isa Fitzmaurice (daughter
of Lord Lansdowne), one of Lady Russell's earliest friends.

_Lady Russell to Lord Amberley_

PEMBROKE LODGE, _October_ 28, 1873

DEAREST JOHNNY,--... Rollo bought Mill's autobiography, and I
have read the greater part of it. Deeply interesting it is, and his
lovableness comes out in it as much as his intellect--but deeply
sad too, in more ways than one. I live in dread of the possible
effect on you and Kate of the account of his education by his
father--the principles right, the application so wofully wrong.
Mill was a learned scholar, a great thinker, a good man, partly in
consequence, partly in spite of it.... Happily you have more Popes
than one, as good for you as it was for the world in days of old.
Happily, too, there's such a thing as love, _innate, intuitive,
instinctive_ (oh, horrible!), which is wise in proportion to its
depth, and will be your best and safest guide. How strange Mill's
utter silence about his mother I How beautiful and touching the
pages about his wife! How melancholy to know that such high natures
as his and hers generally fail to meet in close intimacy here
below, and therefore live and die more than half unknown, waiting
for the hereafter. God bless you, my very dear children.

Your loving MOTHER

PEMBROKE LODGE, _November_ 9, 1873

Visit from Mr. Herbert Spencer, who stayed to dinner. Long, deep,
interesting conversation; all amounting to "we know nothing," he
assuring me that the prospect of annihilation has no terrors for
him; I feeling that without immortality life is "all a cheat," and
without a Father in heaven, right and wrong, love, conscience, joy,
sorrow, are words without a meaning and the Universe, if governed
at all, is governed by a malignant spirit who gives us hopes, and
aspirations never to be fulfilled, affections to be wasted, a
thirst for knowledge never to be quenched.

"1874 opened brightly and peacefully on our dear home," she writes; but it
was to prove one of the saddest years in their lives. Only some of the
heavy trials and sorrows that they were called upon to bear from this time
onward will be touched upon here. They were borne by Lord and Lady Russell
with heroic courage and unfaltering faith.

_Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline_

PEMBROKE LODGE, _February_ 25, 1874

I am now just finishi