21G THE ^VINTEK TROUBLES. Tims not only by temperament, but also by labours gone through at so early a period of life, that they needs must have tended to mould his character and form his habits of thought, Delane was well fitted to become the director — not so much of a journal that would lecture mankind in the spirit of a didactic professor, explaining what was right and what wrong by the aid of extrinsic thought — but rather of a print like the ' Times,' which sought to inculcate with force ideas already perceived to be slowly moving our people. To steer the great journal in calm and in storm, to be arbiter of the ' policies ' of States and the reputations of men, to have the strength of mind and of body that the labour required, and to be all the while exulting — unaflfectedly exulting — in the task — this, one sees, was to have intense life ; and, Delane's genial nature inclining liim to let comrades share the elixir by hearing the things he could tell them, his society, as may well be supposed — and this especially at critical ])eriods — was beyond measure interesting to men who cared eagerly for the actual state of the world. He used generally to bend conversation in such way as to avoid coming into dispute with his comrades, and liked best to reinforce what they said by conveying in anecdote some fragments of that rare knowledge concerning men and their motives with which — because daily the hearer of unnumbered appeals to the 'Times' — he was always abundantly armed.
