he died in January, 1898. The span of her life covers, then, many
important political events, and we shall catch glimpses of these as they
affect her. Though the intention of the following pages is biographical,
the story of Lady Russell's life, after marriage, coincides so closely with
her husband's public career that the thread connecting her letters together
must be the political events in which he took part. Some of her letters, by
throwing light on the sentiments and considerations which weighed with him
at doubtful junctures, are not without value to the historian. It is not,
however, the historian who has been chiefly considered in putting them
together, but rather the general reader, who may find his notions of past
politics vivified and refreshed by following history in the contemporary
comments of one so passionately and so personally interested at every turn
of events.

Another motive has also had a part in determining the possessors of Lady
Russell's letters to publish them. Memory is the most sacred, but also the
most perishable of shrines; hence it sometimes seems well worth while to
break through reticence to give greater permanence to precious
recollections. With this end also the following pages have been put
together, and many small details included to help the subject of this
memoir to live again in the imagination of the reader. For from brief and
even superficial contact with the living we may gain much; but the dead, if
they are to be known at all, must be known more intimately.

* * * * *

Minto House, where Lady Fanny was born, is beautifully situated above a
steep and wooded glen, and is only a short distance from the river Teviot.
The hills around are not like the wild rugged mountains of the Highlands,
but have a soft and tender beauty of their own. Her childhood was far more
secluded than the life that would have fallen to her lot had she been born
in the next generation, for her home in Roxburghshire, in coach and
turnpike days, was more remote from the central stir and business of life
than any spot in the United Kingdom at the present time. Lady Fanny used to
relate what a great event it was for the household at Minto when on very
rare occasions her father brought from London a parcel of new books, which
were eagerly opened by the family and read with delight. Those were not the
days of circulating libraries, and both the old standard books on the Minto
libr