which some devotees of the
Southern mode of worship are said to have been fond of wearing.

From these dangers, which he faced like a man, we welcome him back to a
country which is proud of his courage and ability and grateful for his
services. The highest and lowest classes of England cannot be in
sympathy with the free North. No dynasty can look the fact of
successful, triumphant self-government in the face without seeing a
shroud in its banner and hearing a knell in its shouts of victory. As to
those lower classes who are too low to be reached by the life-giving
breath of popular liberty, we cannot reach them yet. A Christian
civilization has suffered them, in the very heart of its great cities,
to sink almost to the level of Du Chaillu's West-African quadrumana. But
the thoughtful, religious middle class of Great Britain, with their
enlightened leaders and their conscientious followers among the laboring
masses, have listened and will always listen to the voice of any true
and adequate representative of that new form of human society now in
full course of development in Republican North America. They have never
listened to a nobler and more thoroughly national speaker than the
minister, clothed with full powers from Nature and bearing the authentic
credentials from his Divine Master, to whom, on his return from his
successful embassy, we renew our grateful welcome.

* * * * *

THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

A GREETING FOR THE NEW YEAR.

We are at the close of the third year of the Secession War. It is
customary to speak of the contest as having been inaugurated by the
attack on Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861; but, in strictness, it was begun
in December, 1860, when the Carolinians formally seceded from the Union,
which was as much an act of war as that involved in firing upon the
national flag that waved over the strongest of the Federal forts at
Charleston. Even those who insist that there can be no war without the
use of weapons must admit that the act of firing upon the Star of the
West, which vessel was seeking to land men and stores at Sumter, was an
overt act, and as significant of the purpose of the Secessionists as
anything since done by them. That occurred in January, 1861; and because
our Government did not choose to accept it as the beginning of those
hostilities which had been resolved upon by the Southern ultras, it does
not follow that men are bound to shut their eyes to