: ANGL / 21 JANV / 54 / CALAIS and HYERES / 24 / JANV / 54. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 190.

2.

Dr. Cecil Gurney.

3.

See Letters 114 and 118.

4.

See Letter 118.

5.

Presumably the London suburb of that name, but JSM’s correspondent there has not been identified.

6.

Presumably letters from his sisters Clara and Harriet were among the “Kensington” letters enclosed in his letter of Jan. 9 (Letter 114).

7.

See Letter 118.

8.

Tradesmen, as are Marshall and Roberts, mentioned next.

9.

Probably Marianne Laing, a relative of Harriet.

10.

Probably from Harriet’s favourite and youngest brother, Arthur Hardy, who lived in Adelaide, Australia.

11.

Turkey had considerable success on land during the first months of the war with Russia; Russia’s Prince Gorchakov was decisively defeated in battle Jan. 6-9, 1854, at Getatea (Citale), near Kalafat.

12.

The Examiner, Jan. 21, 1854, p. 38, mentions Selim Pasha, “a European,” as commander of Turkish troops at Kalafat. Karl Marx in The Eastern Question (London, 1897), p. 225, identifies Selim Pasha as the “Pole Zedlinsky.”

13.

Josef Bem (1795-1850), Polish soldier. He fought in the Polish war of independence in 1830, offered his services to Hungarian revolutionaries in 1848, and led a brilliant campaign in Transylvania; thereafter he fled to Turkey, where he became a Mohammedan and served as governor of Aleppo.

14.

The rumour had spread that because of undue interference in affairs of state Prince Albert had been sent to the Tower for high treason. See leader in The Times, Jan. 18, 1854, p. 8; “The Stories about Prince Albert,” Sp., Jan. 14, 1854, pp. 37-38; “The Attacks on Prince Albert,” Examiner, Jan. 28, 1854, p. 49.

15.

His diary; see Letter 115, n. 3.

16.

See Letter 103.

17.

John Gregson (1806-1879), solicitor.

1.

MS at Yale. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 190.

2.

The first draft of Autobiog. See Stillinger, Early Draft.

3.

Chemist.

4.

To write on Comte for the WR (see Letters 64, 65, 114, and 118).

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

Zohráb (see Letter 117, n. 7).

3.

In his letter of Jan. 14 to Harriet he reported that the tax gatherer had charged him 12/ for “armorial bearings.”

4.

Tradesman, as is Roberts just below.

5.

His brother, James Bentham Mill.

6.

Probably his sister Wilhelmina.

7.

Tradesman.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 30 JA 30 / 1854 and ANGL . . . / 31 / JANV. / 54 / CALAIS. Published in part in Hayek, pp. 190-92, 199.

2.

Autobiog. (See Letter 122).

3.

See Letters 103 and 119.

4.

John William Parker.

5.

The review of the last three volumes of Grote’s History of Greece.

6.

John Caldwell Calhoun (1782-1850), American statesman. The posthumous work was A Disquisition on Government and A Discourse on the Constitution of the United States, ed. R. K. Crallé (Columbia, S.C., 1851).

7.

See Letter 138.

8.

Jean Gustave Courcelle-Seneuil, Traité théorique et pratique des opérations de banque (Paris, 1853).

9.

See Letter 73, n. 4.

10.

Hippolyte Dussard (1789-1876), French economist.

11.

La République, political journal, published in Paris 1848-51 by Eugène Bareste. Courcelle-Seneuil wrote many articles on political economy and finance for this and other liberal journals.

12.

Gilbert Urbain Guillaumin was the publisher of the French translation of the Pol. Econ.

13.

Arthur Helps (1813-1875), writer, later (1860-75) clerk of the privy council. JSM had reviewed his The Claims of Labour in 1845, reprinted in Dissertations, Brit. ed. II, 181-217, Am. ed. II, 260-96, and in Collected Works, IV, 363-89. See Earlier Letters, p. 643.

14.

“Some Thought for Next Summer,” a review in Sp., Jan. 28, 1854, p. 93, of Arthur Helps’s Friends in Council; Some Thought for Next Summer (printed for private circulation, London, 1853).

15.

The Examiner, Dec. 24, 1853, p. 817, speaks of a “dissatisfaction with the [lukewarm] Eastern policy which is felt by ninety-nine people out of a hundred.” French and British ships were sent to the Black Sea in Jan.—the prelude to the Crimean War.

16.

The Times reported the Manchester meeting of the National Public School Association (“Mr. Cobden on Education . . . ” on Jan. 19, p. 10, “National Public School Association at Manchester,” Jan. 20, p. 7) and ran leaders favouring secular education (Jan. 20, p. 6; Jan. 21, p. 8; and Jan. 28, p. 8).

17.

The Edinburgh meeting was held on Wednesday, Jan. 25, Lord Panmure presiding. It was reported in Sp., Jan. 28, 1854, p. 85; and in The Times (“National Education in Scotland”), Jan. 28, 1854, p.10.

18.

Probably the following sentences in the essay “Nature”: “Even the love of ‘order’ which is thought to be a following of the ways of Nature, is in fact a contradiction of them. All which people are accustomed to deprecate as ‘disorder’ and its consequences is precisely a counterpart of Nature’s ways. Anarchy and the Reign of Terror are overmatched in injustice, ruin, and death, by a hurricane and a pestilence.” (Three Essays on Religion [London, 1874], pp. 30-31)

19.

See Letter 118, n. 5.

20.

See Letter 119, n. 17. The will was eventually found by JSM (see Letter 142).

1.

MS draft at Leeds. Draft is headed: Arthur Gore Esq. 17 Trinity Coll. Dublin. Published in Elliot, I, 178-79. The date is that given by Elliot; none appears on the draft except a pencilled 1843? in another hand.

Gore entered at Trinity College, 1850; B.A., 1853, M.A., 1854.

2.

JSM discussed the difference in the Logic, Book III, chap. xv, sec. 1.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / Chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: . . . / E 2 / . . . 854; ANGL / 3 / FE . . . / CALAIS; and HYERES / 6 / FEVR. / 54.

2.

Actually JSM did not retire from the India House until 1858. See Letters 325 and 326, n. 2.

3.

See Letters 103 and 122.

4.

Charles de Secondat, baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755), philosopher. Montesquieu, in his Spirit of the Laws (2 vols., New York, 1900), said that all was lost by secret votes in the Roman Republic, that people’s votes ought to be public, but that votes of nobles or senators cannot be too secret (I, 14-15). He also cites the observation of Cicero, in De Legibus, Lib. I, xvi, and III, xv, that the laws which made the vote secret toward the close of the Roman Republic were the cause of its decline.

5.

Queen Victoria’s speech opening Parliament on Jan. 31, 1854, reported in The Times, Feb. 1, p. 3.

6.

The parliamentary Reform Bill was introduced on Feb. 13 and withdrawn on April 11, 1854.

7.

The Second Common Law Procedure Bill was introduced on Feb. 27.

8.

The Oxford University Bill was introduced on April 27.

9.

The Settlement and Removal Bill was introduced on Feb. 10.

10.

Although civil service reform was part of its programme outlined at the opening session, the government announced on May 5 that the bill would not be submitted at this session. See also Letters 139, 141, 144, and 159.

11.

As part of the Government of India Bill passed in Aug., 1853.

12.

The three named were tradesmen.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / Chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 4 FE 4 / 1854; ANGL / ... / CALAIS; and ... RES / 8 / FEVR / 54. Excerpts published in Principles, pp. 1032-33, and in Hayek, p. 202.

2.

See Letters 103, 122, and 124.

3.

See Letters 120 and 122.

4.

Probably vol. 4 of Système de politique positive (4 vols., Paris, 1851-54).

5.

“John Stuart Mill on the Theory of Causation,” a review of the 3rd ed. of his Logic (1851), No. Am. Rev., LXXVIII (Jan., 1854), 82-105.

6.

Francis Bowen (1811-1890), philosopher and educator; proprietor and editor of the No. Am. Rev., 1843-54.

7.

In “Of the Law of Universal Causation,” Book III, chap. v, 360-62, 370-72.

8.

No change with reference to Bowen was made in the 4th ed. (1856), though the section was heavily revised.

9.

F. J. Furnivall; see Letters 31 and 33.

10.

“On the probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes,” Pol. Econ., Book IV, chap. vii.

11.

See Letter 129.

12.

Tradesman.

13.

George William Frederick Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon and Baron Hyde (1800-1870), British Foreign Secretary, 1853-58, 1865-66, 1868-70.

14.

Russia demanded an explanation of the intentions of the British and French fleets in the Black Sea. Clarendon, with the approval of England’s allies, proposed a settlement of the Turkish dispute and stated that if Russia did not accept she would be responsible for war. Lord Clarendon summarized the situation in a speech in the House of Lords on Jan. 31. Sp., Feb. 4, 1854, pp. 109-11.

15.

The Russian ambassador called at the Foreign Office and formally suspended relations on Feb. 4, 1854. The Times, Feb. 4, p. 9 and Feb. 6, p. 7.

16.

Morning Post, Feb. 4, 1854, p. 4.

17.

Tsar Nicholas I (1796-1855), Emperor of Russia, 1825-55.

18.

On Feb. 27, Britain and France demanded Russian evacuation of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia—now part of Rumania.

19.

Britain and France made a formal alliance with Turkey on March 12 and declared war on Russia on March 27; Russia had made no reply to the demand for evacuation of the principalities.

20.

In leader on p. 8.

21.

Prussia and Austria made an alliance in April to oppose Russian expansion in the Balkans. When Britain and France declared war at the end of March, Prussia refused to join and Austria hesitated, although Austrian mobilization caused Russia to evacuate the principalities.

22.

Letter from Clarendon to Sir G. H. Seymour, ambassador in St. Petersburg, dated Dec. 27, 1853; published in The Times, Feb. 3, 1854, p. 7.

23.

French and British fleets had entered the Black Sea in Jan., 1854.

24.

Tradesman.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 7 FE 7 / 1854 and ANGL / 8FEVR. / 54 / CALAIS. One par. published in Hayek, p. 192.

2.

Voluntary retirement left the amount of a pension to the discretion of the directors; retirement for reasons of health was almost certain to mean a grant of two-thirds of his salary of £800 a year.

3.

Tradeswoman.

4.

Pensions paid by the East India Company to James Mill’s heirs.

5.

See preceding Letter.

6.

Packe lists on pp. 368-69 JSM’s works on the subjects mentioned, published between 1859 and 1874.

7.

A review in the Examiner, Feb. 4, 1854, pp. 68-69, of Letters of Rachel, Lady Russell, ed. J.R. [Earl Russell] (2 vols., London, 1853).

8.

“The Socialist Conference of the Society of Arts,” Examiner, Feb. 4, 1854, p. 68.

9.

See preceding Letter.

10.

Until the last moment The Times urged a peaceful settlement.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmieres / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 10 FE 10 / 1854; PARIS / 11 / FEVR / 54; and HYERES / 14 / FEVR / 54. Largely published in Hayek, pp. 193-94.

2.

See Letters 120, 122, and 125.

3.

Harriet and her daughter were planning to meet him in Paris; see next Letter.

4.

Harriet’s reply (MS at LSE), dated Feb. 14 and 15, is the only one preserved from this period; it is published in Hayek, pp. 195-96.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmieres / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 13 FE 13 / 1854; ANGL / 14 / FEVR / 54 / CALAIS; and HYERES / 17 / FEVR / ??. Excerpt in Packe, p. 363.

2.

Tradeswoman.

3.

The South Carolina Library Committee (see Letters 122 and 138).

4.

Courcelle-Seneuil (see Letter 122).

5.

See Letter 122, n. 8.

6.

A bookstore, apparently specializing in foreign books.

7.

See Letter 122, n. 11.

8.

Arthur Helps.

9.

Henry (later Sir Henry) Taylor (1800-1886), poet, dramatist, and member of the Colonial Office. He was an old acquaintance from the London Debating Society days.

10.

William Henry Sykes. Emilia has not been identified.

11.

One of the French physicians listed in Letter 115.

12.

Its leaders of Feb. 4, p. 9, and Feb. 9, 1854, p. 6.

13.

Morning Post, a leader of Feb. 11, 1854, p. 5, an attack upon The Times’s support of the “abrogation of the patronage of the Crown.”

14.

Its leader of Feb. 11, 1854, p. 8.

1.

MS at Brit. Mus.; MS draft at Leeds. Envelope addressed: F. J. Furnivall Esq. / 11 New Square / Lincoln’s Inn. Postmark: 3AN3 / FE 14 / 1854. Published in Elliot, I, 177-78.

2.

On JSM’s revisions of this chapter, see Letter 74. On co-operation, see Letter 82.

3.

3rd ed., 1852. There is no evidence that the proposal to reprint the chapter was ever carried out.

1.

MS at Yale. Excerpts published in Principles, p. 1033, and in Hayek, p. 197.

2.

Actually, health forced him to go abroad in June of this year.

3.

James Oliphant, then Deputy Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, became Chairman later in the year.

4.

The early draft of Autobiog.; see Letters 120, 122, 125, 127.

5.

See Letters 125, 129, and 132.

6.

“On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes.”

7.

On Feb. 13, 1854; see next Letter.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 15 FE 15 / 1854; ANGL / 16 / FEVR / 54 / CALAIS; [PARI]S 5 / 16 / FEVR / 54; and HYERES / 19 / FEVR / 54.

2.

See preceding Letter, n. 2.

3.

English physician at Nice.

4.

See preceding Letter, n. 7.

5.

James Garth Marshall; see Letter 112.

6.

Henry George Grey, 3rd Earl Grey, later wrote Parliamentary Government considered with reference to a Reform of Parliament (London, 1858, 2nd ed., 1864).

7.

Report of House of Commons, Examiner, Feb. 18, 1854, p. 104. Russell’s new Reform Bill had been introduced on Feb. 13.

8.

See Letter 119, n. 14. See also “The Position of Prince Albert,” Sp., Feb. 4, 1854, p. 124.

9.

John Campbell, 1st Baron Campbell (1779-1861), legal biographer, Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor. He had been chairman of a royal commission to inquire into the question of divorce; the investigation led eventually to the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857.

10.

The Commission had reported its findings to the House of Lords during the previous session. Based on its recommendation a Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act was introduced on June 13, 1854, but was withdrawn on July 10. In the debate on the latter date Campbell was still urging that divorce should be granted in cases of adultery of the wife but not of the husband. “The moral guilt incurred by the husband was the same, but in most cases it might be condoned.”

11.

Probably the unheaded leader on law reform in the Morning Post, Feb. 3, 1854, p. 4, cols. 4-5, which urged the government to “consider whether an equality of justice, irrespective of the sex of the claimants, should not be provided in all cases.”

1.

MS at Brit. Mus. Envelope addressed: F. J. Furnivall Esq. / 11 New Square / Lincoln’s Inn. Postmark: 1 AN 1 / FE 18 / 1854.

2.

See Letters 130 and 133.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 18 FE 18 / 1854; ANGL / 19 / FEVR / 54 / CALAIS; and one illegible. Excerpt published in Principles, p. 1033.

2.

See Letter 129.

3.

See preceding Letter.

4.

See next Letter.

5.

See Letter 122, n. 8.

6.

See discussion of this draft in Letter 137. Apparently Courcelle-Seneuil never received JSM’s letter (see Letter 144).

7.

By John C. Calhoun. See Letter 122.

8.

See Letter 138.

9.

See Letters 97 and 103.

10.

See Letter 99.

11.

Autobiog. See Letter 130.

12.

War was declared on March 27.

13.

Because of the developing alliance of France with England.

14.

See, e.g., the report of a speech at Halifax by Sir Charles Wood, President of the Board of Control, Examiner, Feb. 12, 1853, p. 97.

15.

See Letter 131. Lord John Russell withdrew the Bill on April 11.

1.

MS in 1965 in the possession of Joseph H. Schaffner of New York.

2.

See Letters 129 and 132.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 21 FE 21 / 1854; ANGL / 22 FEVR / ?? / CALAIS; PARIS / 22 / FEVR / 54; and HYERES / 2 ? / FEVR / ??. Excerpt published in Hayek, pp. 197-98, and in Principles, pp. 1033-34.

2.

MS of her letter at LSE. Published in Hayek, pp. 195-96.

3.

Eventually published in the posthumous Three Essays on Religion. Harriet had written: “About the Essays dear, would not religion, the Utility of Religion, be one of the subjects you would have most to say on—there is to account for the existence nearly universal of some religion (superstition) by the instincts of fear hope and mystery etc., and throwing over all doctrines and theories, called religion, as devices for power, to show how religion & poetry fill the same want, the craving after higher objects, the consolation of suffering, by hopes of heaven for the selfish, love of God for the tender & grateful—how all this must be superseded by morality deriving its power from sympathies and benevolence and its reward from the approbation of those we respect.

“There, what a long winded sentence, which you would say ten times as well in words half the length. . . .”

4.

Autobiog. See Letter 133.

5.

Harriet had written: “Should there not be a summary of our relationship from its commencement in 1830—I mean given in a dozen lines—so as to preclude other and different versions of our lives at Ki[ngston] and Wal[ton]—our summer excursions, etc. This ought to be done in its genuine truth & simplicity—strong affection, intimacy of friendship, and no impropriety. It seems to me an edifying picture for those poor wretches who cannot conceive friendship but in sex—nor believe that expediency and the consideration for feelings of others can conquer sensuality. But of course this is not my reason for wishing it done. It is that every ground should be occupied by ourselves on our own subject.”

6.

His revision of the chapter for Furnivall’s proposed reprint (see Letter 134).

7.

He did add current information on the French associations in his 5th ed. (1862). For all changes of text on this subject, see Principles, pp. 775-85. See also Letter 82.

8.

Harriet’s younger son Algernon was born on Feb. 21, 1830.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 24 FE 24 / 1854, and ?? / ??R / 54. Part published in Hayek, pp. 199-200.

2.

In Letter 128.

3.

Sir James Clark, physician.

4.

Brier and Capper were shopkeepers.

5.

The movement to repeal the remaining stamp tax on newspapers was continuing. On Feb. 8 the Association for Promoting the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge had held a soirée in honour of Milner Gibson’s efforts on behalf of repeal of the tax on advertisements (see Examiner, Feb. 11, 1854, p. 89). JSM’s hostility to The Times was of long standing. Here the implication may be that such a powerful paper could afford to pay the stamp tax, while liberal, or working-class papers could not.

6.

See preceding Letter.

7.

On Feb. 23, 1854, the Lord Advocate introduced a Bill to improve education in Scotland. See Examiner, Feb. 25, 1854, p. 120.

8.

In a speech on the above-mentioned Bill, Feb. 23, 1854. See Hansard, CXXX, cols. 1185-89.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 28 FE 28 / 1854; . . . / . . . / . . . / CALAIS; PARIS / . . . / . . . / 54; and an illegible one. Excerpt published in Principles, p. 1034.

2.

They had apparently decided that he should not retire until they had at least £500 a year as income from investments.

3.

Francis Hopkins Ramadge (1793-1867), physician. His The Curability of Consumption, originally published in 1834, had appeared in later editions, the most recent in this month.

4.

Courcelle-Seneuil; see Letters 128 and 133.

5.

Georges Jacques Danton (1759-1794), revolutionary leader. At the conclusion of his speech to the Legislative Assembly on Sept. 2, 1792, on the eve of the massacres, Danton is reported to have said: “pour les [les ennemis de la patrie] vaincre, Messieurs, il faut de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace, et la France est sauvée.” Moniteur, Sept. 4, 1792, p. 1051.

6.

Gardener.

7.

See Letters 97 and 133.

8.

See Letter 135, n. 6.

9.

Martin Nadaud (1815-1898), political leader, follower of Proudhon; an exile in England, 1851-59.

10.

Tradesman.

1.

MS not located. Published in Elliot, I, 179-80.

2.

From Sept. 24 through Dec., 1853.

3.

In Dec., 1851.

4.

See Letter 122, n. 6.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 3 MR 3 / 1854 / ; ANGL / 4 / MARS / CALAIS; PARIS / 4 / MARS / 54 /; and HYERES / ?? / ?? / 54. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 200.

2.

Possibly Harriet’s brothers Alfred and Arthur Hardy, both of whom had emigrated to Australia. Harriet’s eldest brother Thomas Hardy (1803-c.1829) had died of consumption.

3.

See Letter 137, n. 3.

4.

Provided for by the Government of India Act adopted in Aug., 1853.

5.

See Letter 133, n. 15.

6.

A plan for strict qualifying examinations for civil service appointments. The Report was dated Nov. 23, 1853. “The Organization of the Permanent Civil Service,” Parl. Papers, 1854, XXVII.

7.

Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan (1807-1886), statesman, long an official in India; later, Governor of Madras.

8.

Sir Stafford Henry Northcote, later 1st Earl of Iddesleigh (1818-1887), statesman.

9.

Morning Chronicle, Feb. 22, 1854, p. 4.

10.

In leaders of Feb. 23, 1854, p. 4; Feb. 24, p. 5; and Feb. 27, p. 4. An additional attack appeared the day following this Letter, p. 7.

11.

Leaders in The Times, Feb. 4, 1854, p. 9; Feb. 9, p. 6.

12.

On Feb. 28, 1854, Thomas Chambers, MP for Hertford, moved that a select committee consider legislation to regulate conventual and monastic institutions.

13.

Joseph Napier, MP for Dublin University, in his speech on Feb. 28, 1854. Hansard, CXXXI, cols. 77-84, esp. col. 78.

14.

Lord Claud Hamilton, of Tyrone, on the same day as Mr. Napier of the preceding note. Ibid., cols. 101-103.

15.

Sir John Bowring (1792-1872), linguist, writer, politician; first editor of WR; friend and literary executor of Bentham; MP for Kilmarnock, 1835-37, and for Bolton, 1841-49; British consul at Canton, 1849-53; Governor of Hong Kong, 1854-59. Earlier Letters has one letter to Bowring, whom JSM and James Mill disliked.

16.

Letter 138.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: 6 MR 6 / 1854; ?? / 7 / Mars / 54; and an illegible one. Excerpts published in Hayek, pp. 202-203, and in Principles, pp. 1034-35.

2.

See Letter 135.

3.

Probably the sentence attacking Louis Napoleon as an “unprincipled adventurer” in the chapter on “The Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes” in the third (1852) ed. only; see Principles, p. 748.

4.

John Chapman.

5.

From the July, 1851, WR. See Letters 28, 30, and 35.

6.

Perhaps Mary Anne Evans, later known as George Eliot; she was Chapman’s assistant on WR from the time he took it over in 1852 until the fall of 1853. She wrote for WR until 1857.

7.

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865), the novelist.

8.

See Letter 139, n. 4. For the results of the election, see Letter 142.

9.

See Letter 130.

10.

Sir James Weir Hogg (1790-1876), Director of East India Company; MP for Beverley, 1835-47, for Honiton 1847-57; alternately Deputy Chairman and Chairman of Court of Directors almost continuously, 1845-53.

11.

The “Utility of Religion”; see Letter 135, n. 3.

12.

Tradesmen.

1.

MS not located. In reply to Trevelyan’s of March 8, MS at Johns Hopkins. Quoted in JSM’s letter to his wife of March 14 (published in Hayek, pp. 201-202) as is also part of Trevelyan’s rejoinder to this letter.

2.

The Civil Service Examination Plan; see Letters 124, 139, and 144.

3.

Later in the year JSM wrote a paper in support of the plan; see Letter 159.

4.

The Government of India Act, passed in Aug., 1853, provided for a system of examinations for admission into the India Civil Service. See “The Little Indian Charter,” Examiner, Aug. 27, 1853, p. 546.

1.

MS at Yale. Excerpt published in Principles, p. 1035.

2.

See Letter 122.

3.

A lock named for its inventor, Joseph Bramah (1748-1814), engineer and inventor.

4.

His neighbour.

5.

See Letters 139, 141, and 159.

6.

Gladstone, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, had presented his budget proposals on March 6, in anticipation of war with Russia.

7.

See Letter 140. The full names of the successful and unsuccessful candidates for the Court of Directors of the East India Co. at the election on March 8 were (in the order JSM mentions them) as follows: John Harvey Astell, John Cotton, Col. William Henry Sykes, William Joseph Eastwick, Sir James Weir Hogg, William Butterworth Bailey, Ross Donnelly Mangles, Henry Thoby Prinsep, John Shepherd, Russell Ellice, Major James Oliphant, Sir Henry Willock, Elliott Macnaghten, Hon. William Henry Leslie Melville, Charles Mills, Martin Tucker Smith, John Masterman, John Petty Muspratt, Major John Arthur Moore, William Dent, and John C. Whiteman.

8.

See Letter 137.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / chez M. Goutant / Place des Palmiers / à Hyères / Var. Postmarks: ??? / 12 / MARS / 54 / CALAIS; and one illegible. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 203.

1.

MS at Yale. Excerpts published in Hayek, pp. 201-202, and in Principles, pp. 1035-36.

2.

This letter was lost and never reached her; see Letter 148.

3.

“On the Utility of Religion”; see Letter 140.

4.

Eltham Palace, a residence of the kings of England from Edward II to Henry VIII.

5.

See Letters 139, 141, and 142.

6.

On May 5, 1854, in response to a question, Gladstone said it was not the intention of the Government to submit the Civil Service Bill during the present session (Hansard, CXXXII, col. 1305).

7.

On March 13 Lord Monteagle asked for a copy of the instructions given to the commissioners reporting on the Civil Service, and delivered a long attack on the report. See Hansard, CXXXI, cols. 640-55.

8.

Granville George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville (1815-1891), Lord President of Council, 1852-54, later Foreign Secretary; leader of Liberal party in House of Lords after 1855. For his defence of the Civil Service Report, see Hansard, CXXXI, cols. 655-62.

9.

For the Duke of Argyll’s remarks in defence, see ibid., col. 668.

10.

Sir James Stephen (1789-1859), colonial undersecretary, father of Leslie and Sir James Fitzjames Stephen.

11.

The Times, March 14, 1854, p. 6. As reported in Hansard, ibid. (col. 659), Granville characterized JSM as “not only a great philosophical writer, but one of the most able administrators of the day,” and said that he “cordially approved of the introduction of examinations and competition.”

12.

March 14, 1854, p. 5.

13.

See Letter 6, n. 11. The article began with a plea for the application of scientific method to political and social problems, but ended with an attack on a writer in Fraser’s for attempting to prove the “compatibility of Judaism with a sterling English character.”

14.

See Letters 129, 132, 137, 140.

15.

Probably Book IV, chap. vi, “Of the Stationary State.” No such change was made in any later edition.

16.

No changes were made in this passage; see Principles, II, 746-65.

17.

The only change made in this passage is that contained in the note JSM added to this Letter (see below).

18.

Quotations about French workers’ associations from Cherbuliez, Feugueray, Villiaumé. Hayek (p. 307) notes that in the People’s Edition of the Pol. Econ. (1865), these passages are translated from the French.

19.

These additions appear in the 4th ed., 1857.

20.

Not identified.

21.

See Letters 133 and 137.

22.

See Letter 73, n. 4.

23.

See Letters 31, 33, and 82.

24.

See Letter 82, n. 3.

25.

On her way to Paris with her daughter Helen to meet him.

26.

L’Europe, the inn at Avignon, mentioned in Letter 108.

27.

See Principles, II, 765b.

28.

See ibid., p. 767e-e.

29.

See ibid., p. 783n.

30.

This passage was extensively rewritten for the 1857 ed. See ibid., p. 784h-h.

31.

See ibid., p. 784i-i 793.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame Mill / Poste Restante / à Lyon / Rhône. Postmarks: 18 MR 18 / 1854; LYON / 20 / MARS / 54, and two illegible ones. Excerpts published in Principles, p. 1037.

2.

See Letter 142.

3.

See The Times, March 18, 1854, p. 6.

4.

See Letters 124 and 128.

5.

See Letters 137 and 144.

1.

MS at King’s. Excerpts in Packe, pp. 311, 311n, 347.

2.

To reprint “Enfranchisement of Women”; see Letter 140.

3.

This eventually became The Subjection of Women (London, 1869).

4.

It was eventually reprinted in Dissertations, Brit. ed. II (1859), Am. ed. III (1867).

5.

London, 1853.

6.

See par. about the middle of chap. viii, beginning: “We lived, at first, rather a busy life at Bleak House.”

7.

“Utility of Religion”; see Letters 135, 140, and 144.

8.

See Letter 137, n. 3.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

Of the chapter on the “Futurity of the Labouring Classes”; see Letters 129, 132, 135, 144.

1.

MS at Yale. Addressed: A Madame / Madame J. S. Mill / Poste Restante / à Paris. Postmarks: PARIS / 30 / MARS / 54 / POSTE RESTANTE; and two illegible ones.

1.

The MS of this torn-off last page of the letter is at LSE. Envelope addressed: J. B. Mill Esq. / Ullapool / N.B. Postmarks: 1854 / 31 MR 31; . . . GWALL / AP 2 / 54 and . . . APOOL / AP 3 / 1854. Part published in Hayek, p. 308, n. 40.

James Bentham Mill had retired from the East India Co. service in 1852 and moved to Scotland.

2.

The Government of India Act, adopted in Aug., 1853.

3.

The Aberdeen Cabinet, in office since Dec., 1852.

1.

MS at UCL.

2.

Chadwick’s contribution to “Papers relating to the reorganization of the Civil Service,” in Parl. Papers, 1854-55, XX, 135-228.

3.

On reform of the civil service; see Letter 141.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: A Madame / Madame J. Stuart Mill / Hotel de France / Rue St Honoré 353 / (No 1 à l’entresol / à Paris. Postmarks: 1954/3AP3, and two illegible. Excerpt published in Hayek, pp. 205-206, and in Principles, p. 1037.

2.

Henry Carleton (1785-1863), jurist and author; Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, 1837-39. He resigned on account of ill health and subsequently travelled in Europe (but settled in Philadelphia). Author of Liberty and Necessity (Philadelphia, 1857), Essay on the Will (1863).

3.

Charles James Blasius Williams (1805-1889), physician, author of several treatises on tuberculosis, and a co-founder of the Consumption Hospital at Brompton.

4.

Dr. Williams’s paper on the use of cod liver oil was published in vol. I (1849) of the London Journal of Medicine, and reviewed in the Lancet for 1849, pp. 100 ff.

5.

See Letter 144.

6.

Principles, II, 783n, and note to p. 346 included in Letter 144.

7.

“Utility of Religion”; see Letters 135, 140, 144, 146.

8.

Richard Quain (1800-1887), physician; professor of descriptive anatomy, University of London, 1832-50; President of the Royal College of Surgeons, 1868.

9.

His sister Wilhelmina, then in Germany.

10.

See Letters 142 and 145.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: A Madame / Madame J. Stuart Mill / Hotel de France / Rue St Honoré 353 / No. 1 à l’entresol / à Paris. Postmarks: 5EV5 / AP5 / ?? /; ??? / AP-5 / 1854; and 6 / AVRIL / 54 / PARIS.

2.

Sir George Bowyer (1811-1883), jurist and politician; MP for Dundalk, 1852-68, and for Wexford, 1874-80.

3.

Henry Fitzroy (1807-1859), statesman, then undersecretary for the Home Department.

4.

Palmerston was then Home Secretary.

5.

Morning Post, April 5, 1854, p. 4.

6.

The Divorce Commission, which had been appointed in 1850, issued its report in 1853.

1.

MS draft at LSE. Published in Packe, p. 355.

2.

His sister, Mary Elizabeth Colman. Her letter, dated Saturday, April 3, is at LSE.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: A Madame / Madame J. Stuart Mill / Hotel de France / Rue St Honoré 353 / No 1 à l’entresol / à Paris. Postmarks: 8AP8 / 1854; [PARI]S / 9 / AVRIL / 54; and one illegible.

2.

See Letters 137 and 139.

3.

Col. Richard William Astell (1804-1864).

4.

William Astell (1774-1847), a director of the East India Co. for forty-seven years.

5.

John Harvey Astell (1806-1887), also a director of the East India Co.

6.

Not identified.

7.

Henry Negus Burroughes (1791-1872), MP for East Norfolk, 1837-57.

8.

Charles Ewan Law (1792-1850), recorder of London, 1833-50; MP for Cambridge, 1835-50.

9.

William Frederick Chambers (1786-1855), until his retirement in 1848 the leading physician in London.

10.

Thomas, later Sir Thomas Watson (1792-1882), physician to the Middlesex Hospital, 1827-44; professor of medicine, King’s College, 1835-40; author of Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Medicine (2 vols., London, 1843, and later editions), for thirty years the chief English textbook of medicine.

11.

Thomas Wakley (1795-1862), medical reformer, founder of the Lancet; MP for Finsbury, 1835-52.

12.

Probably Sir James’s Treatise on Pulmonary Consumption (London, 1835). Clark was also the author of several works on the effect of climate on consumption.

13.

René Théophile Laennec (1781-1826), physician, inventor of the stethoscope.

14.

Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis (1787-1872), physician.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: A Madame / Madame J. Stuart Mill / Hotel de France / Rue St Honoré 353 / no 1 à l’entresol / à Paris. Postmarks: 10AP10 / ???; 11 / AVRIL / ???; and 11 / AVRIL / 54 / PARIS. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 205.

2.

Train schedule.

3.

See Examiner, April 8, 1854, p. 211. See also Letter 152, n. 5.

4.

There were five; JSM overlooked Henry Melville (1798-1871), then Principal of the East India College at Haileybury, later (1856) Canon of St. Paul’s.

5.

William Bingham Baring, 2nd Baron Ashburton (1799-1864), statesman; his wife, Lady Harriet, was the close friend of Thomas Carlyle.

6.

See Letters 141 and 159.

7.

John Shaw-Lefevre (1797-1879), public official.

8.

Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893), then a fellow and tutor, later (1870) Master of Balliol. Trevelyan and Northcote’s “Report on the Organization of the Permanent Civil Service” in Parl. Papers, 1854-55, XX, included a “Letter from the Rev. B. Jowett,” some of whose recommendations JSM was soon to attack (see Letter 160).

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: A Madame / Madame J. Stuart Mill / Hotel de France / Rue St Honoré 353 / No 1 à l’entresol / à Paris. Postmarks: 1854 / 11AP11; 12 / AVRIL / 54 / CALAIS / ; and one illegible. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 206.

2.

His brother, who had died in Madeira the preceding summer.

1.

MS draft at LSE.

2.

Harriet and her daughter Helen arrived at Blackheath about the middle of April.

3.

From Paris.

4.

For which Gurney had been her physician. See Letter 107.

5.

At this point in the draft the following passage has been cancelled: “As for myself I am on the whole rather worse than at Nice though I have not now any cough. I am under very careful medical treatment & am doing all I can to get better.”

1.

MS draft at LSE. Published in Elliot I, 180-81.

1.

MS draft at Johns Hopkins. In reply to Trevelyan’s letter of May 11, MS at LSE, as is also Trevelyan’s rejoinder of May 24. See also Letter 141.

2.

“Paper on Reform of Civil Service, addressed as letter to Chancellor of Exchequer,” May 22, 1854, in Parl. Papers, 1854-55, XX, 92-98. Also separately printed, London, 1855. See Letter 141.

3.

See Letter 136, n. 7.

1.

MS draft at Johns Hopkins, as is also Trevelyan’s letter of May 30 requesting JSM’s permission to omit one passage from the text to be published of his letter of May 22 on civil service reform.

2.

See preceding Letter.

3.

The passage, which was an attack on some of Benjamin Jowett’s recommendations in the Report, was published with one change. See next Letter. As published it read as follows: “Whatever means of judging of the moral character of the applicants may be adopted, I will venture to express a hope that they may be of a different kind from those suggested by Mr. Jowett; who would demand from every candidate for examination a certificate of baptism, thus excluding even the Christian sects which do not practise that rite; and would require, among other references, one to a clergyman or a dissenting minister; which, as they would of course give their recommendations only to those whose religious character they approved of, would amount to the severest penalty for non-attendance on some church or minister of religion, and would be in fact a religious test, excluding many highly qualified candidates.” (Parl. Papers, 1854-55, XX, 95.)

JSM also objected to the requirement of a statement from a school or college about the candidate; he pointed out that he himself would have been excluded from such a competition, since he had never attended school or college.

Jowett’s reply to the objections is printed in a long footnote (ibid., 96-97) subjoined to JSM’s statement.

1.

MS draft at Johns Hopkins, as is also Trevelyan’s letter of June 2. For the passage as it finally appeared, see n. 3 of the preceding Letter.

1.

MS draft at LSE. Published in Hayek, p. 207.

2.

This paragraph is a revision of a paragraph which read as follows: “If you shd have occasion to write to me direct to my house at Blackheath and my wife will forward it. My wife sends her best wishes & regrets that her health has made it impossible for her to call on you as she much wished to have done [the last seven words replace—“would otherwise have done long before this]—Ever my dear” etc.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Mrs Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent / England. Envelope bears note in another hand: 1) June 54 Jersey. The “1)” indicates the first of another series of letters. Postmarks: [J]ERS[E]Y / JU 11 / 1854, and CH / 13JU13.

Following his wife’s return from her stay at Hyères, JSM’s own health continued to deteriorate seriously. Finally yielding to the urging of his doctors, he left England on June 9 for a tour of Brittany. His first stop on the journey was at St. Helier on the island of Jersey, where he spent three days.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Mrs Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent / England. Envelope bears note in another hand: 2) June 54 Jersey. Postmarks: JU 13 / 1854, and ??? / JU15 / 1854.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Envelope bears in another hand: 3 June 19th 54 / St Malo. Postmarks: ST. MALO / 15 / JUIN / 54; 19 JU 19 / 1854; and two illegible ones.

2.

Later incorporated in Utilitarianism.

3.

The great French writer, forced into an exile of nearly twenty years after Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état of Dec., 1851, had settled in Jersey in Aug., 1852. On Feb. 20, 1854, The Times (p. 11) had printed a translation of a letter from Hugo to Lord Palmerston, the Home Secretary, protesting the execution of a criminal named Tapner on the island of Guernsey and charging that it was performed to “accommodate” Louis Napoleon. In a leader of the same day, The Times (p. 8) was very critical of Hugo.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

See preceding Letter, n. 2.

3.

Lieut. Barnard, Three Years’ Cruise in Mozambique Channel (London, 1848).

4.

Probably Arthur Ley, husband of Harriet’s sister Caroline.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: MORLAIX / 20 / JUIN / 54; PARIS / 22 / JUIN / 54; 23JU23 / 1854.

2.

Later identified by JSM only as a Mr. Frederick Pope, a young barrister suffering from tuberculosis. A letter by him to JSM dated Dec. 17, 1854 (MS at Johns Hopkins) gives his London address as 16 Oxford Terrace.

3.

By JSM himself on a summer trip with Harriet and Helen Taylor.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Bears in another hand: 6 / Brest. Postmarks: BREST / 2 ? / JUIN / 54; PAID / ET / 27 JU 27 / 1854; and one illegible. Excerpts published in Hayek, p. 208.

2.

In the stream of the Beaver or Afanc, near Nant Ffrancon, Wales.

3.

See preceding Letter.

4.

Folgoët.

5.

On June 13 in the House of Commons.

6.

Eventually included in Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859).

1.

MS draft at LSE, in reply to Colman’s letter of June 17 (copied by JSM in the next Letter) announcing the death of his mother on June 15. He had left England on June 9, and Colman’s letter reached him in Brittany on June 26.

Charles Frederick Colman, husband of JSM’s youngest sister, Mary.

2.

Clara Mill had been appointed joint executor with JSM.

3.

A letter dated March 27, 1854, left for him by his mother, expressing her wishes with regard to the disposal of her household furnishings. The letter (MS at LSE) is published in Packe, p. 356.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: QUIMPER / 26 / JUIN / 54, and PAID / EV / 28 JU 28 / 1854. Excerpt published in Hayek, pp. 209-10. For text of JSM’s reply to Colman, see Letter 169.

2.

[Copied on last page, Charles Colman’s letter of June 17]

My dear Mill,

I have only just got your address, which enables me to write to you.

I am sorry to have to tell you that your mother died on Thursday Evening last, suffering no pain at all.

I should not have taken upon myself to write to you now, but I do so at Clara’s request to ascertain if it is your intention to act as Executor or whether she shall do so, as she has been appointed jointly with you.

There is a letter addressed to you by your Mother which I should have inclosed had I not feared it might have been lost, it is supposed to contain her wishes relative to the disposal of certain articles not mentioned in the Will, & if you are not likely to return soon it might be desirable for you to give leave for its being opened with a view to acting upon it.

If you wish to leave this matter in Clara’s hands I will render all the assistance I can for its proper settlement, as I am remaining in town for that purpose.

Will you kindly reply by return of post, as I am desirous of returning to Clifton as soon as I can

I am
Faithy yours

Charles F. Colman

3.

Mrs. Harriet Burrow.

4.

Harriet did not agree; see Letter 172.

5.

He was especially resentful toward his sisters Clara and Mary.

6.

His sister Wilhelmina, who was a widow.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: LORIENT / 1 / ??? / ???; PAID / EY / 3 JY 3 / 1854, and three illegible ones. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 209.

2.

On June 13, against the ballot; reported in Sp., June 17, 1854, p. 630.

3.

John Bright (1811-1889), the well-known Liberal leader of whom JSM was usually critical.

4.

George Grote throughout his career in Parliament (1832-41) was the leading advocate of the ballot.

5.

Probably what was later published in Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859).

6.

Perhaps a letter by his sister Harriet written before their mother’s death.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: NANTES / ??? / ??? / ???; ??? / JY6 / 1854; and two illegible ones. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 210.

2.

Edward William Tuson (1802-1865), physician, author of The Structure and Function of the Female Breast (London, 1846).

3.

John Flint South (1797-1882), surgeon; lived at Blackheath Park.

4.

See Letter 170.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: NANTES / 5 / JUIL / 54; PAID / EC / 7JY7 / 1854; 10FN10 / JY7 / 1854; and one illegible.

2.

Frederick Pope.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: NANTES / 9 / JUIL / ???; REIMS / 10 / JUIL / 54; PAID / JY11 / 1854.

2.

Sydney Smith (1771-1845), Canon of St. Paul’s, writer and wit; one of the founders of ER. The work referred to is his Ballot (London, 1839).

3.

Augustus De Morgan.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: NAPOLEON-VENDEE / 13 / JUIL / 54; PAID / 15 JY 15 / 54 PARIS / 14 / JUIL / 54; and one illegible. No letter numbered 12 has been located.

2.

Frederick Pope.

3.

The counter-revolutionary insurrection in La Vendée broke out in 1793.

4.

Napoléon-Vendée, founded in 1804, on the site of La Roche-sur-Yon, in the centre of the rebellious province; the name was altered under the Restoration to Bourbon-Vendée.

5.

Caroline Ferdinande Louise, Duchess of Berry (1797-1870), widow of the Duke assassinated in 1820, and mother of the comte de Chambord, Bourbon aspirant to the throne. The chapel on Mont-des-Alouettes was actually built by the Duchess of Angoulême, a daughter of Louis XVI who laid the first stone on Sept. 18, 1823.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: ROCHEFORT / 16 / JUIL / 54; BURDE . . . A PARIS / 16 / JUIL / 54; and PAID / EL / 18JY18 / 1854. Excerpt published in Hayek, pp. 210-11.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: NANTES / 19 / ???; JY21 / 1854. Excerpt published in Hayek, p. 211.

2.

Not identified.

3.

JSM’s maternal grandmother. See Letter 170.

1.

MS draft at LSE. Published in Hayek, p. 211.

2.

See Letters 177 and 179.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs Stuart Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: ROUEN / 24 / JUIL / 54; three others illegible.

2.

Louis Philippe (1773-1850), King of the French, 1830-48.

3.

The preceding Letter.

1.

MS at Huntington.

2.

Possibly on workers’ associations and co-operatives or on the Working Men’s College, which was to open that fall.

1.

MS draft at Leeds. Published in Elliot, I, 181-82.

William Stigant (later Stigand) (1825-1915), later a consular official and author, best known for his The Life, Work, and Opinions of Heinrich Heine (2 vols., London, 1875).

2.

See esp. his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (London, 1789) and Deontology or Science of Morality, ed. John Bowring (2 vols., London, 1834).

3.

David Hartley, Observations on Man (London, 1749).

4.

Reprinted in Essays on Government, Jurisprudence [etc.], written for the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica (Edinburgh, [1825]).

1.

MS not located. Published in Elliot, I, 182-84.

Barbot de Chément, a French captain of artillery and a disciple of Comte. For Comte’s letters to him (1846-51) see Correspondance inédite d’Auguste Comte (4 vols., Paris, 1903-4), III; and Nouvelles lettres inédites, ed. P. E. de Berredo-Carniero (Paris, 1939).

2.

Including among JSM’s friends and acquaintances: Alexander Bain, George Henry Lewes, and George Grote.

3.

In the following year Richard Congreve (1819-1899) began the establishment of a Positivist community in London. Positivism did not flourish until 1867, however, when the Positivist Society was organized, the important leaders being Congreve and Frederic Harrison (1831-1923), lawyer and author interested in social reform. See chaps. vii and viii, W. M. Simon, European Positivism in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1963).

4.

For JSM’s help to Comte and for his correspondence with him, see Earlier Letters and Lettres inédites de John Stuart Mill à Auguste Comte, publiées avec les réponses de Comte, éd. L. Lévy-Bruhl (Paris, 1899). For his later judgments on Comte, see Autobiog., pp. 99-100, 125-28, and 147-48 n; and Auguste Comte and Positivism (London, 1865), reprinted in Collected Works, X, 261-368.

1.

MS draft at LSE, as is also Gomperz’s letter of July 20 to which this is a reply. Published in Heinrich Gomperz, Theodor Gomperz, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, ausgewählt, erläutert und zu einer Darstellung seines Lebens verknüpft, I (all published, Vienna, 1936), 178-79, and in Lord Stamp, “New Letters of John Stuart Mill. A philosopher in politics,” The Times, Dec. 29, 1938. The MSS of JSM’s letters to Theodor Gomperz, which Lord Stamp had acquired from a dealer to whom Heinrich Gomperz had sold them, were destroyed in the bombing of Stamp’s home on April 16, 1941, in which he lost his life.

Theodor Gomperz (1832-1912), Austrian philosopher and philologist, a great admirer of JSM’s philosophy. He later supervised the translation of JSM’s works into German. For an excellent recent study of their relationship, see Adelaide Weinberg, Theodor Gomperz and John Stuart Mill, in Travaux de Droit, d’Economie, de Sociologie et de Science Politiques, No. 16 (Genève, 1963). For Gomperz on JSM, see his “Lebenserinnerungen” in Essays und Erinnerungen (Stuttgart, 1905) esp. pp. 33-38, and in the same volume, pp. 87-102, his “Zur Erinnerung an John Stuart Mill (1806-1873),” reprinted from the Deutsche Zeitung, May 16 and 23, 1873.

2.

Gomperz’s translation of the Logic was eventually published as vols. II-IV (1873-75) in the Gesammelte Werke (12 vols., Leipzig, 1869-80). In a letter to his sister (July 6, 1854) he wrote of the Logic: “It is a work which . . . I consider the most important philosophical achievement of this half century, bound . . . to exert the most powerful influence in all areas of thought” (trans. from H. Gomperz, p. 174). On Jan. 7, 1855, after completing the first draft of his translation, Gomperz wrote his friend Heinrich Jacques (1831-94) a letter which contains a virtual exposition of the Logic (Gomperz, pp. 195-206).

3.

John Stuart Mill, die induktive Logik, trans. J. Schiel (Braunschweig, 1849). Later the same translator did the complete book: J. S. Mill, System der deductiven und inductiven Logik (Braunschweig, 1862).

1.

MS in the Vatican Library.

Pasquale Villari (1826-1917), Italian historian and statesman. This letter was the beginning of a correspondence and friendship that lasted until JSM’s death.

2.

Possibly Villari’s review article on Cesare Beccaria (1854) reprinted in his Saggi Storia, Di Critica e Di Politica (Firenze, 1868), pp. 282-325. Beccaria’s treatise Dei Delitti e delle Pene (1764), trans. as On Crimes and Punishments (1768), had been highly influential among the Benthamites.

3.

“On the Logic of the Moral Sciences.”

4.

Probably his Saggio sul’origine della filosofia della storia (Firenze, 1854), which appears to have been Villari’s only other publication that year. No English translation of it has been located.

1.

MS draft at LSE, in reply to Rae’s letter from Koali, Sandwich Islands, Dec. 5, 1853-Jan. 9, 1854, also at LSE. Both letters were published in “John Rae and John Stuart Mill: A Correspondence,” Economica, n.s. X (Aug., 1943), 253-55.

John Rae (1796-1872), economist. He left Aberdeen for Canada in 1822, and went to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) in 1851. He wrote on philology, geology, and sociology, as well as on political economy. See R. Warren James, John Rae, Political Economist. An Account of His Life and a Compilation of His Main Writings (2 vols., Toronto, 1965).

2.

John Rae, Statement of Some New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy . . . (Boston, 1834). JSM quotes extensively from it in his Pol. Econ., Book I, chap. xi, “Of the Law of the Increase of Capital.”

3.

Rae later published some articles on the Hawaiian language in the newspaper The Polynesian, Sept. 27, Oct. 4, and Oct. 11, 1862. See also Letter 585.

4.

Neil Arnott (1788-1874), well-known physician and natural philosopher. Also from Aberdeen, Arnott had a large and lucrative practice in London, 1811-55. From 1836 he was a member of the Senate of London University.

5.

Nassau Senior.

1.

MS draft at LSE. In reply to Herford’s letter of Oct. 19, 1854, also at LSE.

2.

A paper read to the Manchester Statistical Society on March 9, 1854, published as a pamphlet (Manchester, 1854), and also in Transactions of Manchester Stat. Soc., 1853-54.

3.

See Pol. Econ., Book I, chaps. iv, v, and vi.

1.

MS draft at Yale. Revans’s letters of May 18 and June 8 soliciting the loan and promising repayment in Oct. are also at Yale.

John Revans had been secretary to the Royal Poor Law Commission, 1832-34 and in 1850 had presented reports to the Poor Law Board on the laws of settlement and removal of the poor. See also Earlier Letters, p. 733.

1.

MS draft at LSE. In reply to Herford’s letter of Oct. 27, 1854, also at LSE.

2.

Herford, in his letter of Oct. 27, 1854, had said: “I apprehend that every grain of wheat is in point of fact both a seed, & an article of food, until the very instant when it is either ground into flour, or sown into the earth. It being the actual use & not the destination or intention of using, which decides the question.”

1.

MS in Vatican Library.

2.

Presumably T. B. Macaulay, the historian and essayist, but no information on any connection of his with Villari has been found. For the essay, see Letter 184, n. 4.

3.

They met in Florence in June, 1855. See Letter 242.

1.

MS draft at LSE. In reply to Herford’s letter of Nov. 4, 1854, also at LSE. See Letters 186 and 188.

1.

MS in 1965 in the possession of Joseph H. Schaffner of New York.

2.

The Senses and the Intellect, which was accepted for publication by John W. Parker and Son in 1855.

1.

MS draft at Yale.

2.

See Letter 187.

3.

Actually he did not leave until Dec. 8.

1.

MS draft at Yale. Written on paper (Prospectus) headed, in print: The Safety Life Assurance Company / Chief Offices / 3 Adelphi Terrace / Strand / London.

William Ley, probably a brother of Arthur Ley, husband of Mrs. Mill’s sister Caroline.

2.

See Letter 187.

3.

See Letter 192.

1.

MS draft of first half is at LSE; of the rest, at Leeds. Published in Elliot, I, 184-85.

Sir John McNeill (1795-1883), physician and diplomat, who served in India and Persia, was appointed chairman of the board of supervision for the Scottish Poor Law Act of 1845, and participated in a commission of inquiry on the supplying of troops in the Crimea.

2.

So dated by Elliot. No date appears on the draft.

3.

James Ferrier, Institutes of Metaphysic, The Theory of Knowing and Being (Edinburgh and London, 1854). James Frederick Ferrier (1808-1864), professor of moral philosophy and political economy at St. Andrews, 1845-64.

4.

JSM had taken his wife to Torquay, where she spent the winter. He then left London on Dec. 8, 1854, for an extended tour, which included Italy, Sicily, and Greece. He rejoined his wife in Paris on June 22, 1855.

5.

“Along with whatever any intelligence knows, it must, as the ground or condition of its knowledge, have some cognisance of itself.”

6.

“The object of knowledge, whatever it may be, is always something more than what is naturally or usually regarded as the object. It always is, and must be, the object with the addition of oneself,—object plus subject,—thing, or thought, mecum. Self is an integral and essential part of every object of cognition.”

7.

The portion of the MS at LSE ends here.

1.

MS at Yale. This is the first of a series of 49 letters extending to June 18, 1855.

2.

He had left his wife at Torquay, where she was to remain for some weeks during his absence on the Continent.

3.

Frederick Pope, his walking companion in France the preceding June. In a letter of Dec. 17, 1854, from 16 Oxford Terrace (MS at Johns Hopkins) Pope reported that he had written JSM at Blackheath but had received no reply. He hoped to rejoin JSM on the Continent about the middle of Jan. for the remainder of his journey. The Dec. 17 letter reached JSM in Montpellier on Dec. 23 (see Letter 203).

4.

Probably Deane & Co., hardware merchants, of 46 William St., London Bridge, E.C.

5.

Presumably a housekeeper.

6.

The owner of the house JSM leased at Blackheath.

7.

Dr. John Forbes Royle.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs J. S. Mill / Highfield / Torquay / Devonshire. Postmarks: ORLEANS / 10 / DEC / 54; ??? / 12 DE 12 / 1854; and TORQUAY / DEC 13 / 1854.

2.

Presumably the housekeeper.

3.

See preceding Letter.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs J. S. Mill / Highfield / Torquay / Devonshire. Postmarks: BORDEAUX / 11 / ??? / ???; PAID / 13 DE 13 / 1854; and TORQUAY / DE 14 / 1854.

2.

JSM may have read John Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture (London, 1849), chap. vi of which (“The Lamp of Memory”) contains an attack on restoration of old buildings.

3.

Perhaps Biblioteca portatile Del Viaggiatore (Firenze, 1829-30), I, which contains Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso.

1.

MS at Yale, along with a copy of the programme of the ballet. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs J. S. Mill / Highfield / Torquay / Devonshire. Postmarks: BORDEAUX / 13 / DEC / ???; PAID / PO / 15 DEC 15 / 1854; and TORQUAY / DEC 16 / 1854.

2.

One of the guidebooks published by John Murray.

3.

Eugène Durand, Grenadilla. Ballet fantastique en 2 actes et 1 prologue; musique de M. Rochefort . . . , first performed at Bordeaux, Grand théâtre, Dec. 9, 1854.

4.

Fitzroy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan (1788-1855), commander of the British forces in the Crimean War, 1854-55.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs J. S. Mill / Highfield / Torquay / Devonshire. Postmarks: CARCASSONNE / 16 / DEC / 54; PAID / EO / 20 DEC 20 / 1854; TORQUAY / DEC 21 / 1854; and one illegible.

2.

In the Crimea.

1.

MS at Yale. Letter 6 in this series has not been located.

2.

Where Harriet was then staying.

3.

La Favorite, opera by Gaetano Donizetti, first produced by the Paris Opera (1840); in Italy, at the Scala (Milan, 1843), and in England at the Drury Lane Theatre (1843).

4.

See Letter 197.

5.

Vicenzo da Filicaia (1642-1707), Italian poet.

6.

Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803), Italian poet.

7.

By Torquato Tasso (1544-1595).

8.

Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), famous minister of Louis XIV; the Canal du Midi, built (1666-81) under Colbert by Paul Riquet, connects the Atlantic with the Mediterranean with the aid of the Garonne River. At one time it was regarded as a marvel of engineering skill.

9.

Johann Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853), German poet, dramatist, and novelist.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

Brig.-Gen. Sir Samuel Bentham (1757-1831), Jeremy Bentham’s younger brother, who at the time of JSM’s stay in France with the Benthams in 1820, occupied the Château of Pompignan on the heights overlooking the plain of the Garonne between Montauban and Toulouse; later in the same year Sir Samuel acquired the estate of Restinclière near the foot of the mountain of St. Loup, in the neighbourhood of Montpellier (see Autobiog., chap. ii, and Earlier Letters, pp. 10-11).

3.

Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), Neapolitan painter, famous for picturesque landscapes of the Abruzzi.

4.

François Xavier Pascal Fabre (1766-1837), French painter, corresponding member of the Institute, was born and died in Montpellier, but lived for the better part of his life in Rome and Florence. He left his collection of rare books, paintings, and objets d’art to the Museum at Montpellier, which honoured his memory by naming the gallery after him.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

Harriet’s mother and her sister Caroline were staying with her at Torquay.

3.

Nicolas Poussin (ca. 1594-1665), French painter.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

The letter of Dec. 17 from Frederick Pope, 16 Oxford Terrace, is at Johns Hopkins.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

Presumably William Henry Lytton Earle Bulwer, later (1871) Baron Dalling and Bulwer (1801-1872), diplomat, rather than his nephew Edward Robert Bulwer, later (1873) Earl of Lytton (1831-1891), who was serving as his private secretary. Sir Henry was minister plenipotentiary to the court of the Grand Duke of Florence, 1852-55.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

See Letter 168, n. 2.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Inghilterra / Mrs. J. S. Mill / Highfield / Torquay / Devonshire. Postmarks: GENOVA / 30 / DEC??; PAID / EA / s JA 3 / 1855; and TORQUAY / JA 4 / 1855. Last three sentences published in Hayek, p. 213.

2.

The Enlistment of Foreigners Bill had its 3rd reading and passed in the House of Lords on Dec. 18, 1854. Hansard, CXXXVI, cols. 429-61.

1.

MS at Yale. Excerpts published in Hayek, pp. 214-15.

2.

Il Guercino [the squinter], Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591-1666), Italian painter of the Bolognese school whose first style was formed after that of the Carracci.

3.

Lodovico (1555-1619), Agostino (1557-1602), Annibale (1560-1609), Carracci, Bolognese painters; the cousins founded the Bologna Academy.

4.

Conquered in 1792 by the armies of the French Republic, Nice was part of France till 1814, after which date it reverted to Sardinia. Later, by a treaty concluded in 1860 between the Sardinian King and Napoleon II, it was again transferred to France, and the cession was ratified by over 25,000 electors out of a total of 30,700. L’Avenir de Nice, a newspaper, “le porte-parole des partisans de l’annexion, relate jour par jour les sympathies dont sont entourés les soldats français. . . .”

5.

In the autumn of 1853.

6.

“Only inward disunion among the powers of Nature has preserved men hitherto; nevertheless, that great epoch cannot fail to arrive, when the whole family of mankind, by a grand universal Resolve, will snatch themselves from this sorrowful condition, from this frightful imprisonment; and by a voluntary Abdication of their terrestial abode, redeem their race from this anguish, and seek refuge in a happier world, with their Ancient Father. . . .” Trans. by Thomas Carlyle, in his essay “Novalis” (1829), from Lehrlinge zu Sais [The Pupils at Sais] from Novalis Schriften. Herausgegeben von Ludwig Tieck und Friedrich Schlegel (4th ed., 2 vols., Berlin, 1826), II, 43-57.

7.

See Letter 118, n. 5.

8.

It is so much easier to do oneself harm than to do oneself good.

9.

See Letters 195 and 203.

1.

MS at Yale. One excerpt published in Hayek, p. 215.

2.

In April, 1822, the Shelleys had moved to Lerici (near Spezia). On July 8, 1822, Shelley sailed from Leghorn to Spezia in the company of friends; his boat apparently capsized in a squall; his body was washed ashore near Viareggio on July 18.

3.

Meadow, fertile plain.

4.

West is correct.

5.

See Letter 203.

6.

Andrea del Sarto (1486-1531), Florentine painter.

7.

Under the liberal Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold II (1797-1870), who ruled 1824-59, by decree of Oct. 25, 1851, the universities of Pisa and Siena were combined into a single “University of Tuscany.” Theology and jurisprudence were to be taught in Siena; medicine, philology, natural sciences, and mathematics at Pisa.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

Cascine, dairy farms belonging to the government, three miles outside the city.

3.

Harriet’s letter of Dec. 27 to him in reply to his of Dec. 23 (Letter 203) about Frederick Pope.

4.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), Italian engraver of architectural subjects. His immense artistic output was published by his son in 29 vols. containing about two thousand plates (Paris, 1835-37).

5.

Emperor Leopold II (1747-1792), Roman Emperor and Grand Duke of Tuscany, third son of the Empress Maria Theresa and Francis I. He reformed the administration of his state, introduced a rational system of taxation and land reform, established the autonomy of the communes, abolished torture and inquisition, fostered trade and commerce, and liberalized education and schools. He succeeded his brother Joseph II (1741-1790) as Emperor of Austria.

6.

Giovanni Cimabue (ca. 1240-ca. 1302), Florentine painter, Giotto’s teacher.

7.

Of the insurrection under Garibaldi.

8.

The chains of the ancient harbour of Pisa, captured by the Genoese in 1362; parts of them were given to the Florentines, who suspended them at the entrance of the baptistry at Florence but restored them to the Pisans in 1848.

9.

Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi (1804-1873), Italian publicist, frequently imprisoned for his activities in the cause of young Italy; one of the “Triumvirate,” with Mazzini and Montanelli.

10.

Her letter of Dec. 27.

11.

The city was not captured until Sept. 9, 1855.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

Dr. William Wilson (d. April 1, 1896), for many years a leading physician and surgeon in Florence; MD, Göttingen, 1838; LRCP, 1844. See Lancet, April 11, 1896, p. 1035. He attended Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her last illness.

3.

In Pisa at the time there were several paintings by Andrea del Sarto in the chapel of the Annunziata.

4.

Fra Bartolommeo (1475-1517), Florentine painter.

5.

Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494), Florentine painter.

6.

Daniele da Volterra (1509-1566), Italian painter, sculptor, and architect, a follower of Michelangelo.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

Mariana Starke (1762?-1838), pioneer writer of guidebooks. JSM had with him her Travels in Europe between the years 1824 and 1828; adapted to the use of travellers; and Comprising an Historical Account of Sicily with a guide for strangers in that island (2 vols., Leghorn and London, 1828; 8th ed., London, 1833).

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

Lars Porsena (or Porsenna), King of Clusium in Etruria who, according to legend, besieged Rome ca. 508 bc but turned back, impressed by the bravery of the equally legendary Mucius Scaevola. T. B. Macaulay versified the legend in “Horatius” in Lays of Ancient Rome, which JSM had reviewed favourably in WR XXXIX (Feb., 1843), 105-13.

3.

Luca Signorelli (1441-1523), Italian painter. His most famous work is a series of frescoes in the cathedral of Orvieto, begun by Fra Angelico in 1447 and completed by Signorelli ca. 1503.

4.

Fra Angelico (1387-1455), the great friar-painter, who after his death was named “Beato Angelico,” in honour of his religious virtues.

5.

See Letter 122, n. 6.

6.

Stanza 9, line 4 of Shelley’s “Ode to Liberty,” one of JSM’s favourite poems.

7.

Foreigners.

8.

Probably Dr. Richard Deakin (1808-1873), physician and botanist, who had an MD from Pisa (1838). Murray’s Rome (1853 ed.) lists a Dr. O’Brien as his successor, but Deakin is known to have resided at Rome 1860-72; he published Flora of the Colosseum of Rome (London, 1855).

9.

The doctrine of the immaculate conception was declared an article of faith on Dec. 8, 1854.

1.

MS at Yale. Published in part, as two entries, Jan. 15 and 16, in Hayek, pp. 215-17.

2.

Harriet’s letter of Dec. 27 in reply to his of Dec. 23 about Frederick Pope.

3.

A not quite accurate quotation of Napoleon Bonaparte’s oft-quoted sentence of July 21, 1798, before the battle of the Pyramids: “Soldats, songez que, du haut de ces Pyramides, quarante siècles vous contemplent.”

4.

Although from his election to the papacy in 1846 Pius IX (1792-1878) tried to introduce reforms in the government of the Papal States, the Italian revolution of 1848 drove him from Rome. The republic was proclaimed and had a brief existence under the triumvirate of Mazzini, Saffi, and Armellini. United Italy was to become a republic with Rome for her capital. The constituent assembly of Feb. 9, 1849, proclaimed the fall of the temporal power of the popes. Garibaldi’s defence of Rome succeeded for a time, but French forces finally captured the city. Garibaldi left Rome on July 2, 1849, with several thousands of his followers. The French restored the government of Pius IX, who reigned as an absolute sovereign to 1870.

5.

A letter to Sidney Herbert, the Secretary of War, by Queen Victoria, to convey to Florence Nightingale the message that she should tell the wounded and the sick soldiers in the Crimea that the Queen felt deeply their sufferings and admired their courage and heroism. See The Times, Jan. 5, 1855, p. 6.

6.

Frederic Lucas, editor of the Tablet (Dublin) and MP for the County of Meath, was closely identified with the Irish nationalist party. He had come to Rome in the autumn of 1854 to protest a decree of the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Paul Cullen (1803-1878), forbidding priests to interfere in political affairs. Lucas had two interviews with the Pope, at whose suggestion he wrote a “Statement” on the affairs of Catholics in the United Kingdom. He died soon after his return from Rome. For JSM’s earlier connection with Lucas, see Letter 40.

7.

Probably Abraham Hayward (1801-1884), miscellaneous writer; strongly Tory in his views and in later life a bitter critic of JSM.

8.

Lady Caroline Duff-Gordon (d. 1875), wife of Sir William Duff-Gordon (1772-1823) and mother of Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon, who in 1840 had married Lucie, daughter of John and Sarah Austin. Because of JSM’s estrangement from the Austins he might have found it embarrassing to meet Lucie, whom he had known as a child.

9.

Probably Lady Jane Elizabeth Langdale (d. 1872), widow of Baron Henry Bickersteth Langdale (1783-1851), Master of the Rolls, and a close friend of Bentham and James Mill.

10.

Possibly of the family of Alfred Lyall (1795-1865), editor, author. His brother George (1784-1853), merchant and shipowner, had been a director of the East India Co.

11.

“I had first planned and written it as a short essay in 1854. It was in mounting the steps of the Capitol, in January, 1855, that the thought first arose of converting it into a volume. . . .” Autobiog., chap. vii.

12.

Cf. JSM’s remarks on Auguste Comte’s Système de politique positive, Autobiog., chap. vi.

13.

Built in 1642 by Catherine de Medici from the designs of Paolo Marucelli.

14.

In the Vatican Museum, a statue of Meleager with the boar’s head and the dog, found in the Baths of Titus in a perfect state.

15.

Carlo Maratta (1625-1713), Italian painter who worked in Rome.

16.

Presumably Harriet’s mother and sister.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

By Raphael, originally painted for the church of St. Anna.

3.

Pietro Perugino (ca. 1445-1523), Umbrian painter.

4.

Peter Rolandi, foreign and general bookseller, and foreign circulating library, 20 Berners St., Oxford St. W.

5.

Emile Barrault (1799-1869), French politician, philosopher, and publicist; Eugène (Paris, 1839) was his only novel.

6.

Presumably Harriet’s mother and sister had returned to their homes.

7.

The controversy between the Government and the Church arose over efforts to suppress convents and to tax archbishoprics and religious orders whose revenues exceeded certain limits. See The Times, Jan. 2, 1855, p. 8.

8.

See Letter 213, n. 11.

9.

Guido Reni (ca. 1575-1642), Italian painter. His vast fresco “Phoebus and the Hours preceded by Aurora” is in the garden house of the Rospigliosi Palace.

10.

The treaty between Piedmont (Sardinia), France, and England, provisionally signed on Jan. 10, stipulated that Piedmont should furnish 15,000 men, to be maintained at her own expense, for the Crimean War.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

Two Roman Catholic Churches in London: the Bavarian Chapel in Warwick St., W. and St. Mary’s in Moorfields, the oldest Catholic Mission church in the city.

3.

The S. Paolo fuori le Mure had been reduced to ruins in a fire on July 16, 1824. Large sums had been contributed by Roman Catholic sovereigns and princes, and by each successive pope, for the restoration of the building; transept and high altar were finished and dedicated in 1841 by Gregory XVI.

4.

Nicholas I, Emperor of Russia.

5.

Mehemet Ali (1769-1849), Viceroy of Egypt.

6.

Goethe’s son August (1789-1830) died in Rome, Oct. 27, 1830.

7.

Father Kyne, a Roman Catholic priest who had accompanied Lucas to Rome.

8.

The Hon. and Rev. George Talbot (1816-1886), a younger son of Lord Talbot of Malahide, was received into the Church in 1847 and was ordained by Bishop Wiseman. His position at the Vatican was unique. He was chamberlain, intimate friend, and constant attendant to Pope Pius IX. Later his mind gave way, and he spent the last seventeen years of his life in an asylum. During the years of Talbot’s illness the Pope would not allow his rooms, which were near his own, to be disturbed or occupied.

9.

Franceso Raibolini Francia (1450-1517), originally a goldsmith; he became a painter in middle age, chiefly of religious pictures.

10.

See Letter 213, n. 6.

11.

John MacHale (1791-1881), Archbishop of Tuam (Galway, Ireland), a vigorous Irish nationalist and anti-English all his life; he opposed Newman on the ground that an Englishman was not wanted in a university in Dublin, and quarrelled with Cullen about the Catholic University. He, too, was in Rome in 1854.

12.

George William Frederick Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon, at this time the foreign minister; he had earlier (1847-52) been Lord Lieutenant in Ireland.

13.

No such letter has been located to either Richard More O’Ferrall (1797-1880), diplomat, Governor of Malta, 1847-51; or his brother John Lewis More O’Ferrall (1800-1881), commissioner of police, Dublin, 1836-81.

14.

John Chetwode Eustace (1762?-1815), A Tour through Italy (London, 1813, and many later eds.).

15.

William George Ward had become a professor at St. Edmund’s College, Ware, in 1851.

16.

Dr. Edward William Tuson.

17.

Robert Ferguson, M.D. (1799-1865), writer on diseases of women; later physician extraordinary to the Queen.

18.

Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

19.

Cf. JSM’s earlier comments in Letter 214.

20.

See Letter 213, n. 14.

21.

Giocchino Antonio Rossini (1792-1868), Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo, first performed in Rome Jan. 25, 1817, considered, with the Barber of Seville, among Rossini’s masterpieces in comic opera.

1.

MS at Yale. One excerpt published in Hayek, p. 218.

2.

The Villa Mills, which abuts on the Farnese Gardens on the east, was originally built by the Spada family in the 16th century. It was bought by Sir Charles Mills soon after 1800 and in 1825 subjected to a “Gothic” restoration. See Jordan Hülsen, The Forum and the Palatine, trans. Helen Tanzer (New York, 1928), p. 79.

3.

Scipio Barbatus, Roman consul in 298 bc

4.

Scipio Africanus (234-183 bc), one of the greatest Romans. Named Africanus for his having defeated Hannibal and the Carthaginians in 202 bc

5.

Scipio Asiaticus, consul in 190 bc

6.

Subterranean burial places (literally: pigeon houses or dovecotes).

7.

Caecilia Metella, wife of M. Licinus Crassus, praetor in 71, consul in 55 bc

8.

Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius (ca. ad 278-312), Roman Emperor, ad 306-12, erected a circular temple to his son Romulus, which was consecrated in ad 311.

9.

Brundusium, the modern Brindisi.

10.

See Letter 213, n. 6.

11.

Probably 1st ed. of John Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Southern Italy . . . including Naples (London, 1853); 2nd ed. published 1855.

12.

Sebastiano del Piombo (ca. 1485-1547), Italian painter, studied with Bellini; went to Rome in 1511 to paint frescoes in the Villa Farnesina.

13.

Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, Il Sodoma (1477-1549), Italian painter who lived and died in Siena; he painted the “Marriage of Alexander and Roxana” in the Villa Farnesina in 1512.

14.

Tasso, who died in the adjoining convent in 1595, is buried at S. Onofrio; in the upper part of the garden in front of the church stands Tasso’s oak; tradition has it that the poet used to meditate and study under its shade; it was partly blown down during a storm in the autumn of 1842 but had since gained fresh vitality.

15.

The portrait by Guido Reni of Beatrice Cenci (1577-1599), stepdaughter of Lucrezia, second wife of Francesco Cenci (1549-1598), painted, according to family tradition, on the eve of her execution.

16.

The portrait of Lucrezia Cenci was by Michelangelo Amerighi da Caravaggio (1573-1610). Daughter and stepmother were beheaded on Sept. 11, 1599, for having plotted the murder of Cenci. Shelley’s tragedy The Cenci (1820) was based on the famous case.

17.

La Fornarina, “bakeress”—the name given in the middle of the 19th century to Raphael’s portrait of his mistress.

18.

Stendhal writes on visiting the Barberini palace: “[il y a] d’abord le portrait de la célèbre Fornarina, la maîtresse de Raphaël, par Raphaël lui-même. Ce portrait, sur l’authenticité duquel il ne peut s’élever aucun doute, car on trouve des copies contemporaines, est différent de la figure qui, à la galerie de Florence, est donnée comme le portrait de la maîtresse de Raphaël, et a été gravé, sous ce nom, par Morghen. Le portrait de Florence n’est pas même de Raphaël. . . .” From “Les Cenci,” first published (anonymously) in Révue des deux Mondes, 4th ser., XI (July 1, 1837), 10; again published, under his name, in a volume L’Abesse de Castro (Paris, 1839); and in Chroniques italiennes (Paris, 1855), p. 194.

19.

Giulio Romano (ca. 1492-1546), painter and architect, follower of Raphael.

20.

Giovanni Bellini (ca. 1431-1516), Venetian painter; at the Palazzo Barberini was a Virgin and Child.

21.

The palaces of the Doria and Sciarra families.

1.

MS at Yale. The Jan. 26 part and an excerpt from the Jan. 28 part published in Hayek, pp. 218-20.

2.

A portrait of Queen Joanna II of Naples (1371-1435).

3.

Dughet Gaspard Dughet, called Le Guaspre-Poussin (1613-1675), pupil and brother-in-law of Nicolas Poussin.

4.

Salvator Rosa.

5.

Domenichino Zampieri (1581-1641), a follower of Annibale Carracci.

6.

Claude Lorrain (1600-1682). See Modern Painters, I, chap. vii.

7.

Famous Roman prison, also called Carcer Tullianum, oldest Roman monument of Etruscan construction.

8.

Lucius Sergius Catilina (ca. 108-62 bc), who conspired to murder Cicero in order to obtain the consulship for himself. Catiline’s conspirators were arrested and, in violation of the Roman constitution, strangled in the underground dungeon on the slope of the capitol on Dec. 5, 63 bc

9.

Pompeius Magnus (106-48 bc), Roman general, consul, who had made Syria a Roman province; husband of Caesar’s daughter Julia. The statue, an eleven-foot-high figure of Parian marble holding the globe, was found in 1553 in the Vicolo de’Leutari, near the Cancelleria. Legend has it that it stood in the curia of Pompey, and that Caesar fell at its base.

10.

Charlotte A. Waldie Eaton, Rome in the 19th century (1st ed., Rome, 1820, and subsequent eds.).

11.

The Index Librorum Prohibitorum of the Roman Catholic Church.

12.

See Letter 215, n. 14.

13.

“On the 7th inst., at Pistoia, in Tuscany, Emilia, wife of Major S. Charters, R.A.”

14.

“On the 3rd inst. at Cairo, aged 42, Henry Edward Goldsmid Esq., Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay.”

15.

“On the 11th inst., at Durrant House, near Bideford, in his 74th year, James Smith Ley Esq., a Magistrate for the borough of Bideford, and Deputy Lieutenant for Devonshire.” The Times, Jan. 18, 1855, p. 1. He was the father of Arthur Ley, husband of Harriet’s sister Caroline.

1.

MS at Yale.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Inghilterra / Mrs J. S. Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: LYON A PARIS / 5 / FEVR / 55; 7 / FE / 1855; and one illegible.

2.

Ferdinand II (1810-1859).

3.

Not identified.

4.

Archdeacon Julius Charles Hare had died on Jan. 23, 1855.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

Lucullus (d. 56 or 57 bc) Roman general, praetor, consul (74 bc). After his retirement from active duty, he devoted himself to a life of luxury. The tunnel is usually called the Grotta di Posilipo because it is cut through the ridge of the Posilipo hill. It is 2,755 feet long and affords a communication between Naples and Pozzuoli, where Lucullus had many villas.

3.

Ferdinand II.

4.

Lord Aberdeen’s cabinet resigned after John Roebuck’s motion for a select committee to inquire into the mismanagement of the Crimean expedition had passed on Jan. 29, 1855, by a vote of 305 to 148. Palmerston’s first ministry then came into power.

5.

The Times leaders in support of Grey appeared on Jan. 29, p. 8, and Jan. 30, 1855, p. 8.

6.

See Letter 213, n. 11.

7.

Carlo Poerio (1803-1867), Italian politician, brother of the poet and patriot Alessandro Poerio (1802-1848). The brothers were exiled for a time from Naples to Florence, but returned to Naples, where they practised law with their father. Carlo, in 1848, became Minister of Education, resigned, and took his seat in parliament, where he led the constitutional opposition. After parliament was dissolved by King Ferdinand in 1849, Poerio was condemned to 19 years in irons. The exposure of the horrors of the Neapolitan dungeons by W. E. Gladstone in 1851 with special reference to Poerio awakened the indignation of Europe; he was not released, however, until 1858. He became later the vice-president of the parliament in Turin; he died at Florence, 1867.

8.

Shelley, “Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples,” line 4. JSM quotes the line as in the 1824 edition; the 1839 edition has might for light.

9.

The Bank of Baron C. M. Rothschild, 14 Strada Santa Maria in Portico.

10.

André Vieusseux (1789- or 1790-1858), Italy and the Italians in the Nineteenth Century . . . (2 vols., London, 1824).

11.

See Letter 217, n. 10.

12.

Actually Vieusseux was born in Rome, though he died in London.

1.

MS at Yale. Two excerpts published in Hayek, pp. 221-22.

2.

A mountain near Rome which JSM had climbed earlier. In “Spring Flowers in the South of Europe,” Phytologist, IV (Oct., 1860), 289-96, he describes the ascent from Rome, past the Lake of Albano, and declares the panoramic view from the top to be “surely the most glorious, in its combination of natural beauty and grandeur of historical recollections, to be found anywhere on earth.” Quoted in Henry Trimen, “[JSM’s] Botanical Studies,” in John Stuart Mill: notices of his life and works. . . . Reprinted from the Examiner (London, 1873).

3.

Bunyan’s work probably came to mind because JSM had just been reading Macaulay’s essay “John Bunyan” (see next Letter, n. 6). JSM’s recollection of the Pilgrim’s Progress, however, is inaccurate. The wicket gate was not the entrance to Hell, though other details here have some correspondence to Bunyan’s description of the mouth of Hell. Cf. Pilgrim’s Progress, ed. J. B. Wharey and R. Sharrock (Oxford, 1960), pp. 10, 25, 63, and Matt. 7 : 13-14.

4.

As on their trip to Italy in the early months of 1839.

5.

There appears to be no reference in Mrs. Starke’s book to a servant named Gargiulo.

6.

In the MS, above the word ounces is the word pounds, written apparently in Harriet’s hand.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Inghilterra / Mrs J. S. Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: GENOVA / 20 / FEB / 55; BU / ? / FE / 25 / 1855; and one illegible. Excerpt published in Hayek, pp. 222-23.

2.

William Pitt (1708-1778), 1st Earl of Chatham, statesman. Under his leadership, between 1756 and 1760, with great military victories in Europe, America, and India, England reached the high point of her power in the eighteenth century.

3.

See The Times, Feb. 9, 1855, p. 6: “Lord John Russell . . . abuses the ‘ribald press’ for what it has done, expresses his entire satisfaction with Lord Raglan [the previous Minister of War]. . . .”

4.

Ibid., Feb. 13, 1855, p. 4.

5.

Ibid., Feb. 9, 1855, p. 5, and Letter 82, n. 3.

6.

See Macaulay’s “John Bunyan,” first published in 1830.

7.

Under Cavour, who became minister of trade and agriculture in 1850, and Finance Minister later that year, Piedmont had entered trade alliances with England, France, and Belgium; during the Crimean War, Piedmont fought on the side of the British.

8.

Prince Joseph Charles Paul Napoleon, nicknamed Plon-Plon (1822-1891), second son of Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia, and cousin of Louis Napoleon. In 1854 he took part in the Crimean campaign but returned to France to act as the chief director of the National Exhibition of 1855.

9.

See Letter 221.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Inghilterra / Mrs J. S. Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: 25 / FEVR / 55, and 1855 / FE / 28. Two extracts published in Hayek, pp. 224-25.

2.

North wind.

3.

John Goodwin (d. Dec. 13, 1869), the British consul at Palermo.

4.

No record has been found of such a book, but George Dennis in his Handbook for Travellers in Sicily (London, 1864) acknowledges material given him by Goodwin.

5.

The revolution of the Sicilians against the Angevin (French) domination; so called because it broke out at the hour of Vespers on Easter Tuesday, March 13, 1282.

6.

Métayer is rent paid in kind as by share-croppers. See Pol. Ec., Book II, chap. viii.

7.

Not identified.

8.

Probably Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), moral philosopher, author of Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc., first published in 1711; rather than Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (1801-1885), statesman and philanthropist.

9.

William Henry Leslie Melville, a director of the East India Co.

10.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s journal of his trips to Italy, first published under the title “Auch ich in Arkadien!” in Aus meinem Leben, Zweite Abteilung, I. and II. Teil (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1816 and 1817); first published under the title “Italiänische Reise” as vols. 27, 28, and 29 in Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1829). An excellent recent translation and edition is that by W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer (London, 1962).

11.

Theocritus (ca. 310-250 bc), the Greek pastoral poet, born in Sicily.

12.

Not identified.

13.

Santa Rosalia, born at Palermo in 1130, is supposed to have been a niece of Roger II (1093-1154), King of Palermo, of the Norman Dynasty which ruled from 1072. From the age of twelve, Rosalia spent some years in a “damp and gloomy cave,” forty miles from Palermo, in solitude, prayer, and penance. After being removed by an angel to Montepellegrino, she lived in a similar grotto till her death in 1160.

14.

Villiers Meynell, known earlier as Frederick Villiers (b. 1801), was the natural son of a Mr. Meynell and a Miss Hunlocke. Though not related to the Villiers family he was sponsored by it. Enrolled at Cambridge, he was later at Lincoln’s Inn, 1823-25. JSM had presumably known him as a member of the London Debating Society. He served as MP for Saltash, 1831-32, and was elected for Sudbury in 1841, but the election was voided by Parliament for bribery. The latter part of his life was evidently spent on the Continent, and it is reported that he was living near Genoa in 1864.

15.

The novelist Edward Bulwer Lytton and his brother the diplomat Henry Bulwer.

16.

Edward Bulwer Lytton, Pelham, or Adventures of a Gentleman (London, 1828).

17.

Charles Pelham Villiers.

18.

David Octerlony Dyce Sombre. For details of the bribery by the agents of Sombre and Frederick Villiers, see Hansard, LXIII (May 10, 1842), cols. 345 ff.

19.

Not identified.

20.

William Hodge Mill (1792-1853), orientalist; Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, 1848.

1.

MS at Yale. Excerpts published in Hayek, pp. 225-26.

2.

Pope Pius IX had proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception on Dec. 8, 1854; the first copies of the papal bull were in the mail soon after Jan. 14, 1855. The event was celebrated throughout the Catholic world over the entire year 1855.

3.

Not otherwise identified.

4.

See the entry for Oct. 16, 1786, in Goethe’s Italienische Reise. Dido was the daughter of Belus, king of Tyre, and the sister of Pygmalion. After the murder of her husband Sychaeus by Pygmalion, she fled to Africa and there purchased as much land as could be enclosed by the hide of a bull, but she so cut the hide that she obtained enough space for a citadel; this she called “Byrsa” (“hide”). Around it arose the city of Carthage, of which she was thus the founder and first ruler.

5.

Palmerston had announced on Feb. 16 that Lord John Russell would represent England at Vienna in negotiations with France and Austria to serve as a basis for terminating the war in the Crimea. The negotiations were difficult and dilatory; Russell finally resigned on July 13, 1855.

6.

I.e., Moorish.

7.

Not located.

8.

See Italienische Reise, Oct. 26, 1786. In the same entry Goethe says of a Palladio sketch, apparently made from memory of the temple of Minerva, that its inaccuracy “makes the whole a Palmyra-like monstrosity instead of the great loveliness of the real thing” (p. 108 in the Auden-Mayer translation).

9.

Presumably, JSM was at first under the impression that the Feast of the Immaculate Conception was not a movable feast day, and was amused at the postponement “in case of rain”—hence the reference to eclipses.

10.

Probably Vincenzo Mortillaro, Marchese di Villarena (1806-1888), author of Guido per Palermo e per suoi dintorni (Palermo and Oretea, 1847).

11.

Presumably the revolt of the Sicilians against the Neapolitan government of the island in 1848, when the British and the French intervened.

12.

Dissertations, the first two volumes of which were published in 1859.

13.

The usual spelling is Monreale.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

For the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, see preceding Letter, n. 2 and n. 9.

3.

His landlord (see Letter 223).

4.

Pietro Novelli, Il Morrealese (1603-1647).

5.

Messrs Thomas, Brothers, at the corner of Via dell’Aloro, Palermo.

6.

W. H. Bartlett, Pictures from Sicily . . . (London, 1852, 1853, and later eds.).

7.

The villa of the prince of Belmonte, at the foot of Mt. Pellegrino. Both Murray and Bartlett call it “The Casino Belmonte.” Rented at one time by John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury (1791-1852), who died at Naples.

8.

The History of British India.

9.

Horatio Nelson, 1st Baron and Viscount Nelson, became Duke of Bronté in 1801. After his death, the Dukedom of Bronté devolved upon his brother, the Rev. William Nelson, 1st Earl Nelson; his daughter Charlotte Mary, his surviving heir, married Samuel, 2nd Lord Bridport, and succeeded as Duchess of Bronté (according to the law of Sicily). She died Jan. 29, 1874.

10.

The revolution of 1848-49 against Bourbon rule failed, but Palermo was recaptured by Garibaldi in 1860.

11.

John Oates (d. March, 1865).

12.

The Englishman Benjamin Ingham established a winery in Marsala in 1806. At the time of this letter, another Benjamin Ingham was British Vice-Consul in Marsala.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Inghilterra / Mrs J. S. Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent.

2.

His landlord in Palermo.

3.

Edward Lear, Journals of a Landscape Painter in Southern Calabria and the Kingdom of Naples (London, 1852).

4.

The usual spelling is Calatafimi.

5.

A group of islands off the west coast of Sicily between Drepanum (Trapani) and Lilyboeum. Near them the Romans in 214 bc won a great naval victory over the Carthaginians which brought the first Punic War to an end.

6.

Hamilcar Barca (d. 229 bc), Carthaginian general, father of Hannibal.

7.

Giovanni Gussone (1787-1866), Flora siculae synopsis (3 vols., Naples, 1847).

8.

Sir James Edward Smith (1759-1828), The English Flora (5 vols., London, 1824-36).

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Inghilterra / Mrs J. S. Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmark: GIRGENTI. One excerpt from the March 11 portion published in Hayek, pp. 227-28.

2.

See Letter 225, n. 12.

3.

The oldest British winery in Sicily, established in 1789 by a merchant from Liverpool who had discovered Marsala as early as 1763. John Woodhouse introduced the wine of Marsala to the British fleet in 1802; to honour Lord Nelson, it was imported into England as “Bronté-Madeira.”

4.

Not identified.

5.

Charles V of Hapsburg (1500-1558) at the age of sixteen became King of Spain, Naples, Sicily, and the Spanish lands in America; Roman Emperor, 1519-56. Actually, it was the Viceroy Don Carlo d’Aragona who in 1575 had the harbour of Marsala filled with large stones to prevent the ingress of the Barbary corsairs, thus closing one of the most important outlets of Sicilian commerce.

6.

A tip.

7.

As, for example, in the Odyssey, XI, 538.

8.

For Mariana Starke’s account of ruins of Grecian Doric Temples at Selinus, see her Travels in Europe between the years 1824 and 1828 . . . II, Appendix, “An Historical Account of Sicily,” pp. 23-24.

9.

Marius (157-86 bc), Roman statesman and general, who in the decline of his career was forced by his adversary, Sulla, to flee Rome. He took ship to Africa and landed at Carthage. The Roman governor ordered him to leave the country, and Marius is said to have answered the messenger: “Tell the Praetor that you have seen Marius a fugitive, seated amid the ruins of Carthage.”

10.

See Italienische Reise, April 20-27, 1787. Goethe passed through Castel Vetrano on April 21, 1787, on his way to Sciacca and Girgenti. See Auden and Mayer trans., pp. 256-57.

11.

North wind.

12.

Really Vice-Consul. See Letter 225, n. 11.

1.

MS at Yale. Most of the March 21 portion is published in Hayek, pp. 228-29.

2.

See Mariana Starke, Travels in Europe . . . , II, Appendix on Sicily, pp. 28-34.

3.

Including Gladstone, Sir James Graham, and Sidney Herbert.

4.

Raffaele Politi, author of Il viaggiatore in Girgenti e il Cicerone in Piazza (1st ed., Girgenti, 1826; 2nd ed., Palermo, 1842). He kept for sale a collection of Greco-Siculi vases found in the tombs at Agrigentum.

5.

See Goethe, Italienische Reise, entry for April 24, 1787.

6.

The investigation into the conduct of the Crimean War. See n. 3 above and Letter 220, n. 4.

7.

The report of the death of Nicholas was correct. The war ended June 30, 1855.

8.

Frederick II (1194-1250), Roman Emperor, King of Sicily and Jerusalem.

9.

Brazier, warming pan.

10.

In his review of Tennyson’s Poems twenty years earlier, JSM had quoted the description of the valley (WR, XXX [July, 1835], 417-18).

11.

Baron Gabriele Judica (1760-1835), learned antiquary who excavated for many years among the ruins of Acrae and in its metropolis. Mrs. Starke in Travels in Europe . . . , II, Appendix, p. 36, n. 1, describes the collection (later dispersed) as it was in the 1820’s. Who the owner was in 1855 is not known.

12.

The bracketed words, apparently in Harriet’s hand, appear above Fiorelle.

13.

In 734 bc the Corinthians drove out the Siculi, the original inhabitants of Sicily. The new rulers, under Gelon, successfully resisted the Carthaginians. Syracuse flourished and prospered under a succession of enlightened rulers, but in 415 the Athenians began their harassment; they besieged Syracuse in 414; Nicias erected three forts to command the harbour; the war was fought with desperation, and the Athenians, under Demosthenes, alternately succeeded and were repulsed. Ultimately the Syracusans destroyed Nicias’ fleet and the rest of his forces on the banks of the Asinarus, in 413. The abortive attempt of Athens to conquer Syracuse signified the beginning of Athens’ ultimate downfall.

14.

Philip II (382-336 bc), King of Macedonia, who defeated the Greeks at Thermopylae and Chaeronea (338). He was the father of Alexander the Great (356-323 bc).

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Inghilterra / Mrs J. S. Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent.

2.

Michelangelo Politi, brother of Raffaele Politi (see Letter 228).

3.

The Athenians in 413 bc (see ibid., n. 13), and the Carthaginians in 397 bc

4.

A Marchese Casale.

5.

Horace Grant (1800-1859), JSM’s friend and colleague in the Examiner’s office, 1826-45.

6.

See History of the Peleponnesian War, trans. B. Jowett, Book VI. 96 and VII. 2.

7.

Mrs. Starke, Travels in Europe . . . , II, Appendix, p. 37.

8.

The parenthesis was an afterthought, added between the lines.

9.

Knockholt is about twenty miles from Downe, between London and Dover; the Beeches (elevation, 790 feet) are several miles to the southwest.

10.

John Joshua Jeans (d. Aug. 25, 1877), Vice-Consul in Catania.

11.

Of 1669, which nearly destroyed Catania.

12.

The original Convent of St. Benedict, one of the largest monastic institutions in Europe, was spared by the eruption in 1669, but destroyed by an earthquake in 1693. The present building was erected early in the eighteenth century.

13.

“Clean.”

14.

The organ was built by a Calabrian priest, D. Donato del Piano (1698-1785).

15.

Paterno Castello (Ignazio Vincenzo), Prince di Biscari (1719-1786), published a number of works on Sicilian antiquities. See Goethe, Italienische Reise, entry for May 3, 1787.

16.

Bartlett, Pictures from Sicily.

17.

Feast days.

18.

A soft felt hat with broad brim and low crown.

19.

A country hat.

20.

Another consul named Oates. See Letter 227.

21.

Neptune, Roman god of the waters. Hence, a country formed by the action of waters.

22.

See n. 14 above.

23.

Il Trovatore by Verdi, first produced in Rome, Jan. 19, 1853.

24.

Now Acireale.

25.

Built about 735 bc, and destroyed by Dionysius (ca. 432-367 bc), in 403 bc

26.

Presumably Harriet’s son Herbert Taylor.

27.

Harriet’s relatives by the marriage of her sister Caroline to Arthur Ley.

28.

Probably his colleague David Hill at the East India House.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: England / Mrs. J. S. Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Two excerpts published in Hayek, pp. 230-31.

2.

The consul there.

3.

George Finlay (1799-1875), historian, author of History of Greece (7 vols., Edinburgh and London, 1844-61). Finlay had taken part in the Greek War of Independence and was acquainted with Lord Byron.

4.

Sir Thomas Wyse (1791-1862), Irish politician and diplomat; MP for Tipperary, 1830; MP for Waterford, 1835-47; Secretary of the Board of Control for India, 1846-49; minister to Greece, 1849-62; author of works on his travels and on political questions.

5.

See preceding Letter, n. 28.

6.

Frederick Pope.

7.

See Letter 220.

8.

Edward Lear, Journals of a Landscape Painter in Southern Calabria and the Kingdom of Naples (London, 1852). The engraving of Scilla here referred to is reproduced on p. 142 of the edition by Peter Quennell, Edward Lear in Southern Italy (London, 1964).

9.

Small coin.

10.

Not identified.

11.

Not identified.

12.

Sir Henry George Ward (1797-1860), diplomat, MP for St. Albans, 1837, and for Sheffield till 1849. In May 1849 he was appointed Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, then under the protection of the British Crown. He left Corfu on April 13, 1855. Subsequently Governor of Ceylon and Governor of Madras.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: England / Mrs. J.S. Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: CORFU / 12 APR / ?? PAID / ER / 23AP23 / 1855. Excerpt of April 8 portion published in Hayek, pp. 232-33.

2.

The island of Corfu from 1401 to 1797 had been under the rule of Venice. Then after short interregnums by the French and the Russo-Turkish alliance, it was made a British protectorate in 1815. It was ceded to Greece in 1864.

3.

George, later (1860) Sir George Ferguson Bowen (1821-1899), president of Ionian University at Corfu, 1847-51; chief secretary to the government of the Ionian Islands, 1854; first governor-in-chief and vice-admiral of Queensland, Australia, 1859; Governor, Mauritius, 1879; Hong Kong, 1882. Author of John Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Greece . . . new ed., for the most part re-written [by] G[eorge] F[erguson] B[owen] (London, 1854), and of Mount Athos, Thessaly, and Epirus: a diary of a journey from Constantinople to Corfu (London, 1852); also of Ithaca (Corcyra, 1850; 2nd ed., London, 1851, and 3rd, 1854).

4.

He was being transferred from his post as High Commissioner of Corfu.

5.

Henry Pelham Fiennes Pelham Clinton, 5th Duke of Newcastle (1811-1864), minister of colonial affairs in Lord Aberdeen’s cabinet, 1852-54.

6.

See n. 3 above.

7.

Edward Lear, Journal of a Landscape Painter in Greece and Albania (London, 1851).

8.

The British minister to Greece.

9.

Palmerston was Foreign Secretary in Lord John Russell’s ministry, 1847-50.

10.

A band of Greek of Albanian military chiefs during the Greek War of Independence (1821-33).

11.

St. Spiridon, Bishop of Trimithus, in the island of Cyprus (died ca. ad 350). One of the bishops assembled at the Council of Nicaea (ad 325). Patron saint of Corfu, where his body is still preserved, and where it is carried around in solemn procession several times a year.

12.

Sir John Fraser (1792-1864), a retired Indian Army officer, who left the secretaryship in 1854.

13.

Sir John Young (1807-1876), MP for co. Caven, 1831-55; Lord of the Treasury, 1841; Secretary of the Treasury, 1844-46; Privy Councillor, 1852; Chief Secretary for Ireland, 1852-55; Lord High Commissioner of Ionian Islands, 1855-59.

14.

Sir William Young (1773-1848), convicted in 1847 on a charge of conspiracy to sell East India cadetships, but judgment was arrested because of illness. For accounts of his trial, see The Times, Dec. 20, pp. 6-7, and Dec. 21, 1847, pp. 6-7.

15.

Joseph Hume (1777-1855), radical MP 1818-55, had been a lifelong friend of James Mill from the time of their schooldays at Montrose Academy in Scotland.

16.

Sir George Cornewall Lewis.

17.

Robert Vernon Smith, later (1859) Baron Lyvedon (1800-1873), MP for Tralee, 1829; Northampton, 1830; Junior Lord of Treasury under Melbourne, 1835-39; president of Board of Control under Palmerston, 1855-58.

18.

One of these was possibly Ithaca (see n. 3 above); the other may have been an offprint of his Essay on the Ionian Administration—Lord Seaton and Sir Henry Ward, QR, XCI (Sept., 1852), 315-52 (identified as Bowen’s in the Wellesley Index).

19.

Col. A. J. Lawrence of the Rifle Brigade.

20.

Sic. Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford and Baron Guilford of Guilford (1766-1827), had been Chancellor of the University of Corfu, 1824-27.

21.

Col. Edward C. Butler, 36th Reg.

22.

Thomas Love Peacock.

1.

MS at Yale. Excerpt of April 14 portion published in Hayek, pp. 234-35.

2.

Not identified.

3.

Sir Frederick Hankey (1774-1855), retired army colonel; secretary to government in Malta, 1825-38. He had died March 13, 1855 in London, just a month earlier than this letter.

4.

Not identified.

5.

See the preceding Letter, n. 7.

6.

Christopher Wordsworth, Greece, pictorial, descriptive and historical . . . (London, 1839; new ed., 1853).

7.

Probably N. Manzaros (1795-1875), of Corfu, who composed the Greek national anthem and founded there, in 1840, the first Greek Philharmonic Society.

8.

Col. Berkeley Wodehouse (1806-1877); Resident of Ithaca, 1852; of Cephalonia, Feb., 1855; of Zante, June, 1855; Consul in Zante, 1864-70.

9.

Count Candiano Roma.

10.

Henry Reeve (1813-1895), man of letters; foreign editor of The Times, 1840-55; editor of ER, 1855-95. JSM had been acquainted since childhood with Reeve, who was a nephew of Sarah Austin.

11.

JSM probably thought so because of Reeve’s conservative views and the estrangement from John and Sarah Austin. In the years after Harriet’s death in 1858, however, JSM did resume contributions to ER.

12.

According to legend, the great poetess of antiquity killed herself by leaping from the Leucadian rock, because of unrequited love. Beachy Head was a precipitous chalk headland about three miles southwest of Eastbourne, England.

13.

Theodore Kolokotrones (1770-1843), leader in the Greek War of Independence. In 1823 and 1824 he mutinied against the government and was imprisoned, but was released in 1825 to organize resistance to Ibrahim Pasha; his son Gennaios (1800-1868) was his aide-de-camp, later became an Othonian royalist, and briefly prime minister.

14.

Not otherwise identified.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs J.S.Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: PAID / CD / 7 MY 7 / 1855; GRÈCE / MARSEILLE / . Excerpts of April 19, 20, and 21 portions published in Hayek, pp. 235-37.

2.

Winifrede Mary Wyse (d. 1908), daughter of George Wyse (1793-1867), Thomas Wyse’s brother; editor of Sir Thomas’s Excursion in the Peloponnesus in the year 1858 (2 vols., London, 1865) and his Impressions of Greece (London, 1871).

3.

Wyse in March, 1821, had married Laetitia, daughter of Lucien Bonaparte, prince of Canino, but the marriage was unhappy and they separated in 1828. She died in 1872.

4.

Henri Mercier, the French minister since Jan., 1855; before that he was minister at the Court of Saxony, at Dresden. Mercier’s predecessor at Athens was M. Forth-Fouen.

5.

George William Frederick Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle (1802-1864), MP for Morpeth, 1826; MP for Yorkshire, 1830-31; MP for West Riding, 1832-41 and again in 1846; chief secretary for Ireland, 1835-41; chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1850; rector of University of Aberdeen, 1853; undertook a twelve-month continental trip starting summer 1853; Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, 1855-58.

6.

See Letter 229, n. 9.

7.

Simonides (556-467 bc), Greek lyric poet, an Ionian, most of whose life was spent in Athens.

8.

Thrasybulus, an Athenian general, seized Phyle, a hill fort on Mt. Parnes, in 404 bc

9.

George Finlay, the historian. See Letter 230, n. 3.

10.

Cf. “His [Macaulay’s] enemies might perhaps have said before [his return from India] (though I never did so) that he talked rather too much; but now he has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful. . . . ” Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith by his daughter Lady Holland, ed. by Mrs. Austin (2 vols., New York, 1855), I, 320.

11.

Sir Richard Church (1784-1873), liberator of Greece; officer in the Greek troops in the Ionian islands between 1809 and 1815; generalissimo of the Greek insurgents, 1820; led Greek revolution in 1843; general in the Greek army, 1854; lived in retirement in Athens.

12.

Not identified.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs J.S.Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: 2 MY / 1855 and 4 MY / 55.

2.

In the Dervenaki pass on Aug. 6, 1822, the Greeks annihilated a Turkish army.

3.

Salamis, an island off the west coast of Attica, memorable as the scene of the great naval battle in 480 bc when the Greeks under Themistocles utterly defeated the Persians under Xerxes.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs J.S.Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmark: CS / 24MY24 / 1855. Excerpts from the May 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, and 15 portions published in Hayek, pp. 237-43.

2.

Not otherwise identified.

3.

In his play The Frogs, first produced in 405 bc

4.

“The chestnut-tree of the hundred horses,” an extraordinary specimen on the slopes of Etna. It was so named from a tradition that a queen of Aragon took shelter in its trunk with her retinue of one hundred cavaliers. W. H. Bartlett in his Pictures from Sicily, p. 146, presents an engraving of it.

5.

Edward Noel (ca. 1796-ca. 1876), son of Lord Wentworth’s illegitimate son Thomas, and a cousin of Lady Byron; she had him educated at Emmanuel Fellenberg’s famous Academy in Hofwyl, Switzerland, and, in 1830, bought an estate in Euboea for him. See also Thomas Wyse, Impressions of Greece, pp. 36-37, 214-46, and 281-85.

6.

Emile Müller, a German-speaking Swiss, Noel’s partner.

7.

Probably William Bridges Adams (1797-1872), writer under the pseudonym Junius Redivivus and an inventor. He had married Sarah Flower, sister of Eliza Flower, perhaps Harriet’s closest woman friend. See Earlier Letters.

8.

Leonidas, King of Sparta, who held the pass of Thermopylae against the Persians under Xerxes (480 bc).

9.

Christopher Wordsworth’s Greece, pp. 22 and 168 in 1839 ed.

10.

At a spot between Delphi and Daulis.

11.

In Greek versions of the myth, Philomela, sister-in-law of Tereus, was changed into a swallow—a bird which cannot sing—after Tereus had dishonoured her and cut her tongue so that she could not betray him. Tereus was changed into a hoopoe, and his wife Procne, Philomela’s sister, into a nightingale. In Latin versions, it was Philomela who was turned into a nightingale, as in Matthew Arnold’s poem.

12.

Apparently inserted later, above the line.

13.

Philip of Macedon on Aug. 7, 338 bc, defeated the united Athenians and Boeotians here. The discovery of the monumental lion was apparently made by four English travellers in June, 1818. For an account of the lion, and some of its subsequent history, see Murray’s Greece (1884 ed.), pp. 409-11.

14.

Plutarch (ad 50-120) was born in the town and spent his later life there.

15.

See Letter 215, n. 17.

16.

In 479 bc, won by the Greeks over the Persians. See Herodotus, History, Book IX, chaps. 26ff.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Angleterre / Mrs J.S.Mill / Blackheath Park / Kent. Postmarks: CS / 24 / MY / 1855 / GRÈCE / MARSEILLE and B / 29 MY 29 / 1855.

2.

Sidney Locock (1834-1885), third son of the best-known obstetrician in London, Sir Charles Locock (1763-1843); in diplomatic service in Athens (1853), Constantinople (1858), St. Petersburg (1859), Japan, The Hague, and South America.

3.

Alexander Mavrocordato (1791-1865), leader in the Greek War of Independence; elected President, 1822; Prime Minister, 1843, 1844, and again in 1854; retired from public life in Oct., 1855.

4.

Demetrius Kallergis (1803-1867), leader of the Sept., 1843, revolution; proponent of the Anglo-Russian coalition; and Minister of War in Mavrocordato’s cabinet in 1854.

5.

King Otho (1815-1867), second son of Ludwig of Bavaria, was chosen king of Greece in 1832 and was absolute ruler until 1843, when he was forced to grant a constitution. He was deposed in 1862, and died in Germany.

6.

On Lord Palmerston’s refusal to make publicthe protocols of the Vienna conference on the war in the Crimea, The Times editorialized on May 1, p. 9, that “after a gladiatorial exercise between Mr. Disraeli and the Premier . . . it seems really very strange that nothing can be done in the present momentous crisis of our affairs without such an exuberant quantity of laughing and joking. One really would suppose that getting into a war, losing an army, breaking down a ministry, breaking off a negotiation, raising a loan, doubling the income tax, and forming the most extraordinary government on record, were responsibilities of no weight at all. . . .”

7.

The Emperor Louis Napoleon and the Empress had paid a week-long visit to London, arriving at Dover April 16, and had been enthusiastically received and fêted. See daily accounts in The Times.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame J.S. Mill / Poste Restante / à Paris. Postmarks: CORFU / 1 / GIU /, PARIS / 10 / Juin / 55, and one undecipherable. Excerpts of the May 20, 22, 23, 25, 29, and 30 portions are published in Hayek, pp. 243-47.

2.

Epaminondas (ca. 418-362 bc). Theban general and statesman; after defeating the Spartans at Leuctra in 371 bc, he had established his power in the Peloponnese by the fortifications of Megalopolis and Messene.

3.

Ibrahim Pasha (1789-1848), son of Mahomet Ali. His destruction of Tripolitza was in retaliation for the Greeks’ slaughter of the 8,000 Turkish residents there in 1821.

4.

Not identified.

5.

Under the leadership of the semi-legendary hero Aristomenus in the second Messenian War with Sparta, in the 7th century bc

6.

Ictinus, Athenian architect of the time of Pericles (5th century bc).

7.

Pheidias, greatest of the Greek sculptors (5th century bc).

8.

Possibly Dr. D. Frangopulo.

9.

See Letter 232, n. 8.

10.

He did return, however, with Helen Taylor in 1862. See Letters 536, 538, 539, and 540.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

Her death is mentioned in the preceding Letter.

3.

Sir Sidney Smith Saunders (1809-1884), Consul in Albania, 1835; in Alexandria, 1859; Consul-General, Ionian Islands, 1864-70.

1.

MS at Yale.

2.

The First International Paris Exhibition.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Francia / A Madame / Madame J. S. Mill / Poste Restante / à Paris. Postmarks: FIRENZE. . . . One excerpt published in Hayek, pp. 247-48.

2.

See Letter 210, n. 2.

3.

Ajudi Carolina Caracciolo, famous actress of the mid-century.

4.

Not identified.

5.

Giotto di Bondoni (1267-1337), Florentine painter and architect.

6.

Antonio Allegri da Correggio (ca. 1494-1534), some of whose finest paintings were at Parma.

7.

Jules Baudry (1814-1898), publisher specializing in luxury editions of art books, archaeology, and travel.

8.

Michel Angelo, or Michelangelo (1475-1564), the most brilliant representative of the Italian Renaissance.

9.

Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469-1527), the great political philosopher and writer.

10.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), the great Renaissance scientist, mathematician, astronomer, and physicist.

11.

John Murray, Handbook for Travellers in Northern Italy (3rd ed., London, 1853).

12.

Kerch, a seaport of southern Russia, was captured on May 24, 1855.

13.

The Queen did not visit the Paris Exhibition until Aug., 1855.

14.

See Letter 184.

1.

MS at Yale.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: Francia / A Madame / Madame J. S. Mill / Poste Restante / à Paris. Postmarks: FIRENZE, and one illegible. Excerpts from the June 8, 9, and 12 portions published in Hayek, pp. 248-49.

2.

Donato di Nicolo di Betto Bardi, called Donatello (1386-1466), Florentine sculptor.

3.

Giovanni Bologna (1524-1608), sculptor of Dutch origin who spent his mature years in Florence in the service of the Medici.

4.

Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), Florentine goldsmith, sculptor, and autobiographer.

5.

Andrea Orcagna (1308-1368), Florentine painter, sculptor, and architect.

6.

Baccio Bandinelli (1488-1560), Florentine sculptor and painter.

7.

Lorenzo di Medici (1449-1492) and Giuliano di Medici (1453-1478).

8.

Filippo Brunelleschi (ca. 1377-1446), one of the foremost architects of the Renaissance.

9.

Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano, Il Bronzino (1503-1572), Florentine painter.

10.

The “Madonna and Child with Angels” by Giovanni Cimabue (1240-ca. 1302), one of the great landmarks of sacred art.

11.

J. C. L. de Sismondi, Tableau de l’agriculture toscane (Geneva, 1801).

12.

Ruling lords of Mantua in the 14th century, magnificent patrons and promoters of the arts and literature. Their palace contained many frescoes by Mantegna, not by Guilio Romano, as JSM says below.

13.

Giovanni Francesca Caroto (1480-1555), Veronese painter.

14.

Domenico Piola (1627-1703), painter and engraver.

15.

Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506), painter and engraver.

16.

Paolo Caliari Veronese (1528-1588), Venetian painter.

17.

See The Times, June 6, 1855, p. 8: “the cause of Poland . . . is . . . hopeless, and therefore . . . it would be madness in England and France to take any part in promoting resistance in that country. . . . I should most sincerely lament anything which should at all weaken the power of [the Austrian Empire].”

18.

Louis Napoleon, and Austria.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame J. S. Mill / Poste Restante / à Paris. Excerpts from June 14 and 16 portions published in Hayek, p. 250.

2.

Bernardino Luini (1470-1532), Milanese painter.

3.

Michael William Balfe (1808-1870), Irish composer and singer who studied in Italy.

4.

Giacomo Meyerbeer, Le Prophète, first produced in Paris, 1849.

5.

Meyerbeer, Robert Le Diable, first produced in Paris, 1831.

6.

Giulia Sanchioli first sang the part of Fede in a performance of Meyerbeer’s Il Profeta at La Scala on May 23, 1855.

1.

MS at Yale. Envelope addressed: France / A Madame / Madame J.S. Mill / Poste Restante / à Paris. Postmark: LUZERN / 19 / JUN / 55.

2.

According to legend, Wilhelm Tell is said to have killed the despotic Austrian bailiff of Uri, Gessler, about 1370.

1.

MS draft at Leeds. Published in Elliott, I, 185-86.

Wentworth Holworthy (b. 1812), lawyer, author of The Book of Reform, being reflections and plans on the various important questions . . . about to be decided in the New Parliament (London, 1833).

2.

War Notes. Being fragments and rough thoughts on the war and the present crisis. By a Civil Commentator (London, 1855).

3.

The Administrative Reform Association, an organization largely of middle-class businessmen, was formed in the spring of 1855 as the result of public concern over the revelations of gross inefficiency in the supplying of the military forces in the Crimean War. This led to attacks upon the manning of the whole civil service by political patronage from the ranks of the aristocracy rather than from the business class. Important leaders of the Association included Samuel Morley (1809-1886), wealthy manufacturer, politician, and philanthropist; W. S. Lindsay (1816-1877), shipping magnate, MP for Tynemouth and North Shields, 1854-59; and Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894), the archaeologist of Nineveh, MP for Aylesbury, 1852-57. Edwin Chadwick, though not publicly active in the Association, may well have written one of its important pamphlets, The devising hands and executive heads of the English Government (London, 1855). The Association was influential in the establishment of the Civil Service Commission in 1855. For reports of the early meetings of the Association, see The Times, May 7, 1855, p. 6, and June 14, 1855, p. 12. Charles Dickens was the chief speaker at a meeting on June 27; The Times printed his speech in full the next day. Thackeray prepared a speech for the Association for July 11, but did not deliver it: see “Notes for a Speech to the Administrative Reform Association in 1855” in The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. G. N. Ray (4 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1946), III, 678-84.

1.

MS draft at Leeds. In pencil on verso of July 11 draft to Wentworth Holworthy.

Montague Richard Leverson (1830-1917?), M.D., anti-vivisectionist and anti-vaccinationist, author of Copyright and Patents; or Property in Thought . . . (London, 1854) and other works. He spent his later career in the United States.

1.

MS at Arsenal.

Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin (1796-1864), formerly père suprême of the Saint-Simonians, in 1846 organized the Société d’Etudes pour le Canal de Suez, the ideas of which Ferdinand de Lesseps made some use of in planning the Canal. For JSM’s relationship with the Saint-Simonians, see Earlier Letters.

2.

The sea route via the Cape of Good Hope and the land route across Egypt.

1.

MS at UCL.

2.

George Hastings Heppel (1793-1845), accountant, actuary of a life assurance company “made his fortune as a fruiterer and was one of the principal purveyors of ‘desserts’ to public dinners” (Gentleman’s Mag., n.s. XXIII [1845], 666).

Heppel’s widow had inquired of JSM whether the logarithmic tables worked out by her husband could be published. They were figured to the twelfth place, which was unusual at the time, since most such tables then were to only the sixth or seventh place. Heppel’s tables had been partly printed and stereotyped before his death. His son, the mathematician George Heppel (d. 1908), prefaced the stereotyped plates with a memorandum dated Nov. 17, 1855. See next Letter.

1.

MS at UCL.

2.

See preceding Letter. At the Jan. 28, 1856, meeting of the London Institute of Actuaries it was reported that, as a result of De Morgan’s intervention, Heppel’s logarithmic tables had been purchased and would soon be published (Assurance Magazine and Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, VI [1857], 180). See also ibid., X (1863), 82-83; apparently the tables were in the end not published.

1.

MS at LSE.

2.

Sir William Molesworth had died on Oct. 22.

1.

MS at Indiana.

2.

Sic. Thomas Woollcombe (1800-1876), Sir William’s solicitor and friend; chairman of the South Devon Railway, 1844-76.

1.

MS draft at Leeds. Published in Elliot, I, 187-88. Written in response to a request that he should write an epitaph for Sir William Molesworth.

2.

In Parliament Sir William Molesworth had supported Lord Durham’s report of 1838 on Canada and had otherwise made himself expert in colonial affairs. He became Secretary of State for the Colonies shortly before his death.

3.

Molesworth advocated abolition of the Corn Laws, spoke in favour of national education, the extension of suffrage, the abolition of property requirements for members of Parliament, supported free trade, and opposed the Chartists. See M. G. Fawcett, Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir William Molesworth, Bt. (London, 1901). He also edited The English Works of Thomas Hobbes (11 vols., London, 1839-45) and Hobbes, Opera philosophica quae Latine scripsit omnia (5 vols., London, 1839-45).

1.

MS draft at Leeds, except for MS draft of last paragraph, which is at LSE. Published in Elliot, I, 186-87.

2.

See Earlier Letters, pp. 225, 242, 297-98, and Appendix to the present volumes, Letters 183.1, 216.1, 217.1, 248, and 249.

3.

The longest and best obituary appeared in The Times, Oct. 23, 1855, p. 8. See also the Examiner, Oct. 27, p. 679; Sp., Oct. 27, pp. 1106-1107; Athenaeum, Oct. 27, p. 1242; and Gentleman’s Magazine, n.s. XLIV (Dec., 1855), 645-48.

4.

Thomas Perronet Thompson (1783-1869), soldier, politician, and writer, especially on economics, and from 1829 to 1836 proprietor and editor of the WR.

5.

June 6, 1832.

6.

An unheaded article signed John Lemoinne, Journal des Débats, Nov. 9, 1855, p. 1.

7.

After a conversation with JSM about the possibility of his writing an article for the ER on Molesworth, Henry Reeve in a letter to JSM on Dec. 29, 1855 (MS at LSE) made it clear that the family wished to have no public mention of Molesworth’s anti-religious opinions: “Lady Molesworth & Mr. Woolecombe (her chief adviser & Molesworth’s Executor) are of opinion that whilst Sir William’s philosophical opinions derived chiefly from the friends of Mr. Bentham form an essential & interesting part of his character, they are bound with reference to his anti-religious views to observe the same silence which he did himself during his life, & not to bring prominently forward matters on which he said & wrote nothing & which form no part of the papers prepared by himself for publication.”

1.

MS at UCL.

2.

See Letters 248, 249.

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