No timelier or weightier message was ever delivered to a people than the farewell words of Herbert Spencer to the Americans on the eve of his departure from our shores.
THE BARTHOLDI STATUE.
Everybody has heard of the enormous statue of "Liberty Enlightening the World," now nearly completed by Bartholdi, the French sculptor, to be presented to the Americans for erection in the harbor of New York. It is of magnificent proportions, the figure being one hundred and forty-five feet in height, and is intended to stand upon a massive pedestal of equal height. The arm of the figure supports an uplifted torch which will be a brilliant electric light at an elevation of more than three hundred feet above tide-water. It will be a splendid object of art, and certainly embodies a grand idea, standing as it will at the port of the commercial metropolis of the United States—an impressive symbol of the progress of political liberty.
The statue has been constructed at the cost of a quarter of a million of dollars, which has been raised by the subscriptions of a hundred thousand French-men. It is to be presented by the great Republic of Europe to the great Republic of America, and its acceptance involves only the single condition that the American shall furnish a suitable foundation to support it. It will be ready for delivery and erection the coming summer, and it is therefore desirable to bestir ourselves to prepare for it. The pedestal is to be paid for, and will cost at least two hundred thousand dollars. There are a hundred American millionaires who would be delighted with the opportunity of defraying the whole expense if they could have the name of the donor engraved upon it in colossal letters, and thus make it a monument of selfishness, but it would be better to sink it in mid-ocean than to suffer its perversion in this way. It belongs to the American people to construct this pedestal, and it should be a burden upon nobody. Let half a dozen public-spirited and responsible men and women of each town organize themselves into a committee to obtain subscriptions from one dollar to twenty-five dollars, and the amount will soon be raised. It is no charity, and there needs to be no begging. There are plenty of people who would like to have a little stock in this new wonder of the world which will attract multitudes from the four quarters of the earth to behold it.
James Mill. A Biography. By Alexander Bain, LL.D. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 426. Price, $2.
The influence of John Stuart Mill upon the reputation of his father, James Mill, has been twofold: he has advertised him, and at the same time eclipsed him. It is frequently said of James Mill that his greatest work was John Mill; and there are many who suppose that this is his chief title to be remembered. Others think that, though the father may have been a man of some consideration in his time, yet that he has been so superseded by his son that all interest in him has disappeared.
But James Mill is not to be disposed of in this way. It is hardly questionable if James Mill is not, in fact, the greater and more original man of the two. If one is to be regarded as an appendage to the other, the order of time will correspond to the order of rank. No doubt the two Mills will have to be taken together as representative of one system of ideas. But the system, as such, belongs to the father much more than to the son. James Mill led in its development and John Mill followed. The son continued the father's work, expanding, extending, and elaborating it; but he inherited it as a half-constructed system, and, if the father was unable directly to give it its more developed form, he did it indirectly by educating his son entirely with reference to the
