e and
false, from hour to hour, the unceasing cries of the newsmen with
2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions of all the newspapers, the running
about of friends to one another's houses, the continual crossing of
notes in the streets, each asking the same questions, the hopes and
fears and the conjectures one hears and utters during the course of
the day, and the state of blank, weary stupidity to which one is
reduced by the end of it. What _I_ mind most in it all is the
immense additional anxiety and responsibility it brings upon my
poor husband, who feels it even more than he would have done any
other year from being still, I grieve to say, less strong and well
owing to his influenza still hanging about him.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Minto_

PEMBROKE LODGE, _March_ 29, 1848

John returned to dinner, but some hours later than I expected him,
which in times like these, when each hour may bring an account of a
_new_ revolution _somewhere_, or worst of all, of a
rebellion in Ireland, is a trial to a Minister's wife. However, the
reason was simply that Prince Albert had detained him talking. ...
Of course we talked a great deal with our visitors of France,
Italy, Germany, and Ireland; but happily, engrossing as these
topics are, the bright sun and blue sky and shining river and
opening leaves and birds and squirrels _would_ have their
share of attention, and give some rest to our minds.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby_

PEMBROKE LODGE, _March_ 31, 1848

The preparations for rebellion in Ireland are most alarming, and
John's usually calm and _hopeful_ spirit more nearly fails him
on that subject than any other. The speeches and writings of the
Young Ireland leaders are so _extravagantly_ seditious, and so
grossly false as to the behaviour of England generally, and the
present Ministry in particular to Ireland, that I cannot but hope
they may defeat their own objects.... Poor people, the more deeply
one feels for the starving and destitute millions among them and
admires their patience and resignation, and the more bitterly one
resents the misgovernment under which the whole nation suffered for
hundreds of years, the fruits of which we are now reaping, the less
one can excuse those reckless ones who are now misleading them, who
must and _do_ know that the p