Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by WALKER, FULLER, & Co., in the, in th Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

THE

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

NOVEMBER, 1865.

O. 13. The coingham

ART. I.-MILL'S REVIEW OF HAMILTON.

An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, and of the principal Philosophical Questions discussed in his Writings. By JOHN STUART MILL. 2 vols. Boston: W. V. Spencer.

THE personal qualities of John Stuart Mill, as a man deeply interested in every work of social reform, and in every cause which concerns his fellow-creatures, have lately brought him into such wide and distinguished notice, that even his illustrious fame as a thinker on the profoundest problems in metaphysics seems to be, for a time, eclipsed. The man is cordially admired by people who were ignorant enough to suppose him the author of Miss Evans's novel, "Mill on the Floss." Loyal Americans speak of him as the "Great Englishman,"

why great, they know not, except that he liked them, who stoutly maintained their cause throughout the war, as many another Englishman did; and who loved the cause better than they did themselves, because he understood it better. Such a combination of man's practical sympathy with subtile metaphysical speculation is exceedingly rare.

It is the more rare, when, as in Mr. Mill's case, the speculative talent is in excess of the practical. We consider him to be pre-eminently a thinker on abstract problems. In his canvass for Parliament, he opened himself to the criticism of the short-sighted even, by his singular notion that no one should

VOL. LXXIX. -5TH S. VOL. XVII. NO. III.

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