ii4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



the people. Mr. Lincoln was as far as possible from an 

 impromptu politician. His wisdom was made up of a 

 knowledge of things as well as of men ; his sagacity resulted 

 from a clear perception and honest acknowledgment of diffi 

 culties, which enabled him to see that the only durable 

 triumph of political opinion is based, not on any abstract 

 right, but upon so much of justice, the highest attainable 

 at any given moment in human affairs, as may be had in 

 the balance of mutual concession. Doubtless he had an 

 ideal, but it was the ideal of a practical statesman to aim 

 at the best, and to take the next best, if he is lucky enough 

 to get even that. His slow, but singularly masculine, intel 

 ligence taught him that precedent is only another name for 

 embodied experience, and that it counts for even more in 

 the guidance of communities of men than in that of the 

 individual life. He was not a man who held it good public 

 economy to pull down on the mere chance of rebuilding 

 better. Mr. Lincoln s faith in God was qualified by a very 

 well-founded distrust of the wisdom of man. Perhaps it 

 was his want of self-confidence that more than anything else 

 won him the unlimited confidence of the people, for they 

 felt that there would be no need of retreat from any position 

 he had deliberately taken. The cautious, but steady, 

 advance of his policy during the war was like that of a 

 Roman army. He left behind him a firm road on which 

 public confidence could follow ; he took America with him 

 where he went; what he gained he occupied, and his 

 advanced posts became colonies. The very homeliness of 

 his genius was its distinction. His kingship was con 

 spicuous by its workday homespun. Never was ruler so 

 absolute as he, nor so little conscious of it ; for he was the 

 incarnate common-sense of the people. With all that ten 

 derness of nature whose sweet sadness touched whoever saw 

 him with something of its own pathos, there was no trace 

 of sentimentalism in his speech or action. He seems to 

 have had but one rule of conduct, always that of practical 

 and successful politics, to let himself be guided by events, 

 when they were sure to bring him out where he wished 



