The vintage had already commenced. The peasantry were busy in the fields, the song that cheered their labor was on the breeze, and the heavy wagon tottered by, laden with the clusters of the vine. Everything around me wore that happy look which makes the heart glad. In the morning I arose with the lark; and at night I slept where sunset overtook me. The healthy exercise of foot-travelling, the pure, bracing air of autumn, and the cheerful aspect of the whole landscape about me, gave fresh elasticity to a mind not overburdened with care, and made me forget not only the fatigue of walking, but also the consciousness of being alone.

My first day's journey brought me at evening to a village, whose name I have forgotten, situated about eight leagues from Orléans. It is a small, obscure hamlet, not mentioned in the guide-book, and stands upon the precipitous banks of a deep ravine, through which a noisy brook leaps down to turn the ponderous wheel of a thatch-roofed mill. The village inn stands upon the highway; but the village itself is not visible to the traveller as he passes. It is completely hidden in the lap of a wooded valley, and so embowered in trees that not a roof nor a chimney peeps out to betray its hiding-place. It is like the nest of a ground-swallow, which the passing footstep almost treads upon, and yet it is not seen. I passed by without suspecting that a village was near; and the little inn had a look so uninviting that I did not even enter it.

After proceeding a mile or two farther, I perceived, upon my left, a village spire rising over the vineyards. Towards this I directed my footsteps; but it seemed to recede as I advanced, and at last quite disappeared. It was evidently many miles distant; and as the path I followed descended from the highway, it had gradually sunk beneath a swell of the vine-clad landscape. I now found myself in the midst of an extensive vineyard. It was just sunset; and the last golden rays lingered on the rich and mellow scenery around me. The peasantry were still busy at their task; and the occasional bark of a dog, and the distant sound of an evening bell, gave fresh romance to the scene. The reality of many a day-dream of childhood, of many a poetic revery of youth, was before me. I stood at sunset amid the luxuriant vineyards of France!

The first person I met was a poor old woman, a little bowed down with age, gathering grapes into a large basket. She was dressed like the poorest class of peasantry, and pursued her solitary task alone, heedless of the cheerful gossip and the merry laugh which came from a band of more youthful vintagers at a short distance from her. She was so intently engaged in her work, that she did not perceive my approach until I bade her good evening. On hearing my voice, she looked up from her labor, and returned the salutation; and, on my asking her if there were a tavern or a farm-house in the neighborhood where I could pass the night, she showed me the pathway through the vineyard that led to the village, and then added, with a look of curiosity,

"You must be a stranger, Sir, in these parts." "Yes; my home is very far from here."

"How far?"

"More than a thousand leagues."

The old woman looked incredulous.

"I came from a distant land beyond the sea."

"More than a thousand leagues!" at length repeated she; "and why have you come so far from home?"

"To travel; to see how you live in this country."

"Have you no relations in your own?"

"Yes; I have both brothers and sisters, a father and

"And a mother?"

"Thank Heaven, I have.'

"And did you leave her?"

Here the old woman gave me a piercing look of reproof; shook her head mournfully, and, with a deep sigh, as if some painful recollections had been awakened in her bosom, turned again to her solitary task. I felt rebuked; for there is something almost prophetic in the admonitions of the old. The eye of age looks meekly into my heart! the voice of age echoes mournfully through it the hoary head and palsied hand of age plead irresistibly for its sympathies! I venerate old age; and I love not the man who can look without emotion upon the sunset of life, when the dusk of evening begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding!

I pursued the pathway which led towards the village, and the

next person I encountered was an old man, stretched lazily beneath the vines upon a little strip of turf, at a point where four paths met, forming a crossway in the vineyard. He was clad in a coarse garb of gray, with a pair of long gaiters or spatterdashes. Beside him lay a blue cloth cap, a staff, and an old weather-beaten knapsack. I saw at once that he was a foot-traveller like myself, and therefore, without more ado, entered into conversation with him. From his language, and the peculiar manner in which he now and then wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand, as if in search of the mustache which was no longer there, I judged that he had been a soldier. In this opinion I was not mistaken. He had served under Napoleon, and had followed the imperial eagle across the Alps, and the Pyrenees, and the burning sands of Egypt. Like every vieille moustache, he spake with enthusiasm of the Little Corporal, and cursed the English, the Germans, the Spanish, and every other race on earth, except the Great Nation, his own.

“I like,” said he, "after a long day's march, to lie down in this way upon the grass, and enjoy the cool of the evening. It reminds me of the bivouacs of other days, and of old friends who are now up there."

Here he pointed with his finger to the sky.

"They have reached the last étape before me, in the long march. But I shall go soon. We shall all meet again at the last roll-call. There's a tear!"

Sacré nom de

!

He wiped it away with his sleeve.

Here our colloquy was interrupted by the approach of a group of vintagers, who were returning homeward from their labor. To this party I joined myself, and invited the old soldier to do the same; but he shook his head.

"I thank you; my pathway lies in a different direction."

"But there is no other village near, and the sun has already set." "No matter, I am used to sleeping on the ground. Good night."

I left the old man to his meditations, and walked on in company with the vintagers. Following a well-trodden pathway through the vineyards, we soon descended the valley's slope, and I suddenly found myself in the bosom of one of those little hamlets from

which the laborer rises to his toil as the skylark to his song.

My companions wished me a good night, as each entered his own thatch-roofed cottage, and a little girl led me out to the very inn which an hour or two before I had disdained to enter.

When I awoke in the morning, a brilliant autumnal sun was shining in at my window. The merry song of birds mingled sweetly with the sound of rustling leaves and the gurgle of the brook. The vintagers were going forth to their toil; the winepress was busy in the shade, and the clatter of the mill kept time to the miller's song. I loitered about the village with a feeling of calm delight. I was unwilling to leave the seclusion of this sequestered hamlet; but at length, with reluctant step, I took the cross-road through the vineyard, and in a moment the little village had sunk again, as if by enchantment, into the bosom of the earth.

[From Outre-Mer, a Pilgrimage beyond the Sea, 1833–1834, “The Valley of the Loire." This text is that of the edition of 1846.]

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

[Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, was born near Hodgensville, Ky., Feb. 12, 1809. His education was a desultory one, as he was almost wholly self-taught. He was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1837, having already shown a marked interest in public affairs. He served in the State Legislature (1834-42), in the national Congress (1846-48), and was elected President of the United States in 1860. Reëlected in 1864, he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth soon after the beginning of his second term of office, and died April 15, 1865. The standard edition of his papers and speeches is that of J. G. Nicolay. The best biography is that of Hay and Nicolay.]

LINCOLN'S style, both in the sphere of oratory and in the sphere of dialectic, exhibits two distinct and very striking characteristics. The first is a remarkable compactness, clarity, and precision of statement, which may be taken as a nearly faultless model of convincing exposition. These qualities, moreover, derive their ultimate effectiveness from the supreme perfection with which they show the intellectual processes that gave them birth. The dominant thought is stripped of every superfluous detail and made to stand out vividly before the mind in a clear white brilliancy of phrasing; a nervous energy that is muscular and full of force brings every word to bear upon the writer's purpose; while a delicate balancing of contrasted thought is conveyed in an equally delicate balancing of phrase, that pleases and attracts the mind, no less than the ear, of him who hears it. A tendency toward veiled antithesis, indeed, may be set down as a definite feature of Lincoln's oratory. It enters into nearly all of his most finished utterances; and it is the more effective in that it does not spring from conscious artifice, but is entirely natural; for it arose from the supremely logical workings of an intellect that had been trained to see the other side of every question, to set one fact against another, to weigh and to compare, and then to render judgment with a perfect impartiality. This it was that gave to Lincoln's controver