It is very sad, this moment, when many will think me at the height of my ambition.  But when I think of you and your many trials, and the children with their ailments to disturb you, when I cannot share your anxieties—­it is all very sad.  I doubt, too, of the will of the country to go through with it—­and then I shall have done mischief by calling upon them.  I saw Mr. Bright at one of the stations.  He spoke much of the enthusiasm.  God save and preserve us all.

    Lord John to Lady John Russell

    OSBORNE HOUSE, December 11th, 1845

Well, I am here—­and have seen Her Majesty.  It is proposed to me to form a Government, and nothing can be more gracious than the manner in which this has been done.  Likewise Sir Robert Peel has placed his views on paper, and they are such as very much to facilitate my task.  Can I do so wild a thing?  For this purpose, and to know whether it is wild or not, I must consult my friends....  There end politics—­I hope you have not suffered from anxiety and the desolation of our domestic prospects....  I stay here to-night, and summon my friends in London to-morrow—­Ever, ever affly., with love to all,

    J.R.

    Lady John to Lord John Russell

    EDINBURGH, December 13, 1845

I have just read your note which I so anxiously expected from Osborne House.  No, my dearest, it is not a wild thing.  It is a great duty which you will nobly perform; and, with all my regrets—­with the conviction that private happiness to the degree we have enjoyed is at an end if you are Prime Minister—­still I sincerely hope that no timid friend will dissuade you from at least trying what you have yourself called upon the country to help you in.  If I liked it better, I should feel less certain it was a duty.  If you had not written that letter you might perhaps have made an honourable escape; but now I see none.

She wrote again on the 14th: 

I am as eager and anxious lying here on my sofa—­a broken-down, useless bit of rubbish—­as if I were well and strong and in the midst of the turmoil.  And I am proud to find that even the prospect of what you too truly call the “desolation of our domestic prospects,” though the words go to my very heart of hearts, cannot shake my wish that you should make the attempt.  My mind is made up....  My ambition is that you should be the head of the most moral and religious government the country has ever had.

    Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby

    EDINBURGH, December 14, 1845