tribution to ecclesiastical history in the
shape of a volume of essays on 'The Rise and Progress of the Christian
Religion in the West of Europe to the Council of Trent.' The leisure of
his closing years was, however, chiefly devoted to the preparation, with
valuable introductions, of selections from his own 'Speeches and
Despatches;' and this, in turn, was followed, after an interval of five
years, by a work entitled 'Recollections and Suggestions, 1813-1873,'
which appeared as late as 1875, and which was of singular personal
interest as well as of historical importance. It bears on the title-page
two lines from Dryden, which were often on Lord John's lips in his
closing years:

Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.

[Sidenote: A RETROSPECT]

The old statesman's once tenacious memory was failing when he wrote the
book, and there is little evidence of literary arrangement in its
contents. If, however, Lord John did not always escape inaccuracy of
statement or laboured discursiveness of style, the value not only of his
political reminiscences, but also of his shrewd and often pithily
expressed verdicts on men and movements, is unquestionable, and, on the
whole, the vigour of the book is as remarkable as its noble candour.
Mr. Kinglake once declared that 'Lord John Russell wrote so naturally
that it recalled the very sound of his voice;' and half the charm of his
'Recollections and Suggestions' consists in the artlessness of a record
which will always rank with the original materials of history, between
the year in which Wellington fought the battle of Vittoria and that in
which, just sixty years later, Napoleon III. died in exile at
Chislehurst. In speaking of his own career, Lord Russell, writing at the
age of eighty-one, uses words which are not less manly than modest:

'I can only rejoice that I have been allowed to have my share in the
task accomplished in the half-century which has elapsed from 1819 to
1869. My capacity, I always felt, was very inferior to that of the men
who have attained in past times the foremost place in our Parliament and
in the councils of our Sovereign. I have committed many errors, some of
them very gross blunders. But the generous people of England are always
forbearing and forgiving to those statesmen who have the good of their
country at heart. Like my betters, I have been misrepresented and
slandered by those who know