for this? is this the way to 'human progress'? And ... but as this will not be read by my unknown critics, I come to a stop." The practice which Miss Nightingale thus satirised has not become less frequent in later days when the newspapers supply their readers not with political speeches but with opinions based on summaries of them, and when what are called "educational handbooks" aim at giving the student the power of passing a critical judgment upon authors without the necessity of reading them. [132] In some marginalia on the _Fioretti_ of St. Francis. [133] Edward Denison, who had died in 1870 at the age of 30. [134] See Vol. I. p. 480. [135] Mystical writer; author of _The Pilgrim and the Shrine_. IV A few days after the appearance of Miss Nightingale's first Paper in _Fraser_, Mr. Mill died of a "local endemic disease" at his house near Avignon. She was profoundly moved:-- (_Miss Nightingale to Julius Mohl._) _May_ 20 [1873]. John Stuart Mill's death was a great shock to me. Mr. Grote used to say of him "Talk of Mill's Logic! why he is thrilling with emotion to the very finger-ends." That is just what he was. Now, speaker and subject are both gone. He said at Mr. Grote's funeral, with an agony of tears, "We might have kept him 10 years longer." And now we say of himself with tears "We might have kept him for 10 years longer." He was only 67. He was always urging me to publish. He used to say, with the passion which he put into everything he did say: "I have no patience with people who will not publish because they think the world is not ripe enough for their ideas: that is only conceit or cowardice. If anybody has thought out any thing which he conceives to be truth, in Heaven's name, let him say it!" I did not answer that letter. I thought that this year (I have left much of the India and War Office work, and much of it has left me) I would resume with John Stuart Mill and do as he told me. I put the article in _Fraser's Magazine_ (which I now send you) to please him. And now he is dead, and will never know that I intended to do what he wished. He used to say, "Tell the world what you think--your experience. It will probably strike the world more than anything that could be told it." He quoted my "Stuff" in his book, which he ought not to have done.[136] I published my book on Socrates' mother[137] partly to please him. It was a very odd thing: it was a subject he had taken up: he was President of a Society for _that_. When he was in England (till a fortnight before his death) I could not find his address: I was so overwhelmed with business and illness. I did not know he was going away. And I did not send him this book. And now he is dead, and will never know. But I scarcely regret his death. He was not a happy man. He was a