, its roar sank into a whine, and
its tail was clapped between its legs. The supremacy of the Times had
already been sapped by the abolition of the British paper-duty, and the
consequent starting of various penny-newspapers. If this _fiasco_ does
not gravely damage it, the reason can only, I suppose, be in the
conformity of character and of impetus already pointed out between our
average middle class and the Times. The Englishman whom the Times has
misled for four years concerning the American struggle has a
fellow-feeling for his Times even in the mortification of undeception;
for this Englishman had never supposed that the Times, any more than
himself, was actuated by profound political morality in the side it
espoused--rather by personal proclivities, clamor, and "rule of thumb."
And so, when the next great question arises, the Englishman may again
make the Times his crony and confabulator, just as he would more likely,
through general sympathy of notions and feelings, to take counsel with
private acquaintances who had erred with him in predicting success to
the South, rather than with those who had dissented from him in desire
and expectation. Certainly, however, after all allowances made, the
_prestige_ of the Times must have received a perceptible shock. The
other daily papers which I have named, along with the Times, as Southern
partisans, represent divers sections of Liberalism; and there must be
more than I am cognizant of to say in detail of their views of various
phases and at various periods in the contest. The two Northerners, the
Daily News and the Star, (the latter being specially connected with Mr.
John Bright,) represent the more advanced section of Liberalism: no
doubt their more thorough sympathy with the cause of the North was not
unrelated to their more thorough sympathy with the political
constitution and influences of the American Republic; and the same would
be true of many private Northern adherents. In general, it may be said
without much inexactness that the Northern advocates in the press
belonged either to this section of Liberalism or to the "humanitarian"
and "Evangelical" categories--those which distinctly uphold
Abolitionism, "Aborigines-Protection," etc.; while the Southerners were
recruited from all other classes,--Conservative, Liberal, and
Liberal-Conservative. To this class one may perhaps assign the last two
of the daily papers, the "Post" and the "Pall-Mall Gazette," the latter
of