Sorrows, neither few nor light, fell upon the household at Pembroke Lodge in the closing years of Lord Russell's life; but 'trials,' as Lady Russell puts it in her journal, 'had taught Lord John to feel for others, and age had but deepened his religion of love.' In reply to a birthday letter from Mr. Archibald Peel, his son-in-law, and nephew of his great political rival he said: 'Thanks for your good wishes. Happy returns! I always find them, as my children are so affectionate and loving; "many" I cannot expect, but I have played my part.' Two or three extracts from a packet of letters addressed by Lord John to his daughter, Lady Georgiana Peel, will be read with interest. The majority of them are of too intimate and personal a kind for quotation. Yet the whole of them leave the impression that Lord John, who reproaches himself in one instance as a bad correspondent, was at least a singularly good father. They cover a considerable term of years, and though for the most part dealing with private affairs, and often in a spirit of pleasant raillery, here and there allusions to public events occur in passing. In one of them, written from Gotha in the autumn of 1862, when Lord John was in attendance on her Majesty, he says: 'We have been dull here, but the time has never hung heavy on our hands. Four boxes of despatches and then telegrams, all requiring answers, have been our daily food.' He refers touchingly to the Queen's grief, and there is also an allusion to the minor tribulation of a certain little boy in England who had just crossed the threshold of school-life. Probably Lord John was thinking of his own harsh treatment at Westminster, more than sixty years before, when he wrote: 'Poor Willy! He will find a public school a rough place, and the tears will come into his eyes when he thinks of the very soft nest he left at home.'