d approval. Reading over many of her letters to me on various
passages of the Home Rule agitation inside and outside Parliament, I have
been once again filled with admiration and with wonder at the keen
sagacity, the prophetic instinct, which she displayed with regard to this
or that political movement or political man.

All through these letters it becomes more and more manifest that Lady
Russell's devotedness was in every instance to principle rather than to
party, to measures rather than to men. By these words I do not mean to
convey the idea that her nature led her habitually into any cold and
over-calculating criticism of political leaders whom she admired, and in
whom she had been led to feel confidence.

Her generous nature was enthusiastic in its admiration of the men whose
leadership in some great political movement had won her sympathy from the
first; but even with these her admiration was overruled and kept in order
by her devotion to the principles which they were undertaking to carry into
effect, and by the fidelity with which they adhered to these principles.
Even among intelligent and enlightened men and women we often find in our
observation of public affairs that there are instances in which the
followers of a trusted leader are carried away by their personal devotion
into the championship of absolute errors which the leader is
committing--errors that might prove perilous or even, for the time, fatal
to the cause of which he is the recognised advocate.

Lady Russell always set the cause above the man, regarding him mainly as
the instrument of the cause; and if the alternative were pressed upon her,
would have withdrawn from his leadership rather than tacitly allow the
cause to be misled. This, however, would have been done only as a last
resort and after the most full, patient, and generous consideration of the
personal as well as the public question.

We men do not expect to find in an enthusiastic, tender, and what may be
called exquisitely feminine woman the quality of clear and guiding
discrimination between the policy of the leader and the principles of the
cause which he undertakes to lead. We are inclined to assume that the woman
in such a case, if she has already made a hero of the man, will be apt to
think that everything he proposes to do must be the right thing to do, and
that any question raised as to the wisdom and justice of any course adopted
by him is a treason against his leadership.