receiving her fiancé in the evening often forgets the drawing of the blinds. Then, even where care is taken to draw the front blinds, there is a shocking amount of thoughtlessness among persons occupying back rooms, in many cases not even the bedroom blinds being drawn when the gas is lighted. The National Review.

And it all comes back-this lack of privacy in the American home-to a want of doors of one sort or another, doors to shut one's self in and to shut others out, that one may enjoy, at times, the privacy that is the right of every individual soul.

Mary Mortimer Maxwell.

Lady Agatha Russell, daughter of the English statesman and his wife who are the subjects of this volume, tells the world in her brief preface: "The manuscripts which have supplied the material for a memoir of my mother deal much more fully with the life of my father than with her own life. . . The greater part of the memoir is written by Mr. Desmond MacCarthy; the political and historical commentary is almost entirely his work. The impartial and independent opinion of one outside the family, both in writing the memoir and in selecting passages from the manuscripts for publication, has been of great value. My grateful thanks are due to His Majesty the King for giving permission to publish letters from Queen Victoria. I am also grateful to friends and relations who have placed letters at my disposal; especially to my brother, whose helpful encouragement throughout the work has been most valuable. . . . My cordial thanks are also due to Mr. George Trevelyan for reading the proof sheets, and to Mr. Frederic Harrison for giving permission to publish his Memorial Address at the end of this volume." I have thought it well to quote the greater part of Lady Agatha's preface at the opening of this article, in order

• With Selections from her Diaries and Correspondence. Edited by Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell. Methuen and Co., Ltd. London.

that the readers of the Fortnightly Review may have from the very beginning that clear idea of the materials and the co-operation which the daughter of the Russell house had in the production of her most interesting narrative. I think it right also to add that in cordially agreeing with her as to the value of the assistance rendered to her by Mr. Desmond MacCarthy, I am not taking advantage of an opportunity to offer a tribute, however well merited, to a member of my own family, for there is, I am sorry to say, no family connection between him and me; but I am fortunate in having come into association with him through the medium of his literary companionship with my dear friend of many years, Lady Agatha Russell. In my early days of literary and political life I came into a casual acquaintanceship with Lord John Russell, and had some interesting and memorable conversations with him. When I first had the honor of being presented to his wife, she was then the Countess Russell, and the pair were living at Pembroke Lodge, which had been presented to them by Queen Victoria so long ago as 1847. After I had settled to a London life, in 1860, I had, of course, constant opportunities of hearing Lord John Russell speak in the House of Commons and afterwards in the House of Lords. The story of this volume is mainly told in the letters which passed

between Lord John Russell and his wife. Nowhere that I know of can be found a more living revelation of equal love and more thorough understanding between husband and wife than is found in these letters. The frequent, though short, separations which had to take place between the pair proved to have been of inestimable advantage to the world of the present and the coming time. Lady John Russell's health compelled her to spend as much as she could of her time in the country, and Lord John Russell had often to attend great public meetings in counties and cities, and it was not always or often advisable for him to submit his loved and loving wife to the fatigue of becoming his companion in the double journey. On all these occasions the couple seem to have exchanged by pen and post their affectionate confidences. I do not believe that there can anywhere be found a more authentic, a more convincing, a more complete record of married love, congeniality and consequent happiness than is given to the world in the letters which passed between the husband and the wife, and which are recorded in this volume.

At the present time it may be peculiarly appropriate and interesting to quote the following passages from an entry in the diary of the Countess Russell, dated July 9th, 1893, on the subject of Home Rule for Ireland.

A new policy Home Rule undoubtedly is, a new departure from the "tradition" of any English party; but not a departure from Liberal principles, only a new application of old ones; and I think it is a pity to speak of it as being against Liberal principles, for is there anybody of average intelligence who would not have predicted that if it should ever be adopted by any party it would be by the Liberals? It

is the proud distinction of Liberals to grow perpetually, and to march with eyes open, and to discover, as they are

pretty sure to do, that they have not always in the past been true to their principles. There is no case exactly parallel with that of Ireland; but there are some in great measure analogous, and it is the Liberals who have listened to the voice of other countries, some of them our own dependencies, in their national aspirations or their desire for Parliaments of their own, expressed by Constitutional majorities. I admire the Unionists for standing by their own convictions with regard to Home Rule, and have always done so; but I cannot call it "devotion to the Union and to Liberal principles," and I am not aware of there being a single Home Ruler not a Liberal. The Unionists, especially those in Parliament, have been, and are, in a very dangerous position, and have yielded too readily to the temptation of a sudden transference of party loyalty upon almost every question from Liberal to Tory leaders. But for those, whether in or out of Parliament, who have remained Liberals-and I know several such-I don't see why, after Home Rule is carried, they should not be once more merged in the great body of Liberals, and have their chances, like others, of being chosen to serve their country in Parliament and in office.

On some other subjects equally active and pressing just now we find Lady Russell's opinions given with like effectiveness in letters of hers addressed from Pembroke Lodge, December 16th. 1893, to Mrs. Drummond:

Oh, my dear child, what opinions can poor I give on the almost insoluble problems you put before me? I wish I knew of any book or any man or woman who could tell me whether a Poor Law, even the very best, is on the whole a blessing or a curse, and how the "unemployed" can be chosen out for work of any useful or productive kind without injury to others equally deserving, and what are the just limits of State interference with personal liberty. The House of Lords puzzles me less. I would simply declare it, by Act of the House of Commons, inju

rious to the best interests of the nation and for ever dissolved. Then it may either show its attachment to the Constitution by giving its assent to its Own annihilation, or oblige us to break through the worn-out Constitution and declare its assent unnecessary. It is beyond all bearing that one great measure after another should be delayed, or mutilated, year after year, by such a body, and I chafe and fret inwardly to a painful degree.

Lady Russell may be credited with having possessed something like а prophetic vision with regard to the troubles which the House of Lords was certain to bring upon itself. Up to this time, while the great majority of the Liberals in these islands and in other lands as well were quite convinced that the peers were certain to keep on asserting the privileges they claimed in such a manner as to bring themselves into unceasing quarrels with the House of Commons and the outer public, it did not seem to have occurred to the Radicals in general that the only thing to do with the hereditary chamber was to get rid of it altogether or compel it to submit to a decree of perpetual subordination. For the daughter of one peer and the wife of another, this was certainly a remarkable display of independent opinion and heroic decision.

Lady Russell seems to have had at once a mind, a temperament, an intellect, as well as an inclination which enabled her to find an unfailing interest in every character and in every phase of human life which came under her notice. In the ordinary course of social life or in the study of historical memoirs, just as in the figures we meet in our everyday existence, we find that almost everyone, with whom we happen to come into acquaintanceship, has subjects which especially attract his or her interest, and from which, therefore, he and she cannot easily be prevailed upon to turn away, even for an

hour of casual conversation. Some of the highest intellects have been accompanied by this limitation. We have all known great thinkers and great writers who have of themselves frankly acknowledged, and in some instances have even actually proclaimed their unwillingness to give up time and thought to wholly unfamiliar and therefore, to them uncongenial topics. I have often heard eminent literary men, eminent artists, eminent Members of Parliament, declare that they found it very hard to turn their attention at once to some entirely unfamiliar subject, and would, therefore, rather keep out of the way of this or that exponent of such a theme until it had ceased to be a novelty and had been quietly left in the background. Lady Russell seems to me to have been entirely free from this peculiarity. I have often wondered whether the world, or at least so much of it as she saw in her ordinary daily life brought for her no bores. This was the more remarkable because she was herself so bright, so animated, so vivacious that one would have expected her to seek especially for intercourse with human creatures endowed with similar characteristics.

At the same time she had and always made manifest with unflinching sincerity and earnestness her enthusiastic admiration for great human beings and great human productions; she never turned away with indifference or impatience from any topic merely because it was unfamiliar to her, or from any opportunity of making a new acquaintance merely because the proposed new quaintance was described as being absorbed in some subject utterly unfamiliar to Lady Russell herself. She could pass from grave to gay, from lively to severe, without effort. Many

ac

of her friends have told me of instances in which they had been surprised to find how readily Lady Rus

sell could enter with the most thorough interest into all the details of a controversy on some question which must have been previously utterly unknown to her. It has, however, to be observed that in most such cases the subject was one which allowed her to inform it with suggestions and appeals coming from her own temperament and illumined by her own inspiration. I can hardly believe that Lady Russell could be brought into converse with any sane human creature from whom she would feel compelled to release herself because of the hopeless dulness of the unfamiliar companion.

My rare and casual meetings with Lord John Russell went on for several years before I had the happiness of coming into any actual acquaintanceship with his wife. When he was in office or when he was in Opposition I had many opportunities of meeting him, and was even a guest with him occasionally at some London social gathering or at some formal Parliamentary festivity. But I began to hear more and more eulogies that were poured out on the gifts and graces, the bounties, the patriotic spirit, and the conjugal devotion of his wife, and I had before very long the happiness of becoming not merely her acquaintance but her friend. But in the meantime was to come about the sad event which sentenced Lady Russell to a world of widowhood. The outer world, indeed, has to read this newly-published volume in order to understand how the love-story of Lord and Lady Russell's married happiness remained a lovestory to its very end. This is to be found most vividly expressed in the letters which passed between them, even on the practical details of questions belonging to administrative work.

Some of the most characteristic passages in the story of this volume are to be found in the letters which passed

between the married pair during the days of their best happiness. These are love-letters in the strictest sense, even when they are mainly taken up as an interchange of ideas, of questions and answers, on some present subject of political and administrative importance. Lord Russell is giving to his inquiring wife a full and minute account of the progress which one of his reform measures is making through the House of Commons and the kind of opposition offered to it by this or that political party, and his wife's replies are brimful of encouraging inspiration, and made practical by various suggestions. But the letters are love-letters all the same. They are as evidently love-letters as if they had passed between the hero and heroine of some drama or some romance. I cannot recall to my mind anything in biographical history which affords to us such a striking illustration of the sympathetic working of poetic love and practical companionship as is to be found in these letters of this wedded pair. So the story goes on until we come to the event which changed the whole current of Lady Russell's life, the death of her husband. Lord Russell's death took place at Pembroke Lodge, May 28th, 1878, and I think it well to quote here the letter which his widow received from Queen Victoria:

Balmoral, May 30th, 1878. Dear Lady Russell,

You

It was only yesterday afternoon I learnt through the papers that your dear husband had left this world of sorrows and trials peacefully, and full of years, the night before, or I would have telegraphed or written sooner! will believe that I truly regret an old friend of forty years' standing, and whose personal kindness in trying and anxious times I shall ever remember. "Lord John," as I knew him best, was one of my first and most distinguished Ministers, and his departure recalls many eventful times. To you, dear

Lady Russell, who were ever one of the most devoted of wives, this must be a terrible blow, though you must have for some time been prepared for it. But one is never prepared for the blow when it comes. And you have

had such trials and sorrows of late years that I most truly sympathize with you. Your dear and devoted daughter will, I know, be the greatest possible comfort to you, and I trust that your grandsons will grow up to be all that you could wish.

Believe me always, yours affectionately,

V. R. I.

What I particularly observed in the public life of Lord John-you once told me you liked his former name and title was a moral tone, a conscientious feeling, something higher and better than is often found in the guiding principle of our most active statesmen, and for this I always admired and reverenced him. His family may learn from him, his country may and will cherish his memory. You alone can tell what you have lost. Ever very sincerely yours, John Bright.

Not less characteristic in its way, or less appropriate, is the following letter from Lady Minto:

June 4th, 1878.

I have been thinking of you all day, and indeed through many hours of the night. I rather wished to hear that the Abbey was to have been his resting-place-but, after all, it matters little, since his abiding-place is in the pages of English history. What none could thoroughly appreciate except those who lived in his intimacy was the perfect simplicity which made him the most easily amused of men, ready to pour out his

stores

of anecdote to old and young-to discuss opinions on a level with the most humble of interlocutors, and take pleasure in the commonest forms of pleasantness-a fine day, a bright flower. Nor do I think that the outside world understood from what depth of feeling the tears rose to his eyes when tales of noble conduct or any high sentiment touched some responsive chord-nor how much "poetic fire" lay under that calm, not cold, manner. I remember often going down to you when London was full of some political anger against himwhen personalities and bitterness were rife and returning from you with the feeling of having been in another world, so entire was the absence of such bitterness, so gentle and peaceful were the impressions I carried

away.

The compilers of this volume give us, in their chapter headed 1878-98, a very full and interesting account of the manner in which Lady Russell contrived to pass some of the years which followed the close of her married life. I may quote here some of the opening passages of this chapter:

From the time of Lord hassell's death in May, 1878, till 1890 she kept no diary, but not long before her death she wrote to her children a few recollections of some of the events during those twelve years. . In the summer of 1883 her son Rollo bought a place Dunrozel-near Haslemere, and from this time till 1891 Lady Russell spent a few months every year at Dunrozel. In 1891 and 1892 she took a house on Hindhead-some miles from Haslemere for a few months. She enjoyed and loved the beautiful wild heather country, which reminded her of Scotland, but after 1892 she felt that home was best for her, and never again left Pembroke Lodge.

I feel bound, for the sake of my readers, to quote some further passages from this very interesting chapter:

Lady Russell had sometimes thought that when days of leisure came, she