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 attorney who lives near Lechmere Point. He wriggled round, played with his hat, and seemed unable to dispose of his hands or his feet; his voice was small and thin, but notwithstanding all this, a house of five hundred members was hushed to catch his smallest accents. You listened, and you felt that you heard a man of mind, of thought, and of moral elevation’ (Life and Letters of Sumner, i. 316).

In one of his earlier speeches in the house he affirmed that too much was talked about the wisdom of our ancestors, and that he wished their courage to be imitated. He possessed their courage in overflowing measure, a courage which was akin to rashness, and a self-confidence which resembled obstinacy. He was, indeed, what the Duke of Wellington said of him to Rogers, ‘a host in himself.’ His invincible self-reliance was regarded by Sydney Smith as his worst fault: ‘I believe Lord John Russell would perform the operation for the stone, build St. Peter's, or assume—with or without ten minutes' notice—the command of the Channel fleet; and no one would discover by his manner that the patient had died, the church tumbled down, and the Channel fleet been knocked to atoms’ (, Works, iii. 233).

Like Fox, he was short in stature, but he was devoid of Fox's geniality. The freezing manner on which Bulwer Lytton insisted in his description of Lord John was very manifest in his early years. His father wrote to him at the end of the session of 1837–8: ‘There are circumstances in which you give great offence to your followers (or tail) in the House of Commons by not being courteous to them, by treating them superciliously, and de haut en bas, by not listening with sufficient patience to their solicitations or remonstrances’ (, Life, i. 304). In private life he was a genial companion, and what Greville said of him when at Woburn Abbey in 1841 (Memoirs, ii. 140) applies to his whole life: ‘John Russell is always agreeable, both from what he contributes himself, and his hearty enjoyment of the contributions of others.’ Motley, the American historian, wrote of him that, ‘in his own home, I never saw a more agreeable manner.’ He was never happier than when surrounded by his children and his books. Field sports did not attract him, though he practised shooting at birds when a boy, and killed a boar when attending Queen Victoria in Germany in 1860.

As a statesman he was a sincere but not a demonstrative patriot; he wrote of England as ‘the country whose freedom I have worshipped.’ Proud of his country and jealous of its honour, he nobly upheld the whig motto of civil and religious liberty throughout the world. Every movement for freedom had his hearty support. He championed every measure that he believed would increase the happiness of the people. National education was as dear to him as parliamentary reform. He was reproached with showing undue favour to members of his own party and family, yet he was never convicted of exercising his patronage to the detriment of the public welfare, and, while remembering his relatives, he did not neglect his friends. His own literary tastes made him a discriminating patron of letters and learning. He was responsible for the appointment of Tennyson as poet-laureate, and of Sir John Herschel as master of the mint. In 1846, when Wordsworth was candidate for the lord-rectorship of Glasgow University, Russell declined to stand against him. He gave the Royal Society 1,000l. of public money to be spent on scientific research. In 1872 he served as president of the Royal Historical Society. While an earnest and enlightened churchman, he was the friend of many nonconformists.

His personal characteristics were set forth by himself with modesty and truth in 1869, in the introduction to his speeches: ‘My capacity, I always felt, was very inferior to that of the men who have attained in past times the foremost place in our parliament and in the councils of our sovereign. I have committed many errors, some of them very gross blunders. But the generous people of England are always forbearing and forgiving to those statesmen who have the good of their country at heart.’ Nine years later, when his life was ebbing away, he said to his wife, ‘I have made mistakes, but in all I did my object was the public good.’

Russell was an original member of the Reform Club, where his portrait is conspicuous in the hall. In the National Portrait Gallery is a painting of Russell, presented by the painter, G. F. Watts, R.A., and he was also painted by Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A. There is also a marble bust, sculptured in 1832 by John Francis.

[Walpole's Life of Lord John Russell; Reid's Lord John Russell; Speeches and Despatches, and Recollections and Suggestions by Earl Russell; Hansard's Parliamentary Debates; Greville's Diaries; Torrens's Memoirs of Lord Melbourne; Moore's Diary; Sir Theodore Martin's Life of the Prince Consort; Ashley's Life of Palmerston; Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel, by W. Cooke Taylor and Charles Mackay; Fitzpatrick's Life of O'Connell; Morley's Cobden; Croker Papers; Sydney