dim with tears that would seek calmly to trace out his
place in history. He has been a marvel and a phenomenon among statesmen,
a new kind of ruler in the earth. There has been something even
unearthly about his extreme unselfishness, his utter want of personal
ambition, personal self-valuation, personal feeling.

The most unsparing criticism, denunciation, and ridicule never moved him
to a single bitter expression, never seemed to awaken in him a single
bitter thought. The most exultant hour of party victory brought no
exultation to him; he accepted power not as an honor, but as a
responsibility; and when, after a severe struggle, that power came a
second time into his hands, there was something preternatural in the
calmness of his acceptance of it. The first impulse seemed to be a
disclaimer of all triumph over the party that had strained their utmost
to push him from his seat, and then a sober girding up of his loins to
go on with the work to which he was appointed. His last inaugural was
characterized by a tone so peculiarly solemn and free from earthly
passion, that it seems to us now, who look back on it in the light of
what has followed, as if his soul had already parted from earthly
things, and felt the powers of the world to come. It was not the formal
state-paper of the chief of a party in an hour of victory, so much as
the solemn soliloquy of a great soul reviewing its course under a vast
responsibility, and appealing from all earthly judgments to the tribunal
of Infinite Justice. It was the solemn clearing of his soul for the
great sacrament of Death, and the words that he quoted in it with such
thrilling power were those of the adoring spirits that veil their faces
before the throne: "Just and true are thy ways, thou King of Saints!"

Among the rich treasures which this bitter struggle has brought to our
country, not the least is the moral wealth which has come to us in the
memory of our martyrs. Thousands of men, women, and children too, in
this great conflict, have "endured tortures, not accepting deliverance,"
counting not their lives dear unto them in the holy cause: and they have
done this as understandingly and thoughtfully as the first Christians
who sealed their witness with their blood.

Let us in our hour of deliverance and victory record the solemn vow,
that our right hand shall forget her cunning before we forget them and
their sufferings,--that our tongue shall cleave to the roof of our
mout