problems with the unflinching courage to stand by the cause of
truth, humanity, and justice. She was not impulsive at all, not
hasty in forming her decisions, still less did she seek publicity
or take pleasure in heading a movement. But, with the great
experience of politicians and of political things which in her long
life and her rare opportunities she had acquired, she saw straight
to the heart of so many vexed problems of our day; and when once
convinced of the truth, she held fast to it with a noble
intrepidity of soul. In a life more or less conversant with public
men now for forty years past, I have rarely known either man or
woman who had a more sound judgment in great public questions. And
I have known none who surpassed her in courage, in directness, and
in fixity of purpose. No sense that she and her friends had to meet
overwhelming odds would ever make her faint-hearted. No desertion
by friends and old comrades ever caused her to waver. No despair
ever touched that stalwart soul, however dark the outlook might
appear; for it was her faith that no right or just cause was ever
really lost, however for the time it were defeated and contemned.

Lady Frances Elliot, as she was before marriage, came of a race of
soldiers, governors, and tried servants of the State, and she
married into a race which has long stood in the front rank of the
historic servants of the Crown and of the people. But neither the
house of Elliot nor that of Russell in so many generations ever
bred man or woman with a keener sense of public duty, a more
generous nature, and a more magnanimous soul. In the annals of that
famous house, whose traditions are part of the history of England,
there has been no finer example of the old motto, _noblesse
oblige_, if we understand it to mean--those who have high place
inherit with it heavy responsibilities. That idea was the breath of
her life to Countess Russell, as assuredly it was also to her
husband, and she whose memory we keep sacred to-day is worthy to
take her place beside that Rachel Lady Russell of old, who, more
than two centuries ago, suffered so deeply in the cause of freedom
and of conscience; she whose blood runs in the veins of the
children who to-day revere the memory of their mother.

The Italians call a man of heroic nature--a Garibaldi or a