licable to you and me, and
made me think of your "splendida via" and all its results.

_Lady John to Lord John Russell_

EDINBURGH, _March_ 23, 1846

Thanks for your precious letter of Saturday. You need not grieve at
having brought cares and anxieties ... upon me. You have given me
a love that repays them all; and such words as you write in that
letter strengthen me for all that our "splendida via" may entail
upon us, however contrary to my natural tastes or trying to my
natural feelings. What a delightful hope you give of your getting
away on the 2nd--but I am too wise to build upon it.

_Lady John to Lord John Russell_

EDINBURGH, _March_ 25, 1846

.... There is a calmness and fairness and _depth_ in
conversation here which one seldom meets with in London, where
people are too much taken up by the present to dwell upon the past,
or look forward to the future--and where consequently passion and
prejudice are mixed up with most that one hears. Dante, and Milton,
and Shakespeare, etc., have little chance amid the hubbub of the
great city--but with all its faults, the great city is the place in
the world I most wish to see again.... At poor Lady Holland's one
_did_ hear the sort of conversation I find here, and surely
you must miss not only her but her house very much.

_Lord John to Lady John Russell_

_April_ 3, 1846

At all events pray do not distress yourself with the reflexion that
you will not be a companion to me during my political trials. You
have been feeling strong, ... that strength will, I trust, return.
I see no reason why it should not--and there is no one in existence
who can think so well with my thoughts and feel so truly with my
feelings as yourself. So in sickness and in sorrow, so in joy and
prosperity, we must rely on each other and let no discouraging
apprehensions shake our courage.

Meanwhile in Parliament the Irish Coercion Bill was dragging on. Lord
Bessborough and other Whig peers had changed their mind about its value,
and Lord John, instead of proposing an amendment, definitely opposed it.
The Protectionists, eager to revenge themselves upon Peel, who, they felt,
had betrayed them, caught at the opportunity and voted with the Whigs. The
Government was defeated by a large majority on the very day the Repeal of
the Corn Laws passed the House of Lords