Legislature of Illinois-on such modest foundations the broad structure of his fame was laid. How slowly, and yet by happily prepared steps, he came to his place.

* * * * A plain man of the people, extraordinary fortune attended him. Lord Bacon says: "Manifest virtues procure reputation; occult ones, fortune." He offered no shining qualities at the first encounter; he did not offend by superiority. He had a face and manner which disarmed suspicion, which inspired confidence, which confirmed good will. He was a man without vices. He had a strong sense of duty which it was very easy for him to obey. Then he had what farmers call a long head; was excellent in working out the sum for himself; in arguing his case, and convincing you fairly and firmly.

Then it turned out that he was a great worker; had prodigious faculty of performance; worked easily. A good worker is so rare; everybody has some disabling quality. In a host of young men that start together, and promise so many brilliant leaders for the next age, each fails on trial; one by bad health, one by conceit or by love of pleasure, or by lethargy, or by a hasty temper-each has some disqualifying fault that throws him out of the career. But this man was sound to the core, cheerful, persistent, all right for labor, and liked nothing so well.

Then he had a vast good nature, which made him tolerant and accessible to all; fair-minded, leaning to the claim of the petitioner; affable, and not sensible to the affliction which the innumerable visits paid to him, when President, would have brought to any one else. And how this good nature became a noble humanity, in many a tragic case which the events of the war brought to him, every one will remember, and with what increasing tenderness he dealt, when a whole race was thrown on his compassion. The poor negro said of him, on an impressive occasion, "Massa Linkum am everywhere."

Then his broad good humor, running easily into jocular talk, in which he delighted, and in which he excelled, was a rich gift to this wise man. It enabled him to keep his secret, to meet every kind of man, and every rank in society; to take off the edge of the severest decisions, to mask his own purpose and sound his companion, and to catch with true instinct the temper of every company he addressed. And, more than all, it is to a man of severe labor, in anxious and exhausting crisises, the natural restorative, good as sleep, and is the protection of the overdriven brain against rancor and insanity.

He is the author of a multitude of good sayings, so disguised as pleasantries that it is certain they had no reputation at first

but as jests; and only later, by the very acceptance and adoption they find in the mouths of millions, turn out to be the wisdom of the hour. I am sure if this man had ruled in a period of less facility of printing, he would have become mythological in a very few years, like sop or Pilpay, or one of the

Seven Wise Masters, by his fables and proverbs.

But the weight and penetration of many passages in his letters, messages and speeches, hidden now by the very closeness of their application to the moment, are destined hereafter to a wide fame. What pregnant definitions; what unerring common sense; what foresight, and on great occasions, what lofty, and more than national, what humane tone! His brief speech at Gettysburg will not easily be surpassed by words on any recorded occasion. * * * *

It can not be said there is any exaggeration of his worth. If ever a man was fairly tested, he was. There was no lack of resistance, nor of slander, nor of ridicule. The times have allowed no State secrets; the Nation has been in such a ferment, such multitudes had to be trusted, that no secret could be kept. Every door was ajar, and we knew all that befell. Then what an occasion was the whirlwind of the war. Here was place for no holiday magistrate, no fair-weather sailor; the new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado. In four yearsthe four years of battle days-his endurance, his fertility of resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found wanting.

There, by his courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood an heroic figure in the center of an heroic epoch. He is the true history of the American people in his time. Step by step he walked before them; slow with their slowness; quickening his march by theirs; the true representative of this continent; an entirely public man; father of his country; the pulse of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their minds articulated by his tongue.

William C. Bryant, our venerable poet, composed the following immortal hymn for the obsequies in New York

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

O, slow to smite and swift to spare,
Gentle and merciful and just!

Who, in the fear of God, didst bear

The sword of power-a nation's trust!

In sorrow by thy bier we stand,

Amid the awe that hushes all,
And speak the anguish of a land
That shook with horror at thy fall.

Thy task is done; the bond are free;
We bear thee to an honored grave,
Whose proudest monument shall be
The broken fetters of the slave.

Pure was thy life; its bloody close
Has placed thee with the sons of light,
Among the noble host of those

Who perished in the cause of Right.

Prof. Goldwin Smith, of Oxford University, in England, said:

* * * *

America has gained one more ideal character, the most precious and inspiring of national possessions. * * * * * * * Lincoln has fallen a martyr to the abolition of slavery. He was not a fanatical abolitionist. He would have done nothing unconstitutional to effect immediate emancipation. In this respect, as in others, he was a true representative of the hard-headed and sober-minded farmer of the West. But he hated slavery with all his heart. He was himself one of a family of fugitives from its dominions. He said " and that "If slavery was not wrong, nothing was wrong;" though these words were not violent, they were sincere. He said that the day must come when the Union would be all slave or all free; and here again he meant what he said. He did not, as President, suffer himself to hold fierce language against slavery; nor would he, though hard pressed by those for whose character and convictions he had a high respect, allow himself to be led into premature and illegal measures for its instant extirpation. But, biding his time with patient sagacity, he struck it deliberately and legally the blow of which it has died. It struck him in return the blow which will make him live in the love of the nation and of mankind forever.

The Count de Paris, in a letter to Senator Sumner, used these words:

I should not have presumed to add my voice to the unanimous expressions of sympathy offered by Europe to your fellow-citizens, if my personal relations with Mr. Lincoln,