F. RUSSELL

    P.S.—­I hear you are going to be married to a great many people;
    please let me know how many reports are true.

In 1856 Lady John and the children went abroad.  They visited Lady Mary Abercromby, whose husband was British Minister at the Hague, and later on they joined Lord John at Antwerp.  Thence they travelled to Switzerland, where they remained till the end of September in a villa beautifully situated above the Lake of Geneva, near Lausanne.  The early part of the winter was spent in Italy, where Lord John came into personal contact with Cavour and many other Italian patriots, whose cause he so staunchly supported during the next few years.  The Villa Capponi, where they lived at Florence, became the meeting-place of all the Liberal spirits in Tuscany; and the Tuscan Government, who thought that Lord John had come to Florence to estimate the probable success of the revolutionaries, set spies upon his visitors.

    Lord John Russell to Lady Melgund

    VILLA CAPPONI, December 19, 1856

We have passed our time here very agreeably.  Besides the Florentines and their acute sagacity, we have had here many of those whose wits were too bright or their hearts too warm to bear the Governments of Naples and Rome....  As for the French newspapers, it is the custom at Paris and Vienna to let the newspapers attack everything but their own Government, which is their notion of the liberty of the Press!

    Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby

    VILLA CAPPONI, FLORENCE, January 1, 1857

MY DEAREST MARY,—­You have my first date for the New Year....  God grant it may be a happy one to us all.  We began it merrily.  Mrs. E. Villiers, who, with her daughter, is spending the winter here, gave a little dance.  Twelve struck in the middle of a quadrille, which was accordingly interrupted by general shaking of hands among chaperons, dancers, and all.  There is a cordiality and ease in society abroad, the charm of which goes far with me to make up for the absence of some of the merits of society in England.  The subjects of conversation among men are queer, no doubt; but what people have in them is much easier to get at—­and to me it is a relief not to hear all the ladies talking politics, or rather talking political personalities, as they do in London.

January 2.—­I am afraid, after having been abused as unworthy of Italy (not so much, however, by you as by Lotty and Lizzy) you will now charge me with the far worse sin of being a bad Briton—­but that, depend upon it, I am not, whatever appearances may say—­on the contrary, a better one than ever, only grieving that with such materials as we have at home we do not manage to make social life pleasanter....  Yesterday we had our usual Thursday party; and before more than five or six had come, I went into the girls’ sitting-room, which opens out