annoyed by tariffs, and plagued
by scarcity of cotton;--what wonder, if we are a little misunderstood?
The minor contributors to his daily press will not be able to think
long or wisely of what they write; we must be ready to pardon a
certain amount of irritation and misstatement. That such was the
feeling of intelligent Americans towards England, at the beginning of
our troubles, we have no doubt. But for the scurrility heaped upon
us by what claims to be the higher British press we were totally
unprepared,--and for this good reason, that such malignity of
criticism as is possible in America could never have suggested it. Let
us not be misunderstood. We acknowledge the "Rowdy Journal" and Mr.
Jefferson Brick. Undoubtedly, newspapers exist among us of which the
description of Mr. Dickens is no very extravagant caricature. But
their editors, if not of notoriously infamous life, are those whose
minds are unenlarged by any generous education,--men whose lack of
grammar suggests a certain palliation of their want of veracity and
good-breeding. Such journals are seldom or never seen by the
large class of cultivated American readers, and are in no sense
representative of them. The "Saturday Review" and "Blackwood's
Magazine" are said to be conducted by men of University training.
Their articles are written in clear and precise English, and often
contain vigorous thought. They publish few papers which do not give
evidence of at least tolerable scholarship in their writers. Of
kindred periodicals on this side of the ocean it may be safely said,
that the intelligence of the reader forces their criticism up to
some decent standard of honest painstaking. We may thus explain the
bewilderment which came over us at that burst of vulgar ribaldry
from the leading British press, in which the organs above named have
achieved a scandalous preeminence. Vibrating from the extreme of
shallowness to the extreme of sufficiency, scorning to be limited in
abuse by adhering to any single hypothesis, the current literature
of England has gloated over the rebellion of Slavery with the cynical
chuckles of a sour spinster. Would that language less strong could
express our meaning! President Lincoln--whatever may be judged his
deficiency in resources of statesmanship--will be embalmed by history
as one possessing many qualities peculiarly adapted to our perilous
crisis, together with an integrity of life and purpose honorably
representing the yeomanr