Readers of the "Autobiography" remember the account Mill gives of his two most brilliant successes achieved by the "Review"—the saving of Lord Durham, and the rescuing of Carlyle's "French Revolution" from probable failure. In an interesting letter, written soon after the "Review" ceased, he insists with even greater empressement on these two feats, but adds, "My third success is that I have dinned into people's ears that Guizot is a great thinker and writer, till they are, though slowly, beginning to read him—which I do not believe they would be doing yet, in this country, but for me." His admiration of Guizot persisted some time longer, and led to his most elaborate article of all, in the "Edinburgh Review," five years later; which article he has seen fit to reprint; but we may suppose that Guizot's subsequent career and writings had a disenchanting effect on him as on many others.[1]
Reverting to the salient idea of his political articles for those seven or eight years—the fatality of there being no leader of the Radical party, although it was composed of very able men—I have often wondered in vain what he expected a leader to do or to be. Everything is not possible even to the greatest of chiefs; and it is doubtful whether any of the men that ever wielded the fierce democracy, from Demosthenes to Gambetta, would have headed a conquering majority in the last years of the Melbourne Ministry. He nearly admits as much, but not without reservation. He says explicitly that his father might have been such a leader; and even implies that he himself could have made the state of matters very different. We may well hesitate on both heads. That his father would have made an able minister or party leader, we must cheerfully allow; but his sentiments and views would have required a thick covering of disguise to allow even his being elected to Parliament, and still more to qualify him for meeting that most pressing want of the time—Reform of the Church.
This paper may fitly conclude with the remaining event of importance in the year 1840—the last illness and death of Mill's favorite brother Henry, which took place at Falmouth, on the 4th of April, in his nineteenth year. He was sent there in the beginning of the year, for the relief of his complaint—consumption; and John plied him with every kindness that he could devise. He went and lived at Falmouth, during his illness, as long as he could get away from his office; and had an opportunity at the same time of seeing a great deal of
- ↑ I can not identify all the signatures of the articles in the "Review"; but, in addition to the contributors incidentally brought forward in the text, I may mention the names of Lytton Bulwer, Charles Buller, J. A. Roebuck, James Martineau, Harriet Martineau, Blanco White, Andrew Bisset, W. J. Fox, Mazzini, George Fletcher, Henry Cole. Never was so much "good blood" infused into a periodical of the same duration. Of old "Reviews," I think it would be difficult to produce nine volumes possessing the same amount of interest and stimulus.
extant indications of his career, but he left few or no reminiscences of his more interesting connections.
