Andrews, Cambridge, Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool,
Birmingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Columbia (New York); D.C.L. Oxford.
M.P. for Hertford, 1874-85; Private Sec'y to his uncle, the late
Marquis of Salisbury, 1878-80; served on Mission to Berlin with
Salisbury and Beaconsfield, 1878; Privy Councillor, 1885; President
of Local Government Board, 1885-86; Sec'y for Scotland, 1886-87;
Lord Rector, St. Andrews, 1886; Sec'y for Ireland, 1887-91; Lord
Rector, Glasgow, 1890; Chancellor of Edinburgh since 1891; First
Lord of Treasury, 1891-92; President British Association, 1904;
Prime Minister, 1902-1905; Leader of the Commons, 1895-1906; 1st
Lord of the Admiralty 1915-16; Head of British Mission to America,
1917; Author of a series of philosophical and economic works.

[Illustration: RT. HON. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR]

CHAPTER VI

MR. ARTHUR BALFOUR

_"A sceptre once put into the hand, the grip is instinctive; and he
who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security and
not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft."_--J.R. LOWELL.

In one of the _Tales_ Crabbe introduces to us a young lady, Arabella by
name, who read Berkeley, Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke and was such a prodigy
of learning that she became the wonder of the fair town in which, as he
tells us, she shone like a polished brilliant. From that town she
reaped, and to that town she gave, renown:

And strangers coming, all were taught t'admire
The learned Lady, and the lofty Spire.

One feels that in Mr. Balfour there is something of both the learned
Lady and the lofty Spire. He is at once spinsterish and architectural. I
mean that he is a very beautiful object to look at, and at the same time
a frustrated and perverse nature. Moreover his learning partakes of a
drawing-room character, while his loftiness dwindles away to a point
which affords no foothold for the sons of man. One may look up to him
now and again, but a constant regard would be rewarded by nothing more
serviceable to the admirer than a stiff neck. He points upward indeed,
but to follow his direction is to discover only the void of etheric
vacancy. Like his learning, which may astonish the simple, but which
hardly illuminates the student, his virtues leave one cold. Someone who
knows him well said to me once, "He is no Sir Galahad. Week-ending and
London society have deteriorated his fibre."

He beg