Emerson's writings, his visit to, and lectures in, London in 1847 leavened English thought with the same spiritualizing quality which had long since penetrated the American mind. For one Briton who was inspired by Emerson, hundreds were charmed and humanized by Longfellow first, and by Whittier afterwards. If Longfellow's simple ballads had never been written, the higher offices of poetry, notwithstanding a Tennyson or a Browning, would have remained a mystery hidden from the toiling millions of the Anglo-Saxon world. The same gentle and gracious offices have been performed by less known and not always respected writers, Martin Tupper of the _Proverbial Philosophy_, and the late Hain Friswell of _The Gentle Life_. CHAPTER XXVII NEWSPAPER PRESS TRANSFORMATION SCENES The newspaper press of all kinds, largely, the penny press, exclusively, a Victorian product. Its recent growth reviewed. A valuable rival to Parliament because its publicity assures parliamentary efficiency. Growth of the cheaper journalism summarized. The _Daily News_, the _Daily Telegraph_, the halfpenny press, morning and evening as a special product of the age. The press and party. 'Barnes is the most powerful man in the country.' Such, in reference to the then editor of the _Times_, was the remark made a year or two after the Victorian age had begun by Lord Lyndhurst, himself an ex-journalist,[93] to Charles Greville, the Diarist. Like opinions by equal authorities as to the successors of Barnes have been delivered frequently since, but are less known because the memoir-writer has not yet stamped them with immortality. No attribute of skill or power belonging to Barnes was wanting to Delane. To his weight with the public a characteristic tribute was once paid by a shrewd judge of editors as of men generally, Lord Beaconsfield. 'I think,' were that statesman's exact words, on a social occasion to Lord Granville, 'I had better postpone giving you my views of Delane till he is dead.' On her accession the Queen was congratulated by some 479 newspapers representing the collective press of the United Kingdom and its outlying islands. Her sixtieth commemoration gives a theme to 2396 journals published within the same area.[94] The English newspaper press which in effect began under one Queen, reached its final term of greatness under another Queen. 1837 is a landmark in newspaper history, because it was the first year in which the public press published the parliamentary division lists, and thus made another stride towards equality of influence with the legislature. Its effect was to increase the usefulness of Members of Parliament, as well as of the press itself. The Long Parliament made English freedom, but gagged the press.