ice had seemed like the irony of fate in the great
crisis of 1861. Even so acute an observer as Lyons could then write,
"Mr. Lincoln has not hitherto given proof of his possessing any natural
talents to compensate for his ignorance of everything but Illinois
village politics. He seems to be well meaning and conscientious, in the
measure of his understanding, but not much more[1293]." But Lyons was no
more blind than his contemporaries, for nearly all characterizations,
whether American or foreign, were of like nature.

But the slow progress of the years of war had brought a different
estimate of Lincoln--a curious blending of admiration for the growth of
his personal authority and for his steadiness of purpose, with criticism
of his alleged despotism. Now, with his death, following so closely the
collapse of the Confederacy, there poured out from British press and
public a great stream of laudation for Lincoln almost amounting to a
national recantation. In this process of "whitening Abraham's tomb," as
a few dyed-in-the-wool Southern sympathizers called it, _Punch_ led the
way in a poem by Tom Taylor:

"_You_ lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier,
_You_, who with mocking pencil wont to trace,
Broad for the self-complacent British sneer,
His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face."

* * * * *

"Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
To lame my pencil and confute my pen--
To make me own this hind of princes peer,
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men[1294]."

Less emotional than most papers, but with a truer estimate of Lincoln,
stood the _Times_. Severely reprobating the act of Booth and prophesying
a disastrous effect in the treatment of the conquered South, it
proceeded:

"Starting from a humble position to one of the greatest
eminence, and adopted by the Republican party as a
make-shift, simply because Mr. Seward and their other
prominent leaders were obnoxious to different sections of
the party, it was natural that his career should be watched
with jealous suspicion. The office cast upon him was great,
its duties most onerous, and the obscurity of his past career
afforded no guarantee of his ability to discharge them. His
shortcomings moreover were on the surface. The education of a
man whose early years had been spent in earning bread by
manual labour had necessaril