But, though he was thus early started in life as a city clerk, his
self-training and his education by his father were by no means
abandoned. The ancient and modern languages, as well as the various
branches of philosophy and philosophical thought in which he was
afterwards to attain such eminence, were studied by him in the early
mornings, under the guidance of his father, before going down to pass
his days in the India Office. During the summer evenings, and on such
holidays as he could get, he began those pedestrian exploits for which
he afterwards became famous, and in which his main pleasure appears to
have consisted in collecting plants and flowers in aid of the
botanical studies that were his favorite pastime, and something more
than a pastime, all through his life. His first printed writings are
said to have been on botany, in the shape of some articles contributed
to a scientific journal while he was still in his teens, and it is
probable, that, could they now be detected, we should find in other
periodicals traces of his work, at nearly if not quite as early a
period in other lines of study. That he worked early and with
wonderful ability in at least one very deep line, appears from the
fact that while he was still only a lad, Jeremy Bentham intrusted to
him the preparation for the press, and the supplementary annotation,
of his "Rationale of Judicial Evidence." That work, for which he was
highly commended by its author, published in 1827, contains the first
publicly acknowledged literary work of John Stuart Mill.

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