124 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



Lincoln has never studied Quinctilian ; 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 / 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 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 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. 



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 solely by the hold 

 his good-humoured sagacity had laid on the hearts and 

 understandings of his countrymen. Nor was this all, 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 technical 

 ities 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 



