y be and are the delights of
Paris--and I fully intend that we should all three enjoy
them--_that_ burden is heavier there than in all the world
beside--and why? oh, why? What is there to prevent human nature
from finding out and rejoicing in the blessings of civilization and
society without encumbering them with petty etiquettes and fashions
and forms which deprive them of half their value? Human nature is a
very provoking compound. It strives and struggles and gives life
itself for political freedom, while it forges social chains and
fetters for itself and wears them with a foolish smile. And with
this fruitless lamentation I must end.

_Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline_

SAN REMO, _February_ 23, 1870

I don't know a bit whether we shall be much in London during the
session--it will be session, not season, that takes us there....
The longer I live the more I condemn and deplore a rackety life for
_any_ girl, and therefore if I do what I myself think right by
her and not what others may think right, she shall never be a
London butterfly. Would that we could give our girls the ideal
society which I suppose we all dream for them--that of the wise and
the good of all ages, of the young and merry of their own. No
barbarous crowds, no despotic fashions, no senseless omnipotence of
custom (see "Childe Harold," somewhere).[77] I wonder in this age
of revolution, which has dethroned so many monarchs and upset so
many time-honoured systems of Government and broken so many chains,
that Queen Fashion is left unmolested on her throne, ruling the
civilized world with her rod of iron, and binding us hand and foot
in her fetters.

[77] A favourite stanza of Lady Russell's in "Childe Harold":--

What from this barren being do we reap?
Our senses narrow, and our reason frail,
Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep,
And all things weighed in custom's falsest scale;
Opinion an omnipotence, whose veil
Mantles the earth with darkness, until right
And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale
Lest their own judgments should become too bright,
And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light.

BYRON.

_Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline_

SAN REMO, _March_ 2, 1870

I am writing in my pretty bedroom, at an east window which is wide
open, letting