Geologist on the United States Geographical and Geological Surveys in 1878, and in 1880 became attached to the Geological Survey of the United States. In 1892 he was appointed professor of geology in the university of Michigan.
His publications include Sketch of the Geological History of Lake Lahontan (1885); The Newark System (Bulletin No. 85 U.S. Geol. Survey. 1892); Present and Extinct Lakes of Nevada (1896); Glaciers of North America (1897); Volcanoes of North America (1897); Glaciers of Mount Rainier (Ann. Rep. U.S. Geol. Survey, 1898); and North America (1900).
RUSSELL, JOHN (1745–1806), British portrait painter in
pastel, was born at Guildford, Surrey. At an early age he
entered the studio of Francis Cotes, R.A., from whom he
derived his artistic education, and set up his own studio in
1767. Russell was a man of remarkable religious character,
adevout follower of Whitefield. He began an elaborate introspective
diary in Byrom's shorthand in 1766 and continued
it to the time of his death. In it he records his own mental
condition and religious exercises, entering with a certain morbid
ingenuity into long disquisitions, and only occasionally recording
information concerning his sitters. His religious life is
the key to his complex character, as it actuated his whole career.
He obtained the gold medal at the Royal Academy for figure
drawing in 1770 and exhibited from the beginning of the
Academy down to 1805. He was the finest painter in crayons
England ever produced, and although he painted in oil, in
water-colours and in miniature, it was by his works in crayon
that his reputation was made. He wrote the Elements of
Painting in Crayon, and described in it his method. He made
his own crayons, blending them on his pictures by a peculiar
method termed “ sweetening.” This he carried out with his
fingers, rubbing in the colours and softening them in outline,
uniting colour to colour so accurately that they melt into one
another with a characteristic cadence. His pastel work is to
oil painting “ what the vaudeville is to the tragedy or the
sonnet to the epic.” His colours were pure and his blending
so perfect that no change is to be seen in his works since they
were executed. Sir Joseph Banks, writing in 1789 respecting
his portraits of the president, of Lady, Mrs and Miss Banks,
stated that “ the oil pictures of the present time fade quicker
than the persons they are intended to present, but the colours
made use of by Russell will stand for ever,” and in that prophecy
is so far justified.
An important picture by him hangs in the Louvre (“ Child with Cherries ”), and two, including “ The Old Bathing Man at Brighton,” are owned by the crown. At the Royal Academy, of which he was a member, he exhibited three hundred and thirty works, and his portraits were engraved by Collyer, Turner, Heath, Dean, Bartolozzi, Trotter and other prominent engravers. Russell received warrants of appointment to the king, queen, prince of Wales and the duke of York. He was interested in astronomy, a friend of Sir W. Herschell, and no mean mathematician. He drew an exceedingly accurate map of the moon, and invented a piece of complicated mechanism for exhibiting its phenomena, publishing a pamphlet, illustrated by his own drawings, describing the apparatus.
Two of his sons inherited their father's talent, and one of them, William (1780–1870), exhibited five fine portraits in the Royal Academy.
See George C. Williamson, John Russell (London, 1894).
(G. C. W.)
RUSSELL, JOHN (d. 1494), English bishop and chancellor, was admitted to Winchester College in 1443, and in 1449 went to Oxford as fellow of New College. He resigned his fellowship in 1462, and appears to have entered the royal service. In April 1467 and January 1468 he was employed on missions to Charles the Bold at Bruges. He was there again in February 1470 as one of the envoys to invest Charles with the Garter: the Latin speech which Russell delivered on this last occasion was one of Caxton's earliest publications, probably printed for him at Bruges by Colard Mansion (see Blades, Life of Caxton, i. p. vii, ii. 29–31). In May 1474 he was promoted to be keeper of the privy seal, and retained his office even after his consecration as bishop of Rochester on the 22nd of September 1476, and translation to Lincoln on the 9th of September 1480. As a trusted minister of Edward IV., he was one of the executors of the king's will; but on the 13th of May 1483 he accepted the office of chancellor in the interest of Richard of Gloucester, apparently with great reluctance. He retained the great seal till the 29th of July 1485. Russell was above all things an official, and was sometimes employed by Henry VII. in public affairs. But his last years were occupied chiefly with the business of his diocese, and of the university of Oxford, of which he had been elected chancellor in 1483. He died at Nettleham on the 30th of December 1494, and was buried at Lincoln Cathedral.
Sir Thomas More calls Russell “a wise manne and a good, and of much experience, and one of the best-learned men, undoubtedly, that England had in hys time.” Two English speeches composed by Russell, for the intended parliament of Edward V., and the first parliament of Richard III., are printed in Nichols's Grants of Edward V. (Camden Soc.). Some other writings of less interest remain in manuscript.
For contemporary notices see especially More's Life of Richard III., the Continuation of the Croyland Chronicle, ap. Freeman Scriptores, and Bentley's Excerpta Historica, pp. 16–17. See also Wood's History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, and T. Kirby, Winchester Scholars, and Annals of Winchester College. There are modern biographies in Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, and Foss's Judges of England. (C. L. K.)
RUSSELL, JOHN RUSSELL, 1st Earl (1792–1878), British statesman, third son of the 6th duke of Bedford, by Georgiana Elizabeth Byng, second daughter of the 4th Viscount Torrington, was born in London on the 18th of August 1792. He was sent to a private school at Sunbury in 1800, and from 1803 to 1804 he was at Westminster School, but was then withdrawn on account of his delicate health. From 1805 to 1808 he was with a private tutor at Woodnesborough, near Sandwich. After travelling in Scotland and in Spain, he studied from the
autumn of 1809 to 1812 at the university of Edinburgh, then the academic centre of Liberalism, and dwelt in the house of Professor John Playfair. On leaving the university, he travelled in Portugal and Spain, but on the 4th of May 1813 he was returned for the ducal borough of Tavistock and thereupon came back to England.
In foreign politics Lord John Russell's oratorical talents were especially shown in his struggles to prevent the union of Norway and Sweden. In domestic questions he cast in his lot with those who opposed the repressive measures of 1817, and protested that the causes of the discontent at home should be removed by remedial legislation. When failure attended all his efforts he resigned his seat for Tavistock in March 1817, and meditated permanent withdrawal from public life, but was dissuaded from this step by the arguments of his friends, and especially by a poetic appeal from his friend Tom Moore. In the parliament of 1818–20 he again represented the family borough in Devon, and in May 1819 began his long advocacy of parliamentary reform by moving for an inquiry into the corruption which prevailed in the Cornish constituency of Grampound. During the first parliament (1820–26) of George IV. he sat for the county of Huntingdon, and secured in 1821 the disfranchisement of Grampound, but the seats were not transferred to the constituency which he desired. Lord John Russell paid the penalty for his advocacy of Catholic emancipation with the loss in 1826 of his seat for Huntingdon county, but he found a shelter in the Irish borough of Bandon Bridge. He led the attack against the Test Acts by carrying in February 1828 with a majority of forty-four a motion for a committee to inquire into their operations, and after this decisive victory they were repealed (9th of May 1828). He warmly supported the Wellington ministry when it realized that the king's government could only be carried on by the passing of a Catholic Relief Act (April 1829). For the greater part of the short lived parliament of 1830–31 he served his old constituency of Tavistock, having been beaten in a contest for Bedford county at the general election by one vote; and when Lord Grey's
