the chief of these was a dinner with Mr. Mill at his house at Blackheath, to which Susan and I went about a month ago. Shortly after we reached England last summer Mr. Mill went to Avignon. He had already written most kindly to me saying that he hoped to see me in the autumn on his return to England. But when he came back for the election I was ill, and was unable to see him during his short stay in the country. In the course of the autumn and winter I received several very interesting letters from him, - mainly with regard to the social and political condition and prospects of England. He takes a more hopeful view of affairs than I am able to do, and sees in the great moral changes which have taken place during the last few years the promise of peaceful progress in improvement and reform. He believes that the evils of the state have not become too great for legal remedy, and that there is sufficient moral energy and sense of responsibility in the ruling and powerful and rich class to lead to the application of the measures necessary to bring about a healthier condition of society.

I am quite aware that an intelligent American is very likely to overestimate the dangers resulting from the apparent division of classes, the unequal distribution of power and wealth, the wretched condition of the mass of the productive portion of the population, the increase of poverty, and the inefficiency of the government. But after studying the conditions of the country as well as my opportunities have admitted, and estimating as justly as I am able the sources of erroneous conclusions, I am only confirmed in some of the

strongest of my first impressions, and I cannot but believe that social evils in England are of such enormous magnitude, and so dependent on the principles on which the existing organization of society depends, and from which the existing system of government draws its strength, that the question is imminent whether the nation is to decline into a state of chronic decrepitude, or to be redeemed by a more or less violent revolution which shall complete the work left unfinished by the Cromwellian period, and restore vigour and common life to the various classes which are now arrayed against each other in the weakness of divided interests and uncertain counsels. You will see some of the grounds of my opinion very imperfectly set forth, and insufficiently detailed, in a paper1 which I shall send Gurney next week for the July "North American."

But this is not Mr. Mill. On his return from Avignon in March, to spend a few weeks here, he came to see us, but we unfortunately were out and missed his visit, and then he sent a pleasant note to ask Susan and me to dine with him on a Sunday. Blackheath Park, where he lives, is some seven or eight miles from London, and we went out by train to the station half a mile from his house. The house itself is a square, plain, brick house, in a little plot of ground, of about the size of one of the Kirkland Street places, but with a characteristically English air and look in its seclusion behind a wall, and trim thick shrubbery, and the ivy covering one side

1 This long and carefully considered article, "The Poverty of England," appeared in the "North American" for July, 1869.

and affording a shelter for innumerable twittering sparrows. Over the way is a wide open space of rolling meadow bounded far off by a blue outline of distant hills.

Mill looks like his photograph, but the portrait does not render the sensitiveness of his expression or the nervous action of his refined face. His look, his dress, his air all indicate a nature of acute and delicate sensibilities. There is nothing of the repose so marked in such a countenance and bearing as Emerson's, but his restlessness seems to spring much more from a nervous temperament and fine feminine susceptibility than from any want of moral dignity and self-possession. His manner is entirely that of a gentleman and man of the world, with a tender grace and sweetness about it rarely met with. . . . He is entirely simple, and modest, and makes no claim to the position of superiority and authority which most men would readily grant to him. His expression and manner reveal a very large and important part of his character which is but indirectly and imperfectly indicated by his writings. They impress one with a sense of his habitual intellectual selfcontrol, and give evidence of the strength of the sensitive and affectionate side of his nature. His stepdaughter, Miss Taylor, lives with him, and to her opinions, which are decidedly pronounced, he exhibits a deference which suggests an element of weakness. ... There is nothing epigrammatic, or strained in Mill's talk. It is like the talk of any other intelligent, liberal, well-bred man. Its most interesting characteristic to me was just this; was, in fact, that there was