The leading rebels, occupying the seats of usurped power in their ephemeral confederacy, have succeeded in arousing and sustaining a considerable feeling of nationality and independence among the masses of their population. Grasping the sceptre of ill-gotten authority with great boldness, they have wielded it with a corresponding energy. Their early successes and their protracted resistance, sustained for more than two years by means of large and formidable armies, organized, disciplined, and led with great skill, have sufficed to give them credit and support at home, and much consideration abroad. In the midst of stirring events, carried away by the first impulse of excitement, the Southern people have not been in a mood to calculate the consequences of a long struggle. They have been elated and blinded by their apparent triumphs; and they, whose crafty purpose all the time has been to make use of them for the furtherance of their own ambitious projects, have been careful to preoccupy the minds of the people, and to conceal from them, by the plausible pretences and superficial successes of the hour, the certainty of ultimate discomfiture which has awaited them from the beginning. Occasionally, it is true, there have been indications that light was beginning to dawn on the popular mind; and in spite of the complete system of terror and compression which the leaders have inaugurated and sustained with the utmost determination, and with the most relentless rigor, we have seen every now and then, in different parts of the confederacy, the vivid flashes of a still living sentiment of love for the Union. As the hopes of the conspiracy become gradually less bright, this sentiment of affection for the old and honored Government of our fathers will grow stronger and more outspoken, and will not be confined to mere individual expressions. When the people begin to open their eyes and see the strength of the rebellion rapidly wasting away, with the repetition of its fruitless endeavors; when victories no longer compensate for the privations and horrible disasters which follow in their track; when, finally, they understand, as they soon must, that the whole movement is destined to end in utter failure, and that this failure is to be only the more overwhelming the longer the unhappy contest shall be continued, a complete revulsion of feeling may well be expected to take place. Many things in the course of the struggle have combined to delay the advent of this inevitable change. The progress of our arms has been extremely slow, with many checks and defeats in those campaigns and at those points which seemed to be the most important. If we have been successful in the West, it has not been without protracted efforts and immense expenditure of life and means--a long and bloody struggle, the uncertainty of which has not tended to strengthen us during its pendency. On the other hand, the brilliant successes of the rebels on the Rappahannock and at Charleston have not been fully counteracted by their actual and definitive discomfiture in other quarters. When Vicksburg and Port Hudson fall, as fall they must, the emptiness of all their triumphs will be felt and appreciated. Bull Run, twice famous, Fredericksburg, Charleston, Chancellorsville--all will then appear in their true light as magnificent phantoms of delusive success, alluring the proud victors to further fruitless efforts and barren victories, only to overwhelm them with more tremendous ruin, in the end which is slowly but certainly approaching.