Note A — ENGLISH OPINION ON THE AMERICAN WAR.

I remember meeting at dinner, just about this time, a near relative of the American ambassador, Mr. Adams. I expressed myself as anxious, but barely able, to believe that the Northerners would yet gain the day, and asked whether he candidly supposed they would. His emphatic "Certainly" surprised me at the time, and remained in my mind as an almost sublime instance of a true citizen's inability to "despair of the Republic." It soon turned out to be a deserved rebuke to any who desponded, along with myself, and finally prophetic. No doubt there were thousands of Americans who could, even in those dark days, with equal conviction have pronounced that "Certainly," and whose very certainty was the one thing needed and able to make the thing certain indeed.