Certainly he was not idle, had written a book, travelled, was a Captain of Yeomanry, a Justice of the Peace, a good cricketer, and a constant and glib speaker.

It would have been unfair to call his enthusiasm for social reform spurious.

It was real enough in its way, and did certainly testify that he was not altogether lacking either in imagination or good-heartedness.

But it was over and overlaid with the public-school habit--that peculiar, extraordinarily English habit, so powerful and beguiling that it becomes a second nature stronger than the first--of relating everything in the Universe to the standards and prejudices of a single class.

Since practically all his intimate associates were immersed in it, he was naturally not in the least conscious of this habit; indeed there was nothing he deprecated so much in politics as the narrow and prejudiced outlook, such as he had observed in the Nonconformist, or labour politician.