Lady Charlotte Portal to Lady Russell, after reading Mr.
    Walpole’s “Life of Lord John Russell” December 26, 1889

...  I long that every one should know as we do what the extraordinary beauty of that daily life was.  I always think it was the most perfect man’s life that I ever knew of; and that could better bear the full flood of light than any other.

In January, 1890, after nearly twelve years’ break in her diary, Lady Russell began writing again a few words of daily record.  On the 6th she mentions a “most agreeable” visit from Mr. Froude; the same day she received Mr. Justin McCarthy to dinner, and adds that the talk was “more Shakespeare than Ireland.”

    Lady Russell to Mr. Justin McCarthy [113]

    November 19, 1890

DEAR MR. MCCARTHY,—­I hardly know why I write to you, but this terrible sin and terrible verdict make us very, very unhappy, and we think constantly of you, who have been among his closest friends, and of all who have trusted him and refused to believe in the charge against him.  You must, I know, be feeling all the keenness and bitterness of sorrow in the moral downfall of a man whose claims to the gratitude and admiration of his country in his public career nothing can cancel.  It is also much to be feared that the great cause will suffer, at least in England, if he retains the leadership.  It ought not, of course; but where enthusiasm and even respect for the leader can no longer be felt, there is danger of diminution of zeal for the cause.  Were he to take the honourable course, which alone would show a sense of shame—­that of resignation—­his political enemies would be silenced, and his friends would feel that although reparation for the past is impossible, he has not been blinded by long continuance in deception and sin to his own unworthiness, and to the fact that his word can no longer be trusted as it has been, and as that of a leader ought to be.  I dare not think of what his own state of mind must be; it makes me so miserable—­the unlimited trust of a nation not only in his political but in his moral worth must be like a dagger in his heart.  Were he to retire, the recollection of the great qualities he has shown would revive, and the proof of remorse given by his retirement would draw a veil over his guilt, and the charity, which we all need, would not be withheld from him.  I know that numerous instances can be given of men in the highest positions who have retained them without opposition in spite of lives tainted with similar sin; but this has not been without evil to the nation, and I think there is a stronger sense now than there used to be of the value of high private character in public men, in spite of a great deal of remaining Pharisaism in the difference of the measure of condemnation meted out to different men.  I think too that the unusual and most painful amount of low deception in this case will