curred to him, indeed, that there was anything higher to start from than manhood; and he put himself on a level with those he addressed, not by going down to them, but only by taking it for granted that they had brains and would come up to a common ground of reason. In an article lately printed in The Nation, Mr. Bayard Taylor mentions the striking fact, that in the foulest dens of the Five Points he found the portrait of Lincoln. The wretched population that makes its hive there threw all its votes and more against him, and yet paid this instinctive tribute to the sweet humanity of his nature. There ignorance sold its vote and took its money, but all that was left of manhood in them recognized its saint and martyr. 25 Mr. Lincoln is not in the habit of saying, "This is my opinion, or my theory," but "This is the conclusion to which, in my judgment, the time has come, and to which, accordingly, the sooner we come the better for us." His policy has been the policy of public opinion based on adequate discussion and on a timely recognition of the influence of passing events in shaping the features of events to come.

One secret of Mr. Lincoln's remarkable success in captivating the popular mind is undoubtedly an unconsciousness of self which enables him, though under the necessity of constantly using the capital I, to do it without any suggestion of egotism. There is no single vowel which men's mouths can pronounce with such difference of effect. That which one shall hide away, as it were, behind the substance of his discourse, or, if he bring it to the front, shall use merely to give an agreeable accent of individuality to what he says, another shall make an offensive challenge to the self-satisfaction of all his hearers, and an unwar

ranted intrusion upon each man's sense of personal importance, irritating every pore of his vanity, like a dry northeast wind, to a goose-flesh of opposition and hostility. Mr. Lincoln has never studied Quintilian; but he has, in the earnest simplicity and unaffected Americanism of his own character, one art of oratory worth all the rest. He forgets himself so entirely in his object as to give his I the sympathetic and persuasive effect of We with the great body of his countrymen. Homely, dispassionate, showing all the rough-edged process of his thought as it goes along, yet arriving at his conclusions with an honest kind of every-day logic, he is so eminently our representative man, that, when he speaks, it seems as if the people were listening to their own thinking aloud. The dignity of his thought owes nothing to any ceremonial garb of words, but to the manly movement that comes of settled purpose and an energy of reason that knows not what rhetoric means. There has been nothing of Cleon, still less of Strepsiades 2 striving to underbid him in demagogism, to be found in the public utterances of Mr. Lincoln. He has always addressed the intelligence of men, never their prejudice, their passion, or their ignorance.

27 On the day of his death, this simple Western attorney, who according to one party was a vulgar joker, and whom the doctrinaires among his own supporters accused of wanting every element of statesmanship, was the most absolute ruler in Christendom, and this 1 A famous Latin writer on the Art of Oratory.

2 Two Athenian demagogues, satirized by the dramatist Aristophanes.

solely by the hold his good-humored sagacity had laid on the hearts and understandings of his countrymen. Nor was this ail, for it appeared that he had drawn the great majority, not only of his fellow-citizens, but of mankind also, to his side. So strong and so persuasive is honest manliness without a single quality of romance or unreal sentiment to help it! A civilian during times of the most captivating military achievement, awkward, with no skill in the lower technicalities of manners, he left behind him a fame beyond that of any conqueror, the memory of a grace higher than that of outward person, and of a gentlemanliness deeper than mere breeding. Never before that startled April morning did such multitudes of men shed tears for the death of one they had never seen, as if with him a friendly presence had been taken away from their lives, leaving them colder and darker. Never was funeral panegyric so eloquent as the silent look of sympathy which strangers exchanged when they met on that day. Their common manhood had lost a kinsman.

I.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S SPEECH

AT THE DEDICATION OF THE NATIONAL CEMETERY, GETTYS BURG, PENNSYLVANIA, NOVEMBER 19, 1863.

The great battles fought at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in July, 1863, made that spot historic ground. It was early perceived that the battles were critical, and they are now looked upon by many as the turning-point of the war for the Union. The ground where the fiercest conflict raged was taken for a national cemetery, and the dedication of the place was made an occasion of great solemnity. The orator of the day was Edward Everett, who was regarded as the most finished public speaker in the country. Mr. Everett made a long and eloquent address, and was followed by the President in a little speech which instantaneously affected the country, whether people were educated or unlettered, as a great speech. The impression created has deepened with time. Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay on Eloquence says: "I believe it to be true that when any orator at the bar or the Senate rises in his thought, he descends in his language, that is, when he rises to any height of thought or passion, he comes down to a language level with the ear of all his audience. It is the merit of John Brown and of Abraham Lincoln one at Charlestown, one at Gettysburg in the two best

specimens of eloquence we have had in this country."

It is worth while to listen to Mr. Lincoln's own account of the education which prepared him for public speaking. Before he was nominated for the presidency he had attracted the notice of people by a remarkable contest in debate with a famous Illinois statesman, Stephen Arnold Douglas, As a consequence Mr. Lincoln received a great many invitations to speak in the Eastern States, and made, among others, a notable speech at the Cooper Union, New York. Shortly after, he spoke also at New Haven, and the Rev. J. P. Gulliver, in a paper in the New York

Independent, Sept. 1, 1864, thus reports a conversation which he held with him when traveling in the same railroad car :—

"Ah, that reminds me,' he said, 'of a most extraordinary circumstance, which occurred in New Haven, the other day. They told me that the Professor of Rhetoric in Yale College a very learned man, is n't he?' 'Yes, sir, and a very fine critic, too.' 'Well, I suppose so; he ought to be, at any rate — They told me that he came to hear me and took notes of my speech, and gave a lecture on it to his class the next day ; and,, not satisfied with that, he followed me up to Meriden the next evening, and heard me again for the same purpose. Now, if this is so, it is to my mind very extraordinary. I have been sufficiently astonished at my success in the West. It has been most unexpected. But I had no thought of any marked success at the East, and least of all that I should draw out such commendations from literary and learned men !'

"That suggests, Mr. Lincoln, an inquiry which has several times been upon my lips during this conversation. I want very much to know how you got this unusual power of "putting things." It must have been a matter of education. No man has it by nature alone. What has your education been?' “Well, as to education, the newspapers are correct. I never went to school more than six months in my life. But, as you say, this must be a product of culture in some form. I have been putting the question you ask me to myself while you have been talking. I say this, that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand. I don't think I ever got angry at anything else in my life. But that always disturbed my temper, and has ever since. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking up and down, and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings. I could not sleep, though I often tried to when I got on such a hunt after an idea, until I had caught it; and when I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over, until I had put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck by me, for I am never easy now, when I am handling a thought, till I have bounded it north and bounded it