haracter was very amiable, and the immense influence
which, especially in the later years of his life, he exercised, was
partly helped by his personal friendships. But it was unfortunate for
him that in 1865 he was returned to Parliament. His political views,
though it was the eve of the triumph of what might be called his party,
were _doctrinaire_ and out of date, and his life had given him no
practical hold of affairs, so that he more than fulfilled the usual
prophecy of failure in the case of men of thought who are brought late
in life into action. Fortunately for him he was defeated in 1868, and
passed the rest of his life mostly in France, dying at Avignon on 8th
May 1873.

Brought up in an atmosphere of discussion and of books, Mill soon took
to periodical writing, and in early middle life was for some years
editor of the _London and Westminster Review_; but his literary
ambition, which directed itself not to pure literature but to
philosophical and political discussion, was not content with periodical
writing as an exercise, and his circumstances enabled him to do without
it as a business. In 1843 he published what is undoubtedly his chief
work, _A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive_, five years later
a companion treatise on _Political Economy_ which may perhaps rank
second. In 1859 his essay on _Liberty_, a short but very attractive
exposition of his political principles, appeared; next year a collection
of essays entitled _Dissertations and Discussions_. After lesser works
on _Utilitarianism_ and on Comte, of whom he had been a supporter in
more senses than one, but whose later eccentricities revolted him, he
issued in 1865 his _Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_,
which ranks as the third of his chief works, and completes his system,
as far as a system so negative can be said to be completed, on the side
of theology and metaphysics. Among his smaller works may be mentioned
_Representative Government_, and (very late) the fanatical and curious
_Subjection of Women_. His _Autobiography_, an interesting but
melancholy book, appeared shortly after his death.

Mill must be accounted on the whole by good judges, even if they are
utterly opposed to his whole system of philosophy, the chief
philosophical _writer_ of England in this century; and the enormous
though not permanent influence which he attained about its middle was
deserved, partly by qualities purely literary, but partly also by so