Englishmen learnt to respect a man who showed the best characteristics of their race in his respect for what is good in the past, acting in unison with a recognition of what was made necessary by the events of passing history[1295]." This was first reaction.

Two days later, commenting on the far warmer expressions of horror and sympathy emanating from all England, there appeared another and longer editorial: "If anything could mitigate the distress of the American people in their present affliction, it might surely be the sympathy which is expressed by the people of this country.

We are not using the language of hyperbole in describing the manifestation of feeling as unexampled.

Nothing like it has been witnessed in our generation....

But President Lincoln was only the chief of a foreign State, and of a State with which we were not infrequently in diplomatic or political collision.