John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

will afford him sensible and permanent
LONG TOUR IN ITALY. 45
benefit for the whole
of his life. . . . That this might have turned to gout."
The next letter is one from himself, dated Rome, nth March.
He : says
"
I have returned here after passing about three
weeks very pleasantly in Naples, and the country about it. I
did not for some time get any better, but I think I am now,
though very slowly, improving, ever since I left off animal
food, and took to living almost entirely on macaroni. I began
this experiment about a fortnight ago, and it seems to succeed
better than any of the other experiments I have tried." The
remainder of the letter describes Naples and the neighbourhood
"Pompeii, Baise, Paestum, &c." Ten As
days later he writes :
" health is at
for me I am going on well too not that my
all better ; but I have gradually got quite reconciled to the
idea of returning in much the same state of health as when I
left England ; it is by care and regimen that I must hope to
get well, and if I can only avoid getting worse, I shall have no
great reason to complain, as hardly anybody continues after my
age (33) to have the same vigorous health they had in early
youth. In the meantime it is something to have so good an
opportunity of seeing Italy." Again, he writes on the 3ist
May, from Munich on his way home :
"
I am not at all
cured, but I cease to care much about it. I am as fit for all
my occupations as I was before, and as capable of bodily
exertion as I have been of late years only I have not quite so
good a stomach." He then dilates on the pleasures
Italian tour, to which he added the Tyrol.
of his
He returned to his
office-work on the ist July. The only indication of his state
"
is in a letter from : Henry John is come back looking
tolerably well he is ; considerably thinner, however." We
infer that his primary affection was in the chest, and to this
was added weakness of stomach. In both these organs, he
was subject to recurring derangements for the rest of his life.*
* He took the opportunity of studying Roman History while in Italy ; and
in Rome itself he read Niebuhr. It was long a design of his to write the