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 of true love, that of Joseph Gales ran smooth:  Miss Marshall accepted his suit and they were married.  Never were husband and wife better mated.  They lived together most happily and long,—­she dying, at an advanced age, only two years before him.  Meantime, she had, from the first, brought him some marriage-portion beyond that which the Muses are wont to give with their daughters,—­namely, laurels and bays; and she bore him three sons and five daughters, near half of whom the parents survived.  Three (Joseph the younger, Winifred, and Sarah, now Mrs. Seaton) were born in England; a fourth, at the town of Altona, (near Hamburg,) from which she was named; and the rest in America.