Mr. Lincoln's murder has thrown some of the English Con-
federate writers into curious embarrassment. They try to express the national sentiment towards him without quite suffocating their real feeling towards the North, and the effect is often both gro- tesque and melancholy. The Telegraph of Monday, in an article which dealt lavishly in the form of bad-writing called " colour " —that is, in this sort of thing—" softly and slowly, perchance did Lee's war-horse bear him into the illustrious city" (Richmond),— made an elaborate effort at once to render homage to the late Pre- sident, "the honest, kindly man, with homely common sense," .and to scourge the North for their wicked crusade against slavery. Of course only the latter sentiment came out fully and cordially. Here is a fine specimen :—" A fine and gallant race, brave .ani noble in its actions, though tainted by the hereditary pollution of a sin which was not its own, has simply been im- proved' off the face of the earth for the benefit of fancy niggers, epauletted adventurers, unchristian clergymen, and the sectarian- ism of trading polities. So be it. To many of us the game may not seem worth the candle ; not a few, despite the benedictions of the Church orally militant, may think that Thomas Jackson's life meant a good deal more in the economy of the universe than the life of Quashee, whose blubber lips broadly grin at the news of a liberty' which, to his mind, means laziness and liquor; that poor Hood, going into action a very cripple of a man, like our own Nelson, was better worth keeping upon the earth than the Peter or Pompey who skulked into the Federal lines, and learnt there the difference between slavery with provisions and liberty without them." And thisappears in a paper which aims at being The Times of the lower middle class,—the clam which likes to hear about how " softly and slowly" General Lee's war-horse might " perchance " have borne him. Is it, then, true that thoughts so vulgar and so evil, so deeply impregnated with a bad imitation of Carlylian scorn as these, are really popular in any class in England ?
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