Page:Wives of the prime ministers, 1844-1906.djvu/127

LADY JOHN RUSSELL delightful in his marrying while heart and mind are fresh and innocent and unworldly, and I even add inexperienced—for I am not overfond of experience. I think it just as often makes people less wise as more wise."

Scattered through her letters and diaries are many wise reflections, and many pointed observations on the great people she knew. Of Disraeli, when she met him in 1858, she said he was a sad flatterer, and less agreeable than so able a man of such varied pursuits ought to be. Speaking of Gladstone's visit to Scotland in November 1879, she said: "There is always something that makes me sad in such tremendous hospitality." Of a book by her sister-in-law, the Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot, First Earl of Minto, she wrote: "There are no lies in it, and therefore you must not expect a great sale."

She thought much of the position of women, and although as early as 1870 she earnestly wished for legal and social equality for them, she could not shut her eyes to what woman had already been, "the equal, if not the superior, of man in all that is highest and noblest and loveliest." She strongly disapproved of setting the sexes against one another, and considered 97