all parties must have done, in admiration of a lecture, or rather speech, made at our school by a very good and clever Mr. Wicksteed, a Nonconformist (I believe Unitarian) minister on Politics and Morals.  The principle on which he founded it was that politics are a branch of morals; accordingly he placed them on as high a level as any other duty of life, and spoke with withering indignation of the too common practice, and even theory, that a little insincerity, a little trickery, is allowable in politics, whereas it would not be in other matters. [108] We were all delighted.

[108] Lady Russell often quoted a saying attributed to Fox, “Nothing which is morally wrong can ever be politically right.”

    Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal

    PEMBROKE LODGE, March 7, 1888

“Adam Bede” was as interesting a sofa companion as you could have found; a very lovely book—­wit and pathos almost equally good, pathos quite the best though, to my mind.  We are reading aloud another charming book of Lowell’s, “Democracy,” and other essays in the same volume; and I flutter about from book to book by myself, and have still two books of “Paradise Lost” to read, and am wondering what is going to happen to Adam and Eve.  I was very miserable when I found she ate the forbidden fruit.  She had made such fair promises to be good.  Alas, alas! why did she break them?  That story of the Fall, though I suppose nobody thinks it verbally true, is always to me most full of deep meaning, and seems to be the story of every mortal man and woman born into this wondrous world.

    Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal

    DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, October 3, 1888

Agatha gone yesterday to Pembroke Lodge—­Rollo gone to-day to join her, so my wee bairnie and I are “left by our lone,” as you used to say.  “Einsam nein, dass bin ich nicht, denn die Geister meiner Lieben, Sie umschweben mich.” [109] I think it’s good now and then to let the blessed and beautiful memories of the past have their way and float in waking dreams before our eyes, and not be forced down beneath daily duties and occupations and enjoyments, till the pain of keeping them there becomes hard to bear.  Yet, “act, act in the living present” is very, very much the rightest thing; though I don’t think I quite like the past to be called the dead past, when it is so fearfully full of keenest life.

[109] “Lonely—­no, that am I not, for the spirits of my loved ones, they hover around me.”

    Lady Russell to Lady Georgiana Peel

    DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, SURREY, October 8, 1888