irely different subjects.
The chamber of her mind seemed to me to be like one of those mysterious
apartments about which we read in fairy stories, which were endowed with a
magical capacity of expansion and reception.

I have come to her home at a time when, for those whose lives were mainly
passed in political work, there was some subject then engaging the
attention of all politicians in these countries--some subject in which I
well knew that Lady Russell was deeply and thoroughly interested.

But it sometimes happened that there were friends just then with her who
did not profess any interest in politics, and who were mainly concerned
about some new topic in letters or art or science, and I often observed
with admiration the manner in which Lady Russell could give herself up for
the time to the question in which those visitors were chiefly interested,
and could show her sympathy and knowledge as if she had not lately been
thinking of anything else. About this there was evidently no mere desire to
please her latest visitors, no sense of obligation to submit herself for
the time to their especial subject, but a genuine sympathy with every
effort of human intellect, and a sincere desire to gather all that could be
gathered from every garden of human culture.

Many of Lady Russell's letters to me on the events and the fortunes, the
hopes and the disasters of our Irish National movement have in them an
actual historical interest, such as the one dated November 27, 1890, which
is quoted in this volume. It was written during the crisis which came upon
our Irish National party at the time when the hopes of Mr. Parnell's most
devoted friends in England as well as in Ireland were that after the result
of a recent divorce suit Parnell would resign, for a time at least, the
leadership of the party and only seek to return to it when he should have
made what reparation was in his power to his own honour and to public
feeling. In a letter of December 26, 1891, Lady Russell says: "Your poor
country has risen victorious from many a worse fall, and will not be
disheartened now, nor bate a jot of heart or hope."

Lady Russell's letters not merely illustrate her deep and noble sympathy
with the cause and the hopes of Ireland, but also they are evidence of the
clear judgment and foresight which were qualities at once of her intellect
and of her feeling. Scattered throughout her letters to me are many other
evidences of the same kind wit