most essential to success had to be fabricated by himself. The first count in the measurement is that with a calm, sublime reliance on God and the everlasting principles of Right he conducted an immense nation through the most tremendous civil war ever waged, and never committed a single serious mistake! The Illinois backwoodsman did not possess Hamilton's brilliant genius; yet Hamilton never read the future more sagaciously. He made no pretensions to Webster's massive and magnificent oratory; yet Webster never put more truth in portable form for the popular guidance. He possessed Benjamin Franklin's immense common sense and gift of terse proverbial speech, without Franklin's "fleshly lusts" and sceptical infirmities. In what may be styled civil literature Lincoln's position is unique; nearly all his productions are admirable, and a few of them are unequalled by any American pen. The immortal twentyline address at Gettysburg is the high-water mark of sententious eloquence. With that speech should be placed the equally pathetic and equally perfect letter of condolence to Mrs. Bixby, of Boston, after her five sons had fallen in battle. With that speech, also, should be read that wonderful second Inaugural Address, which even the hostile London Times pronounced to be the most sublime state paper of this century. This second Address his last great production contains some of the best illustrations of his fondness for balanced antithesis and rhythmical measurement; there is one sentence which may be rendered into rhyme:

"Fondly do we hope,

Fervently do we pray,

That this mighty scourge of war

May soon pass away."

Terrible as was the tragedy of that April night thirty years ago, yet it may be sadly true that Lincoln died at the right time for his own imperishable fame. It was fitting that his precious blood should be the last to be shed in the stupendous struggle. He had called over two hundred thousand heroes to lay down their lives, and then his own was laid down beside the humblest private soldier or drummer boy that fills the sacred mould of Gettysburg or Chickamauga. In an instant, as it were, his career crystallized into that pure white fame which belongs only to the martyr for justice, law and liberty.

For a whole generation his ashes have slumbered in his old, beloved home at Springfield. From that tomb his dust may be summoned on the last great Day of Judgment, when the millions of the liberated may gratefully say to their Liberator: "We were a-hungered, and thou gavest us the bread of mercy; we were thirsty for liberty, and thou gavest us to drink; we were strangers, and thou didst take us in; we were sick with two centuries of sorrow, and thou didst visit us; we were in the prison house of bondage, and thou camest unto us." And we may surely believe that the King will say unto him: "Inasmuch as thou hast done this unto the least of these my brethren, thou hast done it unto Me. Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of thy Lord!" BROOKLYN, N. Y.

K

LINCOLN'S MOST CONSPICUOUS VIRTUE.

FROM A CONFEDERATE GENERAL.

BY THE HON. JOHN T. MORGAN,

U. S. SENATOR FROM ALABAMA.

THE character of Abraham Lincoln is not yet known to this generation, as it will be to those who shall live in later centuries. They will see, as we cannot yet perceive, the full maturity of his wisdom in its actual effects upon the destinies of two great races of men. Probably, he had an inadequate conception of his own work. Had he lived to full age, his guidance of the emancipation, that he decreed under military law, would have saved both races from many of the rough experiences that it has produced and will yet cause, by the effort to fuse the races into political harmony, against the mutual instinct that will keep them forever separated by race and social antagonisms.

The character of Mr. Lincoln was clearly displayed in his conduct of the War, but he was deprived of the opportunity for its full development in a period of peace and security. His most conspicuous virtue, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, was the absence of a spirit of resentment, or oppression, toward the enemy,

and the self-imposed restraint under which he exercised the really absolute powers within his grasp. For this all his countrymen revere his memory, rejoice in the excellence of his fame, and those who failed in the great struggle hold him in grateful esteem.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AS SEEN BY A LIFE

LONG DEMOCRAT.

AFTER GOING THROUGH BALTIMORE.

BY COL. B. F. WATSON,

OF THE MASSACHUSETTS SIXTH REGIMENT.

My slight individual knowledge of Abraham Lincoln was during his first term as President, and was comprised in two interviews at the White House, one at the request of the officers of my regiment and the other at Mr. Lincoln's request, and to a brief correspondence of which I still retain two of his autograph letters, all, interviews and correspondence, having some connection with each other, although in dates separated by several months.

I first saw him on Sunday morning, April 21st, 1861, near the entrance to the Cabinet chamber in the White House. At the urgent request of the captains of the Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, I called upon Maj.-Gen. Winfield Scott, then commanding the United States Army. I was unattended. There is no special importance in the facts I am about to state unless it be remembered that this Sunday was but six days after the firing upon Sumter, and two days after the affair of Baltimore, that Washington and the whole country were surging under an excitement almost impossible to describe, and that I was the representative of a body of men who had been recently making history.