ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 155 



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 sensitiveness 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- 

 humor, the sagacity, the large-mindedness, and the un- 

 selfish honesty of the unknown man whom a blind for- 

 tune, 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 con- 

 vincingly 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 sentiment 

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

 that he can be firm without seeming obstinate in essen- 

 tial ones, and thus gain the advantages of compromise 

 without the weakness of concession ; by so instinctively 

 comprehending the temper and prejudices of a people as 

 to make them gradually conscious of the superior wisdom 



