THE NEW BRITISH PREMIER. BY A. MAURICE LOW. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR is one of the most interesting and attractive actors in the world's great drama, and his career is more suggestive of one of "Ouida's" darling heroes, with a mixture of one of Disraeli's political creations, than that of a living English politician. Born fifty-four years ago in Scotland, the son of a commoner, although his lineage is older and better than that of half the peers of the realm, on his mother's side connected with the house of Cecil, whose head is his uncle, the Marquis of Salisbury, at nine years he was the heir, by the death of his father, to nearly 100,000 acres of land and a great income. Young Balfour was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. Neither at Eton nor at Cambridge was he remarkable for scholarship. He left the university with a second class in moral science. At Cambridge he belonged to "Souls," a group of young men who languidly discussed transcendentalism and dabbled in metaphysics. Voltaire said, with his deplorable flippancy, a maga. zine writer remarked once, with Mr. Balfour as his theme, that when a man talked about what he did not understand to those who did not understand him, that was metaphysics. Voltaire may have been right. One thing is certain. Balfour, as schoolboy and undergraduate, gave no promise of the great things he was to do later. When twenty-six years old, he was elected a member of Parliament. EARLY DAYS IN PARLIAMENT. Mr. During the next few years he did little to distinguish himself from the rank and file, still less to make any one pick him out as a future prime minister. He was tall and very thin. His face was long and pointed. His manner has been described as lackadaisical. "He had in many respects the whole appearance and manner of the curate, who has been the butt of the caricaturists and the satirists for two generations," and, like the curate of caricature and satire, he found fre quent consolation in the use of his pocket hand. kerchief. In the House he "languidly sprawled" on the bench. He was in wretched health, and apparently marked for an early death. His whole manner was that of a man who was deadly bored with life, who lived because he had to, but who wished that the curtain would ring down as quickly as possible. His manner was contemptuous rather than sneering. He had money, more money than he knew what to do with, but he indulged in no senseless extravagances, and his name was linked with no folly that united him with the mass of mankind. His life was so irreproachable that in sheer derision he was nicknamed "Miss Balfour" and "Miss Nancy." And yet no one looked upon him as a man devoid of intelligence. Five years after entering Parliament, when he was thirtyone years old, he wrote his first important book, and probably because he was a Cecil born north of the Tweed, it was a polemical work. His Defense of Philosophic Doubt" is not a book that can be dismissed in a sentence. It showed not only great ability, but it also showed that its writer was a logician and a master of style. Written even by a lesser person than a Conserv ative member of Parliament connected by ties of blood with the Salisbury family, it would have attracted attention. 66 UNDER LORD SALISBURY'S TUTELAGE. He had been serving his apprenticeship during those years. Either Lord Salisbury had the prescience to divine in his nephew the same qualities that were an inheritance of the common blood, or else it was pure luck that made him his political guardian. Whatever the reason, it was fortunate for both uncle and nephew; and this close connection between Balfour and Lord Salisbury, which began almost immediately after he entered the House, doubtless had much to do with the formation of his character. Lord Salisbury, who at that time held the seals of the Foreign Office, appointed him one of his private secretaries, and in that capacity he accompanied his uncle to the Berlin conference. In 1886, Mr. Balfour was elected Lord Rector of St. Andrews University. Lord Salisbury went out of office, Mr. Gladstone came in, and in 1884 Lord Salisbury was once more called to the head of affairs. Lord Salisbury was always kind to his relatives; so kind, in fact, that the present cabinet has been dubbed the "Hotel Cecil," because of the numerous members of that powerful family, direct and collateral, who sit at the cabinet board. He made his nephew a privy councillor, which means much; and president of the local government board, which means little. It was quite the (King Albert died on June 18, and was succeeded in the kingship by his brother, Prince George.) June 28.-Judge Henry K. Baker, of Hallowell, Maine, 95. June 29.-Gen. John Hendrickson, of New York, Civil War veteran, -70.... Major Ira Alexander Shaler, civil engineer, 40. July 4.-Hervé A. E. A. Faye, the astronomer, oldest member of the Academy of Sciences, 88. July 7.-Chief Justice Marshall J. Williams, of the Ohio Supreme Court, 65 ....William Clark, the thread manufacturer of Newark, N. J., 61. July 8.-James P. Stephens, of Trenton, N. J., one of the oldest pottery manufacturers in the country, 62.... Mrs. Mary H. Cheeseborough, of Saratoga, N. Y., a miniature-portrait artist, 79. July 9. Judge William Marvin, of Skaneateles, N. Y., 94 .... Edmund J. Cleaveland, a widely-known genealogist, of Hartford, Conn., 59....Mrs. Charles G. Leland, an American woman well known in Europe, 71. July 12.-Archbishop Patrick A. Feehan, of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Chicago, 73. July 13.-Gen. Thomas J. Morgan, Civil War veteran, and corresponding secretary of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, 63. THE LATE KING ALBERT OF SAXONY. July 10.-Mrs. Annie Alexander Hector ("Mrs. Alexander"), the English novelist, 77. July 14.-Sir Joseph Ignatius Little, Chief Justice and Deputy Governor of Newfoundland, 67....William Still, of Philadelphia, one of the most prominent members of the negro race, 80. July 16.-The Very Rev. William Choka, vicar - general of the Roman Catholic diocese of Nebraska, 62. July 17.-Brevet Maj. Gen. Charles H. Smith, retired, of Maine, Civil War veteran, 75....Maj. Frederick W. Coleman, of Plainfield, N. J., Civil War veteran, 65.... William Johnston, Conservative member of Parliament for South Belfast, 73.... William H. Williams, general manager of the Union News Company, 62. July 18.-The Sultan of Zanzibar.... Marquis Saigo, a distinguished Japanese statesman. July 20.-John W. Mackay, American financier, 71. FORTHCOMING HE following conventions have been announced TH for this month: American Bar Association, at Saratoga Springs, N. Y., on August 27-29; American Fisheries Society, at Put-in-Bay, Ohio, on August 5-7; American Forestry Association, at Lansing, Mich., on August 27-28; League of American Municipalities, at Grand Rapids, Mich., on August 27-29; American Park and Outdoor Art Association, at Boston, on August 5-7; Univeralist Church of America, at Old Orchard, Maine, on August 1-10; Friends' International Christian Endeavor Convention, at Richmond, Va., on August 8-10; National Federation of Catholic Societies, at Chicago, on August 5-7; Catholic Total Abstinence EVENTS. Union, at Dubuque, Iowa, on August 6-9; Salvation Army Encampment, at Old Orchard, Maine, on August 16-September 3; General Conference of Christian Workers of the United States, at East Northfield, Mass., on August 1-September 7; Brotherhood of the Kingdom, at Morristown, N. J., on August 4-8; TransMississippi Congress, at St. Paul, on August 19-22; National Fraternal Congress, at Denver, on August 26-30; National Society of the Army of the Philippines, at Council Bluffs, Iowa, on August 14-15; National Postmasters' Association, at Milwaukee, Wis., on August 26-29; and the National Negro Business League, at Richmond, Va., on August 25-27. Silent it stands, the shrine within whose walls Which only faith may stay. Not for ourselves we mourn the moment's loss, So keep we vigil; so a Nation's prayer That of His grace and pity God may spare From Punch (London). SHAKE! "There's nobody gladder than I am, John!" From the Journal (New York). |