civil one, and the affair is very different. For myself, I feel-though the tax on my time is heavy- that no hours of my day are better employed than those which thus bring me again within the direct contact and atmosphere of the average of our whole people. Men moving only in an official circle are apt to become merely official—not to say arbitrary—in their ideas; and are apter and apter, with each passing day, to forget that they only hold power in a representative capacity. Now this is all wrong. I go into these promiscuous receptions of all, who claim to have business with me twice each week, and every applicant for audience has to take his turn as if waiting to be shaved in a barber's shop. Many of the matters brought to my notice are utterly frivolous; but others are of more or less importance; and all serve to renew in me a clearer and more vivid image of that great popular assemblage out of which I sprang, and to which at the end of two years I must return. I tell you, Major," he said-appearing at this point to recollect I was in the room, for the former part of these remarks had been made with half shut eyes, as if in soliloquy-"I tell you that I call these receptions my public-opinion baths, for I have little time to read the papers and gather public opinion that way; and though they may not be pleasant in all their particulars, the effect, as a whole, is renovating and invigorating to my perceptions of responsibility and duty. It would never do for a president to have

guards with drawn sabres at his door, as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were assuming to be, an emperor."

And out of this grew as a consequence that direct personal interest of the people in him which has honored his tomb with the most magnificent demonstration of public sorrow ever paid to a ruler. The reverence of the people for Washington might have equalled if not surpassed that conceded to Lincoln. I doubt if the Nation's love for its first president equalled its love for the last. The more stately revolutionary regime, the circumstance of birth, the condition of society, even the character of the Father of his Country, did not tend to bring the hearts of president and people in as close contact then as now. We never knew this until he was taken from us. For four years the hearts and eyes of the nation had unconciously rested on him as the central figure of every public movement; for four years he has been demonstrating by continuous testimony his personal interest in every man, woman and child of the American people that came into contact with him. Those who had never seen him, knew nevertheless that the same cordial welcome, the same affectionate sympathy with their cares and wishes awaited them if their time should come: and when he died, it was as if the light had gone out of every eye. Every hand instinctively groped for a support, and little children wept because Abraham Lincoln was dead.

A recent article from the London Spectator so forcibly illustrates some of these views that I may be pardoned for quoting an extract:

"But without the advantages, of Washington's education or training, Mr. Lincoln was called from a humble station at the opening of a mighty civil war to form a government out of a party in which the habits and traditions of official life did not exist. Finding himself the object of southern abuse so fierce and so foul that in any man less passionless it would long ago have stirred up an implacable animosity; mocked at for his official awkwardness and denounced for his steadfast policy by all the Democratic section of the loyal states; tried by years of failure before that policy achieved. a single great success; further tried by a series of successes so rapid and brilliant that they would have puffed up a smaller mind and overset its balance; embarrassed by the boastfulness of his people and of his subordinates no less than by his own inexperience in his relations with foreign states; beset by fanatics of principle on one side, who would pay no attention to his obligations as a constitutional ruler, and by fanatics of caste on the other, who were not only deaf to the claims of justice but would hear of no policy large enough for a revolutionary emergency, Mr. Lincoln has persevered through all without ever giving way to anger, or despondency, or exultation, or popular arrogance, or sectarian fanaticism, or caste prejudice, visibly grow

ing in force of character, in self-possession, and in magnanimity, till, in his last short message to Congress on the fourth of March, we can detect no longer the rude and illiterate mould of a village lawyer's thought, but find it replaced by a grasp of principle, a dignity of manner, and a solemnity of purpose which would have been unworthy neither of Hampden nor of Cromwell, while his gentleness and generosity of feeling towards his foes are almost greater than we should expect from either of them."

At once the representative fact of his administration, and that which distinguished it above any other in our history, is its relations to the great question of human bondage. In this respect his administration forms an era in the history of the race. The status of the question at the time of his inauguration, and for a long time after, was peculiar and difficult. The moral and political aspects of the contest were brought into apparent antagonism; and the foreign emissaries of secession had no dearer object than to prove this antagonism real, and thus alienate from us the sympathy of Europe. Europe, knowing slavery to lie at the root of our trouble, expected us to strike at once at slavery. We, knowing the fact equally well, could, at the time, strike only at treason. We could deal only with the immediate development, not with the ultimate cause. The provisions of the Constitution, the divided sentiment of the north, the hesitating attitude of the border states, the general

ignorance of the extent and maturity of the conspiracy, made it a matter of the utmost difficulty and delicacy. The President clearly appreciated the source of the difficulty, and, as the result showed, had its removal as deeply at heart as any man. Hence, at Philadelphia, prior to his inauguration, he remarked: "I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this confederacy so long together. It was something in the Declaration of Independence, giving liberty not only to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all coming time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. If this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated upon the spot than surrender it." I need not follow the great question through the history of its solution. The world will bear testimony to the cautious, far-seeing wisdom with which he dealt with it. History will do justice to the man who could make impulse, however high and generous, stand back for duty. It will bear witness to the faith which could wait as well as labor; which was content to let the result come out in the slow grinding of the mills of God, without putting forth his hand to quicken the machinery. It will record how sacredly he respected the constitutional rights of the south; how timely were his warnings; how liberal his solici