in the balmiest of airs, and the spring twittering of
chaffinches and larks and other little birds, and the gentle music
of the waves. Below the window I look at a very untidy bit of
nondescript ground, with a few white-armed fig-trees and a number
of flaunting Italian daisies--a little farther an enclosure of
glossy green orange-trees laden with fruit; then an olive
plantation, soft and feathery; then a bare, brownish, pleasant
hill, crowned by the "Madonna della Guardia," and stretching to the
sea, which I should like to call blue, but which is a dull grey. Oh
dear, how sorry we shall be to leave it all! You, I know,
understand the sort of shrinking there is after so quiet, so
spoiling, so natural and unconventional a life (not to mention
climate and beauty) from the thought of the overpowering quantity
of people and business of all sorts and the artificial habits of
our own country, in spite of the immense pleasure of looking
forward to brothers and sisters and children and friends.

_Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell_

SAN REMO, _March_ 17, 1870

... No doubt we must always in the last resort trust to our own
reason upon all subjects on which our reason is capable of helping
us. On a question of _language_, Hebrew for instance, if we
don't know it and somebody else does, we cannot of course dispute
his translation, but where nobody questions the words, everybody
has a right--it is indeed everybody's duty--to reflect upon their
meaning and bearing and come to their own conclusions; listening to
others wiser or not wiser than themselves, eagerly seeking help,
but never, oh never fettering their minds by an unconditional and
premeditated submission to _anybody_ else's, or rather
_pretending_ so to fetter it, for a mind will make itself
heard, and there's much false modesty in the disclaimer of all
power or right to judge--that very disclaimer being in fact, as you
say, an exercise of private judgment and a rebellion or protest
against thousands of wise and good and learned men.

_Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline_

SAN REMO, _March_ 23, 1870

You must take John's second letter to Forster, [78] which will
appear in the _Times_ and _Daily News_, as my letter to
you for to-day, as I had already not left myself much time for you,
so that copying them, although th