Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/262

218 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, nothing, whose time is of scarce any worth ; and " indeed he had the outward composure, the air of power not yet put forth that becomes a strong man of action ; but it always could be seen that his energies were rather compressed than lulled — that the furnace, if so one may speak, had its fires ' banked up ' in the day-time, yet still was always aglow, always ready to blaze into action an hour or two before midnight. When already in his carriage and moving to the scene of his midnight labours, kind nature used to grant him some minutes of sleep, upon which, because giving fresh strengtli, he used to set a great value ; but from the moment of his entering the editor's room until four or five o'clock in the morning, the strain he had to put on his faculties must have been always great, and in stirring times almost prodigious ; for although of course the great bulk of the manifold work required for constructing a num- ber of the ' Times ' was performed by subordi- nates, and although it rested with others — per- haps I might say with one other — to determine what — at least for a while — should be the chosen policy of the journal, its editor had to execute the general design ; and these were the hours of night when often he had to decide — to decide of course with great swiftness — between two or more courses of action momentously difl'erent ; when, besides, he must judge the appeals brought up to the paramount arbiter from all kinds of men, from all sorts of earthly tribunals ; when despatclies of moment, when