for scenery and his powers of description. He depicts climate, productions, villages, the habits of the people, as well as the views that were encountered. The party make the ascent of Le Pic du Midi de Bigorre, and he is in raptures with the prospect. "Mais jamais je n'oublierai la vue du côte méridionale." In short, to describe its magnificence would need a volume!
We may now conceive with some degree of precision the intellectual caliber of this marvelous boy. In the first place we learn the number of hours that he could devote to study each day. From two to three hours before breakfast, about five hours between breakfast and dinner, and two or three in the evening, make up a working day of nine hours clear; and while at Toulouse scarcely any portion of his reading could be called recreative. His lightest literature was in French, and was intended as practice in the language. Probably at home his reading-day may have often been longer; it would scarcely ever be shorter. For a scholar in mature years eight or nine hours' reading would not be extraordinary; but then there is no longer the same tasking of the memory. Mill's power of application all through his early years was without doubt amazing; and, although he suffered from it in premature ill-health, it was a foretaste of what he could do throughout his whole life. It attested a combination of cerebral activity and constitutional vigor that is as rare as genius; his younger brothers succumbed under a far less severe discipline.
That the application was excessive, I for one will affirm without any hesitation. That his health suffered we have ample evidence, which I shall afterward produce. That his mental progress might have been as great with a smaller strain on his powers, I am strongly inclined to believe, although the proof is not so easy. We must look a little closer at the facts.
I can not help thinking that the rapid and unbroken transitions from one study to another must have been unfavorable to a due impression on the memory. He lost not a moment in passing from subject to subject in his reading: he hurried home from his music-lesson or fencing-lesson to his books. Now, we know well enough that the nervous currents, when strongly aroused in any direction, tend to persist for some time: in the case of learning anything, this persistence will count in stamping the impression; and part of the effect of a lesson must be lost in hurrying without a moment's break to something new, even although the change of subject was of the nature of relief. By his own account, his lessons at Toulouse, with the exception of French and music, took no effect upon him. Nor is this the worst feature of Mill's programme. According to our present notions of physical and mental training, he ought to have had a decided break in the afternoon. Considering that he was at work from about six in the morning, with only half an hour for breakfast, he should clearly have had, between one and two, a cessation of several hours, extending over dinner; especially as
