nd less, but more and more, as the time for
leaving them draws nearer. God grant you many and many another
birthday of happiness, as I trust this one is to you and your
home.... Your letter was an echo of much that we had been saying to
one another, as we read our novel--not only does nobody, man or
even woman, see every change and know its meaning in the human
countenance, and interpret rightly the slight flush, the hidden
tremor, the shade of pallor, the faint tinge, etc.; but we don't
think there _are_ perceptible changes to such an extent except
in novels.... I think a great evil of novels for girls, mingled
with great good, is the false expectation they raise that
_somebody_ will know and understand their every thought, look,
emotion.... How glad I am that you have a rival baby to
worship--ours is beyond all praise--oh, so comical and so lovely in
all his little ways and words....

Your most affectionate sister,

F.R.

_Lady Russell to Lady Georgiana Peel_

PEMBROKE LODGE, _November_ 28, 1887

... We have been having such a delightful visit from Lotty ... we
_did_ talk; and yet it seems as if all the talk had only made
me wish for a great deal more. Books and babies and dress and
almsgiving and amusements and the nineteenth century, its merits
and its faults, high things and low things, and big things and
trifles, and sense and nonsense, and everything except Home Rule,
on which we don't agree and couldn't spare time to fight. We did
thoroughly agree, however, as I think people of all parties must
have done, in admiration of a lecture, or rather speech, made at
our school by a very good and clever Mr. Wicksteed, a Nonconformist
(I believe Unitarian) minister on Politics and Morals. The
principle on which he founded it was that politics are a branch of
morals; accordingly he placed them on as high a level as any other
duty of life, and spoke with withering indignation of the too
common practice, and even theory, that a little insincerity, a
little trickery, is allowable in politics, whereas it would not be
in other matters. [108] We were all delighted.

[108] Lady Russell often quoted a saying attributed to Fox,
"Nothing which is morally wrong can ever be politically right."

_Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal_

PEMBROKE LODGE, _March_ 7, 1888

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