I2O ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



continued to be applicable and effective, for here again 

 the reason of the people was to be reached and kindled 

 through their sentiments. It was one of those periods of 

 excitement, gathering, contagious, universal, which, while 

 they last, exalt and clarify the minds of men, giving to the 

 mere words country, human rights, democracy, a meaning 

 and a force beyond that of sober and logical argument. 

 They were convictions, maintained and defended by the 

 supreme logic of passion. That penetrating fire ran in 

 and roused those primary instincts that make their lair in 

 the dens and caverns of the mind. What is called the great 

 popular heart was awakened, that indefinable something 

 which may be, according to circumstances, the highest 

 reason or the most brutish unreason. But enthusiasm, once 

 cold, can never be warmed over into anything better than 

 cant ; and phrases, when once the inspiration that filled them 

 with beneficent power has ebbed away, retain only that sem 

 blance of meaning which enables them to supplant reason 

 in hasty minds. Among the lessons taught by the French 

 Revolution there is none sadder or more striking than this, 

 that you may make everything else out of the passions of 

 men except a political system that will work, and that there 

 is nothing so pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sincerity 

 formulated into dogma. It is always demoralising to extend 

 the domain of sentiment over questions where it has no 

 legitimate jurisdiction ; and perhaps the severest strain upon 

 Mr. Lincoln was in resisting a tendency of his own sup 

 porters which chimed with his own private desires, while 

 wholly opposed to his convictions of what would be wise 

 policy. 



The change which three years have brought about is too 

 remarkable to be passed over without comment, too weighty 

 in its lesson not to be laid to heart. Never did a President 

 enter upon office with less means at his command, outside 

 his own strength of heart and steadiness of understanding, 

 for inspiring confidence in the people, and so winning it for 

 himself, than Mr. Lincoln. All that was known of him was 

 that he was a good stump-speaker, nominated for his availa 

 bility that is, because he had no history and chosen by a party 

 with whose more extreme opinions he was not in sympathy. 

 It might well be feared that a man past fifty, against whom 

 the ingenuity of hostile partisans could rake up no accusa 

 tion, must be lacking in manliness of character, in decision 



