I wrote yesterday should miscarry; so this may again inform you at London, that your coach shall be at Harford Bridge (if God permit) upon Thursday, to wait your coming, and on Saturday I hope to be at Stratton and my sister also. This day she resolved it, so her coach will bring us all. It is an inexpressible joy to consider I shall see the person in the world I most and only long to be with, before another week is past. I should condemn my sense of this happiness as weak and pitiful if I could tell it to you. No, my best life, I can say little, but think all you can, and you cannot think too much. My heart makes it all good. I perfectly know my infinite obligations to Mr. Russell, and in it is the delight of her life, who is as much yours as you desire she should be.

RACHEL VAUGHAN.

The Same to the Same.

LONDON, Sept. 6, 1680.

My girls and I being just risen from dinner, Miss Rachel followed me into my chamber, and seeing me take pen and ink asked me what I was going to do. I told her I was going to write to her papa. "So will I," said she, "and while you write I will think what I have to say," and truly,

before I could write one word, she came and told me she had done. So I set down her words, and she is hard at the business, as I am not, one would conclude, by the pertinence of this beginning, but my dear man has taken me for better or worse in all conditions, and knows my soul to him. So expressions are but a pleasure to myself, not to him who believes better things of me than my ill rhetoric will induce him to by my words.

To this minute I am not one jot wiser as to intelligence (whatever other improvements my study has made me), but I hope this afternoon's conversation will better me that way. Lady Shaftesbury sends me word if her lord continues as well as he was this morning I shall see her, and my sister was visiting there yesterday. I shall suck the honey from them all, if they be communicative. .

Later. I have stayed till Mr. Cheke came in, and he helps me to nothing but a few half-crowns, I expect, at backgammon. Unless I let him read my letter he vows he would tell me no news, if he knew any, and doubting this is not worth his perusal I hasten to shut it up. Lord Shaftesbury was alone, so his lady came not. Your birds came safe to feed us to-morrow.

I am yours, my dear love,

R. RUSSELL.

The Same to the Same.

STRATTON, Sept. 30, 1681.

To see anybody preparing and taking their way to see what I long to do a thousand times more than they, makes me not endure to suffer their going without saying something to my best life, though it is a kind of anticipating my joy when we shall meet, to allow myself so much before that time; but I confess I feel a great deal that although I left London with great reluctance (as it is easy to persuade men that a woman does), yet I am not like to leave Stratton with greater.

They will tell you how well I got hither, and how well I found our dear treasure here. Your boy will please you; you will, I think, find him improved, though I tell you so beforehand. They fancy he wanted you, for, as soon as I alighted, he followed, calling "Papa;" but I suppose it is the word he has most command of, so was not disobliged by the little fellow. The girls were fine in remembrance of the happy 29th of Sept. [Lord Russell's birthday], and we drank your health after a red-deer pie, and at night your girls and I supped on a sack-posset; nay, Master [their son] would have his share, and for haste burnt his fingers in the posset, but he does but rub his hands for it.

seen.

It is the most glorious weather that ever was The coach shall meet you at the cabbagegarden; it will be there by eight or a little after, although I hardly guess you will be there so soon, day breaks so late, and indeed the mornings are so misty it is not wholesome to be in the air so early. I do propose going to my neighbour Worsley to-day.

I would fain be telling my dear heart more things, anything to be in a kind of talk with him, but I believe Spenser stays for me to despatch this; he was willing to go early, but this writing to you was to be the delight of this morning and the support of the day. It is performed in bed, thy pillow at my back, where thy dear head shall lie, I hope, to-morrow night, and many more, I trust in his mercy, notwithstanding all our enemies or evil-wishers. Love, and be willing to be loved by, thy

R. RUSSELL.

The Duke of Marlborough to the Duchess.

The greatest military leader of England in the eighteenth century, JOHN CHURCHILL, Duke of Marlborough, was under the domination of a ruler more powerful than he. For years the Duchess of Marlborough, imperious, brilliant, ambitious, was the most powerful person in Eng

land, ruling even the queen by the ascendancy she had gained through their long friendship.

It is difficult to see now how she held such power, with so little that seems attractive, and with nothing that is amiable, in her character; but that she must have been in youth a woman capable of attaching others to her with hooks of steel is incontrovertible. Marlborough married her for love, and loved her absolutely. His affection breaks through all his letters to her. He writes, “I am heart and soul yours," "I can have no happiness till I am with you;" and his fear of her displeasure or tempers comes in such plaintive bursts as "I am never so happy as when I think you are kind." His motive of life was to please her, and his ambition to conquer all fields that were before him, that he might settle down at home with the blessing of living quietly with her my soul longs for."

Perhaps fortunately for this much-wished-for peace, the Duke died long before the Duchess, who lived to great old age; a virago whose last days remind us not a little of those of the Countess of Shrewsbury,' in Elizabeth's reign, who spent her last days not only at variance with those about her, but even with her nearest of kin, and who died execrated by those to whom she should have been an object of reverence and love.

HAGUE, April 23, 1706.

I AM Very uneasy at not having heard from you since my being in this country; and, the wind continuing in the east, I am afraid I shall not have the satisfaction of receiving any letter from my

1 See letters to Countess of Shrewsbury, p. 242.