conversation carried on by the society frequenting the house." It is
perhaps not strange that a boy of eleven, at any rate a boy who was to
become so modest a man, should not take much part in general
conversation; and Mr. Mill himself never, in referring to his father,
led his hearers to suppose that he had, as a child, been in any way
unduly repressed by him. The tender affection with which he always
cherished his father's memory in no way sanctions the belief that he
was at any time subjected to unreasonable discipline. By him his
father was only revered as the best and kindest of teachers.

There was a break in the home teaching in 1820. James Mill, after
bearing bravely with his early difficulties, had acquired so much
renown by his famous "History of India," that, in spite of its adverse
criticisms of the East-India Company, the directors of the Company in
1817 honorably bestowed upon him a post in the India House, where he
steadily and rapidly rose to a position which enabled him to pass the
later years of his life in more comfort than had hitherto been within
his reach. The new employment, however, interfered with his other
occupation as instructor to his boy; and for this reason, as well
probably as for others tending to his advancement, the lad was, in the
summer of 1820, sent to France for a year and a half. For several
months he lived in Paris, in the house of Jean Baptiste Say, the
political economist. The rest of his time was passed in the company of
Sir Samuel Bentham, Jeremy Bentham's brother. Early in 1822, before he
was eighteen, he returned to London, soon to enter the India Office as
a clerk in the department of which his father was chief. In that
office he remained for five and thirty years, acquitting himself with
great ability, and gradually rising to the most responsible position
that could be there held by a subordinate.