THE ANNUAL BIOGRAPHY AND OBITUARY, OF 1827. PART I. MEMOIRS OF CELEBRATED PERSONS, WHO HAVE DIED WITHIN THE YEARS 1826-1827. No. I. CHARLES MILLS, ESQ. To the thoughtful observer, the history of the mind of a man of genius and learning can never be destitute of attraction or utility. The whole process by which his faculties have been cultivated and his knowledge has been built up, is in itself well deserving of attention; and if the generous ambition of excellence be apparent throughout as the guiding principle of action, a still higher character will be imparted to the study. Charles Mills was born at Croom's Hill, Greenwich, on the 29th of July, 1788. His family had been long and respectably known in that place, where his grandfather and father had successively exercised the profession of surgeons for nearly half a century, in the enjoyment of the first practice afforded by an opulent vicinity. His father, Samuel Gillam Mills, was not more esteemed for professional ability than for his private qualities of mind and heart. He was a man of powerful intellect, upright intention, and keen sensibility; and the uncompromising integrity of his character was brought conspicuously into public notice upon more than one occasion of his life, on which it is not here necessary to dwell. Charles was the youngest of the family. So early was a fondness for reading imbibed by him, that, when quite a child, a book or a newspaper was a never-failing expedient for quieting his gambols, and rivetting him to a chair. He had been rather a weakly infant; and one severe illness, when a boy of thirteen, betrayed a defective constitution, and perhaps left the seeds of that decay which prematurely terminated his existence. At about the usual age, he was placed at a private school to acquire the rudiments of a classical education. His first and only master was a clergyman of Greenwich; and under that gentleman's tuition was gathered whatever school knowledge of the Latin and Greek he possessed. That he was thoroughly grounded in the classical languages, his subsequent attainments in both fully testify. So natural seemed his predilection for study, and so tenacious was his memory, that his lessons were never a task to him: and when he quitted school, his master dismissed him with this commendation to his father, that "he was fit for anything." But comparatively little of his learning was gained at school; and to subsequent study, undertaken voluntarily, and pursued in private, and without assistance, was he mainly indebted for the sum of his acquire ments. The period having arrived when some choice of a future profession for him became indispensable, his father's views were directed to the law; but this not according with his own wishes, he was placed in a merchant's counting-house. With the details of that occupation, however, a very short trial sufficed to disgust him; and being permitted to relinquish the pursuit of a commercial life, and to adopt his father's original intention, law, he was finally, in 1804, and at about the age of sixteen, articled for five years with Messrs. Williams and Brookes, eminent solicitors of Lincoln's Inn. Between his |