Party in public, he added still more to the gaiety of its secret councils. He rallied generously to the chaff in which Lord Randolph always delighted, and the comradeship which grew between them was abiding. No cloud darkened, no conflict of interests or opinions disturbed it. Of the intimate relations between these four allies, the friendship of Lord Randolph and Sir Henry Wolff was the only one to survive unimpaired the vicissitudes of political life. Mr. Gorst possessed temper and talents of a different kind. His mood was serious, his ability distinguished, his industry enormous. His career in the past had been more noteworthy than that of any of his companions. He was a rapidly rising lawyer. He had sat in Parliament as early as 1866. He had been entrusted with the reorganisation of the Conservative party machinery after the defeat of 1868, and Mr. Disraeli always regarded the victory of 1874 as largely due to his arrangements, and treated him with special favour and confidence. He probably knew more about politics, public and secret, than all his three colleagues together, and his knowledge of law proved on repeated occasions of inestimable value to the rest. In conjunction with Lord Randolph Churchill his abilities became doubly effective. A few years later Sir Henry James publicly complained, in a Standing Committee, of such an alliance. It was, he said, a poacher’s combination--a pointer to find game and a greyhound to run it down. The career of the remaining member of the Fourth Party is not yet complete. Mr. Arthur Balfour in 1880 was an affable and rather idle young gentleman, who had delicately toyed with philosophy and diplomacy, was earnest in the cause of popular concerts, and brought to the House of Commons something of Lord Melbourne’s air of languid and well-bred indifference. How he came at all to be drawn into that circle of fierce energy which radiated from Lord Randolph Churchill was a puzzle to those who knew him best. In the early days of the Fourth Party no one--certainly not his comrades--regarded him as a serious politician. Lord Randolph, who delighted in nicknames, used to call him ‘Postlethwaite,’ and made him the object of much harmless and friendly chaff. In private life he already exercised that personal charm and fascination which in later years were curiously to deflect the course of great events. But he seemed so lacking in energy, so entirely devoid of anything like ambition, so slenderly and uncertainly attached to politics at all, that his friends feared he would withdraw altogether, and none recognised or imagined in this amiable, easy-going member for a family borough the calculating, tenacious, and unwearying Minister who was destined through so many years to control the House of Commons and shape the policy of the State.