he printed three letters to Mr. Chichester Fortescue on 'The State of Ireland.' In the same year he consulted Messrs. Longman on the propriety of publishing anonymously some imaginary colloquies between Bishop Burnet and Archbishop Tillotson on the Athanasian Creed. Messrs. Longman referred the manuscript, without revealing the secret of the authorship, to a clergyman of broad views and literary distinction who is still alive, and the opinion of this gentleman on the book

It is a work which I should like to see both published and popular; but I do not anticipate for it any marked success, although I do not suppose it can be a failure

is still preserved with the original manuscript.

Lord Russell did not publish the colloquies. Influenced, perhaps, by the opinion of Messrs. Longman's reader, he abandoned his intention. But he incorporated what he had to say on dogmatic Christianity in the remarkable volume of essays on 'The Rise and Progress of the Christian Religion in the West of Europe from the Reign of Tiberius to the Council of Trent.'1 An anonymous reviewer said of this book on its publication that

Many are the points of view from which minds, weighted with the complex results of an age eminently inquiring and resolutely scientific, have contemplated the mysterious import of Christianity ; but no previous writer has been led to look at it through the prism of concrete Constitutionalism, and to reduce the history of its world-wide evolutions into a handy manual of Whig principles.

The sneer, if it were applicable at all, can only apply to the two concluding essays in the volume, in which Lord Russell made the mistake of the child who is ignorant of perspective and attached an undue importance to objects which looked large because they happened to be near. The remaining essays are not susceptible to the same reproach. No doubt, like all Lord Russell's historical works, they are founded not on original research, but on other men's researches. No doubt, too, occasional repetitions offend the taste, and perhaps reveal

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the weight which advancing age was imposing on the octogenarian author. But nevertheless they form an admirable account of the 'transformation' which Christianity had undergone.

Christ had told His Apostles to preach a religion of love; it had been perverted into a religion of logic. St. John, St. Paul, and Christ Himself had called for sympathy; St. Athanasius and St, Thomas Aquinas relied on a syllogism.

The preparation of this work did not exhaust Lord Russell's literary labours. In 1870 he published selections from his speeches between 1817 and 1841, and from his despatches. between 1859 and 1865. To the speeches he prefixed a long introduction of 170 octavo pages; to the despatches a shorter preface of 58 pages. In the following year he composed an excellent essay of 96 pages on the foreign policy of England from 1570 to 1870. Four years later he published two pamphlets on education, in which he advocated the institution of free schools; and he brought his long literary labours to a conclusion with the best known of his later works, his 'Recollections and Suggestions.' In the preface to this book, however, he acknowledged that he found his memory was beginning to fail, and that he had therefore copied the account of his earlier recollections from the details which he had given five years before in the introduction to his speeches.

Whatever may be thought of the 'Recollections and Suggestions' as a literary work, it breathes from the first page to the last the same spirit of liberty which had actuated its author throughout his long life. There is nothing so conservative as Progress :' such-so he said in his old age—was the first advice which he gave as Prime Minister to the Queen. 'There is nothing so conservative as Progress:' such is the last sentiment which his pen records.

But perhaps, in an autobiographical sense, the most interesting part of the Recollections and Suggestions' is the motto which Lord Russell placed on his title-page:

Not heaven itself upon the past has power:

But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.

For the interest which attaches to the quotation arises from the circumstance that thirty-eight years before Lord John had applied the same lines to himself in his speech at Bristol. There, while expatiating on the reforms which the Whig Ministries of Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne had accomplished, he had quoted from memory, for he gave it imperfectly, Dryden's couplet. But if in 1835 he had already cause to be satisfied with the hour which he had lived, the career with which this book has been occupied had hardly begun. For twenty consecutive years after the Bristol speech Lord John was to lead the Liberal party in the House of Commons. For twenty years he was to fill the highest offices in the State. For thirty years, in the language of the ode which Dryden has thus translated for us, he was to be by turns the favourite and the victim of fortune; and if in his old age he could look back with calm satisfaction at the second hour he had lived, his friends could claim for him that he could shroud himself in his own manly integrity.

A narrative of Lord Russell's literary pursuits during the closing years of his life must not distract attention from more personal matters. On his leaving office in the summer of 1866 his wife wrote in her diary

John so well and happy that my joy at his release becomes greater every hour. There is a sense of repose that can hardly be described abounding happiness at his honourable downfall that cannot be uttered.

A few weeks after the resignation of the Government, Lord Russell turned his back on London, and took his wife down with him to Endsleigh. They had gone there first together after the fall of Lord Melbourne; they were returning after his own final retirement. During the few days in which they were the guests of the Duke of Bedford, Lord Russell found leisure to compose, and read, an address at the Town Hall of Tavistock, the town which more than half a century before had first chosen him as its representative.

Lord Russell was, however, already contemplating a much

longer journey. The Seven Weeks' War was over. Austria had surrendered Venetia to France, who had in turn transferred it to Italy. Thus, at last, Italy was free from the Alps to the Adriatic; and her King, it was rumoured, would inaugurate his new rule by publicly entering Venice. Lord John determined to witness a spectacle associated with so many of his aspirations; and on October 18, with his wife and five unmarried children, set out for Italy. They travelled leisurely, making halts of more or less duration at Paris, Strasburg, Stuttgart, Munich, and Innspruck, on the last day of October crossed the Brenner-the pass swarming with soldiers-and on November 3 reached Verona, arriving on the 5th at Venice. Two days later Victor Emanuel entered the city by water; and Lord Russell saw the pageant from the windows of the Palazzo Corner, the house of an old friend, Count Pasolini, the Commissary of the city.

Mia madre [so runs the narrative of Count Pasolini's son] andò incontro al vecchio amico . . . e vedendolo comparire con una gran coccarda tricolore sul petto, dissegli festevolmente, 'Ah! ah! fort bien, Mi Lord! Nos couleurs italiennes sur votre cœur !' 'Pour moi,' rispos' egli, stringendole la mano, ‘je les ai toujours portées. Comtesse! Je suis bien content de vous trouver ici aujourd'hui. C'est un des plus beaux jours de notre siècle.'

E lamentando taluno che il sole, il sole d' Italia, mancasse a far più bella la storica solennitá, Lord Russell rispose scherzando che l' Inghilterra, in segno di simpatia, avea mandato al Canal Grande la cara nebbia del suo Tamigi.

After Lord Russell's death the Fanfulla thus recorded its recollections of the incident :

L'ultima volta che lo vidi fu a Venezia. Re Vittorio Emanuele era entrato nella sospirata città, e salutava, commosso, da uno dei balconi in piazza S. Marco, le mille e mille persone che lo acclamavano con delirio.

Un vecchietto, a pochi passi dal Re, contemplava quello spettacolo attraverso un velo di lagrime. Il conte Russell, venuto apposta a Venezia per assistere all' ingresso del Re d' Italia, si asciugava gli occhi e dava strette di mano a destra e a sinistra, come che egli pure fosse stato un cittadino di quella fantastica città, quasi

che egli pure provasse il debito della riconoscenza per il Re Galantuomo. E la sera, quando le belle signore di Venezia acclamavano Vittorio Emanuele alla Fenice, il conte Russell fu visto agitare il fazzoletto, e la voce robusta del Ministro liberale uni il suo 'hurrah!' agli evviva dei Veneziani.

The Russells remained at Venice for a week after this famous spectacle. They left it on November 13; and, after spending two days at Milan, and three at Bologna, where they placed themselves under the guidance of Signor Minghetti, one of the most capable statesmen whom modern Italy has produced, they arrived on the 19th at Florence. Sir Henry Elliot, Lord Russell's brother-in-law, was at that time British Minister at Florence, still the capital of the new Kingdom; and the society which Lady Elliot and he gathered round them at the Embassy naturally added to the attractions which the City of Flowers would, in any case, have possessed for Lord Russell and his family.1

1 Sir H. Elliot, Lady Russell's second brother, had been made by Lord John Russell British Minister at the Court of Naples. In 1860 the conquest of the Two Sicilies by Garibaldi, and the annexation of the Kingdom to Piedmont, terminated the appointment, and Lord Russell, writing to him on the 12th of November, said, 'The triumph of Italy is death to your mission,' and added, 'I think you may as well stay in England for a time when you come home, without looking for a fresh appointment.' The day after that letter was written, the Times published a leading article warning the public that a gross job was being perpetrated by Lord John Russell for the benefit of Mr. Elliot, and at the expense of Sir James Hudson, who was to be removed to St. Petersburg in order that Mr. Elliot might take his place at Turin. Sir James, on seeing the report, wrote a letter to Lord John expressing his surprise and annoyance at the article; and Lord John replied on November 26, 'You will readily believe that I never thought of moving you from Italy, where you have done so much, and are so justly esteemed. . . . We are going to send Bloomfield ambassador to Vienna, but he will not be there for five or six weeks. Later an ambassador will be named to Petersburg. Lord Napier (secret at present) will be the man.' The appointment of Lord Napier to Petersburg (which was at that time raised to an embassy) necessitated some other diplomatic changes. Sir Andrew Buchanan was removed from Madrid to the Hague in Lord Napier's room, and Sir John Crampton was transferred from St. Petersburg to Madrid in the place of Sir A. Buchanan. The first half of this arrangement was known on December 8, and the Times, returning to its old charge, declared that, the former intrigue having failed, Sir A. Buchanan is to be shifted to make room for Mr. Elliot. By Lord John's desire a formal contradiction of the new charge, and of the intention of removing Sir James Hudson from Turin, was sent to that paper, and the Times in publishing it wrote, 'As to the intention