James Mill Author:Alexander Bain Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TUTOR TO MISS STUART. 13 Whatever may have been Lady Jane's intentions as to bringing Mill forward for the ministry, this much is clear, that for many years t... more »he principal bond of connexion between him and the Stuart family was the education of their only daughter. We do not know when Mill entered on this task, nor how it was reconciled with his private studies and his attendance at the University. The family resided in Edinburgh in winter, and at Fettercairn House in summer. In Edinburgh, Mill had his own lodging, and probably went to Miss Stuart during certain hours each day. In summer he lived much at Fettercairn. It is possible that he may have been Miss Stuart's tutor before he went to Edinburgh, and may have ceased attending the Montrose Academy for some time before entering the University; in which case, he would be resident the whole year at Fettercairn, excepting the portion of time that the family may have been in Edinburgh. All this is completely in the vague. The one thing certain is that the Stuarts took him to Edinburgh instead of allowing him to proceed to Aberdeen, like the other young men of the neighbourhood, and that their only motive was the education of their child. It is true also that both Sir John and Lady Jane contracted a liking for himself that lasted with their lives; they were never tired of his company. If their patronage had been a mere matter of charitable help to a promising young man, the sending him to Aberdeen would have cost them less than any other mode of effecting the object; but I repeat that this could have been perfectly accomplished without their assistance. We now pass to his career at Edinburgh University. He first appears in the records in 1790: so that he entered college at the unusually advanced age of 17£ years. For this sessi...« less