es that Mr. Lincoln did
possess, and has treated them with the loftier sense of justice and
truth, he has employed no adventitious agencies to give brilliancy or
emphasis to any salient point in the character of the man he portrays;
he has treated Mr. Lincoln as he found him; he has interpreted him as he
would have interpreted himself; in inspiration, in execution, and in
result, he thought of none other, he labored for none other, he has
given us none other, than simple, honest Abraham Lincoln.

Were all the biographies and estimates of the President's character to
be lost, it would seem as if, from this picture alone, the
distinguishing qualities of his head and heart might be saved to the
knowledge of the future; for a rarer exhibition seems impossible of the
power of imparting inner spiritual states to outward physical
expression.

As a work of art, we repeat, this is beyond question the finest instance
of line-engraving yet executed on this continent. Free from carelessness
or coarseness, it is yet strong and emphatic; exquisitely finished, yet
without painful over-elaboration; with no weary monotony of parallel
lines to fill a given space, and no unrelieved masses of shade merely
because here must the shadow fall.

As a likeness, it is complete and final. Coming generations will know
Abraham Lincoln by this picture, and will tenderly and lovingly regard
it; for all that art could do to save and perpetuate this lamented man
has here been done. What it lacks, art is incapable to express; what it
has lost, memory is powerless to restore.

There is, at least, some temporary solace to a bereaved country in
this,--that so much has been saved from the remorseless demands of
Death; though the old grief will ever come back to its still uncomforted
heart, when it turns to that tomb by the Western prairie, within whose
sacred silence so much sweetness and kindly sympathy and unaffected love
have passed away, and the strange pathos, that we could not understand,
and least of all remove, has faded forever from those sorrowful eyes.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln. The
Story of a Picture._ By F. B. CARPENTER. New York: Hurd and
Houghton.

The grandeur which can survive proximity was peculiarly Abraham
Lincoln's. Had that great and simple hero had a valet,--it is hard to
conceive of him as so attended,--he must still have been a hero even to
the