It is impossible any longer to deny that the chief newspaper of that busy city is the New York Herald. No matter how much we may regret this fact, or be ashamed of it, no journalist can deny it. We do not attach much importance to the fact that Abraham Lincoln, the late lamented President of the United States, thought it worth while, during the dark days of the summer of 1864, to buy its support at the price of the offer of the French mission. He was mistaken in supposing that this paper had any considerable power to change votes; which was shown by the result of the Presidential election in the city of New York, where General McClellan had the great majority of thirty-seven thousand. Influence over opinion no paper can have which has itself no opinion, and cares for none. It is not as a vehicle of opinion that the Herald has importance, but solely as a vehicle of news. It is for its excellence, real or supposed, in this particular, that eighty thousand people buy it every morning. Mr. Lincoln committed, as we cannot help thinking, a most egregious error and fault in his purchase of the editor of this paper, though he is in some degree excused by the fact that several leading Republicans, who were in a position to know better, advised or sanctioned the bargain, and leading journalists agreed not to censure it. Mr. Lincoln could not be expected to draw the distinction, between the journalist and the writer of editorials. He perceived the strength of this carrier-pigeon's pinions, but did not note the trivial character of the message tied to its leg. Thirty or forty war correspondents in the field, a circulation larger than any of its rivals, an advertising patronage equalled only by that of the London Times, the popularity of the paper in the army, the frequent utility of its maps and other elucidations,--these things imposed upon his mind; and his wife could tell him from personal observation, that the proprietor of this paper lived in a style of the most profuse magnificence,--maintaining costly establishments in town and country, horses, and yachts, to say nothing of that most expensive appendage to a reigning house, an heir apparent. Our friends in the English press tell us, that the Herald was one of the principal obstacles in their attempts to guide English opinions aright during the late struggle. Young men in the press would point to its editorials and say: "This is the principal newspaper in the Northern States; this is the Times of America; can a people be other than contemptible who prefer such a newspaper as this to journals so respectable and so excellent as the Times and Tribune, published in the same city?" "As to (American) journalism,"