I know that he does his best, and that is all I care very deeply or very permanently about; though there may now and then be a more than commonly anxious day.  If I thought him stupid, or mean, or ignorant, or thoughtless, or indifferent in his trade, I should not be satisfied with his doing his best even; but as I luckily think him the contrary of all these things, I am both satisfied and calm, and his own calm mind helps me to be so.  Sometimes I think I care much more about politics at a distance than when I am mixed up in them.  The fact is that I care very much for the questions themselves, but grow wearied to death of all the details and personalities belonging to them, and consequently of the conversation of lady politicians, made up as it is of these details and personalities.  And the more interested I am in the thing itself, the more angry I am with the nonsense they talk about it, and had rather listen to the most humdrum domestic twaddle.  Mind, I mean the regular hardened lady politicians who talk of nothing else, of whom I could name several, but will not.

    PEMBROKE LODGE, November 24, 1848

    We have just had a visit from Louis Philippe.  He spoke much of
    France—­said that his wishes were with Louis Bonaparte rather than
    with Cavaignac for the presidency.

John expressed some fear of war if Louis Bonaparte should be elected; the King said he need have none, that France had neither means nor inclination for war.  His account of the dismissal of Guizot’s Ministry was that he said to Guizot “What’s to be done?”—­that Guizot gave him three answers:  “Je ne peux pas donner la Reforme.  Je ne peux pas laisser dissoudre la garde nationale.  Je ne peux pas laisser tirer les troupes sur la garde nationale.”  Upon this he had said to Guizot that he must change his Ministry:  “Cela l’a peut-etre un peu blesse—­ma foi, je n’en sais rien.  Il a dit que non, que j’etais le maitre.”

When he heard that the National Guard said, if the troops fired on the mob, they would fire on the troops, he knew that “la chose etait finie,” and when he went out himself among the National Guard, to see what the effect of his presence would be, La Moriciere called out to him, “Sire, si vous allez parmi ces gens-la je ne reponds pas de votre vie.  Ils vont tirer sur vous.”  He answered whatever might come of it he would “parler a ces braves gens”; but they surrounded him, grinning and calling out “La Reforme, nous voulons la Reforme,” pointing their bayonets at him and even over his horse’s neck.

    Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby

    WOBURN ABBEY, December 10, 1848