TRussel 541 



Russel,' went away with the impression that he was *a 

 most charming man.' Old ladies without an idea 

 behind their ringlets, old gentlemen without a thought 

 beyond their denomination or their crops, sat and 

 listened, worthy souls ! as the editor poured out stories 

 and made jokes, while they were themselves afraid to 

 smile in case what he said was meant to be serious, and 

 were afraid to look solemn in case he had meant to 

 be funny, and therefore preserved an expression of 

 wonderful mental and facial perplexity." 



And yet, brilliant conversationalist as he was, Russel 

 loathed and hated public speaking. He must, I imagine, 

 in his time have taken part in public meetings he could 

 hardly have escaped doing so but no speech of his, as 

 far as I am aware, has ever been recorded. All his 

 fluency and confidence deserted him at the prospect of 

 facing an audience in public. He was, I suppose, 

 conscious that he had no oratorical gifts ; he knew the 

 limits of his own powers. When he was invited in 1872 

 to stand as one of the candidates for the Lord Rector- 

 ship of Aberdeen he declined the honour, because it 

 would have entailed the necessity of delivering an 

 address, and he would rather have died than do that. 



It was in 1855, when the paper duty was removed and 

 The Scotsman suddenly burst out as a daily penny paper, 

 that Russel's influence reached its zenith. In its previous 

 form, as a journal issued twice a week, The Scotsman 

 had, under Russel's editorship, which began nominally 

 in 1848, though it had existed really from the time 

 he joined the paper in 1845, risen to what was then 

 considered the remarkable circulation of 4,000 for each 



