As soon as he grasped the helm of the _Examiner_ again, that great battleship trembled and obeyed him. It had been powerful before, it was now a mighty engine, dragging every thing in its wake. Commencing by supporting the Government, it soon became bitterly inimical to President Davis and the whole administration. The invective in which it indulged was not so violent as in the past, but it was even more powerful and dangerous. Every department was lashed, in those brief, terse sentences which all will remember--sentences summing up volumes in a paragraph, condensing oceans of gall into a drop of ink. Under these mortal stabs, delivered coolly and deliberately, the authors of public abuses shrank, recoiled, and sought safety in silence. They writhed, but knew the power of their adversary too well to reply to him. When once or twice they did so, his rejoinder was more mortal than his first attack. The whole country read the _Examiner_, from the chief officers of the administration to the humblest soldier in the trenches. It shaped the opinions of thousands, and this great influence was not due to trick or chance. It was not because it denounced the Executive in terms of the bitterest invective; because it descended like a wild boar on the abuses or inefficiency of the departments; but because this journal, more, perhaps, than any other in the South, spoke the public sentiment, uttered its views with fearless candor, and conveyed those views in words so terse, pointed, and trenchant--in such forcible and excellent English--that the thought of the writer was driven home, and remained fixed in the dullest apprehension. The _Examiner_, in one word, had become the controlling power, almost, of the epoch. Its views had become those even of men who bitterly stigmatized its course. You might disapprove of its editorials often, and regret their appearance--as I did--but it was impossible not to be carried onward by the hardy logic of the writer: impossible not to admire the Swift-like pith and vigor of this man, who seemed to have re-discovered the lost well of undefiled English. When I went to see John M. Daniel, thus, in this summer of 1864, it was not a mere journalist whom I visited, but a historic character. For it was given to him, invisible behind the scenes, to shape, in no small degree, the destiny of the country, by moulding the views and opinions of the actors who contended on the public arena. Was that influence for good or for evil? Let others answer. To-day this man is dead, and the cause for which he fought with his pen has failed. I reproduce his figure and some scenes of that great cause--make your own comments, reader. V. THE EDITOR IN HIS SANCTUM. Knocking at the door of the journalist’s house on Broad Street, nearly opposite the “African church,” I was admitted by a negro servant, sent up my name, and was invited by Mr. Daniel to ascend to his sanctum on the second story.