Passing much of his time in the modest house that he had bought, that he might be within sight of his wife’s tomb, Mr. Mill was also frequently in London, whither he came especially to facilitate the new course of philosophical and political writing on which he entered.  He found relief also in excursions, one of which was taken nearly every year, in company with his step-daughter, Miss Helen Taylor, into various parts of Europe.  Italy, Switzerland, and many other districts, were explored, partly on foot, with a keen eye both to the natural features of the localities, especially in furtherance of those botanical studies to which Mr. Mill now returned with the ardor of his youth, and also to their social and political institutions.  Perhaps the longest and most eventful of these excursions was taken in 1862 to Greece.  On this occasion it had been proposed that his old friend, Mr. Grote, should accompany him.  “To go through those scenes, and especially to go through them in your company,” wrote Mr. Grote in January, “would be to me pre-eminently delightful; but, alas! my physical condition altogether forbids it.  I could not possibly stay away from London, without the greatest discomfort, for so long a period as two months.  Still less could I endure the fatigue of horse and foot exercise which an excursion in Greece must inevitably entail.”  The journey occupied more than two months; but in the autumn Mr. Mill was at Avignon; and, returning to London in December, he spent Christmas week with Mr. Grote at his residence, Barrow Green,—­Bentham’s old house, and the one in which Mr. Mill had played himself when he was a child.  “He is in good health and spirits,” wrote Mr. Grote to Sir G.C.  Lewis after that visit; “violent against the South in this American struggle; embracing heartily the extreme Abolitionist views, and thinking about little else in regard to the general question.”

It was only to be expected that Mr. Mill would take much interest in the American civil war, and sympathize strongly with the Abolitionist party.  His interest in politics had been keen, and his judgment on them had been remarkably sound all through life, as his early articles in “The Morning Chronicle” and “The London and Westminster Review,” and his later contributions to various periodicals, helped to testify; but towards the close of his life the interest was perhaps keener, as the judgment was certainly more mellowed.  It was not strange, therefore, that his admirers among the working classes, and the advanced radicals of all grades, should have urged him, and that, after some hesitation, he should have consented, to become a candidate for Westminster at the general election of 1865.  That candidature will be long remembered as a notable example of the dignified way in which an honest man, and one who was as much a philosopher in practice as in theory, can do all that is needful, and avoid all that is unworthy, in an excited electioneering contest, and submit without injury to the insults of political opponents and of political time-servers professing to be of his own way of thinking.  The result of the election was a far greater honor to the electors who chose him than to the representative whom they chose; though that honor was greatly tarnished by Mr. Mill’s rejection when he offered himself for re-election three years later.