The feeling among the villagers may be gathered from two brief passages in letters written after her death:  a gardener in Petersham alluded to her as “our much-loved friend, Countess Russell,” and another man—­who had been educated at Petersham School—­wrote:  “She was really like a mother to many of we ‘Old Scholars.’”

Lady Russell’s letters will show that her interest in politics remained as keen as ever to the end; and she eagerly watched the changes which affected Ireland.  To the end of her life she retained the fervour of her youthful Radicalism, and with advancing years her religious opinions became more and more broad.  To her there was no infallibility in any Bible, any prophet, any Church.  With an ever-deepening reverence for the life and teaching of Jesus, she yet felt that “The highest Revelation is not made by Christ, but comes directly from the Universal Mind to our minds.” [98] Her last public appearance in Richmond was at the opening of the new Free Church, on April 16, 1896, which she had joined some years before as being the community holding views nearer to her own than any other.

[98] Rev. F.W.  Robertson, of Brighton.  Sermons, 1st Series.

There is a side of Lady Russell’s mind which her letters do not adequately represent.  She was a great reader, and in her letters (written off with surprising rapidity) she does not often say much about the books she was so fond of discussing in talk.  Among novelists, Sir Walter Scott was perhaps the one she read most often; Jane Austen too was a favourite; but she also much enjoyed many of the later novelists, especially Charles Dickens and George Eliot.

In poetry her taste was in some respects the taste of an earlier generation; she could not join, for instance, in the depreciation of Byron, nor could she sympathize with the unbounded admiration for Keats which she met with among the young.  Milton, Cowper, Burns, Byron, and Longfellow were among those oftenest read, but Shakespeare always remained supreme, and as the years went by her wonder and admiration seemed only to grow stronger and deeper with every fresh reading of his greatest plays; and the intervals without some Shakespeare reading, either aloud or to herself, were short and rare.  She had not an intimate knowledge of Shelley, but in the later years of her life she became deeply impressed by the beauty and music of his poetry, which she liked best to hear read aloud.

Tennyson she loved, and latterly also Browning, with protests against his obscurity and his occasionally most unmusical English.  The inspiration of his brave and optimistic philosophy she felt strongly.  She was extremely fond of reading Dante, and she was better acquainted with German and Italian poetry than most cultivated women.  But though she read much and often in the works of famous writers, this did not prevent her keeping abreast with the literature of the day.  She was strongly attracted by speculative