opposition in another light. The pitiless storm of public hate beat upon him for thirty years. Malice-personal, political, religious-watched his every act, dogged his every step, and yet no breath of suspicion ever touched his character. Out of that ordeal he comes with no smell of fire on his garments; the boldest malice never gathered courage to invent an accusation. Son, brother, husband, father, neighbor, friend, reformer, in private life, in business, or holding office, no man ever suspected him of anything but the bravery of holding opinions which all hated, none could confute, and of acting them. out at the risk of property and life, and the actual sacrifice of all common men love. How few have such an epitaph! We who knew him, when we read of Hampden resisting ship-money, or Sidney going to the block, feel that we have walked and lived with their fellow. Scholars watched him, and thought of Plutarch. Narrow sectarians scrutinized him, and wondered how one lacking their shibboleth wore so naturally graces they only prayed for. Active, stanch friend, wise counsellor, liberal hand, serene worker,-like the stars," without haste, without rest!" Let us thank God for the sight, for the example! He would tell us to spare our words, saying, he had only tried to use his powers honestly. His best praise is our following his example, and each fearlessly obeying his own conscience, and doing with his might whatever his hand finds to do for his fellowman. us so do him honor; and as the great Englishman said of his friend: "There's none to make his place good,let us go to the next best," so of thee, dear comrade and leader of many years, thy place is sacred forever to thy memory! We go to the next best, till God gives us to see thee once again, face to face!

Let

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Address after the assassination of President Lincoln, Tremont Temple, Boston, April 23, 1865.

THE

HESE are sober days. The judgments of God have found us out. Years gone by chastised us with whips; these chastise us with scorpions. Thirty years ago how strong our mountain stood, laughing prosperity on all its sides! None heeded the fire and gloom which slumbered below. It was nothing that a giant sin gagged our pulpits; that its mobs ruled our streets, burned men at the stake for their opinions, and hunted them like wild beasts for their humanity. It was nothing that, in the lonely quiet of the plantation, there fell on the unpitied person of the slave every torture which hellish ingenuity could devise. It was nothing that, as husband and father, mother and child, the negro drained to its dregs all the bitterness that could be pressed into his cup; that, torn with whip and dogs, starved, hunted, tortured, racked, he cried, "How long, O Lord, how long!" In vain did a thousand witnesses crowd our highways, telling to the world the horrors of this prison-house, none stopped to consider, none believed. Trade turned away its deaf ear; the Church gazed on them with stony brow; letters passed by with mocking tongue. But what the world would not look at God has set to-day in a light so ghastly bright that it almost dazzles us blind. What the world refused to believe, God has written all over the

face of the continent with the sword's point in the blood of our best and most beloved. We believe the agony of the slave's hovel, the mother, and the husband, when it takes its seat at our board. We realize the barbarism that crushed him in the sickening and brutal use of the relics of Bull Run, in the torture and starvation of Libby Prison, where idiocy was mercy, and death was God's best blessing; and now, still more bitterly, we realize it in the coward spite which strikes an unarmed man, unwarned, behind his back, in the assassin fingers which dabble with bloody knife at the throats of old men on sick pillows. O God, let this lesson be enough! Spare us any more such costly teaching!

This deed is but the result and fair representative of the system in whose defence it was done. No matter whether it was previously approved at Richmond, or whether the assassin, if he reaches the Confederates, be received with all honor, as the wretch Brooks was, and as this bloodier wretch will surely be wherever rebels are not dumb with fear of our cannon. No matter for all

this.

God shows this terrible act to teach the nation in unmistakable terms the terrible foe with which it has to deal. But for this fiendish spirit, North and South, which holds up the rebellion, the assassin had never either wished or dared such a deed. This lurid flash only shows us how black and wide the cloud from which it sprung.

And what of him in whose precious blood this momentous lesson is writ? He sleeps in the blessings of the poor, whose fetters God commissioned him to break. Give prayers and tears to the desolate widow and the fatherless; but count him blessed far above the crowd of his fellow-men. [Fervent cries of "Amen!"] He was permitted himself to deal the last staggering blow which sent rebellion reeling to its grave; and then, holding his darling boy by the hand, to walk the streets of its sur

rendered capital, while his ears drank in praise and thanksgiving which bore his name to the throne of God in every form piety and gratitude could invent; and finally, to seal the sure triumph of the cause he loved with his own blood. He caught the first notes of the coming jubilee, and heard his own name in every one. Who among living men may not envy him? Suppose that when a boy, as he floated on the slow current of the Mississippi, idly gazing at the slave upon its banks, some angel had lifted the curtain and shown him that in the prime of his manhood he should see this proud empire rocked to its foundations in the effort to break those chains; should himself marshal the hosts of the Almighty in the grandest and holiest war that Christendom ever knew, and deal with half-reluctant hand that thunderbolt of justice which would smite the foul system to the dust, then die, leaving a name immortal in the sturdy pride of our race and the undying gratitude of another, would any credulity, however sanguine, any enthusiasm however fervid, have enabled him to believe it? Fortunate man! He has lived to do it! [Applause.] God has graciously withheld him from any fatal misstep in the great advance, and withdrawn him at the moment when his star touched its zenith, and the nation needed a sterner hand for the work God gives it to do.

No matter now that, unable to lead and form the nation, he was contented to be only its representative and mouthpiece; no matter that, with prejudices hanging about him, he groped his way very slowly and sometimes reluctantly forward: let us remember how patient he was of contradiction, how little obstinate in opinion, how willing, like Lord Bacon, "to light his torch at every man's candle." With the least possible personal hatred; with too little sectional bitterness, often forget

ting justice in mercy; tender-hearted to any misery his own eyes saw; and in any deed which needed his actual sanction, if his sympathy had limits, — recollect he was human, and that he welcomed light more than most men, was more honest than his fellows, and with a truth to his own convictions such as few politicians achieve. With all his shortcomings, we point proudly to him as the natural growth of democratic institutions. [Applause.] Coming time will put him in that galaxy of Americans which makes our history the day-star of the nations, Franklin, Jefferson, and Jay. to the bright list, with a more tude than either of them. No one of those was called to die for his cause. For him, when the nation needed to be raised to its last dread duty, we were prepared for it by the baptism of his blood.

Washington, Hamilton, History will add his name loving claim on our grati

What shall we say as to the punishment of rebels? The air is thick with threats of vengeance. I admire the motive which prompts these; but let us remember no cause, however infamous, was ever crushed by punishing its advocates and abettors, - all history proves this. There is no class of men base and coward enough, no matter what their views and purpose, to make the policy of vengeance successful. In bad causes, as well as good, it is still true that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." We cannot prevail against this principle of human nature. And again, with regard to the dozen chief rebels, it will never be a practical question whether we shall hang them. Those not now in Europe will soon be there; indeed, after paroling the bloodiest and guiltiest of all, Robert E. Lee, there would be little fitness in hanging any lesser wretch.

The only punishment which ever crushes a cause is that which its leader necessarily suffers in consequence