John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

94 REVIEWS: WHEWELL; GROTE. 1849-1873.
Carrel," is a piece of French political history, and the replies to
Brougham are scathing. I remember well, in his excitement at
the Revolution, his saying that the one thought that haunted
him was Oh, that Carrel were still alive !
It was for the Westminster of October, 1852, that he wrote
the article on Whewell s Moral Philosophy. What effect it had
upon Whewell himself I cannot say ; in a subsequent
edition of
his Elements of Morality, he took notice of it blandly in reviewing
objectors generally, omitting names. John Grote thought that
in this and in the
"
Sedgwick
"
article, Mill indulged
in a
severity that was unusual in his treatment of opponents. I
could not, for my own part, discover the difference. Yet it is
no wonder, as he told me once, that he avoided meeting Whewell
in person, although he had had opportunities of being introduced
to him (I have no doubt, through his old friend James Garth
Marshall, of Leeds, whose sister Whewell married). *
In 1853, he wrote his final article on Crete s Greece, in which
he enters with enthusiasm into Grote s vindication of the
Athenians and their democratic constitution. He was, quite
as much as Grote, a Greece-intoxicated man. Twice in his life
he traversed the country from end to end. I remember, when I
saw him at the India House after his first tour, he challenged
me to name any historical locality that he had not explored.
His youngest brother, George, died this year at Madeira, where
he had to go on account of disease of the lungs.t He had been
* In the Life of Whewell, by Mrs. Stair Douglas, recently published, there
occur several letters from him to James Garth Marshall. From some of them,
we can plainly see that Marshall had been engaged in counter-arguing Whewell,
on the points where he stood opposed to Mill.
f Dr. M Cosh, in his work on the Scottish Philosophy, has a notice of
James Mill, and publishes the fact that his son George put an end to his own
life. His informant, he says, was resident in Madeira at the time. It was the
case that George, in consequence of very acute suffering, anticipated by a week
or two, the inevitable termination but ; Dr. M Cosh s informant is both errone
ous and coarse in stating the manner of his death.