od, and he never lost his liking for the
drama. Travelling was also a great delight to him, either by coach in
England or in foreign countries, and this enjoyment, with a wonderfully
keen observation of all that he saw of different places and peoples, lasted
to old age.

In 1835 Lord John married Lady Ribblesdale, widow of the second Lord
Ribblesdale.

She had by her first husband four children; one son and three daughters.
[21] After her marriage with Lord John Russell she had two daughters,
Georgiana Adelaide, born in 1836, and Victoria, born in 1838. The marriage
had been a most happy one, and her death on November 1, 1838, was a severe
blow to Lord John.

[21] Lord Ribblesdale, Adelaide Lister (Mrs. Drummond), Isabel Lister (Mrs.
Warburton), Elizabeth Lister (Lady Melvill).

A slight sketch of the more public side of his career will be enough here.
A visit to Fox in June, 1806, was perhaps the first experience which turned
his interests and ambitions towards politics. All his life he looked up to
the memory of Fox. There was in Fox an element which made him more akin to
the Liberals, who succeeded him, than to the old Whig party. Lord John, as
different from Fox in temperament as a man could be, was the inheritor of
the spirit which leavened the old Whig tradition. In Lord John the
sentiments of Fox took on a more deliberate air. He was a more intellectual
man than his lavish, emotional, imposing forbear; and if it is remembered
that he had, in addition, the diffidence of a sensitive man, these facts go
far to explain an apparent contradiction in his character which puzzled
contemporaries. To the observer at a distance there seemed to be two John
Russells: the man who appeared to stand off coldly from his colleagues and
backers (he was certainly as incapable as the younger Pitt of throwing
round him those heartening glances of good-fellowship which made the
followers of Fox feel like a band of brothers); and again, the man who, to
the rapture of adherents, could lift debate at moments to a level where
passionate principles swept all hesitation away. It was surprising to find,
in one who commonly wore the air of picking his steps with care, the dash
and anger of the fighter. Bulwer Lytton has described such moments in "The
New Timon"--

"When the steam is on,
And languid Johnny glows to glorious John."

His speeches, if they had not the animated, flowing reasonableness of
Cobden's, resembled them in this,