e came up, your father and I, on Tuesday to dine with
Clarendons, and stayed all yesterday to dine with Salisburys. Many
things strike me on returning to England and English society: the
superiority of its best to those of any other nation; the larger
proportion of vulgarity in all classes; ostentatious vulgarity,
aristocratic vulgarity, coarse vulgarity; the stir and activity of
mind on religion, politics, morals, all that is most worthy of
thought. What is to come of it all? Will goodness and truth
prevail? Is a great regeneration coming? I believe it in spite of
many discouraging symptoms. I believe that a coming generation will
try to be and not only call itself Christian. God grant that each
of my children may add some little ray of light by thought, word,
and deed to help in dispelling the darkness of error, sin, and
crime in this and all other lands.

_Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell_

_June_ 2, 1870

I wish most earnestly for legal and social equality for women, but
I cannot shut my eyes to what woman has already been--the equal, if
not the superior, of man in all that is highest and noblest and
loveliest. I don't at all approve of any appearance of setting one
against the other. Let equal justice be done to both, without any
spirit of antagonism.... I can well believe in all the delights of
Oxford, and envy men that portion of their life.

CHAPTER XII

1870-78

In July, 1870, public attention was abruptly distracted from Irish and
educational questions by the outbreak of the Franco-German War, which
followed immediately upon the King of Prussia's refusal to promise France
that he would never, under any circumstances, countenance his cousin Prince
Leopold's candidature for the Spanish throne. War came as a surprise to
every one, even to the Foreign Office, and its real causes were little
understood at the time. The entire blame fell on Napoleon. Only some, who
had special information, knew that Bismarck had long been waiting for the
opportunity which the extravagant demand of France had just given him; and
very few among the well-informed guessed that he might have had a hand in
contriving the cause of dispute itself. Napoleon, since his annexation of
Savoy, had so bad a reputation in Europe, a reputation which Bismarck had
managed to blacken still more in their recent controversy over Luxembourg,
that people w