tellectual toil, as well as in hours of friendly
intercourse and happy relaxation.

Charles Dickens, speaking in 1869 at a banquet in Liverpool, held in his
honour, over which Lord Dufferin presided, refused to allow what he
regarded as a covert sneer against the House of Lords to pass
unchallenged. He repelled the insinuation with unusual warmth, and laid
stress on his own regard for individual members of that assembly. Then,
on the spur of the moment, came an unexpected personal tribute. He
declared that 'there was no man in England whom he respected more in his
public capacity, loved more in his private capacity, or from whom he had
received more remarkable proofs of his honour and love of literature
than Lord John Russell.' The compliment took Lord Russell by surprise;
but if space allowed, or necessity claimed, it would be easy to prove
that it was not undeserved. From the days of his youth, when he lived
under the roof of Dr. Playfair, and attended the classes of Professor
Dugald Stewart in Edinburgh, and took his part, as a _protege_ of Lord
Holland, in the brilliant society of Holland House, Lord John's leanings
towards literature, and friendship with other literary men had been
marked. As in the case of other Prime Ministers of the Queen's reign,
and notably of Derby, Beaconsfield, and Mr. Gladstone, literature was
his pastime, if politics was his pursuit, for his interests were always
wider than the question of the hour. He was the friend of Sir James
Mackintosh and of Sydney Smith, who playfully termed him 'Lord John
Reformer,' of Moore and Rogers, Jeffrey and Macaulay, Dickens and
Thackeray, Tyndall and Sir Richard Owen, Motley and Sir Henry Taylor,
Browning and Tennyson, to mention only a few representative men.

[Sidenote: LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS]

When the students of Glasgow University wished, in 1846, to do him
honour, Lord John gracefully begged them to appoint as Lord Rector a
man of creative genius, like Wordsworth, rather than himself. As Prime
Minister he honoured science by selecting Sir John Herschel as Master of
the Mint, and literature, by the recommendation of Alfred Tennyson as
Poet Laureate. When Sir Walter Scott was creeping back in broken health
from Naples to die at Abbotsford it was Lord John who cheered the sad
hours of illness in the St. James's Hotel, Jermyn Street, by a
delicately worded offer of financial help from the public funds. Leigh
Hunt, Christopher North, Sheridan Knowles,