One of these men was Russell.  Of his shameful dealings with the Court of Saint Germains we possess proofs which leave no room for doubt.  But no such proofs were laid before the world till he had been many years dead.  If rumours of his guilt got abroad, they were vague and improbable; they rested on no evidence; they could be traced to no trustworthy author; and they might well be regarded by his contemporaries as Jacobite calumnies.  What was quite certain was that he sprang from an illustrious house, which had done and suffered great things for liberty and for the Protestant religion, that he had signed the invitation of the thirtieth of June, that he had landed with the Deliverer at Torbay, that he had in Parliament, on all occasions, spoken and voted as a zealous Whig, that he had won a great victory, that he had saved his country from an invasion, and that, since he had left the Admiralty, every thing had gone wrong.  We cannot therefore wonder that his influence over his party should have been considerable.

But the greatest man among the members of the junto, and, in some respects, the greatest man of that age, was the Lord Keeper Somers.  He was equally eminent as a jurist and as a politician, as an orator and as a writer.  His speeches have perished; but his State papers remain, and are models of terse, luminous, and dignified eloquence.  He had left a great reputation in the House of Commons, where he had, during four years, been always heard with delight; and the Whig members still looked up to him as their leader, and still held their meetings under his roof.  In the great place to which he had recently been promoted, he had so borne himself that, after a very few months, even faction and envy had ceased to murmur at his elevation.  In truth, he united all the qualities of a great judge, an intellect comprehensive, quick and acute, diligence, integrity, patience, suavity.  In council, the calm wisdom which he possessed in a measure rarely found among men of parts so quick and of opinions so decided as his, acquired for him the authority of an oracle.  The superiority of his powers appeared not less clearly in private circles.  The charm of his conversation was heightened by the frankness with which he poured out his thoughts.477 His good temper and his good breeding never failed.  His gesture, his look, his tones were expressive of benevolence.  His humanity was the more remarkable, because he had received from nature a body such as is generally found united with a peevish and irritable mind.  His life was one long malady; his nerves were weak; his complexion was livid; his face was prematurely wrinkled.  Yet his enemies could not pretend that he had ever once, during a long and troubled public life, been goaded, even by sudden provocation, into vehemence inconsistent with the mild dignity of his character.  All that was left to them was to assert that his disposition was very far from being so gentle as the world believed, that he was really prone to the angry passions, and that sometimes, while his voice was soft, and his words kind and courteous, his delicate frame was almost convulsed by suppressed emotion.  It will perhaps be thought that this reproach is the highest of all eulogies.