But at the same time she was never one of those who cannot be convinced that some particular course is not the wisest and most just to adopt without at once rushing to the conclusion that the leader who makes any mistakes must be in the wrong because of wilfulness or mere incapacity, and is therefore not worthy any longer of admiration and trust.

I have many letters from her, written at the time of some serious crisis in the fortunes of the Irish National movement, which show the keenest and the earliest intelligence of some mistake in the policy of the party on this or that immediate question without showing the slightest inclination to diminish her confidence in the sincerity and the purposes of its leaders, any more than in the justice of the cause.  I can well recollect that in many instances she proved to be absolutely in the right when she thus gave me her opinion, and that events afterwards fully maintained the wisdom and the justice of her criticism.  The reason why so many of Lady Russell’s opinions were conveyed to me by letter was that I had to be, like all my companions of the Irish Parliamentary Party, a constant attendant at the debates in the House of Commons, and that many days often passed without my having an opportunity to visit Lady Russell and converse with her on the subjects which had so deep an interest for her as well as for me.  I therefore was in the habit of writing often to her from the House of Commons in order to give her my own ideas as to the significance and importance of this or that debate, of this or that speech and its probable effect on the House and on the outer public.  Lady Russell never failed to favour me with her own views on such subjects, and the views were always her own, and were never a mere good-natured and friendly adoption of the opinions thus offered to her.

Then, when I had the opportunity of visiting her at Pembroke Lodge, we were sure to compare and discuss our views in the conversations which she made so delightful and so inspiring.

One of her marvellous qualities was that her interest and her intellect were never wholly absorbed in the passing political questions, but that she could still keep her mind open to other and entirely different subjects.  The chamber of her mind seemed to me to be like one of those mysterious apartments about which we read in fairy stories, which were endowed with a magical capacity of expansion and reception.

I have come to her home at a time when, for those whose lives were mainly passed in political work, there was some subject then engaging the attention of all politicians in these countries—­some subject in which I well knew that Lady Russell was deeply and thoroughly interested.