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.
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