of England unusually reticent in superficial relations but open in
intimacy, in whom the qualities of administrator and politician overlay the
detachment of sensitive reflection, she came to judge men and events by
principles drawn from deep feelings and wide surveys; and in the long years
of her widowhood, possessing still great natural vitality and vivacity of
feeling, she continued open to the influences of an altered time,
delighting and astonishing many who might have expected to find between her
and them the ghostly barrier of a generation.

She died in January, 1898. The span of her life covers, then, many
important political events, and we shall catch glimpses of these as they
affect her. Though the intention of the following pages is biographical,
the story of Lady Russell's life, after marriage, coincides so closely with
her husband's public career that the thread connecting her letters together
must be the political events in which he took part. Some of her letters, by
throwing light on the sentiments and considerations which weighed with him
at doubtful junctures, are not without value to the historian. It is not,
however, the historian who has been chiefly considered in putting them
together, but rather the general reader, who may find his notions of past
politics vivified and refreshed by following history in the contemporary
comments of one so passionately and so personally interested at every turn
of events.

Another motive has also had a part in determining the possessors of Lady
Russell's letters to publish them. Memory is the most sacred, but also the
most perishable of shrines; hence it sometimes seems well worth while to
break through reticence to give greater permanence to precious
recollections. With this end also the following pages have been put
together, and many small details included to help the subject of this
memoir to live again in the imagination of the reader. For from brief and