which we are speaking, there was probably not a single man at the North, of well-furnished and well-balanced mind--who stood clear in heart and pocket of all secret or interested bias toward the South--that deliberately recognized the probability of the dissolution of the Union. Very few such men will, indeed, recognize that possibility now, except as they recognize the possibility of the destruction of an edifice of solid blocks and stately columns by the grinding to powder of each large mass of the fabric, so that no rebuilding could restore it. This was the state of mind and feeling with which we, who had so much at stake and could watch every pulsation of the excitement, contemplated the aspect of our opening strife. But with the first echo from abroad of its earliest announcements here came the most positive averments in the English papers, with scarcely a single exception, that the knell of this Union had struck. We had fallen asunder, our bond was broken, we had repudiated our former league or fellowship, and henceforth what had been a unit was to be two or more fragments, in peaceful or hostile relations as the case might be, but never again One. It would but revive for us the first really sharp and irritating pangs of this dismal experience, to go over the files of papers for those extracts which were like vinegar to our eyes as we first read them. Their substance is repeated to us in the sheets which come by every steamer. There were, of course, variations of tone and spirit in these evil prognostications and these raven-like croaks. Sometimes there was a vein of pity, and of that kind of sorrow which we feel and of that other kind which we express for other people's troubles. Sometimes there was a start of surprise, an ejaculation of amazement, or even profound dismay, at the calamity which had come upon us. In others of these newspaper comments there was that unmistakable superciliousness, that goading contemptuousness of self-conceit and puffy disdain, which John Bull visits on all "un-English" things, especially when they happen under their unfortunate aspects. In not a few of these same comments there was a tone of exultation, malignant and almost diabolical, as at the discomfiture of a hated and dangerous rival. We have read at least three English newspapers for each week that has passed since our troubles began; we have been readers of these papers for a score of years. In not one of them have we met the sentence or the line which pronounces hopefully, with bold assurance, for the renewed life of our Union. In by far the most of them there is reiterated the most positive and dogged averment that there is no future for us. We are not unmindful of the manliness and stout cheer with which a very few of them have avowed their wish and faith that the Rebels may be utterly discomfited and held up before the world in their shame and friendlessness, and have coupled with these