been thought a sufficient achievement for a whole literary life, may be said without exaggeration to have been the commencement of rational thinking on the subject of India: and by that, and his subsequent {xiv} labours as an administrator of Indian interests under the East India Company, he effected a great amount of good, and laid the foundation of much more, to the many millions of Asiatics for whose bad or good government his country is responsible. The same great work is full of far-reaching ideas on the practical interests of the world; and while forming an important chapter in the history and philosophy of civilization (a subject which had not then been so scientifically studied as it has been since) it is one of the most valuable contributions yet made even to the English history of the period it embraces. If, in addition to the History and to the present treatise, all the author's minor writings were collected; the outline treatises on nearly all the great branches of moral and political science which he drew up for the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, and his countless contributions to many periodical works; although advanced thinkers have outgrown some of his opinions, and include, on many subjects, in their speculations, a wider range of considerations than his, every one would be astonished at the variety of his topics, and the abundance of the knowledge he exhibited respecting them all. One of his minor services was, that he was the first to put together in a compact and systematic form, and in a manner, adapted to learners, the principles of Political Economy as renovated by the genius of Ricardo: whose great {xv} work, it may be mentioned by the way, would probably never have seen the light, if his intimate and attached friend Mr. Mill had not encouraged and urged him, first to commit to paper his profound thoughts, and afterwards to send them forth to the world. Many other cases might be mentioned in which Mr. Mill's private and personal influence was a means of doing good, hardly inferior to his public exertions. Though, like all who value their time for higher purposes, he went little into what is called society, he helped, encouraged, and not seldom prompted, many of the men who were most useful in their generation: from his obscure privacy he was during many years of his life the soul of what is now called the advanced Liberal party; and such was the effect of his conversation, and of the tone of his character, on those who were within reach of its influence, that many, then young, who have since made themselves honoured in the world by a valuable career, look back to their intercourse with him as having had a considerable share in deciding their course through life. The most distinguished of them all, Mr. Grote, has put on record, in a recent publication, his sense of these obligations, in terms equally honourable to both. As a converser, Mr. Mill has had few equals; as an argumentative