Mr John Stuart Mill has not been the first to bestow honour on the surname which he bears. His father, Mr James Mill, had already ennobled the name. An ampler title to distinction in history and philosophy can seldom be produced than that which Mr James Mill left behind him. We know no work which surpasses his 'History of British India' in the main excellencies attainable by historical writers: industrious accumulation, continued for many years, of original authorities--careful and conscientious criticism of their statements--and a large command of psychological analysis, enabling the author to interpret phenomena of society, both extremely complicated, and far removed from his own personal experience. Again, Mr James Mill's 'Elements of Political Economy' were, at the time when they appeared, the most logical and condensed exposition of the entire science then existing. Lastly, his latest avowed production, the 'Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind,' is a model of perspicuous exposition of complex states of consciousness, carried farther than by any other author before him; and illustrating the fulness which such exposition may be made to attain, by one who has faith in the comprehensive principle of association, and has learnt the secret of tracing out its innumerable windings. It is, moreover, the first work in which the great fact of Indissoluble Association is brought into its due theoretical prominence. These are high merits, of which lasting evidence is before the public; but there were other merits in Mr James Mill, less publicly authenticated, yet not less real. His unpremeditated oral exposition was hardly less effective than his prepared work with the pen; his colloquial fertility on philosophical subjects, his power of discussing himself, and of stimulating others to discuss, his ready responsive inspirations through all the shifts and windings of a sort of Platonic dialogue--all these accomplishments were, to those who knew him, even more impressive than what he composed for the press. Conversation with him was not merely instructive, but provocative to the dormant intelligence. Of all persons whom we have known, Mr James Mill was one who stood least remote from the lofty Platonic ideal of Dialectic--[Greek: _Tou didhonai kahi dhechesthai lhogon_]--(the giving and receiving of reasons) competent alike to examine others, or to be examined by them, on philosophy. When to this we add a strenuous character, earnest convictions, and single-minded devotion to truth, with an utter disdain of mere paradox--it may be conceived that such a man exercised powerful intellectual ascendancy over younger minds. Several of those who enjoyed his society--men now at, or past, the maturity of life, and some of them in distinguished positions--remember and attest with gratitude such ascendancy in their own cases: among them the writer of the present article, who owes to the historian of British India an amount of