in duties zealously done, in the love and sympathy of many--"Mutter
Treu ist ewig neu," and that you may find some rest to your aching
heart in that Mutter Treue, which is always hovering round you,
wherever you are, and to which every day seems to add fresh
strength and renewed longing to give you comfort, is my daily,
nightly hope and prayer. May this letter find you well and cheerful
and able to enjoy the loveliness of sea and sky and mountain; if
so, I know it will not sadden you to get this drop out of the ocean
of my thoughts about you--thoughts which the freshness of the
wounds makes it intensely difficult for me to utter.... Kiss my two
precious little boys and keep us in their memory. Is Bertrand as
full of fun and merriment as he used to be? Poor pets! they look to
you for all the tenderness of father and mother combined in order
to be as happy as children ought to be. Give it them largely, my
child, as it is in your nature to do.... God bless you all.

In August, 1875, Lady Russell notes in her diary that her husband had
written a letter to the _Times_ giving his support to the Herzegovina
insurgents. During the few years preceding 1876 he had become convinced
that the days of Turkish misrule in the Christian provinces must be ended.
[90] He frequently spoke with indignation of the systematic murders
contrived by the Turkish Government and officials, and felt that the cause
of the oppressed Christians deserved support, and that the time for
upholding the rule of the Sultan as a cardinal principle in our policy had
passed. He threw himself with the greatest heartiness into a movement for
the aid of the insurgents. Though in his eighty-third year he was the first
British statesman to break with the past and to bless the uprising of
liberty in the near East. In the following letter, written from Caprera on
September 17, 1875, the generous sympathy between him and Garibaldi found
fresh expression.

[90] In 1874 he wrote that from Adrianople to Belgrade all government
should be in the hands of the Christians.

MON ILLUSTRE AMI,--En associant votre grand nom au bien-faiteurs
des Chretiens opprimes par le Gouvernement Turc, vous avez ajoute
un bien precieux bijou a la couronne humanitaire qui ceint votre
noble front. En 1860 votre parole sublime sonna en faveur des
Rayahs Italiens, et l'Italie n'est plus une expression
geographiq