ot to think me in earnest, and to "know that I often write
what I do not mean," a fault unknown to myself, and one to be
corrected, for it is a great fault, if not worse. The letter just
received pleases me much, for I find in it a high tone of moral
rectitude, a noble feeling of devotion to your husband's calling,
an unselfish determination to fulfil your destiny, an abnegation of
domestic comfort, a latent feeling of ambition tempered with
resignation, such as becomes a woman, that do you the highest
honour.... I think the crisis we are going through in England very
alarming ... a frightful system of political immorality is
stalking through the land--the Democracy is triumphant, the
Aristocracy is making a noble and last effort to hold its own,
unfortunately in so bad, so unjust, so selfish, so stupid a cause,
that it must fall covered with shame.... The hero of the day,
Cobden, is a great man in his way, the type of an honest
manufacturer, but for the moment all-powerful. I am domiciled with
your brother and sister, [27] under the same roof, dine daily at
their hospitable table, sit over the fire and cose and prose with
them, sometimes alone with your sister, who thinks and talks very
like you, that is, not only well but very well.

I am very affectionately yours,

W.R.

P.S.--You say it would be unworthy of John to _pine_ for
office. I think the difficulties of a Prime Minister so great and
the toil so irksome that the country ought to be full of gratitude
to any man that will undertake it. I am full of gratitude to Sir
Robert Peel for having sacrificed his ease and enjoyment for the
good of his country, and to enable us to sit in the shade under our
own fig-trees. Glory and gratitude to Peel.

[27] Lady Mary Abercromby.

_Lord John to Lady John Russell_

CHESHAM PLACE, _February_ 15, 1846

I have been to St. Paul's to-day. Mr. Bennett enforced still
further obedience to the Church, and what was strange, he said
Papists and Dissenters were prevented by the prejudices of
education from seeing the truth--as if the same thing were not just
as true of his own Church. I do not see how it is possible to be
out of the Roman Catholic pale and not use one's own faculties on
the interpretation of the Bible. That tells us that our Saviour
said, he who knew that to lo