His handsome appearance, his genial manner, his distinguished voice, his eagerness and playfulness in conversation, all contribute to an impression of personality hardly equalled at the present time.

He might easily pass for the perfect ideal of the gentleman.

In a certain set of society he remains to this day a veritable prince of men.

And his tastes are pure, and his life is wholesome.
A lady of my acquaintance was once praising to its mother a robust and handsome infant who could boast a near relationship with Mr.Arthur Balfour.

"Yes," said the mother, with criticism in her eyes and voice, "I think he is a nice child, but we rather fear he lacks the Balfourian manner." Even in childhood! This Balfourian manner, as I understand it, has its roots in an attitude of mind--an attitude of convinced superiority which insists in the first place on complete detachment from the enthusiasms of the human race, and in the second place on keeping the vulgar world at arm's length.
It is an attitude of mind which a critic or a cynic might be justified in assuming, for it is the attitude of one who desires rather to observe the world than to shoulder any of its burdens; but it is a posture of exceeding danger to anyone who lacks tenderness or sympathy, whatever his purpose or office may be, for it tends to breed the most dangerous of all intellectual vices, that spirit of self-satisfaction which Dostoievsky declares to be the infallible mark of an inferior mind.
To Mr.Arthur Balfour this studied attitude of aloofness has been fatal, both to his character and to his career.