nd will dissuade you from at least
trying what you have yourself called upon the country to help you
in. If I liked it better, I should feel less certain it was a duty.
If you had not written that letter you might perhaps have made an
honourable escape; but now I see none.

She wrote again on the 14th:

I am as eager and anxious lying here on my sofa--a broken-down,
useless bit of rubbish--as if I were well and strong and in the
midst of the turmoil. And I am proud to find that even the prospect
of what you too truly call the "desolation of our domestic
prospects," though the words go to my very heart of hearts, cannot
shake my wish that you should make the attempt. My mind is made
up.... My ambition is that you should be the head of the most moral
and religious government the country has ever had.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby_

EDINBURGH, _December_ 14, 1845

DEAREST MARY,--All you say of your dreams for me in days gone by is
like yourself. You were always thinking more of my happiness than
your own. What a strange world it is, where the happiest and
saddest events are so often linked together--for instance, the
marriage and absence of those one would wish to have always by one.
I certainly never wish either of our marriages _undone;_ but
"Seas between us braid hae roared sin auld Lang-syne" more than
either of us could have borne to look forward to. If ever I did
wish myself freed from my husband, it has been for the last five
days, since the highest honour in the land has been within his
reach. Oh dear! how unworthy I am of what to many wives would be a
source of constant pride, not only for their husband's sake, but
their own; whereas, proud as I _am_ of so public a mark of his
country's good opinion, and convinced as I am that he ought not to
shrink from the post, still to myself it is all loss, all
sacrifice--every favourite plan upset--London, London, London, and
London in its worst shape--a constant struggle between husband and
children, constant anxiety about his health and theirs, added to
that about public affairs. But I will not begin to count up the
countless miseries of office to those who have, I will not say a
love, but a passion for quiet, leisure, and the country.

As I said before, I am so convinced that he ought to make the
trial,