John Stuart Mill was born in London on the 20th of May 1806, and died at Avignon on the 8th of May 1873. He was of Scotch descent. He was connected with Edinburgh not only as having been an honorary member of this Society, but because his father, James Mill, the historian of British India, and author of the “Analysis of the Human Mind,” received his academical education here. His grandfather was a small farmer, at Northwater Bridge, in the county of Angus, of whom I find nothing more recorded. The father, by his extraordinary intellectual promise when a boy, drew the attention of Sir John Stuart, then member for Kincardineshire, by whom he was sent to the University of Edinburgh, at the expense of a fund, established by Lady Jane Stuart and some other ladies, for educating young men for the Church of Scotland. Towards the end of last century, James Mill attended the classes in Arts and Divinity. He was a pupil of Dalziel, the Professor of Greek, whose prelections he attended, I believe, for three sessions, and his philosophical powers were called forth by Dugald Stewart's lectures in Moral Philosophy.
Newly Elected Honorary Member of the Optical Society of India
