While he was producing that result of laborious study in a special and intricate subject, his education in all sorts of other ways was continued.  In evidence of the versatility of his pursuits, the veteran author of a short and ungenerous memoir that was published in “The Times” of May the 10th contributes one interesting note.  “It is within our personal knowledge,” he says, “that he was an extraordinary youth when, in 1824, he took the lead at the London Debating Club in one of the most remarkable collections of ‘spirits of the age’ that ever congregated for intellectual gladiatorship, he being by two or three years the junior of the clique.  The rivalry was rather in knowledge and reasoning than in eloquence, mere declamation was discouraged; and subjects of paramount importance were conscientiously thought out.”  In evidence of his more general studies, we may here repeat a few sentences from an account, by an intimate friend of both these great men, of the life of Mr. Grote, which was published in our columns two years ago.  “About this time a small society was formed for readings in philosophical subjects.  The meetings took place at Mr. Grote’s house in Threadneedle Street, on certain days from half past eight till ten in the morning, at which hour the members (all in official employment) had to repair to their respective avocations.  The members were Grote, John Mill, Roebuck, William Ellice, William Henry Prescott, two brothers Whitmore, and George John Graham.  The mentor of their studies was the elder Mr. Mill.  The meetings were continued for two or three years.  The readings embraced a small manual of logic, by Du Trieu, recommended by Mr. Mill, and reprinted for the purpose, Whately’s Logic, Hobbes’s Logic, and Hartley on Man, in Priestley’s edition.  The manner of proceeding was thorough.  Each paragraph, on being read, was commented on by every one in turn, discussed and rediscussed, to the point of total exhaustion.  In 1828 the meetings ceased; but they were resumed in 1830, upon Mill’s ’Analysis of the Mind,’ which was gone over in the same manner.”  These philosophical studies were not only of extreme advantage in strengthening and developing the merits of Mr. Mill and his friends, nearly all of whom were considerably older than he was, they also served to unite the friends in close and lasting intimacy of the most refined and elevating sort.  Mr. Grote, his senior by twelve years, was perhaps the most intimate, as he was certainly the ablest, of all the friends whom Mr. Mill thus acquired.

Many of these friends were contributors to the original “Westminster Review,” which was started by Bentham in 1824.  Bentham himself and the elder Mill were its chief writers at first; and in 1828, if not sooner, the younger Mill joined the number.  In that year he reviewed Whately’s Logic; and it is probable that in the ensuing year he contributed numerous other articles.  His first literary exploit, however, which he cared to reproduce in his “Dissertations