further knowledge. Of course he
became a master in the craft. At length, returning to his own town to
exercise it, he grew, by his industry and good conduct, into a
condition to exercise it on his own account, and set up a
newspaper,--"The Sheffield Register."

Born of the people, it was natural that Joseph Gales should in his
journal side with the Reformers; and he did so: but with that
unvarying moderation which his good sense and probity of purpose
taught him, and which he ever after through life preserved. He kept
within the right limits of whatever doctrine he embraced, and held a
measure in all his political principles,--knowing that the best, in
common with the worst, tend, by a law of all party, to exaggeration
and extremes. Beyond this temperateness of mind nothing could move
him. Thus guarded, by a rare equity of the understanding, from excess
as to measures, he was equally guarded by a charity and a gentleness
of heart the most exhaustless. In a word, it may safely be said of
him, that, amidst all the heats of faction, he never fell into
violence,--amidst all the asperities of public life, never stooped to
personalities,--and in all that he wrote, left scarcely an unwise and
not a single dishonest sentence behind him.

Such qualities, though not the most forward to set themselves forth to
the public attention, should surely bring success to an editor. The
well-judging were soon pleased with the plain good sense, the general
intelligence, the modesty, and the invariable rectitude of the young
man. Their suffrage gained, that of the rest began to follow. For, in
truth, there are few things of which the light is less to be hid than
that of a good newspaper. "The Register," by degrees, won a general
esteem, and began to prosper. And as, according to the discovery of
Malthus, Prosperity is fond of pairing, it soon happened that our
printer went to falling in love. Naturally again, being a printer, he,
from a regard for the eternal fitness of things, fell in love with an
authoress.

This was Miss Winifred Marshall, a young lady of the town of Newark,
who to an agreeable person, good connections, and advantages of
education, joined a literary talent that had already won no little
approval. She wrote verse, and published several novels of the
"Minerva Press" order, (such as "Lady Emma Melcombe and her Family,"
"Matilda Berkley," etc.,) of which only the names survive.

Despite the poetic adage about the course