s the fearful tidings travel
over sea, over land, from country to country, like the shadow of an
uncalculated eclipse over the planet. Old as history is, and manifold
as are its tragedies, I doubt if any death has caused so much pain to
mankind as this has caused, or will cause, on its announcement; and
this, not so much because nations are by modern arts brought so
closely together, as because of the mysterious hopes and fears which,
in the present day, are connected with the name and institutions of
America.

In this country, on Saturday, every one was struck dumb, and saw at
first only deep below deep, as he meditated on the ghastly blow. And
perhaps, at this hour, when the coffin which contains the dust of the
President sets forward on its long march through mourning States, on
its way to his home in Illinois, we might well be silent and suffer
the awful voices of the time to thunder to us. Yes, but that first
despair was brief: the man was not so to be mourned. He was the most
active and hopeful of men; and his work has not perished: but
acclamations of praise for the task he has accomplished burst out into
a song of triumph, which even tears for his death cannot keep down.

The President stood before us as a man of the people. He was
thoroughly American, had never crossed the sea, had never been spoiled
by English insularity or French dissipation; a quiet native,
aboriginal man, as an acorn from the oak; no aping of foreigners, no
frivolous accomplishments, Kentuckian born, working on a farm, a
flatboat-man, a captain in the Black Hawk war, a country lawyer, a
representative in the rural legislature of Illinois;--on such modest
foundations the broad structure of his fame was laid. How slowly, and
yet by happily prepared steps, he came to his place. All of us
remember--it is only a history of five or six years--the surprise and
the disappointment of the country at his first nomination by the
convention at Chicago. Mr. Seward, then in the culmination of his good
fame, was the favorite of the Eastern States. And when the new and
comparatively unknown name of Lincoln was announced (notwithstanding
the report of the acclamations of that convention), we heard the
result coldly and sadly. It seemed too rash, on a purely local
reputation, to build so grave a trust in such anxious times; and men
naturally talked of the chances in politics as incalculable. But it
turned out not to be chance. The profound good opinion whic