In the small social arts, which are so valuable an equipment for
a political leader, he was indeed deficient. He had no memory for
faces, and was painfully apt to ignore his political supporters
when he met them outside the walls of Parliament; and this inability
to remember faces was allied with a curious artlessness which made
it impossible for him to feign a cordiality he did not feel. In
his last illness he said: "I have seemed cold to my friends, but
it was not in my heart." The friends needed no such assurance, for
in private life he was not only gentle, affectionate, and tender
to an unusual degree, but full of fun and playfulness, a genial
host and an admirable talker. The great Lord Dufferin, a consummate
judge of such matters, said: "His conversation was too delightful,
full of anecdote; but then his anecdotes were not like those told
by the ordinary raconteur, and were simply reminiscences of his
own personal experience and intercourse with other distinguished
men."

When Lord Palmerston died, _The Times_ was in its zenith, and its
editor, J. T. Delane, had long been used to "shape the whispers"
of Downing Street. Lord Russell resented journalistic dictation.
"I know," he said, "that Mr. Delane is very angry because I did not
kiss his hand instead of the Queen's" _The Times_ became hostile,
and a competent critic remarked:"

"There have been Ministers who knew the springs of that public
opinion which is delivered ready digested to the nation every morning,
and who have not scrupled to work them for their own diurnal
glorification, even although the recoil might injure their colleagues.
But Lord Russell has never bowed the knee to the potentates of