f circumstances. Henry went over to the nation; Mr.
Lincoln has steadily drawn the nation over to him. One left a united
France; the other, we hope and believe, will leave a reunited America.
We leave our readers to trace the further points of difference and
resemblance for themselves, merely suggesting a general similarity
which has often occurred to us. One only point of melancholy interest
we will allow ourselves to touch upon. That Mr. Lincoln is not
handsome nor elegant, we learn from certain English tourists who would
consider similar revelations in regard to Queen Victoria as thoroughly
American in their want of _bienseance_. It is no concern of ours, nor
does it affect his fitness for the high place he so worthily occupies;
but he is certainly as fortunate as Henry in the matter of good looks,
if we may trust contemporary evidence. Mr. Lincoln has also been
reproached with Americanism by some not unfriendly British critics;
but, with all deference, we cannot say that we like him any the worse
for it, or see in it any reason why he should govern Americans the less
wisely.

People of more sensitive organizations may be shocked, but we are glad
that in this our true war of independence, which is to free us forever
from the Old World, we have had at the head of our affairs a man whom
America made, as God made Adam, out of the very earth, unancestried,
unprivileged, unknown, to show us how much truth, how much magnanimity,
and how much state-craft await the call of opportunity in simple
manhood when it believes in the justice of God and the worth of man.
Conventionalities are all very well in their proper place, but they
shrivel at the touch of nature like stubble in the fire. The genius
that sways a nation by its arbitrary will seems less august to us than
that which multiplies and reinforces itself in the instincts and
convictions of an entire people. Autocracy may have something in it
more melodramatic than this, but falls far short of it in human value
and interest.

Experience would have bred in us a rooted distrust of improvised
statesmanship, even if we did not believe politics to be a science,
which, if it cannot always command men of special aptitude and great
powers, at least demands the long and steady application of the best
powers of such men as it can command to master even its first
principles. It is curious, that, in a country which boasts of its
intelligence, the theory should be so genera