and its success is as strong an argument as we have
ever seen in favor of the theory that men can govern themselves. He
never appeals to any vulgar sentiment, he never alludes to the
humbleness of his origin; it probably never occurred to him, indeed
that there was anything higher to start from than manhood; and he put
himself on a level with those he addressed, not by going down to them,
but only by taking it for granted that they had brains and would come
up to a common ground of reason. In an article lately printed in "The
Nation," Mr. Bayard Taylor mentions the striking fact, that in the
foulest dens of the Five Points he found the portrait of Lincoln. The
wretched population that makes its hive there threw all its votes and
more against him, and yet paid this instinctive tribute to the sweet
humanity of his nature. Their ignorance sold its vote and took its
money, but all that was left of manhood in them recognized its saint
and martyr.

Mr. Lincoln is not in the habit of saying, "This is my opinion, or my
theory," but, "This is the conclusion to which, in my judgment, the
time has come, and to which, accordingly the sooner we come the better
for us." His policy has been the policy of public opinion based on
adequate discussion and on a timely recognition of the influence of
passing events in shaping the features of events to come.

One secret of Mr. Lincoln's remarkable success in captivating the
popular mind is undoubtedly an unconsciousness of self which enables
him, though under the necessity of constantly using the capital I, to
do it without any suggestion of egotism. There is no single vowel
which men's mouths can pronounce with such difference of effect. That
which one shall hide away, as it were, behind the substance of his
discourse, or, if he bring it to the front, shall use merely to give
an agreeable accent of individuality to what he says, another shall
make an offensive challenge to the self-satisfaction of all his
hearers, and an unwarranted intrusion upon each man's sense of
personal importance, irritating every pore of his vanity, like a dry
northeast wind, to a goose-flesh of opposition and hostility. Mr.
Lincoln has never studied Quintilian; but he has, in the earnest
simplicity and unaffected Americanism of his own character, one art of
oratory worth all the rest. He forgets himself so entirely in his
object as to give his I the sympathetic and persuasive effect of We
with the great body of