MY DEAREST DORA,—­I am afraid you will say that I have forgotten you and your most loving and welcome birthday letter, but as I know you will not think it, I don’t so very much mind.  Nobody at seventy-one and with many still to love and leave on earth, can hail a birthday with much gladness....  The real sadness to me of birthdays, and of all marked days, is in the bitterly disappointing answer I am obliged to make to myself to the question:  “Am I nearer to God than a year ago?” ...  I never answered your long-ago letter about your doubts and difficulties and speculations on those subjects which are of deepest import to us all, yet upon which it sometimes seems that we are doomed to work our minds in vain—­to seek, and not to find—­to exult one moment in the fullness of bright hope and the coming fulfilment of our highest aspirations, and the next to grope in darkness and say, “Was it not a beautiful dream, and only a dream?  Is it not too good to be true that we are the children of a loving Father who stretches out His hands to guide us to Himself, who has spoken to us in a thousand ways from the beginning of the world by His wondrous works, by the unity of creation, by the voices of our fellow-creatures, by that voice, most inspired of all, that life and death most beautiful and glorious of all, which ’brought life and immortality to light,’ and chiefly by that which we feel to be immortal within us—­love—­the beginning and end of God’s own nature, the supreme capability which He has breathed into our souls?” No, it is not too good to be true.  Nothing perishes—­not the smallest particle of the most worthless material thing.  Is immortality denied to the one thing most worthy of it?

I sent you “The Utopian,” because I thought some of the little essays would fall in with all that filled your mind, and perhaps help you to a spirit of hopefulness and confidence which will come to you and abide with you, I am sure.  You will soon receive another book written by several Unitarians, of which I have only read very little as yet, but which seems to me full of strength and comfort and holiness....  Good-bye, and God bless you.

    Your ever affectionate,

    F. RUSSELL

    Lady Charlotte Portal to Lady Russell

    January 26, 1887

DEAREST FANNY,—­I wonder if you are quite easy in your conscience, or whatever mechanism takes the place with you of that rococo old article.  Do you think you have behaved to me as an elder ought?—­to me, a poor young thing, looking for and sadly requiring the guidance of my white-headed sister?  Our last communications were at Christmas-time—­a month ago.  Are you all well?  Are you all entirely at the feet of the dear baby boy? [106] Or have your republican principles begun to rebel against his autocratic sway? ...  I have been amusing myself with an obscure author named William Shakespeare, and