ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 1 1 1 



nothing more romantic than that sudden change, as by a 

 rub of Aladdin s lamp, from the attorney s office in a 

 country town of Illinois to the helm of a great nation in 

 times like these. The analogy between the characters 

 and circumstances of the two men is in many respects 

 singularly close. Succeeding to a rebellion rather than a 

 crown, Henry s chief material dependence was the Hugue 

 not party, whose doctrines sat upon him with a looseness 

 distasteful certainly, if not suspicious, to the more fanatical 

 among them. King only in name over the greater part of 

 France, and with his capital barred against him, it yet 

 gradually became clear to the more far-seeing even of the 

 Catholic party, that he was the only centre of order and 

 legitimate authority round which France could reorganise 

 itself. While preachers who held the divine right of kings 

 made the churches of Paris ring with declamations in 

 favour of democracy rather than submit to the heretic dog 

 of a Bearnois much as our soi-disant Democrats have 

 lately been preaching the divine right of slavery, and 

 denouncing the heresies of the Declaration of Independence 

 Henry bore both parties in hand till he was convinced 

 that only one course of action could possibly combine his 

 own interests and those of France. Meanwhile the 

 Protestants believed somewhat doubtfully that he was 

 theirs, the Catholics hoped somewhat doubtfully that he 

 would be theirs, and Henry himself turned aside remon 

 strance, advice, and curiosity alike with a jest or a proverb 

 (if a little high, he liked them none the worse), joking 

 continually as his manner was. We have seen Mr. Lincoln 

 contemptuously compared to Sancho Panza by persons 

 incapable of appreciating one of the deepest pieces of 

 wisdom in the profoundest romance ever written namely, 

 that, while Don Quixote was incomparable in theoretic and 

 ideal statesmanship, Sancho, with his stock of proverbs, 

 the ready money of human experience, made the best 

 possible practical governor. Henry IY. was as full of wise 

 saws and modern instances as Mr. Lincoln, but beneath all 

 this was the thoughtful, practical, humane, and thoroughly 



