Lady Russell never seemed to me to yield for a moment to any such sentiment
of mere hero-worship. She set, as I have said, the cause above the man, and
she measured the man according to her interpretation of his policy towards
the cause.

But at the same time she was never one of those who cannot be convinced
that some particular course is not the wisest and most just to adopt
without at once rushing to the conclusion that the leader who makes any
mistakes must be in the wrong because of wilfulness or mere incapacity, and
is therefore not worthy any longer of admiration and trust.

I have many letters from her, written at the time of some serious crisis in
the fortunes of the Irish National movement, which show the keenest and the
earliest intelligence of some mistake in the policy of the party on this or
that immediate question without showing the slightest inclination to
diminish her confidence in the sincerity and the purposes of its leaders,
any more than in the justice of the cause. I can well recollect that in
many instances she proved to be absolutely in the right when she thus gave
me her opinion, and that events afterwards fully maintained the wisdom and
the justice of her criticism. The reason why so many of Lady Russell's
opinions were conveyed to me by letter was that I had to be, like all my
companions of the Irish Parliamentary Party, a constant attendant at the
debates in the House of Commons, and that many days often passed without my
having an opportunity to visit Lady Russell and converse with her on the
subjects which had so deep an interest for her as well as for me. I
therefore was in the habit of writing often to her from the House of
Commons in order to give her my own ideas as to the significance and
importance of this or that debate, of this or that speech and its probable
effect on the House and on the outer public. Lady Russell never failed to
favour me with her own views on such subjects, and the views were always
her own, and were never a mere good-natured and friendly adoption of the
opinions thus offered to her.

Then, when I had the opportunity of visiting her at Pembroke Lodge, we were
sure to compare and discuss our views in the conversations which she made
so delightful and so inspiring.

One of her marvellous qualities was that her interest and her intellect
were never wholly absorbed in the passing political questions, but that she
could still keep her mind open to other and ent