When he first entered Parliament a contemporary observer wrote:  “It would be difficult to imagine a more complete beau-ideal of aristocracy.  His whole countenance has the coldness as well as the grace of a chiselled one, and expresses precision, prudence, and determination in no common degree.”  The stateliness of bearing, the unbroken figure, the high glance of stern though melancholy resolve, he retained to the end.  But the incessant labour and anxiety of sixty years made their mark, and Sir John Millais’s noble portrait, painted in 1877, shows a countenance on which a lifelong contact with human suffering had written its tale in legible characters.

Temperament is, I suppose, hereditary.  Lord Shaftesbury’s father, who was for nearly forty years Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords, was distinguished by a strong intellect, an imperious temper, and a character singularly deficient in amiability.  His mother (whose childish beauty is familiar to all lovers of Sir Joshua’s art as the little girl frightened by the mask in the great “Marlborough Group”) was the daughter of the third Duke of Marlborough by that Duchess whom Queen Charlotte pronounced to be the proudest woman in England.  It is reasonable to suppose that from such a parentage and such an ancestry Lord Shaftesbury derived some of the most conspicuous features of his character.  From his father he inherited his keenness of intellect, his habits of laborious industry, and his iron tenacity of purpose.  From his mother he may have acquired that strong sense of personal dignity—­that intuitive and perhaps unconscious feeling of what was due to his station as well as to his individuality—­which made his presence and address so impressive and sometimes alarming.

Dignity was indeed the quality which immediately struck one on one’s first encounter with Lord Shaftesbury; and with dignity were associated a marked imperiousness and an eager rapidity of thought, utterance, and action.  As one got to know him better, one began to realize his intense tenderness towards all weakness and suffering; his overflowing affection for those who stood nearest to him; his almost morbid sensitiveness; his passionate indignation against cruelty or oppression.  Now and then his conversation was brightened by brief and sudden gleams of genuine humour, but these gleams were rare.  He had seen too much of human misery to be habitually jocose, and his whole nature was underlain by a groundwork of melancholy.

The marble of manhood retained the impression stamped upon the wax of childhood.  His early years had been profoundly unhappy.  His parents were stern disciplinarians of the antique type.  His private school was a hell on earth; and yet he used to say that he feared the master and the bullies less than he feared his parents.  One element of joy, and one only, he recognized in looking back to those dark days, and that was the devotion of an old nurse, who comforted him in his childish sorrows, and taught him the rudiments of Christian faith.  In all the struggles and distresses of boyhood and manhood, he used the words of prayer which he had learned from this good woman before he was seven years old; and of a keepsake which she left him—­the gold watch which he wore to the last day of his life—­he used to say, “That was given to me by the best friend I ever had in the world.”