Il8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



foreigner should be blind to the grandeur of the combat of 

 ideas that has been going on here to the heroic energy, 

 persistency, and self-reliance of a nation proving that it 

 knows how much dearer greatness is than mere power ; and 

 we own that it is impossible for us to conceive the mental 

 and moral condition of the American who does not feel his 

 spirit braced and heightened by being even a spectator of 

 such qualities and achievements. That a steady purpose 

 and a definite aim have been given to the jarring forces 

 which, at the beginning of the war, spent themselves in the 

 discussion of schemes which could only become operative, if 

 at all, after the war was over ; that a popular excitement has 

 been slowly intensified into an earnest national will ; that a 

 somewhat impracticable moral sentiment has been made the 

 unconscious instrument of- a practical moral end ; that the 

 treason of covert enemies, the jealousy of rivals, the unwise 

 zeal of friends, have been made not only useless for mischief, 

 but even useful for good ; that the conscientious sensitive 

 ness of England to the horrors of civil conflict has been 

 prevented from complicating a domestic with a foreign war 

 all these results, any one of which might suffice to prove 

 greatness in a ruler, have been mainly due to the good 

 sense, the good-humour, the sagacity, the large-mindedness, 

 and the unselfish honesty of the unknown man whom a blind 

 fortune, as it seemed, had lifted from the crowd to the most 

 dangerous and difficult eminence of modern times. It is by 

 presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native 

 metal of a man is tested ; it is by the sagacity to see, and 

 the fearless honesty to admit, whatever of truth there may be 

 in an adverse opinion, in order more convincingly to expose 

 the fallacy that lurks behind it, that a reasoner at length 

 gains for his mere statement of a fact the force of argument ; 

 it is by a wise forecast which allows hostile combinations to 

 go so far as by the inevitable reaction to become elements of 

 his own power, that a politician proves his genius for state 

 craft ; and especially it is by so gently guiding public senti 

 ment that he seems to follow it, by so yielding doubtful 

 points that he can be firm without seeming obstinate in 

 essential ones, and thus gain the advantages of compromise 

 without the weakness of concession ; by so instinctively com 

 prehending the temper and prejudices of a people as to make 

 them gradually conscious of the superior wisdom of his free 

 dom from temper and prejudice it is by qualities such as 



