hir-r-ring office? To
order! Yes, sprightliness is compulsory there; so are weightiness, and
fervour, and erudition. He must seem to abound in these advantages, or
another man will take his place. He must disguise himself at all costs.
But disguises are not easy to make; they require time and care, which
he cannot afford. So he must snatch up ready-made disguises--unhook
them, rather. He must know all the cant-phrases, the cant-references.
There are very, very many of them, and belike it is hard to keep them
all at one's finger-tips. But, at least, there is no difficulty in
collecting them. Plod through the 'leaders' and 'notes' in half-a-dozen
of the daily papers, and you will bag whole coveys of them.

Most of the morning papers still devote much space to the old-fashioned
kind of 'leader,' in which the pretence is of weightiness, rather than
of fervour, sprightliness, or erudition. The effect of weightiness is
obtained simply by a stupendous disproportion of language to sense. The
longest and most emphatic words are used for the simplest and most
trivial statements, and they are always so elaborately qualified as to
leave the reader with a vague impression that a very difficult matter,
which he himself cannot make head or tail of, has been dealt with in a
very judicial and exemplary manner.

A leader-writer would not, for instance, say--

Lord Rosebery has made a paradox.

He would say:--

Lord Rosebery

whether intentionally or otherwise, we leave our readers to decide,
or, with seeming conviction,
or, doubtless giving rein to the playful humour which is
characteristic of him,

has

expressed a sentiment,
or, taken on himself to enunciate a theory,
or, made himself responsible for a dictum,

which,

we venture to assert,
or, we have little hesitation in declaring,
or, we may be pardoned for thinking,
or, we may say without fear of contradiction,

is

nearly akin to
or, not very far removed from

the paradoxical.

But I will not examine further the trick of weightiness--it takes up
too much of my space. Besides, these long 'leaders' are a mere
survival, and will soon disappear altogether. The 'notes' are the
characteristic feature of the modern newspaper, and it is in them that
the modern journalist displays his fervour, sprightliness, and
erudition. 'Note'-writing, like chess, has certain recognised openings,
e.g.:--

There is no new thing under the sun.
It