h is
neither talent nor virtue, and which gives him the mysterious secret of
drawing men after him, leaves a deeper sense of emptiness than this; but
lamentation is at once soothed and elevated by a sense of sacredness in
the occasion. Even those whom Mr. Mill honoured with his friendship, and
who must always bear to his memory the affectionate veneration of sons,
may yet feel their pain at the thought that they will see him no more,
raised into a higher mood as they meditate on the loftiness of his task
and the steadfastness and success with which he achieved it. If it is
grievous to think that such richness of culture, such full maturity of
wisdom, such passion for truth and justice, are now by a single stroke
extinguished, at least we may find some not unworthy solace in the
thought of the splendid purpose that they have served in keeping alive,
and surrounding with new attractions, the difficult tradition of patient
and accurate thinking in union with unselfish and magnanimous living.

* * * * *

Much will one day have to be said as to the precise value of Mr. Mill's
philosophical principles, the more or less of his triumphs as a
dialectician, his skill as a critic and an expositor. However this trial
may go, we shall at any rate be sure that with his reputation will
stand or fall the intellectual repute of a whole generation of his
countrymen. The most eminent of those who are now so fast becoming the
front line, as death mows down the veterans, all bear traces of his
influence, whether they are avowed disciples or avowed opponents. If
they did not accept his method of thinking, at least he determined the
questions which they should think about. For twenty years no one at all
open to serious intellectual impressions has left Oxford without having
undergone the influence of Mr. Mill's teaching, though it would be too
much to say that in that gray temple where they are ever burnishing new
idols, his throne is still unshaken. The professorial chairs there and
elsewhere are more and more being filled with men whose minds have been
trained in his principles. The universities only typify his influence on
the less learned part of the world. The better sort of journalists
educated themselves on his books, and even the baser sort acquired a
habit of quoting from them. He is the only writer in the world whose
treatises on highly abstract subjects have been printed during his
lifetime in editio