In 1842 he was chosen by Pope Gregory XVI to be the first Vicar Apostolic of Ceylon, but he refused the dignity as also the Bishopric of Down and the Archbishopric of Armagh. Three years later he returned to Maynooth as professor of ecclesiastical history. Having published his translation of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz's System of Theology in 1850, he was occupied on his Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti which appeared in 1858. In 1857 he succeeded the Rev. Dr. Laurence F. Renehan as President of St. Patrick's, Maynooth. Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman corresponded often with Russell and when the Cardinal visited Ireland in 1858 he paid a visit to Maynooth. In a memoir written later the Cardinal wrote "the professors and the students, over five hundred in number, in full academic costume, were in waiting with the college grounds, and accorded to their illustrious visitor a thoroughly Irish welcome". There are there are original letters from Cardinal Wiseman to Dr. Russell in the archives of St. Patrick's College, Maynooth. In 1869 Dr. Russell's antiquarian learning caused him to be appointed a member of the Historical Manuscripts Commission and in that capacity he acted as joint editor of the eight-volume Report on the Carte Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and the Calendar of Irish StatePapers during the reign of James I. He was also a frequent contributor to the Dublin Review which for thirty years he enriched by various papers, often writing more than one for the same number. The last of these were the two masterly articles on the sonnet. He wrote many articles for Chambers's Encyclopaedia, and two - "Palimpsests" and "Papyrus" - for the Encyclopædia Britannica. He contributed other magazines, such as the Edinburgh Review, the Month, and the Irish Monthly. A popular work was his translation of Canon Schmid's Tales for the Young first published in 1846.
Death
He died in Dublin, aged 67, from unknown causes and is buried in the College Cemetery which he had repaired and enhanced in his time as College President In 1983 the distinguished ecclesiastical historian Dr. Ambrose MacAuley published his biography of Russell.
Legacy
Cardinals Nicholas Wiseman - the first Archbishop of Westminster - and John Henry Newman alike counted him as an intimate friend, and the latter wrote of him: "He had perhaps more to do with my conversion than any one else". Dr. Russell lived to witness the early success of his nephew Charles Russell who in his uncle's lifetime was made a QC but who would subsequently become Lord Chief Justice of England.
