Mr. John Thaddeus Delane, perhaps the ablest newspaper editor who
ever lived, died on Saturday at his house at Ascot, aged only sixty-two. He was the son of a solicitor who became financial manager of the Times, and in 1841, when only twenty- four years of age, was appointed editor-in-chief of that paper, a post he held for more than thirty-five years. During that period, which embraces the whole active manhood of the present generation, and covers the greatest of modem events since the fall of Napoleon, he was a great power in England,
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-and a considerable personage n the world. Writing but little himself, he knew exactly what he intended to have written, and 'drove a succession of literary teams with extraordinary skill, certainty, and decision. He rarely made a blunder as to English opinion, and had a rough but statesmanlike sense of the general drift of things which, coupled with his very great -experience, made him an invaluable confidant to successive Governments. We have spoken of his character elsewhere, but -we may add here two remarks,—one is that Mr. Delano, though accused all his life of "simpering in gilded saloons," was the most independent of men, and, as we suspect, rather disliked the aristocratic system ; and another is, that while determined -that the Times should reflect opinion, he took great pains not to force individual writers to write against their own. The work must be done, but so far as it was humanly possible, it should be done by men who were not, in doing it, suppressing them- selves. Mr. Delano, though he never wrote leaders, wrote astonishingly able notes, many of which, we hope, will one day appear.
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