his position seem to suggest that he make no public recognition of it.  Every Chief Magistrate of this Republic, before its present head, acceded to office with its powers and dignities and facilities and trusts unimpaired by his predecessor.  We have thought that among the thorns of the pillow on which a certain “old public functionary” lays his head, as he watches the dismal working of elements which he had more power than any other to have dispelled, not the least sharp one must be that which pierces him with the thought of the difference between the position which his predecessors prepared for him and that which he prepared for his successor.  Not among the least of the claims which that successor has upon the profound and respectful sympathy of all good men everywhere is the fact that there has been no public utterance of complaining or reproachful words from his lips, reflecting upon his predecessor, or even asking indulgence on the score of the shattered and almost wrecked fabric of which we have put him in charge.  We confess that we have looked through the English papers for months for some magnanimous and high-souled tribute of this sort to the Man who thus nobly represents a sacred and imperilled cause.  If such tribute has been rendered, it has escaped our notice.

Now, as we are reflecting upon the tone and spirit of the English press at the opening of the Rebellion, we have to recall to the minds of our readers the fact, that in all its early stages, even down to and almost after the proclamation of the President summoning a volunteer force to resist it, we ourselves, at the North, utterly refused to consider the Seceders as in earnest.  We may have been stupid, besotted, infatuated even, in our blindness and incredulity.  But none the less did we, that is, the great majority of us, regard all the threats and measures of the South as something less formidable and actual than open war and probable or threatening revolution.  We were persuaded that the people of the South had been wrought up by artful and ambitious leaders to wild alarm that the new Administration would visit outrages upon them and try to turn them into a state of vassalage.  Utterly unconscious as we were of any purpose to trespass upon or reduce their fullest constitutional rights, we knew how grossly our intentions were misrepresented to them.  We applied the same measure to the distance between their threats and the probability that they would carry them out which we knew ought to be applied to the difference between our supposed and our real intentions.  In a word,—­for this is the simple truth,—­we regarded the manifestations of the seceding and rebelling States—­or rather of the leaders and their followers in them—­as in part bluster and in part a warning of what might ensue, though it would not be likely to ensue when their eyes were open to the truth.  We were met by bold defiance, by outrageous abuse, and with an almost overwhelming venting of falsehoods.  There