in gladness now gaze round,
      And wish thy name with hers in glory bound. 
      With one alone when fades the glowing West,
      Beneath the moonbeam let thy spirit rest,
      While childhood’s silvery tones the stillness break
      And all the echoes of thy heart awake. 
      Then wiser, holier, stronger than before,
      Go, plunge into the maddening strife once more;
      The dangerous, glorious path that thou hast trod,
      Go, tread again, and with thy country’s God.

    F.R.

    WOBURN ABBEY, August 18, 1864

My dear, dear husband’s birthday. [He was seventy-two.] I resolved not to let sad and untrustful thoughts come in the way of gratitude for present happiness, and oh! how thankfully I looked at him with his children around him.  They made him and me join them in a match at trap-ball that lasted two hours and a half.  He, the boys, Johnny and Agatha rode, Mademoiselle and I drove in the same direction.  He and his cavalcade were a pleasant sight to me.  He looked pleased and proud with his three sons and his little daughter galloping beside him.  The day ended with merry games.

In September, 1864, came the news of Lord Amberley’s engagement to Lord Stanley of Alderley’s daughter.  He was at that time only twenty-one.  Lady Russell’s feeling about it is shown in the following letter: 

    Lady Russell to Lady Georgiana Russell

    NORTH BERWICK, September 21, 1864

MY DEAREST GEORGY,—­Your long and dear letters were a great pleasure to me, showing how you are thinking and feeling with us about this event, so great to us all.  Whatever pangs there may be belonging to it, and of course there are some, are lost and swallowed up to me in great joy and gratitude.  We might have wished him to marry a little later, to have him a little longer a child of home.  But, on the other hand, there is something to me very delightful in his marrying while heart and mind are fresh and innocent and unworldly, and I even add inexperienced—­for I am not over-fond of experience.  I think it just as often makes people less wise as more wise.  There is more real truth in their “Ideale” than in what follows....  God bless you, dear child.

    Your very loving MAMA

In July, 1865, Parliament was dissolved, the Ministry having held office for six years.  They had lost prestige over the Schleswig-Holstein negotiations.  Lord Derby, with justification, denounced their policy as one of “meddle and muddle,” and Palmerston only escaped a vote of censure in the Commons by being able to point to the prodigious success of the Ministry’s finance.  His personal popularity and ascendancy, however, were as great as ever; the Liberals were returned by a majority of sixty-seven.  Although this majority must have been more than they looked for, the election disappointed Lord Russell in two respects:  Gladstone lost his seat at Oxford and Lord Amberley was beaten at Leeds.  Before Parliament met Palmerston fell seriously ill.