ife,--see him passing over the high
places and the low, and across the long stretches of the prairie;
spending years in the Socratic arguments of the tavern, and anon holding
the rudder of state in grim silence; choosing jests which have the
freshness of earth, and principles of eternal right; judging potentates
and laborers in the clear light of nature, and at ease with both; alone
by virtue of a large and melancholy soul, at home with every man by
virtue of love and faith,--this figure takes its place high in our minds
and hearts, not solely through the natural right of strength and
success, but also because his strength is ours, and the success won by
him rested on the fundamental purity and health of the popular will of
which he was the leader and the servant. Abraham Lincoln was in a deep
and lasting sense the first American."

Mr. John Bigelow, already quoted in these pages, summarized Lincoln's
character and achievements in a passage of singular eloquence and force.
"Lincoln's greatness must be sought for in the constituents of his moral
nature. He was so modest by nature that he was perfectly content to
walk behind any man who wished to walk before him. I do not know that
history has made a record of the attainment of any corresponding
eminence by any other man who so habitually, so constitutionally, did to
others as he would have them do to him. Without any pretensions to
religious excellence, from the time he first was brought under the
observation of the nation he seemed, like Milton, to have walked 'as
ever in his great Taskmaster's eye.' St. Paul hardly endured more
indignities and buffetings without complaint. He was not a learned man.
He was not even one who would deserve to be called in our day an
educated man--knew little rather than much of what the world is proud
of. He had never been out of the United States, or seen much of the
portion of them lying east of the Alleghany Mountains. But the spiritual
side of his nature was so highly organized that it rendered superfluous
much of the experience which to most men is indispensable--the choicest
prerogative of genius. It lifted him unconsciously above the world,
above most of the men who surrounded him, and gave him a wisdom in
emergencies which is bestowed only on those who love their fellow-man as
themselves.... In the ordinary sense of the word, Mr. Lincoln was not a
statesman. Had he come to power when Van Buren did, or when Cleveland
did, he would p