160 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



otherwise, has always waited, as a wise man should, till 

 the right moment brought up all his reserves. Semper 

 nocuit differre paratis, is a sound axiom, but the really 

 efficacious man will also be sure to know when he is not 

 ready, and be firm against all persuasion and reproach 

 till he is. 



One would be apt to think, from some of the criticisms 

 made on Mr. Lincoln's course by those who mainly agree 

 with him in principle, that the chief object of a states- 

 man should be rather to proclaim his adhesion to certain 

 doctrines, than to achieve their triumph by quietly ac- 

 complishing his ends. In our opinion, there is no more 

 unsafe politician than a conscientiously rigid doctrinaire, 

 nothing more sure to end in disaster than a theoretic 

 scheme of policy that admits of no pliability for contin- 

 gencies. True, there is a popular image of an impossi- 

 ble He, in whose plastic hands the submissive destinies 

 of mankind become as wax, and to whose commanding 

 necessity the toughest facts yield with the graceful 

 pliancy of fiction ; but in real life we commonly find 

 that the men who control circumstances, as it is called, 

 are those who have learned to allow for the influence of 

 their eddies, and have the nerve to turn them to account 

 at the happy instant. Mr. Lincoln's perilous task has 

 been to carry a rather shaky raft through the rapids, 

 making fast the unrulier logs as he could snatch oppor- 

 tunity, and the country is to be congratulated that he 

 did not think it his duty to run straighfltlt all hazards, 

 but cautiously to assure himself with his setting-pole 

 where the main current was, and keep steadily to that. 

 He is still in wild water, but we have faith that his skill 

 and sureness of eye will bring him out right at last. 



A curious, and, as we think, not inapt parallel, might 

 be drawn between Mr. Lincoln and one of the most 

 striking figures in modem history, Henry IV. of 



