d
enhances his importance at the expense of the country; his only
ambition, his only thought was faithfully to fulfil the mission which
his fellow-citizens had entrusted to him.... His inaugural address,
March 4, 1865, shows us what progress had been made in his soul. This
piece of familiar eloquence is a master-piece; it is the testament of
a patriot. I do not believe that any eulogy of the President would
equal this page on which he had depicted himself in all his greatness
and all his simplicity.... History is too often only a school of
immorality. It shows us the victory of force or stratagem much more
than the success of justice, moderation, and probity. It is too often
only the apotheosis of triumphant selfishness. There are noble and
great exceptions; happy those who can increase the number, and thus
bequeath a noble and beneficent example to posterity! Mr. Lincoln is
among these. He would willingly have repeated, after Franklin, that
'falsehood and artifice are the practice of fools who have not wit
enough to be honest.' All his private life, and all his political
life, were inspired and directed by this profound faith in the
omnipotence of virtue. It is through this, again, that he deserves to
be compared with Washington; it is through this that he will remain in
history with the most glorious name that can be merited by the head of
a free people--a name given him by his cotemporaries, and which will
be preserved to him by posterity--that of Honest Abraham Lincoln."

A letter from the well-known French historian, Henri Martin, to the
Paris Siecle, contained the following passages: "Lincoln will remain
the austere and sacred personification of a great epoch, the most
faithful expression of democracy. This simple and upright man, prudent
and strong, elevated step by step from the artisan's bench to the
command of a great nation, and always without parade and without
effort, at the height of his position; executing without
precipitation, without flourish, and with invincible good sense, the
most colossal acts; giving to the world this decisive example of the
civil power in a republic; directing a gigantic war, without free
institutions being for an instant compromised or threatened by
military usurpation; dying, finally, at the moment when, after
conquering, he was intent on pacification, ... this man will stand
out, in the traditions of his country and the world, as an incarnation
of the people, and of modern de