For forty years and upwards he has graced the public scene
Without becoming sterilized or stiffened by routine;
He still retains his freshness and his brain is just as keen.
His credit was not shipwrecked on the fatal Irish reef;
He has always been a loyal and a sympathetic chief;
And he has also written _The Foundations of Belief_.
As leader of the Mission to our cousins and Allies,
We learn with satisfaction, but without the least surprise,
That he proved the very cynosure of Transatlantic eyes.
For the special brand of statesman _plus_ aristocratic sage,
Like the model king-philosopher described in PLATO'S page,
Is uncommonly attractive in a democratic age.
"BALFOUR Must Go!" was once the cry of those who deemed him slack,
But now there's not a single scribe of that unruly pack
Who is not glad in every sense that BALFOUR has come back.
And as for his "successor"--the Napoleonic peer
Whose functions are restricted to a purely business sphere--
We must try to bear his absence in a spirit of good cheer.
* * * * *
=THE INFANTICIDE.
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