we had his Inaugural Address, which is very conciliatory and firm." At that critical moment men were concerned with what Lincoln said, not with how he said it.

Only one criticism was found that combined indorsement of Lincoln's political views with an unfavorable estimate of his style. It was found in a German-American Roman Catholic paper, Wahrheits Freund, published in Cincinnati and evidently an organ of the conservative republicans, and reads in translation as follows: "Far more conservative and patriotic in its contents than beautiful and classical in its form." The only reasonable explanation of this curious criticism is that the author's limited knowledge of English made it impossible for him to appreciate the beauty of Lincoln's style.

The "Second Inaugural Address" is in as marked contrast to the "First Inaugural Address" as are the circumstances under which it was delivered compared to those of four years before. In the first place, it is only a

fourth as long as the earlier address. This difference in length is accounted for by the speaker himself in the opening sentence: "At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first." Furthermore, the "First Inaugural Address" was in the main argumentative and all of Lincoln's speeches of this class tend to fullness of expression. The "Second Inaugural Address, on the other hand, is expository and emotional, resembling more closely the "Farewell Speech" and the "Gettysburg Address." In what may be called his lyrical mood Lincoln tends towards brevity. The longer, argumentative speeches might be compared to heroic statues, full of strength, combined with rare beauty; the shorter, emotional speeches suggest rather delicate cameos, in which grace and beauty are the predominating qualities.

We are not accustomed to associate the London Times with President Lincoln except as an unsympathetic, and often a harsh, critic.

Both in the news and the editorial columns the Thunderer usually leaned far toward the South. All the more remarkable, therefore, is this appreciation of the "Second Inaugural Address" which appeared in an editorial of the Times, for March 17, 1865:

"The circumstances under which Mr. Lincoln assumes office for another term of four years are so strange and impressive that they may justify an address full of a kind of Cromwellian diction and breathing a spirit very different from the usual, unearnest utterances of successful politicians. . We cannot but see that the President, placed in the most important position to which a statesman can aspire, invested with a power greater than that of most Monarchs, fulfills the duties which destiny has imposed on him with firmness and conscientiousness, but without any feeling of exhilaration at success or sanguine anticipation of coming prosperity. . . . Such language is not unbecoming a man who has been

continued in power avowedly that he may persist in a devastating war."

Even more interesting and significant than this editorial is the following brief comment of the special correspondent:

"I am just in time to hear Mr. Lincoln deliver the last words of his singular but pathetic address. Is he not far grander and wiser and greater to-day than when four years ago he came from Springfield?"

The New York Times, for March 5, speaks of "the extreme simplicity of this address, its calmness, its modesty, its reserve. We have a President who will be faithful to the end, let what betide."

But, as in the case of the “Gettysburg Address," it is not until after Lincoln's death that we find in the newspapers and elsewhere the superlative note that is now accepted as the right one. Perhaps the most adequate of the earlier posthumous appreciations is the follow

ing passage found in a review of Raymond's "Life of Abraham Lincoln," in the London Spectator, which is all the more interesting because of its English source:

"For ourselves we cannot read his last inaugural address, delivered only five weeks before his assassination, without a renewed conviction that it is the noblest political document known to history, and should have, for the nation and the statesmen he left behind him, something of sacred and almost prophetic authority. Surely none was ever written under a stronger sense of God's government."

This seems to anticipate Carl Schurz's fine characterization:

"This was like a sacred poem. No American President had ever spoken words like these to the American people. America never had a President who found such words in the depth of his heart."

Reverting to the comparison of the two men in the opening chapter, we cannot fail to be