Mr. Lincoln and one of the most striking figures in modern
history,--Henry IV. of France. The career of the latter may be more
picturesque, as that of a daring captain always is; but in all its
vicissitudes there is 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 Huguenot 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 reorganize itself. While preachers who held
the divine right of kings made the churches of Paris ring with
declamations in favor 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 remonstrance, 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 IV.
was as full of wise saws and modern instances as Mr. Lincoln, but
beneath all this was the thoughtful, practical, humane, and thoroughly
earnest man, around whom the fragments of France were to gather
themselves till she took her place again as a plan