things from the downfall
of a corrupt Court, and the call for heroism and self-sacrifice to
a frivolous and depraved city--frivolous and depraved, and yet
containing so much of noble and good--all the nobler and better,
perhaps, from the constant struggle to remain so in that
atmosphere. Even if, as God grant, there is no siege, the serious
thoughts which the prospect of it must give will perhaps not be
lost on the Parisians. I, like you, long that the King of Prussia
may prove that he spoke in all sincerity when he said that he
fought against the Emperor, not France, and be magnanimous in the
conditions he may offer--but what does that precisely mean? John
says he is right to seek for some guarantee against future French
ambition. Hitherto he has acted very like a gentleman, as John in
the House of Lords declared him to be, and may still be your model
sovereign.

_Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell_

PEMBROKE LODGE, _November_ 3, 1870

Your letter is so interesting and raises so many serious thoughts
that I should like to answer it as it deserves, but can't do so
to-day as I am obliged to go to London on business, and have hardly
a moment. The kind of "gigantic brains" which you mention are, I
agree with you, often repulsive--there is a harshness of
_dissent_ from all that mankind most values, all that has
raised them above this earth, which cannot be right--which is the
result of deficiency in some part of their minds or hearts or both,
and not of excess of intellect or any other good thing. If they are
right in their contempt of Christian faith and hope, or of all
other spiritual faith and hope, they ought to be "of all men most
miserable"; but they are apt to reject Christian charity too, and
to dance on the ruins of all that has hitherto sustained their
fellow-creatures in a world of sin and sorrow. That they are not
right, but wofully wrong, I firmly believe, and happily many and
many a noble intellect and great heart, which have not shrunk from
searching into the mysteries of life and death with all the powers
and all the love of truth given them by God to be used, not to lie
dormant or merely receive what other men teach, have risen from the
search with a firmer faith than before in Christ and in the
immortality which he brought to light. I believe that many of t