means of his keen insight into the public needs of the moment, by his choice of colleagues (Edward Sterling above all), and by his own incisive writing. It was to him, in 1835, that Sir Robert Peel, just after resigning his first Premiership, wrote the famous letter in which he thanked 'one whose person even is unknown to me' for 'the daily exhibition of that extraordinary ability to which I was indebted for a support which was the more valuable because it was an impartial and a discriminating support.' It was on Barnes too, according to the story told by Sir Denis Le Marchant to Greville, that Lord Durham called one night at Printing House Square with a request from the King of the Belgians for an article of a 'healing description'; on which Le Marchant said, 'Here was the proudest man in England come to solicit the editor of a newspaper for a crowned head!' In November 1834, when Wellington and Peel were just taking office, in succession to Melbourne, who himself had only been Prime Minister for four months, mighty efforts were made to win the support of the Times' for the new Government. In the previous summer the paper had been fiercely attacking Brougham, Lord Melbourne's Chancellor; for in those days when journalists and public men quarrelled they fought without gloves. Suddenly the combatants made peace, Brougham (if we are to believe Greville) doing a scandalous service to the paper, and Barnes accepting it. Melbourne had resigned, telling none of his colleagues but the Chancellor, who promptly went down to the office of the paper which had been attacking him, and gave the news. It appeared next morning, in a paragraph ending with the outrageous words, 'The Queen has done it all.' Of course the King, the Duke, and Society generally were grievously offended, but blamed first Melbourne and then Brougham, not the 'Times.' The news was what would now be called a 'journalistic coup,' to be accepted as fresh evidence of the power of the paper. Greville and others pressed upon the Duke the desirability of winning the Times' to his side; he answered 'he did not think the "Times" could be influenced.' But terms were made, through the agency of Lyndhurst (the new Lord Chancellor) and Scarlett (his successor as Lord Chief Baron); and the paper, which during the Reform agitation two or three

TIMES'; DELANE TO NORTHCLIFFE years earlier had been constantly and vehemently Whig, now blessed the Tories, they having agreed to the Editor's pre-established condition that they did not tamper with Reform and did not change the foreign policy of the country. Barnes,' said Lyndhurst to Greville, 'is the most powerful man in the country'-an estimate not quite verifiable, but interesting as showing the importance already attained by the Press and by its chief representative. One has to remember that less than thirty years before, Pitt's Government was fining and imprisoning any editor or journalist who dared to speak his mind.

Barnes died in May 1841, and a few days afterwards, young Delane rushed into the lodging which he shared with a friend in St James's Square, exclaiming, 'By Jove, John, what do you think has happened? I am Editor of the "Times"!' He was only twenty-three years old, quite undistinguished, and with no particular social influence, but his work as a subordinate had led Mr Walter (the second of the name) to make what proved to be a choice of wonderful wisdom. His father, a country neighbour of Mr Walter, had for some years been financial manager of the 'Times.' Personally, young Delane was the very opposite of Barnes; sociable where his predecessor had been a recluse, quick to recognise the power of personalities in and upon political life, free from acrimony, and no lover of that 'thundering' style which Barnes and Edward Sterling had cultivated-for instance, in their long controversy with Daniel O'Connell. He had evidently by nature a real social gift. Realising his power, but not presuming upon it, he very soon came to associate on equal terms with Ministers, such as Aberdeen and Clarendon, and with their aristocratic friends, male and female; and let it be remembered that for many years after 1841-in fact till the other day-the aristocratic framework of English society was no mere framework. There is a phrase in Mr J. B. Atkins's 'Life of W. H. Russell' which might be transferred without change to Delane: 'He coveted position for himself, because it meant a readymade vantage ground for the exercise of influence in the world.' The Governing Classes' in England still governed. With a House of Lords still unmutilated,

with a House of Commons elected (till 1867) under the limited franchise granted by the first Reform Act, and with a Court whose tendencies were popular and mildly Liberal, the country houses still exerted their old patriarchal sway, permitting even the Corn Laws to be repealed so long as the substance of power remained with them and their friends. And with them and their owners Delane remained on the best of terms till the end. He very soon began, as the phrase runs, to 'go everywhere'; he dined out constantly, hostesses readily accepting his condition that he must be allowed to slip away to his office at ten o'clock; he visited Ministers at their offices or at the Houses of Parliament, but he quickly caused it to be an accepted fact that his judgment and that of the 'Times' was independent of party and persons. To have maintained that attitude successfully for thirty-six years was Delane's great achievement. The Prince Consort called the Times' the barometer of public opinion,' and as such it was regarded by statesmen, by financiers, and by all other watchers of the public weather. They consulted it anxiously, but they knew that no tapping of theirs would send the mercury up or down to suit their wishes.

Delane's correspondence with Ministers was immense; indeed his biographer states that Lord Clarendon's letters to him, which were carefully preserved, 'would fill a volume.' It is not our business to dwell upon it, but one single instance may be referred to, for it shows in a striking way both the position of the 'Times' in the middle period of Delane's rule and the fine discretion with which he handled delicate political situations, besides throwing a curious light on the economy of truth' with which statesmen used sometimes to content themselves. In June 1859, after a General Election, Lord Derby's Government was defeated, and Lord Palmerston became Prime Minister. That was all that the public would have known, had not a leading article in the 'Times' of June 14 revealed the fact that the Queen, unwilling to choose between those great rivals, Palmerston and John Russell, had endeavoured to induce Lord Granville, the Liberal leader of the House of Lords, to become Prime Minister a task in which he failed. The Queen read the article, and was indignant; 'Whom

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am I to trust?' she said; 'why, these were my very own words!' Who was the traitor in the camp? Or was Delane gifted with second sight? There was everywhere great excitement, and on the 16th Lord Derby raised the question in the House of Lords. There had been, he said, a gross breach of confidence; for if it was the duty of his noble friend Granville to communicate Her Majesty's wishes and words to some person, that person was clearly not the editor of a newspaper. Lord Granville, in his reply, sailed as near the wind as was possible.

'In the course of the same evening,' he said, 'I made a statement generally to some of my friends-some political, some private-as to what had passed, but I never meant in respect of any one circumstance to give Her Majesty's language. It is quite clear that the article in the "Times was founded on one or more of the statements which I had made myself on the previous evening.'

The obvious deduction which he meant his hearers to draw was that 'Delane had put together hints derived from leaky friends.' Will it be believed that the information, with a long sentence containing the Queen's very words, given in inverted commas, had been sent to Delane in a letter from Lord Granville himself, written on June 12? And that his permission to publish had been given in the words, 'if you make use of this information, please wrap it up, as you know t how to do!' The letter is printed at length in Dasent (vol I, p. 313).

Once, when Lord Palmerston was attacked in Parliament for using too much influence through the Editor of the Times,' he 'simply replied that Mr Delane's company was so agreeable that he was always welcome.' It was agreeable also, mutatis mutandis, to his staff; they liked him, because with all his unquestioned authority, he was considerate and intensely human. One of the few survivors, Dr Wace, now Dean of Canterbury, issued in 1908 a little pamphlet containing a general account of Delane's relations with the office and a number of letters suggesting articles or cordially thanking the writer for a piece of work well done. When a subject was important or difficult, the Editor

OW would come into the writer's room and discuss the question, indicating the line to be taken, but leaving plenty of room for original treatment. To talk with him,' says the Dean, was like talking to the great political or social world itself, and one's mind seemed to move in a larger sphere after a short discussion with him.' Then the article would be written and printed, and carefully revised in proof by the Editor; and sometimes, even at four or five o'clock in the morning, he would cheer the heart of his contributor by such a little note as the one printed in the pamphlet, congratulating the writer on his 'admirable army article,' which 'does you great honour and reflects as much credit on the paper.' Only two or three examples of these notes are given in the Dean's pamphlet, but many others exist. One, in the days of the Russo-Turkish crisis of 1876–8, bids Dr Wace to take up the Eastern Question, which has been much mismanaged in my absence.' Another, very characteristic, written later, thanks the writer for 'the great and important series of articles [on that question] which you have contributed during the last fortnight. They effect a retreat from a false position so skilfully as scarcely to be perceived till the movement was complete.'

The great personality of the Editor and the evergrowing prestige of the paper had succeeded in bringing together a succession of remarkable helpers and contributors, the latter including not only a well-chosen special staff and regular Correspondents, but a variety of eminent 'outsiders,' such as it would be hard to match in the records of any other newspaper, past or present. Delane's biographer has given a list of them, by no means complete, which fills three pages; a few may be mentioned here. Among the regular Foreign Correspondents were W. H. Russell, whose Crimean work did immense service to the army by forcing upon the Government and the country the need for removing the scandals of maladministration and making the horrors of the first 'Crimean winter' impossible for the future. Russell worked also for a time at the beginning of the American Civil War, but his 'Southernism,' in which the paper shared, made his position impossible, and he left too soon to describe the great battles. General Eber in