20? 



RUSSELL, ALEXANDER. 



RUSSELL, THE RIGHT HON. LORD JOHN. 



208 



series of 'Notes' on Turner's pictures and drawings exhibited at 

 Marlborough House, in which he has dealt with Turner's demerits in 

 a style which has not a little surprised those who have taken their 

 opinion of Mr. Ruskin rather from report than from a careful con- 

 sideration of his writings. 



Mr. Ruskin was one of the founders of the Arundel Society, and he 

 drew up a notice of 'Giotto and his Works,' 4to, 1854, to accompany 

 outlines from certain of Giotto's frescoes engraved by that society. 

 Mr. Ruskin has also, in his desire to extend the knowledge of art, 

 delivered several lectures to artizans, on ornamentation, &c. ; and for 

 some time ho directed classes in drawing in the Working Men's 

 College, as well as by various friendly services assisting other schools 

 and institutions, and also private students. 



RUSSELL, ALEXANDER, was a native of Edinburgh, where he 

 received his medical education. Having finished his 'Studies in the 

 university of that city, he came to London, and in the year 1740 was 

 appointed physician to the English factory at Aleppo. Having made 

 himself master of the Arabic language, he soon obtained a pre-emi- 

 nence over all the practitioners in the place, and was honoured by the 

 particular friendship of the pasha. On his return to England, in 

 1754, he published his 'Natural History of Aleppo,' a valuable and 

 interesting work. It contains a description of the city and principal 

 natural productions in its neighbourhood ; together with an account 

 of the climate, inhabitants, and diseases, and a diary of the progress of 

 the plague in 1742-43-44. Four years after the publication of this 

 work, a vacancy occurring in St. Thomas's Hospital, he was elected 

 physician to that institution, which office he retained till his death in 

 1768. He was a man of great abilities, industry, and humanity. . He 

 presented several contributions to the Royal and Medical Societies. A 

 second edition of his ' Natural History of Aleppo,' revised, enlarged, 

 and illustrated with notes, by Patrick Russell, has been translated 

 into several European languages. 



RUSSELL, PATRICK, brother of Dr. Alexander Russell [RUSSELL, 

 ALEXANDER], was born in Scotland in 1726. His father was a lawyer 

 of great eminence in the city of Edinburgh, and of seven sons whom 

 he brought up it is reported that not one ever gave him a moment's 

 disquietude. Having completed his medical studies in the University 

 of Edinburgh, Patrick Russell went to Aleppo to reside with his 

 brother Dr. Alexander Russell. On the return of the last-named 

 physician to England, Dr. Patrick Russell succeeded him as physician 

 to the British factory at Aleppo. It was during his residence in this 

 capital that the great plague of 1760 and the two following years 

 broke out in Syria, and he readily availed himself of the opportunities 

 which it afforded him of studying this disease in all its varieties. His 

 quarto work on the plague, which was published some years after his 

 return to England, is justly esteemed one of the best and most com- 

 plete that ever has been written on the subject. It contains an 

 historical and medical account of the disease, and treats fully the 

 subjects of quarantine, lazarettos, and the police to be adopted in 

 times of pestilence. He also gave to the public a new and very 

 enlarged edition of his brother's work on Aleppo, and in 1796 pub- 

 lished an account of the Indian serpents collected on the coast of 

 Coromandcl, containing descriptions and drawings of each species, 

 together with experiments and remarks on their several poisons. He 

 died in 1805. 



* RUSSELL, THE RIGHT HON. LORD JOHN, is the third and 

 youngest son of the sixth Duke of Bedford, by his first wife, the Hon. 

 Georgiana Elizabeth, the second daughter of the fourth Viscount 

 Torrington. His eldest brother, the present or seventh Duke, is four 

 years his senior. He was born in Hertford-street, London, on the 18th 

 of August 1792, and was educated first at Westminster school, and 

 afterwards at the University of Edinburgh, where he attended the 

 Moral Philosophy lectures of Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown. 

 It was Lord John Russell, who headed the deputation of students 

 that waited on Dugald Stewart to congratulate him on his recovery 

 from the illness which had caused him to have recourse to Brown's 

 help, and to thank him for having procured so valuable a substitute. In 

 1813, at the age of twenty-one, he entered the House of Commons as 

 member for Tavistock, of which borough his father had the disposal ; 

 and, faithful to the hereditary Whiggism of the House of Bedford, he 

 attached himself at once to the opposition, who were then maintaining 

 Whig principles against the powerful ministry of Liverpool and 

 Castlereagh, It was about this time that the cessation of the European 

 war left the mind of the nation free to return to home-politics ; and 

 the first portion df Lord John Russell's parliamentary career is iden- 

 tified with the progress of that stubborn contest which the Whig 

 opposition, with the country at their back, carried on inch by inch 

 tUl the year 1827 against the reigning Toryism. His abilities and the 

 industry and conscientiousness with which he devoted himself to 

 politics as his business concurred, with the advantages of his birth and 

 connections as a scion of the great ducal house of Bedford, to give him 

 very soon the place of a leader among the Whig politicians. While 

 taking part in all the Whig questions, he fastened from the first with 

 extraordinary tenacity on the main question of parliamentary reform, 

 bringing forward or supporting year after year measures for the sup- 

 pression of rotten boroughs and the enfranchisement of large com- 

 mercial towns. Lord Brougham, after speaking of the great services 

 rendered to the cause of Reform at this time in parliament by Earl 



Grey, Sir Francis Burdett, Lord Durham, and others, says, "But no 

 one did more lasting and real service to the question than Lord John 

 Russell, whose repeated motions, backed by the progress of the subject 

 out of doors, had the effect of increasing the minority in its favour, in 

 so much that, when he at last brought it forward in 1826, Mr. Canning 

 [then Castlereagh's successor in the Foreign Secretaryship in the Liver- 

 pool Cabinet, but virtual head of the government] finding he could 

 only defeat it by a comparatively small majority, pronounced the 

 question substantially carried. It was probably from this time that 

 his party perceived the prudence of staying a change which they 

 could not prevent." The bill, the proposal of which had this im- 

 portant effect, was one for disfranchising certain rotten boroughs and 

 substituting large and important towns in their place. At the time 

 of proposing it Lord John was no longer member for Tavistock, 

 but for Huntingdonshire, which county he had represented since 

 1820. 



While thus laying the foundation of his reputation as a serious and 

 persevering Whig statesman, and as the man among the junior Whigs 

 who had made the question of parliamentary "reform most thoroughly 

 his own, Lord John had at the same time made various appearances as 

 an author. In 1819 he published in quarto a ' Life of William, Lord 

 Russell, with some Account of the Times in which he lived' a grace- 

 ful and characteristic tribute to his celebrated Whig ancestor. The 

 work was followed in 1821 by ' An Essay on tho History of the 

 English Government and Constitution, from the Reign of Henry VII. 

 to the present Time ; ' and this again by an effort in verse entitled 

 ' Don Carlos, or Persecution, a Tragedy in five Acts,' published in 1822, 

 and which went through several editions in the course of that year. 

 The subject of the tragedy is the story of Don Carlos of Spain, the 

 son of Philip II., already dramatised by the genius of Schiller. In 

 1824 Lord John published the first volume of a work of a different 

 character, entitled ' Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe from the Peace 

 of Utrecht,' but the work was not completed till 1829. Several lighter 

 productions; in the shape of sketches, &c., also came from his pen 

 about this period ; and indeed for a time he seemed to be divided 

 between politics and literature. This was the period of his first inti- 

 macy with Moore and with others of the literary men who used to 

 frequent the society of Lord Lansdowne and of Holland House ; and 

 there is extant a poem of Moore's, remonstrating with Lord John 

 Russell on an intention which he had intimated to Moore in conversa- 

 tion, of withdrawing from political pursuits altogether : 

 " Shalt thou he fainthearted and turn from the strife, 



From the mighty arena, where all that is grand 

 And devoted and pure and adorning in life 



'Tis for high-thoughted spirits like thine to command ? " 



Fortunately, Lord John did not carry out his intention, but continued 

 in that career of political life, in which it was, and not specially in 

 literature, that nature had fitted him to excel. 



The prostration of Lord Liverpool by apoplexy in April 1827 called 

 Canning to his brief premiership. His administration (April 1827 

 August 1827) and that of his successor, LordGoderich (August 1827 

 January 1828). formed a period of peculiar difficulty for the Whigs, 

 more especially on the Reform question. Canning's Tory colleagues 

 of the Liverpool government having refused to serve under his 

 premiership, he had to solicit the Whigs to join him so as to form a 

 Coalition government. As however Canning had pledged himself to 

 oppose reform, and as he had also engaged to the king not to bring 

 forward any measure of Roman Catholic emancipation, it was argued 

 by some Whigs that his government would, in fact, in all except 

 foreign questions, be a Tory one, and that to join it would be to betray 

 Whig pinciples. Earl Grey took this view, and refused to join the 

 Coalition. Lord Lausdowne, Mr. Tierney, Lord Brougham, and the 

 majority of the Whig leaders thought otherwise ; and Lord Lansdowno 

 and Mr. Tierney became members of Canning's ministry. The effect, 

 at all events, was temporarily to arrest the Reform question. It could 

 not be urged without breaking up the Coalition ; and, as Lord 

 Lausdowne and other leading Whigs were in the Coalition, Lord John 

 Russell (who had in 1826 vacated his seat for Huntingdonshire and 

 now eat for Bandon-Bridge) had to defer to circumstances, and allow 

 his favourite measure to lie over. It was not till the resignation of 

 Lord Goderich, and the formation of a regular Tory ministry of the 

 old kind under the Duke of Wellington (1828), that the Whig zeal of 

 Lord John was again free to act vigorously and aggressively. During 

 the Wellington ministry (January 1828 November 1830) no man was 

 more active and resolute in urging Whig views, and in driving the 

 government forward against their will. In 1828 he moved for the 

 repeal of the Test Acts ; and in 1830 by which time the reluctant 

 concession of Roman Catholic emancipation by Wellington's ministry 

 had left the question of parliamentary reform almost alone to occupy 

 the public mind he submitted, though unsuccessfully, a scheme for 

 conferring the franchise on Leeds, Birmingham, and Manchester. 



On the resignation of the Wellington ministry in November 1830, 

 Lord John Russell, then in the thirty-ninth year of his age, entered 

 on office for the first time, as Paymaster of the Forces, under the 

 Reform or first Whig ministry of Earl Grey a ministry which the 

 death of George IV. and the accession of William IV. had rendered 

 possible. Parliamentary reform was now the one paramount question 

 of national interest ; and the new ministry had come in expressly 



