colleagues had known it all along, and even the best of them had sometimes experienced his 'blue pencil' when any article of theirs on a political subject had made a mistake of fact as to any events between 1860 and 1910. With a remarkable quickness in grasping essentials, whether from books or from talk, and with a still more remarkable memory; with a keen interest in public affairs, especially domestic; with few prejudices and with the best education that Oxford could give, he may be said to have possessed as many of the qualifications of a first-rate Editor as are likely to be met with under this imperfect scheme of things. Though he did not follow Delane's example in haunting the great world (which by the way was not so great in the 'eighties as it had been in Palmerston's day), he was no recluse, and in times of crisis he was in constant touch with the political leaders, especially those two who possessed his chief confidence, Mr Balfour and Joseph Chamberlain. Foreign affairs he was content to leave to a great extent in the hands of skilled advisers, at first Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, and afterwards Sir Valentine Chirol, who joined the staff in 1892 and remained for twenty years, latterly in the new and very necessary post of Foreign Editor. These two, with a number of trained and trustworthy Correspondents-among whom the late Dr Morrison may be specially mentioned for his work in the Far East, and the late J. D. Bourchier for his wonderful knowledge of Balkan politics-gave to the Times' its unrivalled position as an authority on foreign countries.

But, in Mr Buckle's early years as Editor, the chief interest of the country, and of the paper, lay nearer home. The Irish crisis had reached its acutest stage. In Ireland itself the law was openly defied, and in the House of Commons highly organised obstruction, planned and carried out under the orders of Charles Stewart Parnell, blocked the whole business of the country. Then, as every one knows, came Gladstone's Home Rule proposal, to which the Times' carried on to the end a determined opposition. The defeat of the Home Rule Bill broke up the Liberal party, but it only intensified the trouble in Ireland itself. Driven underground, the agitation resulted in renewed crime and

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outrage, which neither new Land Acts nor the firm administration of the new Chief Secretary, Mr Balfour, could bring to an end. This being so, the Times' took the serious and costly step of attempting to trace crime to its sources, and to reveal the ultimate and actual responsibility of the Nationalist party in Parliament, and its Chief, Mr Parnell. A series of formidable articles, under the heading 'Parnellism and Crime,' began to appear, written with much ability and vigour; they formed a chief feature of the paper during 1887 and 1888. One Nationalist member, F. H. O'Donnell, began an action for libel against Mr Walter, but the whole matter was raised to higher importance when, near the end of the Session of 1888, Mr Parnell asked for a Select Committee to investigate the charges brought by the Times against himself and the Irish members. The paper had fixed its attack upon him in particular by printing-one in facsimile-what purported to be copies of various letters written by Parnell, encouraging the policy of outrage, and sometimes (especially in the case of Mr Burke, murdered in the Phoenix Park) approving of murder after the fact. These, Mr Parnell declared, were forgeries. Mr W. H. Smith, on behalf of the Government, refused a Select Committee, but offered a Special Commission of three Judges of the High Court, and this Parnell accepted, more or less under protest. An Act constituting it was quickly passed. The Judges appointed were first-rate men-Sir James Hannen, Mr Justice Day, and Mr Justice A. L. Smith; and they proceeded to open the inquiry on Oct. 22, having first declared their intention of conducting the proceedings according to the rules, as to counsel and evidence, followed in ordinary trials. Never was a more formidable array of counsel; for the 'Times,' Sir Richard Webster, Sir Henry James, and half a dozen other QC.s; for the Parnellites, Sir Charles Russell, and such younger lights of the bar as Mr Asquith and Mr R. T. Reid. Prodigious speeches, sometimes lasting a week or more, prepared the way for evidence that would have filled volumes; but the Court and the public fixed their attention on two witnesses only, both called by the 'Times,' one Major Le Caron and a certain Pigott. Le Caron, alias Beach, was a man of a type that became

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familiar enough during the Great War, a 'secret agen who mixed with the enemy in daily life, and the reported to the Government. He had done his dangerou work well, and his evidence as to the close connexio between outrage and politics carried much weigh With Pigott the case was different, and before he ha been an hour in the witness-box the friends of th 'Times' began to tremble for their cause. It was from him that the 'Times' had bought the Parnell letters; a instance of the incredible rashness with which, in time of excitement, even sensible people will sometimes act Pigott was an unmitigated scoundrel, as everybody i Ireland knew; but the Times' had never inquired int his character. In a long day's cross-examination hi case hopelessly broke down, and the famous 'facsimile letter was proved to have been forged by Pigott himself The Court adjourned for three days; in the interva Pigott bolted to Madrid, and there committed suicide just after the police had arrested him. The Times very properly withdrew the letters, but the inquiry proceeded, and was not concluded till Nov. 22, 1889 after 128 working days had been spent upon it. The full findings of the Court were published in a vast document, which may be read, somewhat condensed, in the Annual Register' for 1889. They proved that the paper had been right in exposing a formidable revolutionary conspiracy in Ireland, financed from America, but that it had been unable to establish that Parnell and the Nationalist members were criminally involved in it.

The huge expenses incurred by reason of the Parnell affair were the ultimate cause of the financial difficulties from which, some years later, the proprietors of the 'Times' found that they could not emerge unaided. In 1890 the manager, J. C. Macdonald, died, his life having been undoubtedly shortened by that trial, and to fill his place Mr Arthur Walter sent for Charles Moberly Bell from Egypt, where for some years he had been the Correspondent of the paper. Moberly Bell belonged to a family of Egyptian merchants, and had been born in Alexandria in 1847; he was at one time partner in a firm, but had left it for journalism, and had made a name by a brilliant dispatch describing the bombard ment of Alexandria by the British fleet in 1882. Hence

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et agent forth he regularly belonged to the paper, while at the and the same time Lord Cromer, who had a great belief in him, anger constantly consulted him. Once installed in Printing onner House Square, he grasped the situation, and began with weight great energy to devise means for improving it. In the true modern spirit, he tried what could be done with 'by-products' of the great printing and publishing machine which was at his disposal, and with somethough not all of these he was very successful. Such were 'The Times Atlas' and the Times History of the War in South Africa.' To Bell's initiative also were due the several weekly Supplements which are now well known; 'Literature' first, edited by H. D. Traill, scholar and wit, which ran from 1897 to 1901, its place being afterwards taken by the 'Literary Supplement,' which under the direction of Mr Bruce Richmond soon gained, and has retained, a position of the highest critical authority. Trade and Engineering Supplements were soon added to the list; they still form a part of the paper's regular weekly output. Another scheme of Bell's (in 1905) was received with less universal favour; it was 'The Times Book Club,' primarily a circulating library for the use of 'Times' subscribers, and secondarily just a book-shop. The fierce controversy which followed with the publishers and booksellers, as to the right of the club to sell off surplus copies sooner than trade conventions had permitted, lasted for two full years, and added greatly to Bell's anxieties; but he lived to see the Book Club well established, though with a programme not quite as he had planned it. Financially, however, none of these ventures had a success comparable with that of the great new edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.' 'I have had a call from a Mr Hooper, of the U.S.A.,' said Bell to a friend about 1901; he asks us to print the new edition of the "Encyclopædia," on the American system of subscribers paying by instalments. I think it looks like good business. Do you?' It was indeed; and the profits went no small way towards paying for the terrible Trial!

Still, things did not go well. About the year 1907, the paper began to lose money; and its peculiar constitution, which vested the property in a number of owners without definite and limited liability, made it difficult to

have recourse to the ordinary arrangements which are practised at times of crisis by companies established under the Limited Liability Acts. Mr Arthur Walter, who was then in chief command, began to get nervous, and he and Moberly Bell agreed that steps must be taken to sell at least a principal share of the paper. In January 1908, Bell called on Lord Rothschild at New Court, and made proposals to him. They were favourably received, for ever since early in Delane's time the Rothschilds had been in close touch with the paper. But Mr Walter had a rival scheme, although the Times' solicitors were already in communication with New Court. It is not worth while to go into the details of the game of cross-purposes that ensued. Briefly, Mr Walter opened negotiations with Mr Pearson (afterwards Sir Arthur, who during and after the war did such good work for the blind), but they fell through, Mr Pearson not feeling able to negotiate with such a vague body of 'proprietors.' Bell withdrew from his Rothschild negotiations, and at last got Mr Walter to agree to deal with quite a different person, belonging to a different world, and bred to quite different traditions. This was Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, who in twelve years had made an enormous fortune out of the 'Daily Mail' and other papers, and whose ambition was to control the Times' and inherit its influence and prestige. Not unnaturally, when the terms had been arranged, it was not an easy matter to get them accepted, for the idea of a Harmsworth in Printing House Square suggested to many of the old-fashioned proprietors the proverbial bull in a china-shop. The Daily Mail,' with its staring headlines and flaming posters, its ubiquitous self-advertisement, its view of the world as a compound of a football scrimmage and a flower-show, was to many of the owners of stock and to most of the staff the very embodiment of what was to be avoided in journalism. It seems to be uncertain whether the bulk of the proprietors had been made aware of the negotiations with New Court, which, as we happen to know, Lord Rothschild was quite ready to confirm; if they had been so made aware, it seems very likely that those arrangements would have been ratified, and that the rule of Carmelite House would never have