He was not mistaken, and did not overestimate his powers. When I saw him in 1849 or ‘50, he was obscurest of the obscure. Two or three years afterward he had made the _Examiner_ one of the great powers of the political world, and was living in a palace at Turin, minister to Sardinia. He had achieved this success in life by the sheer force of his character; by the vigor and recklessness of his pen, and the intensity of his invective. Commencing his editorial career, apparently, with the theory that, in order to rise into notice, he must spare nothing and no one, he had entered the arena of partisan politics like a full armed gladiator; and soon the whole country resounded with the blows which he struck. Bitter personality is a feeble phrase to describe the animus of the writer in those days. There was something incredibly exasperating in his comments on political opponents. He flayed and roasted them alive. It was like thrusting a blazing torch into the raw flesh of his victims. Nor was it simple “abuse.” The satirist was too intelligent to rely upon that. It was his scorching wit which made opponents shrink. His scalpel divided the arteries, and touched the vitals of the living subject. Personal peculiarities were satirized with unfailing acumen. The readers of the _Examiner_, in those days, will still recall the tremendous flaying which he administered to his adversaries. It may almost be said, that when the remorseless editor had finished with these gentlemen, there was “nothing of them left”--what lay before him was a bleeding and mortally wounded victim. And what was worse, all the world was laughing. Those who looked with utter disapproval upon his ferocious course, were still unable to resist the influence of his mordant humor. They denounced the _Examiner_ without stint, but they subscribed to it, and read it every morning. “Have you seen the _Examiner_ to-day?” asked the friend whom you met on the street. “John M. Daniel is down on Blank!” said A to B, rubbing his hands and laughing. Blank may have been the personal acquaintance and friend of Mr. A, but there was no resisting the cartoon of him, traced by the pen of the satirist! The portrait might be a caricature, but it was a terrible likeness! The long nose was very long; the round shoulders, very round; the cast in the eye, a frightful squint; but the individual was unmistakable. The bitter humor of the artist had caught and embodied every weakness. Thenceforth, the unfortunate adversary went on his way before all eyes, the mark of suppressed ridicule and laughing whispers. Whether you approved or disapproved, you read those tremendous satires. Not to see the _Examiner_ in those days was to miss a part of the history of the times. The whole political world felt the presence of a _power_ in journalism. Into all the recesses of the body politic, those shafts of ridicule or denunciation penetrated. That venomous invective pierced the hardest panoply.