unexpected success
and a wide reputation, and from that time on he developed rapidly into
one of the most skillful statesmen of the Conservative party. By
tradition and by temperament he is an extreme Tory; and it is in the
opposition, as a skillful fencer in debate and a sharp critic of
pretentious schemes, that he has been most admired and most feared.
However, he is kept from being narrowly confined to the traditional
point of view by the philosophic interests and training of his mind,
which he has turned into practical fairness. Some of his speeches are
most original in suggestion, and all show a literary quality of a high
order. His writings on other subjects are also broad, scholarly, and
practical. 'A Defense of Philosophic Doubt' is thought by some
philosophers to be the ablest work of destructive criticism since Hume.
'The Foundations of Belief' covers somewhat the same ground and in more
popular fashion. 'Essays and Addresses' is a collection of papers on
literature and sociology.

[Illustration: ARTHUR J. BALFOUR]

THE PLEASURES OF READING

From his Rectorial Address before the University of Glasgow

I confess to have been much perplexed in my search for a topic on which
I could say something to which you would have patience to listen, or on
which I might find it profitable to speak. One theme however there is,
not inappropriate to the place in which I stand, nor I hope unwelcome to
the audience which I address. The youngest of you have left behind that
period of youth during which it seems inconceivable that any book should
afford recreation except a story-book. Many of you are just reaching the
period when, at the end of your prescribed curriculum, the whole field
and compass of literature lies outspread before you; when, with
faculties trained and disciplined, and the edge of curiosity not dulled
or worn with use, you may enter at your leisure into the intellectual
heritage of the centuries.

Now the question of how to read and what to read has of late filled much
space in the daily papers, if it cannot strictly speaking be said to
have profoundly occupied the public mind. But you need be under no
alarm. I am not going to supply you with a new list of the hundred books
most worth reading, nor am I about to take the world into my confidence
in respect of my "favorite passages from the best authors." Nor again do
I address myself to the professed student, to the fortunate individual
with whom literat