pathies, but not in powers, for his powers were superior. His mind mastered the problem of the day; and, as the problem grew, so did his comprehension of it. Rarely was man so fitted to the event. In the midst of fears and jealousies, in the Babel of counsels and parties, this man wrought incessantly with all his might and all his honesty, laboring to find what the people wanted, and how to obtain that.

It cannot 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 know 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 years—the 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 centre 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.

Adam Smith remarks that the axe, which, in Houbraken's portraits of British kings and worthies, is engraved under those who have suffered at the block, adds a certain lofty charm to the picture. And who does not see, even in this tragedy so recent, how fast the terror and ruin of the massacre are already burning into glory around the victim? Far happier this fate than to have lived to be wished away; to have watched the decay of his own faculties; to have seen-perhaps, even he-the proverbial ingratitude of statesmen; to have seen mean men preferred.

Had he not lived long enough to keep the greatest promise that ever man made to his fellow-men-the practical abolition of slavery? He had seen Tennessee, Missouri, and Maryland emancipate their slaves. He had seen Savannah, Charleston, and Richmond surrendered; had seen the main army of the rebellion lay down its arms. He had conquered the public opinion of Canada, England, and France. Only Washington can compare with him in fortune.

And what if it should turn out, in the unfolding of the web, that

ne had reached the term; that this heroic deliverer could no longer serve us; that the rebellion had touched its natural conclusion, and what remained to be done required new and uncommitted hands— a new spirit born out of the ashes of the war; and that Heaven, wishing to show the world a completed benefactor, shall make him serve his country even more by death than by his life. Nations, like kings, are not good by facility and complaisance. "The kindness of kings consists in justice and strength." Easy good-nature has been the dangerous foible of the Republic, and it was necessary that its enemies should outrage it, and drive us to unwonted firmness, to secure the salvation of this country in the next ages.

The ancients believed in a serene and beautiful Genius which ruled in the affairs of nations; which, with a slow but stern justice, carried forward the fortunes of certain chosen houses, weeding out single offenders or offending families, and securing at last the firm prosperity of the favorites of Heaven. It was too narrow a view of the Eternal Nemesis. There is a serene Providence which rules the fate of nations, which makes little account of time, little of one generation or race, makes no account of disasters, conquers alike by what is called defeat or by what is called victory, thrusts aside enemy and obstructions, crushes every thing immoral as inhuman, and obtains the ultimate triumph of the best race by the sacrifice of every thing which resists the moral laws of the world. It makes

its own instruments, creates the man for the time, trains him in poverty, inspires his genius, and arms him for his task. It has given every race its own talent, and ordains that only that race which combines perfectly with the virtues of all shall endure.

In New York, fitting remarks and discourses were delivered at the service by Bishop Coxe, at Calvary Church; Rev. Dr. Dix, at Trinity Church, in the presence of General Dix and Governor Fenton; Archbishop McCloskey at the Cathedral; by Dr. Cheever, at the Church of the Puritans; Rev. Dr. Osgood, at the Church of the Messiah; Rev. Dr. Chapin, Rev. M. R. Deleeuw, at the Synagogue Bnai Israel, and others in various parts.

Public

The assemblies were not confined to the churches. bodies also met, and Parke Godwin, Esq., delivered at the Athenæum Club an address worthy of preservation.

"How grand and how glorious, yet how terrible, the times in which we are permitted to live! How profound and various the emotions that alternately depress and thrill our hearts, like these

April skies-now all smiles, and now all tears. Within a weekthe Holy Week, as it is called in the rubrics of our churches-we have had our triumphal entries, amid the waving of the palms of Peace; we have had our dread Friday of crucifixion; we have had, too, in the recently renewed patriotism of the nation, a resurrection of a new and better life!

“It seems but a day or two since we listened to the music of the glad and festival parade; we saw the banners of our pride waving in beauty to every air, their stars brighter than the stars of the morning, and their rays of white and red, like the beams of the rainbow, telling that the tempest was passed; we pressed hands and hurrahed, and grew almost delirious with the joy that Peace had come, that Unity was secured, that Liberty and Justice, like the cherubim of the ark, would stretch their wings over the altars of our Country and stand forever as the guardian angels of her sanctity and glory.

"But now those exultant strains are changed into the dull and heavy toll of bells; those flags are folded and draped in the emblems of mourning; and our hearts, giving forth no more the cheering shouts of victory, are despondent and full of sadness.

"The great captain of our cause-the commander-in-chief of our armies and navies-the president of our civic councils-the centre and director of movement-this true son of the people-once the poor flatboatman-the village lawyer that was the raw, uncouth, yet unsophisticated child of our American society and institutions, whom that society and those institutions had lifted out of his low estate to the foremost dignity of the world-Abraham Lincolnsmitten by the basest hand ever upraised against human innocence, is gone, gone, gone! He who had borne the heaviest of the brunt, in our four long years of war, whose pulse beat livelier, whose eyes danced brighter than any others, when

the storm drew off,

In scattered thunders groaning round the hills,"

in the supreme hour of his joy and glory was struck down. That genial, kindly heart has ceased to beat; that noble brain has oozed from its mysterious beds; that manly form lies stiff in the icy fetters, and all of him that was mortal has sunk 'to the portion of weeds and outworn faces.'

"Our feelings are now too deep to ask or warrant any attempt at an analysis of the character or of the services of the man whose loss we deplore. Standing over his bier, looking down almost into the tomb to which he must shortly be consigned, we are consciou› only of our grief. We know that one who was great in himself, as

well as by position, has suddenly departed. There is something startling, ghastly, awful in the manner of his going off. But the chief poignancy of our distress is not for the greatness fallen, but for the goodness lost. Presidents have died before; during this bloody war we have lost many eminent generals-Lyons, Baker, Kearney, Sedgwick, Reno, and others; we have lost lately our finest scholar, publicist, orator,

that when he spoke,

The air, a chartered libertine, was still,

To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences.'

Our hearts still bleed for the companions, friends, brothers, that sleep the sleep 'that knows no waking,' but no loss has been comparable to his, who was our supremest leader-our safest counsellor our wisest friend-our dear father. Would you know what Lincoln was, look at this vast metropolis, covered with the habiliments of woe! Never in human history has there been so universal, so spontaneous, so profound an expression of a nation's bereavement. In all our churches, without distinction of sect; in all our journals, without distinction of party; in all our workshops, in all our counting-houses-from the stateliest mansion to the lowliest hovel-you hear but the one utterance, you see but the one emblem of sorrow. Why has the death of Abraham Lincoln taken such deep hold of every class? Partly, no doubt, because of the awful and atrocious method of his taking off; largely because he was our Chief Magistrate; but mainly, I think, because through all his public functions there shone the fact that he was a wise and good man; a kindly, honest, noble man; a man in whom the people recognized their own better qualities; whom they, whatever their political convictions, trusted; whom they respected; whom they loved; a man as pure of heart, as patriotic of impulse, as patient, gentle, sweet and lovely of nature, as ever history lifted out of the sphere of the domestic afflictions to enshrine forever in the affections of the world.

"Yet, we sorrow not as those who are without hope. Our chief is gone; but our cause remains; dearer to our hearts, because he is now become its martyr; consecrated by his sacrifice; more widely accepted by all parties; and fragrant and lovely forevermore in the memories of all the good and the great, of all lands, and for all time. The rebellion, which began in the blackest treachery, to be ended in the foulest assassination-for as Shakspeare says,

'Treason and murder ever kept together,

As two yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose'

this rebellion, accursed in its motive, which was to rivet the shackles of slavery on a whole race for all the future; accursed in its means, which have been 'red ruin and the breaking up of laws,' the overthrow of the mildest and blessedest of governments, and the profuse shedding of brother's blood by brother's hands; accursed in its accompaniments of violence, cruelty, and barbarism, is now doubly accursed in its final act of cold-blooded murder.

"Cold-blooded, but impotent, and defeated in its own purposes! The frenzied hand which slew the head of the government, in the mad hope of paralyzing its functions, only drew the hearts of the people together more closely to strengthen and sustain its power. All the North once more, without party or division, clenches hands around the common altar; all the North swears a more earnest fidelity to Freedom; all the North again presents its breasts, as the living shield and bulwark of the nation's unity and life. Oh! foolish and wicked dream, oh! insanity of fanaticism! oh! blindness of black hate to think that this majestic temple of human liberty, which is built upon the clustered columns of free and independent States, and whose base is as broad as the continent-could be shaken to pieces by striking off the ornaments of its capital! No! this nation lives, not in one man nor in a hundred men, however eminent, however able, however endeared to us; but in the affections, the virtues, the energies, and the will of the whole American people. It has perpetual succession, not like a dynasty, in the line of its rulers, but in the line of its masses. They are always alive; they are always present, to empower its acts, and to impart an unceasing vitality to its institutions. No maniac's blade, no traitor's bullet shall ever penetrate that heart, for it is immortal, like the substance of Milton's angels, and can only by annihilating die.'

"These sudden visitations of Providence; these mysterious and fearful vicissitudes in the destinies of nations and individuals, always seem to our shortsighted human wisdom as inscrutable. Nor would it be less than presumption in any one to attempt to interpret the meaning of the Divine Mind in this late and most appalling affliction. God, as he passes, the Scriptures tell us, can only be seen from behind, can only be seen when events have gone by Until then we grope in the darkness, we guess at best but dimly we more often muse in mere mute wonder and awe. Yet it is al ways permitted us to extract such good as we may from His seeming frowns and judgments. Thus I discern, in the removal of Mr. Lincoln-lamentable and horrible as it was in its circumstances some reasons for a calm and hopeful submission to the Divine will.