At the age of twelve he became clerk to a notary, and was afterwards apprenticed to a druggist.
During the seven years of his married life Mill published less than in any other period of his career, but four of his most ' Mrs Taylor (Harriet Hardy) was the wife of John Taylor, a wholesale druggist in the city of London.
Having formed an acquaintance with the painter Carstens, whose influence was an important stimulus and help to him, he renounced his trade of druggist, and set up as a portrait-painter and drawing-master.
After attending the grammar school at Lancaster he spent six years as an apprentice to a druggist in that town.
The apothecaries' ordinance at Nuremberg provided that no Theriaca should in future be branded with the seal of the city unless it had been previously examined and declared worthy of the same by the doctors of medicine, and that every druggist must know the age of the Theriaca he sold.