the good of all ages, of the young and merry of their own.  No barbarous crowds, no despotic fashions, no senseless omnipotence of custom (see “Childe Harold,” somewhere).[77] I wonder in this age of revolution, which has dethroned so many monarchs and upset so many time-honoured systems of Government and broken so many chains, that Queen Fashion is left unmolested on her throne, ruling the civilized world with her rod of iron, and binding us hand and foot in her fetters.

[77] A favourite stanza of Lady Russell’s in “Childe Harold":—­

    What from this barren being do we reap? 
    Our senses narrow, and our reason frail,
    Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep,
    And all things weighed in custom’s falsest scale;
    Opinion an omnipotence, whose veil
    Mantles the earth with darkness, until right
    And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale
    Lest their own judgments should become too bright,
  And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light.

    BYRON.

    Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline

    SAN REMO, March 2, 1870

I am writing in my pretty bedroom, at an east window which is wide open, letting in the balmiest of airs, and the spring twittering of chaffinches and larks and other little birds, and the gentle music of the waves.  Below the window I look at a very untidy bit of nondescript ground, with a few white-armed fig-trees and a number of flaunting Italian daisies—­a little farther an enclosure of glossy green orange-trees laden with fruit; then an olive plantation, soft and feathery; then a bare, brownish, pleasant hill, crowned by the “Madonna della Guardia,” and stretching to the sea, which I should like to call blue, but which is a dull grey.  Oh dear, how sorry we shall be to leave it all!  You, I know, understand the sort of shrinking there is after so quiet, so spoiling, so natural and unconventional a life (not to mention climate and beauty) from the thought of the overpowering quantity of people and business of all sorts and the artificial habits of our own country, in spite of the immense pleasure of looking forward to brothers and sisters and children and friends.

    Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell

    SAN REMO, March 17, 1870

...  No doubt we must always in the last resort trust to our own reason upon all subjects on which our reason is capable of helping us.  On a question of language, Hebrew for instance, if we don’t know it and somebody else does, we cannot of course dispute his translation, but where nobody questions the words, everybody has a right—­it is indeed everybody’s duty—­to reflect upon their meaning and bearing and come to their own conclusions; listening to others wiser or not wiser than themselves, eagerly seeking help, but never, oh never fettering their minds by an unconditional and premeditated submission