ore, where once his life
had been threatened, for the homage of vast crowds; stopping at New
York, where among the huge assembly old General Scott came to bid him
affectionate farewell; stopping at other cities for the tribute of
reverent multitudes--to Springfield, his home of so many years, where,
on May 4, 1865, it was laid to rest. After the burial service the
"Second Inaugural" was read over his grave, nor could better words than
his own have been chosen to honour one who "with malice toward none,
with charity toward all, with firmness in the right as God gave him to
see the right, had striven on to finish the work that he was in." In
England, apart from more formal tokens of a late-learnt regard and an
unfeigned regret, Punch embodied in verse of rare felicity the manly
contrition of its editor for ignorant derision in past years; and Queen
Victoria symbolised best of all, and most acceptably to Americans, the
feeling of her people when she wrote to Mrs. Lincoln "as a widow to a
widow." Nor, though the transactions in which he bore his part were
but little understood in this country till they were half forgotten,
has tradition ever failed to give him, by just instinct, his rank with
the greatest of our race.

Many great deeds had been done in the war. The greatest was the
keeping of the North together in an enterprise so arduous, and an
enterprise for objects so confusedly related as the Union and freedom.
Abraham Lincoln did this; nobody else could have done it; to do it he
bore on his sole shoulders such a weight of care and pain as few other
men have borne. When it was over it seemed to the people that he had
all along been thinking their real thoughts for them; but they knew
that this was because he had fearlessly thought for himself. He had
been able to save the nation, partly because he saw that unity was not
to be sought by the way of base concession. He had been able to free
the slaves, partly because he would not hasten to this object at the
sacrifice of what he thought a larger purpose. This most unrelenting
enemy to the project of the Confederacy was the one man who had quite
purged his heart and mind from hatred or even anger towards his
fellow-countrymen of the South. That fact came to be seen in the South
too, and generations in America are likely to remember it when all
other features of his statecraft have grown indistinct. A thousand
reminiscences ludicrous or pathetic, passing into myth