Page:Wives of the prime ministers, 1844-1906.djvu/126

WIVES OF THE PRIME MINISTERS matters in her children, for she recognised that the voice of God might not sound the same to the child as it did to the father and mother, and that a child should never be afraid to speak freely to its parents. The only book she ever published—though her letters and journals and the occasional verses written for family events show literary aptitude and something more—was Family Worship (1876), a small volume of selections from the Bible and prayers for everyday use.

Lady John Russell used her very considerable intellectual gifts not for herself but for others, for her husband, her children, her friends. Her mind was intensely receptive and ever eager for information. Thinking always more of others than of herself, she could throw herself into their thoughts and feelings. Although her lot had been thrown in the world's most crowded ways, she was unworldliness itself, and she seems to have had little belief in the value of experience. When her eldest son, Lord Amberley, became engaged to be married at the age of twenty-one, she owned that she might have wished him to wait till he was a little older, but she continued:

"On the other hand, there is something very 96