“All leaders,” he replied, “are divided into three paragraphs, and no paragraph must begin with the word ‘The.’ Simple, ain’t it? Eh, what?” An answer which seemed rather to argue that, his extraordinary journalistic capacity notwithstanding, he regarded the Press with a sentiment not far removed from cynical contempt. And yet to have taken a first place as a writer on a journal boasting such a staff as the _Telegraph_ then possessed should have gratified the ambition of any ordinary man. Mr. (subsequently Sir) Edwin Arnold was really Editor, though nominally working under the direction of Mr. Edward Lawson (now Lord Burnham). A courteous and accomplished gentleman, Arnold will perhaps be remembered by posterity in respect of his “Light of Asia.” That poem was an awakening for the easy-going, slow-thinking, credulous, missionary-meeting-supporting British public, who had been taught from infancy that Buddha was a false god, and the centre of a foul and degrading faith. To Sir Edwin Arnold is mainly due the fact that in England to-day there are thousands who have some appreciation of the life and the doctrines of “the teacher of Nirvana and the Law.” Sir Edwin had the courage of his Oriental convictions. He chose as his second wife a Japanese lady. But the writer who had given the _Telegraph_ its peculiar _cachet_, and whose work was readily recognized by the readers of the paper, was George Augustus Sala. Sala, I maintain, was the best all-round journalist of his time. Nothing came amiss to him. Although the _Saturday_ and Matthew might affect to sneer at the erudition of his “leaders,” it may be mentioned here that those superior critics sometimes mistook for Sala’s the work of Williams, whose scholarship was at least equal to that of the detractors. As a descriptive writer, Sala was quite without a rival, and the public soon “tumbled” to his piping. The early vogue of the “_Telly_” was due to his brilliant and unceasing series of pen-pictures. One saw the pageants that he wrote about. Coronations, royal functions, the marriage of Princes, great cathedral services—these incidents lived again in his vivid columns. Sala’s versatility was amazing. He wrote at least one remarkable novel; he illustrated some of his own humours; he is the author of a ballad—printed for private circulation only—of which Swift would have been proud. His “Conversion of Colonel Quagg” is one of the most humorous short stories ever written. He wrote an excellent burlesque for the Gaiety Theatre. His articles on Hogarth, contributed to the _Cornhill_, at the suggestion of Thackeray, exhibit him as an art critic of insight and of profound technical knowledge. His lectures on the conflict between North and South, delivered on his return from his mission as Special Correspondent during the American War, drew the town. He was a fine linguist, and, at a time when the art of after-dinner speaking was still held in some repute, he