e.

The political color of the English press may be summarized as either
Conservative, Liberal, or Liberal-Conservative. The Conservative daily
papers are the "Standard" and the "Herald," both rabidly Southern. The
principal Liberal ones are the "Times," "Globe," "Telegraph," "Daily
News," and "Star." Of these five journals, three were for the South, and
only two for the North,--the two which I have named last. Two other
Liberal daily papers are but little known to me,--the "Advertiser" and
the "Sun": I believe the latter was at any rate not decidedly Southern.
Everybody knows that the Times is the Englishman's paper _par
excellence_; it would hardly be unfair to call us "a Times-led
population," unless, indeed, one prefers the term, "a popularity-led
Times." Converse with ten ordinary middle-class Englishmen,--men of
business or position, receiving or imparting the current of opinion
which is uppermost in their class,--probably nine of them will express
views which you will find amplified in the columns of the Times. That
journal is neither above their level nor below it; as matters strike
them, so do they also strike the Times. Englishmen do not particularly
respect the Times; it is like them, (or in especial like the bustling,
energetic, money-making, money-spending classes of them,) and they are
like it; but an Englishman of this sort will not feel bound to "look up
to" the Times any more than to another Englishman of the same class.
They reciprocally express each other, and with no obligation or claim to
lofty regard on either side. When, therefore, one finds the Times
abiding for a long while (which is not invariably its way) by one
constant view of a question, one may be sure that it is supported in
that view by an active, business-like, prominent, and probably even
predominant body of its countrymen; but it by no means follows that the
deeper convictions of the nation, its hearty sentiments of right, for
which it would be prepared to do or die, are either represented or
roused by the newspaper. The Times, during the American War, was
cursed--or cursed its readers--with prophets, seers, and oracles, in its
correspondents; and the prophecies turned out to be ridiculously wrong,
the seeing to be purblindness, and the oracles to be gibberish. A more
miserable exposure could not easily be cited; the most indignant
American might afford to pity the Times, when, after four years of
leonine roarings and lashings of tail