As I look back upon my editorial experiences during the year and a half that I spent at Preston, the salient questions which stand out in my recollection are the war between Denmark and the Austro-Prussian allies, in which this country was so nearly involved, and the concluding struggles in the American Civil War, which may be said to have had their culmination in the tragical assassination of Lincoln. It may seem a strange thing to say, and yet I believe that Lincoln's cruel death did more to hasten the return of peace and goodwill, not only in the United States, but all over the world, after the close of the war, than anything else could have done. It is certain that it produced a remarkable effect in England. The "classes" in England were, as I have said, almost unanimously opposed to the North, and there was no single person engaged in the great struggle whom they more persistently misunderstood and misrepresented than Abraham Lincoln. Even now I feel a sense of shame as I recall the abuse which was showered upon that great man at the time when he was leading his country through the most terrible crisis in her history. But his death, coming as it did in the moment of victory, and also at the moment when he had shown that he knew how to be moderate and magnanimous in victory, opened the eyes of the world, and showed him, even to those Englishmen who had hated him, in his true colours--one of the wisest and noblest men of our time. This revelation of the blunder which "the classes" had committed in their estimate of Lincoln had an even greater effect in softening the asperities which the war left behind it than had the exposure of the egregious miscalculations of English statesmen as to the comparative military strength of North and South. One must not blame Englishmen too severely, however, for their lack of appreciation of Lincoln. It is doubtful if even now he is appreciated at his true worth by Americans themselves. Some years ago I had the privilege of taking in to dinner a charming young lady who was Lincoln's direct descendant. I said to her, "You can hardly understand how pleased I am to have met you. There is scarcely any man whose name is familiar to me whom I honour as I honour the memory of your grandfather." The young lady opened her eyes in innocent amazement, and confessed subsequently that she had been very much surprised by my little speech. "At home they never say anything about grandpapa." Lowell, however, has said something about him which will live for ever in the elegiac poetry of the world.