worked out, if necessary, by his labour, and the child might be put to school at his expense. Once in every year the examination should be renewed, with a gradually extending range of subjects, so as to make the universal acquisition, and, what is more, retention, of a certain minimum of general knowledge virtually compulsory.'

An ingenious commentator has compared the position of the father under such a system to that of Sir Malachi Malagrowther, the whip. ping boy of James I.9 As we have been assured that any boy or girl of average capacity might easily be taught the principal Greek and English prose classics, besides many other branches of knowledge, before attaining his or her eighth year, it follows that every father in competent circumstances who does not educate his boys and girls up to this standard should be fined.

6

"The question,' says Mill's most formidable antagonist, how large ought the province of liberty to be, is really identical with this: in what respects must men influence each other if they want to attain the objects of life, and in what respects must they leave others uninfluenced ?' 10 Surely influence is too mild a term when the question is when penal and prohibitory legislation shall be put in force. After devoting our best attention to the essay On Liberty, especially to the concluding chapter entitled 'Applications,' and straining all our faculties to arrive at some definite rule

or principle for determining when personal liberty should or should not be infringed, we can discover none, except that everybody should be compelled to do what the author, aided by all but unrivalled wisdom,' deems right, and nobody allowed to do what he deems wrong.

'At first sight, indeed, it might seem as if Mr. Mill was fighting with a shadow; for liberty of philosophising is a postulate which, in general terms, everyone concedes. But when you come to fathom the real feelings which underlie this concession, you discover that almost every man makes it under reservės, which, though acting in silence, are not the less efficacious. Everyone has some dogmas which he cannot bear to hear advocated, and others which he will not allow to be controverted, in his presence.' 11 Mill himself is a striking illustration of this remark. Every attack on Christianity is to be encouraged; but he denounces as 'downright persecution' the comments of the English press on Mormonism.

The legal restraints on divorce are, in his and his wife's judgment, grave and indefensible infringements on liberty. After quoting Wilhelm von Humboldt's opinion that marriage should require nothing more than the will of either party to dissolve it, he qualifies his assent by admitting that when a person, either by express promise or by conduct, has encouraged another to build expectations, and arrange his or her plan of life accordingly, a

He

new series of moral obligations arises which may possibly be overruled but cannot be ignored. Again, if third parties, namely children, have been called into existence, obligations arise on the part of both husband and wife towards them.

It does not follow, nor can I admit, that these obligations extend to requiring the fulfilment of the contract at all costs to the happiness of the reluctant parties; but they are a necessary element in the question; and even if, as Von Humboldt maintains, they ought to make no difference in the legal freedom of the parties to release themselves from the engagement (and I do hold that they ought not to make much difference), they necessarily make a great difference in the moral freedom. A person

is bound to take all these circumstances

into account, before resolving on a step which may affect such important interests of others; and if he does not allow proper weight to these interests, he is morally responsible for the wrong.

There are many men and women who would disregard the moral obligation if the legal obligation were withdrawn or materially weakened; and according to the theory here propounded, there would and should be neither legal nor moral obligation in the way, if there was no child, and both parties agreed to separate. Now how long would the tie retain its sacredness or binding force, if it were liable to be set aside force, if it were liable to be set aside at the first growth of a new inclination—the first feeling of satiety the first discovery of a difference in taste or temper? How many couples ever lived together for a series of years without intervals of struggle; when it required all their firmness, all their consciousness of

the true nature of their position, to bear and forbear, till the habit of mutual concession became a pleasure? We cannot help fancying that many a love match would end within a year or two by the young couple humming in unison:

With all my soul, then, let us part,

Since both are anxious to be free, And I will send you home your heart If you will send back mine to me. We've had some happy hours together, But joy must often change his wing;

And spring would be but gloomy weather,
If we had nothing else but spring.
Tennyson's model wife, Isabel, is
described as having—

The laws of marriage character'd in gold
Upon the blanched tablets of her heart.

The laws of marriage as settled by Mr. and Mrs. Mill would be hardly worthy of such a shrine.

The English law of husband entire and wife, especially the merger of the woman's rights of property, is undeniably open to amendment. But nothing short of entire subversion will satisfy Mill. Equality before the law is not enough. To quote from the Autobiography: In proclaiming the perfect equality of men and women and an entirely new order of things in regard to their relations with one another, the St. Simonians, in common with Owen and Fourier, have entitled themselves to the grateful remem brance of future generations.' Improving, if possible, on the St. Simonians-rather dangerous guides at all times-he has encouraged women to adopt a tone like that of the hen who should request the cock i to take his turn at laying and hatching, while she enacted the more agreeable part of crowing, strutting, and fighting. Till women can man

age

with the resulting cares and duties, to be relieved from maternity there must be an insuperable bar to perfect equality between the sexes; Mill's attempt (in his Subjection of and vain, though ingenious, was Women, published in 1869) to meet

the

displayed the highest order of crea argument that no woman ever ture, science, or the fine arts; not tive genius in any branch of literaeven in poetry, music, and painting, education nor physical strength. which require neither masculine There are no female Homers or Shakespeares; no female Raphaels or Michel Angelos; no female Handels, Beethovens, or Mozarts. Place a list of the first-class women alongside of a list of the first-class men,

and it will be seen at a glance that the hero of Locksley Hall had some show of reason when he propounded his ungallant doctrine:

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy pas

sions, matched with mine, Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.

Mill dwells with justifiable selfcomplacency on his short parliamentary career. His general manner made a highly favourable impres:sion. It was happily described by a very eminent lawyer as a mixture of modesty and authority. Occasionally, too, he gave proof of commendable independence of party, as in his very able speech on the seizure of enemies' goods in neutral : vessels. But his first vote in the House was in a minority of five; and he rarely lost an opportunity of exhibiting his predilection for extreme opinions of the most advanced sort. He absolutely takes credit for the course he pursued with the working men, who had resolved on a second meeting in the parks:

It was the working men who held out, and so bent were they on their original scheme, that I was obliged to have recourse to les grands moyens. I told them that a proceeding which would certainly produce a collision with the military could only be justifiable on two conditions; if the position of affairs had become such that a revolution was desirable, and if they thought themselves able to accomplish one. To this argument, after considerable discussion, they at last yielded and I was able to inform Mr. Walpole that their intention was given up. I shall never forget the depth of his relief or

the warmth of his expressions of gratitude. It was by flattering or humouring the larger public in this fashion, and (above all) by his socialistic views, that he attained his widespread popularity-in contradistinction to the well-earned reputation he enjoyed in a select and limited circle. To add to this popularity, in the early part of 1859 (he states), in compliance with a wish frequently expressed to him by working men, he published, at considerable pecuniary sacrifices, cheap

People's Editions of those of his writings which seemed most likely to find readers among the working classes.

The Grecian orator, when vehemently applauded by the multitude, turned round and asked, 'Have I said anything very foolish?' Mill might well have asked a similar question when he found his writings most popular with the least qualified class of readers, and himself the idol of meeting after meeting assembled to assert rights or promote movements at utter variance with his own well-understood doctrine of utility. What sound Liberals thought of his proceedings may be collected from the reluctant condemnation of Mr. Grote:

I

I deeply regret the mischievous teaching of John Mill. He has abandoned the true principles of political economy. He seems to me to have a fanatical hatred against the rich, simply because they are rich. verily believe he is doing more injury than any man in the present day by his attempt to confiscate property under the plea of the ' unearned increment' of land, and by his other socialistic doctrines.12

No one could have said of him what was said of Lord Lyndhurst, that he had no rubbish in his head.

In

Youthful errors forsooth! Why, we now know that he never had anything youthful about him at any time-except perhaps when, in an epicene fashion, he fell in loveand the worst and most mischievous of his errors were the last. reference to the mixed merits and demerits of O'Connell, Lord Melbourne suggested that he should be hanged on the highest gallows, and a handsome monument erected to his eloquence and patriotism on the spot. Having regard to the many fine qualities of John Stuart Mill's intellect, with their perversion, we think that, among the many proposed modes of doing honour to his memory, the best would be to endow a Mill Professorship for the delivery of an annual course of lectures against the noxious doctrines he has diffused.

bade him be of good cheer, and pursue his admirable course of conduct. The monks of Sterium brought him into the church and endeavoured to exorcise the demon, first with prayers, and afterwards with kicks and blows. Nicolas rushed from the gates of the church shrieking, Kyrie eleison!' He was brought back and shut up in a tower, with a slab of stone against the door, to keep him in. During the night the sleep of the monks was broken by the muffled cries of 'Kyrie eleison!' issuing from the old tower. A thunderstorm burst over the monastery at midnight, and Nicolas dashed the door open, threw down the stone, and leaped forth, shouting between the thunder crashes, Kyrie eleison!' The monks caught him, put shackles on his wrists, and thrust him into a cell. As they sat next day at their meal in the refectory, the door flew open, and in stalked Nicolas with the chains broken in his hands; he clashed them down on the table before their eyes, and shouted 'Kyrie eleison!' till the rafters and walls shook again. The monks rose from table, and thrust him forth, whilst they proceeded with their meal. Nicolas ran to the church, scrambled up the walls-how no one knows; his biographer Bartholomew thinks he must have swarmed up a sunbeam-reached the dome, and mounting to the apex, began to shout his supplication, Kyrie eleison !'

In the meantime the monks had retired for their nap after dinner, when the reiterated cries from the top of the church cupola roused them and made sleep impossible. They came forth in great excitement. One, by order of the hegumen, or abbot, took a stout stick, and ascending to the roof by a

spiral staircase, crawled after the boy, reached him, dislodged him, and with furious blows drove him off the roof.3

The monks now thought the best thing they could do would be to get summarily rid of the maniac by drowning. Papebroeck, the Bollandist, at this point appends the curious note: 'If amongst ourselves, better instructed, it is customary to suffocate those who have been bitten by a mad dog-an atrocious custom

lest they should bite and hurt others, and this is regarded as a rough sort of mercy, is it any wonder that these rude monks should have supposed it proper to make away with a madman upon whom exorcism had failed to produce any effect?'

The monks accordingly tied the hands and feet of Nicolas, drew him down to the shore, threw him into a boat, rowed some way out to sea, and flung him overboard.

But Nicolas broke his bonds,4 as he had shivered the shackles, and swimming ashore, reached land before the monks, and mounting a rock, roared to them as his greeting, Kyrie eleison!'

He

The monks despaired of doing anything to him, and abandoned him to follow his own devices. ran wild among the mountains, and constructed a little hut of logs and wattled branches for his residence. One day he descended to his mother's house and carried off a hatchet, a knife, and a saw, and amused himself fashioning crosses out of the wood of the cedars he cut down, and erecting them on the summit of rocks inaccessible to everyone else.

On another occasion he carried off his brother; but the boy was so frightened at the wild gestures and cries of Nicolas, that he refused to remain more than a night in his cell