Hungarian General Eber, who began to work in 1854, was afterwards for many years the influential 'Times correspondent at Vienna, Athens, and Turin. Antonio Gallenga, the Italian, did invaluable work from 1859 to 1877, writing with equal success on Italy, on the Spanish Revolution of 1868, and on the Eastern Question nine years later. Louis Jennings, afterwards well known as the Editor of the 'Croker Papers,' worked for many years on the Times,' both as Correspondent in India and the United States and as a miscellaneous writer at home. But it was, of course, in his staff of 'leader' writers that Delane was most interested. A Correspondent may say, within limits, pretty much what he likes, but the writer of a leading article speaks for the paper, and the Editor must bear the responsibility for what he says. Hence Delane had to be careful whom he chose, and fortune for the most part favoured him. Dasent, Woodham of Cambridge, Thomas Mozley, A. A. Knox (afterwards a well-known police magistrate), Henry Reeve, and Robert Lowe were the chief members of his staff in early years; a strong team, which for the most part kept step beautifully and took the coach along safely, and at the regulation speed. Lowe was the most brilliant of these men, but neither his Editor nor his colleagues seem to have thought him capable of what he achieved in Parliament in 1865-6-of delivering a tremendous attack upon democracy, of collecting the discontented Whigs in a Cave of Adullam, and of breaking up Gladstone's Government. With Henry Reeve, Foreign Adviser' from 1840 to 1855, neither Delane nor Dasent was ever on comfortable terms. The future editor of the Edinburgh' was both pompous and quarrelsome. There was no room in the Times' office for both him and Delane, and the Editor was not sorry when, in 1855, Reeve left the paper.

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Delane began to break down in 1875, and after two more years at work (often hard and anxious, for it was the time of the Near-Eastern crisis) he retired in the autumn of 1877, having just reached the age of sixty. Two years later he died.

In appointing his successor, Mr Walter did not go outside the existing staff; his principle being that a chief who knew the traditions of the office was more likely to

succeed than a man, however eminent, brought in from outside. Many people expected that it would be Leonard Courtney, who had long been an influential leader writer. To the world of politics, the appointment of Thomas Chenery was a surprise, for people knew him not as a journalist or publicist but as a learned Oriental scholar, Professor of Arabic at Oxford, and a member of the Committee for revising the authorised version of the Old Testament. In point of fact, he had been a busy member of the Times' staff for twenty-five years. Before and during the Crimean War he had been Correspondent at Constantinople, whence he spoke with the authority of a man of calm judgment who knew the languages and the people. Afterwards he had worked steadily at the office, showing a knowledge of foreign affairs rare at that time, which gave him a high value in the eyes of Delane. On the whole, though he did not, like Delane, frequent the great world, he was a good Editor, moderate in his views and on the best of terms with proprietor, manager, and staff, most helpful to his leader' writers, and quite able to cope with any situation that might arise in public affairs-it being remembered that the years between the Berlin Treaty and the first Home Rule Bill were not years of acute crisis. Chenery was long a sufferer in health, and he died in 1884, after a reign of less than seven years. John Walter III was still the chief proprietor (he lived till 1894). J. C. Macdonald had been for some years business manager, and among the survivors of Delane's staff of leader writers or editorial aids were William Stebbing, Leonard Courtney (Lord Courtney), and Dr Henry Wace. Courtney was a good and prolific writer on many subjects-almost as prolific as another politician, George Brodrick (who confessed to 1600 leading articles !), had been ten years earlier-and it is a little surprising that Delane and Chenery should have got on so well and so long with a writer of such an angular mind. Of other writers of the Chenery epoch, three were of great force and persistency, especially upon the Irish question; two of them have passed away-E. D. J. Wilson and J. Callender Ross. The public never knew even their names, but it is certain that their ceaseless bombardment of the Gladstonian position did more to defeat

Home Rule than the speeches of any statesman, except Chamberlain and Bright. The third of these writers survives; so, happily, does Sir James (then Mr) Thursfield, who being a convinced Home Ruler asked to be excused from writing on the subject. It is to the credit of the directing powers that they readily agreed; that writer's work in other departments (especially naval) being too valuable to be lost.

Long before Delane's death the conditions of the United Kingdom, from the point of view of a business like that of the Times,' had entirely changed from what they were in the middle of the century. Politically, Disraeli's Reform Act of 1867 had called into existence a new class of voters, several millions strong, and three years later W. E. Forster's Education Act had taken the first great step towards the fulfilment of Robert Lowe's policy-We must induce our masters to learn their letters!' The one measure tended to alter the balance of the Constitution; the other promised a large increase of possible newspaper readers. Together, they made it easy to foresee a vast development of a cheaper Press, competing with the high-priced papers, while they compelled a wise Editor to take into account the new forces, and gradually to enlarge his outlook so as to include that reservoir of unknown forces, the self-governing democracy.

The competition in question, though it had long been in existence, had only begun to be serious after the great reforms of 1853, 1855, and 1860, which swept away in succession the three Taxes on Knowledge'-the Advertisement tax, the Stamp tax, and the Paper Duty. The first had imposed a tax of 1s. 6d. on every advertisement, great or small; the second, a tax of a penny on every sheet; and the third a serious tax on paper of every kind. The first was easily repealed in 1853; all the commercial classes, as well as all the newspapers, were against it. The second followed it into oblivion two years later, under the guidance of that eminent man of letters, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Naturally the 'Times' was nervous, fearing that cheap London and provincial papers, published a few hours later, might steal its news. But this argument, and those instinctively used by some Tories in the House,

did not prevail, and the more open-minded Conservatives, like Bulwer Lytton, joined the Government in carrying the Bill, while new arrangements for postal charges on papers gave a certain prospect that the Post Office would soon gain more than was lost by the abolition of the tax. Over the Paper Duty there was a more serious struggle, involving a fight between the two Houses, after many foolish things had been said by people who ought to have known better, including Lord Robert Cecil, afterwards the great Lord Salisbury. Could it be maintained,' he asked on March 12, 1867, 'that a person of any education could learn anything from a penny paper?' We wonder whether he asked the same question fourteen years later, when the 'Standard' was heading the Conservative Reaction' of 1874, which gave Disraeli and Lord Salisbury six years of power?

In 1855, when the first two of the obnoxious taxes were removed, the circulation of the 'Times' was so far in excess of that of any of its rivals that it may be said to have still possessed almost a monopoly. It sold some 60,000 copies daily, a figure not approached (as the stamp returns show) by the combined sales of the Morning Advertiser,' the Daily News,' the 'Morning Herald,' and the 'Morning Post.' A change was at hand. The time for a widely-circulated cheap daily press had come; there was any amount of journalistic ability ready to be engaged; all that was wanted was the money and the man. They were forthcoming in this same year, when a printer of Hebrew race, Joseph Moses Levy, bought the struggling 'Daily Telegraph and Courier' and brought it out as a penny morning paper on Sept. 17, 1855. It succeeded from the first, and on March 29, 1858, it appeared as an eight-page sheet, dropping its sub-title 'the Courier,' and the 'Daily Telegraph' began the course of full prosperity which has continued, with some variations, to this day. It was not alone, for in 1856 the friends of Cobden and Bright raised a capital of 80,000l. and brought out the 'Morning Star' and its companion the Evening Star' as the organs of Free-Trade Radicalism, and in the following year James Johnson bought the bankrupt 'Standard,' reorganised it with much ability, and issued it first at twopence and then at a penny, with a programme of 'enlightened amelioration and progress.' All

these papers did well, and not only satisfied an existing public of readers but created a new one, of which the more educated part grew more and more critical, and came to demand fresh and more stimulating food. Very soon this need was met by new weekly papers, of which the Saturday Review' soon took the lead. Founded mainly by Beresford Hope, a Churchman and a rather critical Conservative, it appeared in November 1855, its editor being John Douglas Cook, one of the great names of English journalism, who had for some years conducted the Morning Chronicle' in its unsuccessful attempts to convert the world to the politics of the Peelites. Cook was far more successful in his new task, which was to make the cultivated public of the cities, the Universities, and the country houses, eager to read every Saturday a clever, critical, and independent survey of things in general-politics, literature, science, and art'-from the pens of some of the ablest writers of the day. About the same time, fresh life was breathed into Rintoul's 'Spectator,' then thirty years old, by the new editor-proprietors, Richard Holt Hutton and Meredith Townsend. There were other weeklies, of course, dear and cheap, some of the latter already commanding a vast circulation; but the two examples here given are enough to show that in the mid-'sixties the London weekly press was a powerful and well-organised institution. It is curious, however, to record that the 'Saturday Review,' in its very first number, declared that one of its main objects was to attack the supremacy of the 'Times.' 'No apology is necessary,' it said, 'for assuming that this country is ruled by the "Times." This sad state of things the 'Saturday' intended to alter, and its first step towards achieving that aim was to get some of the cleverest 'Times' men to write for it, such as Hayward and Vernon Harcourt. And readers of both papers soon came to recognise that the public and political aims of these two daily and weekly journals were substantially the same.

Once started, the development of the popular Press which marked the 'fifties and 'sixties of the 19th century pursued its course with increasing speed, and we need not attempt to follow its manifestations. Its main effect on the 'Times' was to cause the older journal to carry out its traditional policy with fresh vigour, that