sential representative of all Yankees, and the veritable specimen, physically, of what the world seems determined to regard as our characteristic qualities. It is the strangest and yet the fittest thing in the jumble of human vicissitudes, that he, out of so many millions, unlooked for, unselected by any intelligible process that could be based upon his genuine qualities, unknown to those who chose, and unsuspected of what endowments may adapt him for his tremendous responsibility, should have found the way open for him to fling his lank personality into the chair of state,—where, I presume, it was his first impulse to throw his legs on the council-table, and tell the Cabinet Ministers a story. There is no describing his lengthy awkwardness, nor the uncouthness of his movement; and yet it seemed as if I had been in the habit of seeing him daily, and had shaken hands with him a thousand times in some village street; so true was he to the aspect of the pattern American, though with a certain extravagance which, possibly, I exaggerated still further by the delighted eagerness with which I took it in. If put to guess his calling and livelihood, I should have taken him for a country schoolmaster as soon as anything else. He was dressed in a rusty black frockcoat and pantaloons, unbrushed, and worn so faithfully that the suit had adapted itself to the curves and angularities of his figure, and had grown to be an outer skin of the man. He had shabby slippers on his feet. His hair was black, still unmixed with gray, stiff, somewhat bushy, and had apparently been acquainted with neither brush nor comb that

morning, after the disarrangement of the pillow; and as to a nightcap, Uncle Abe probably knows nothing of such effeminacies. His complexion is dark and sallow, betokening, I fear, an insalubrious atmosphere around the White House; he has thick black eyebrows and an impending brow; his nose is large, and the lines about his mouth are very strongly defined.

"The whole physiognomy is as coarse a one as you would meet anywhere in the length and breadth of the States; but, withal, it is redeemed, illuminated, softened, and brightened by a kindly though serious look out of his eyes, and an expression of homely sagacity, that seems weighted with rich results of village experience. A great deal of native sense; no bookish cultivation, no refinement; honest at heart, and thoroughly so, and yet, in some sort, sly, at least, endowed with a sort of tact and wisdom that are akin to craft, and would impel him, I think, to take an antagonist in flank, rather than to make a bull-run at him right in front. But, on the whole, I like this sallow, queer, sagacious visage, with the homely human sympathies that warmed it; and, for my small share in the matter, would as lief have Uncle Abe for a ruler as any man whom it would have been practicable to put in his place."

Wendell Phillips had no conception of the real character of the man he befouled; and some may say that his blindness is excusable, because no one understood Lincoln. Unfortunately for Phillips,

the beauty of Lincoln's character was appreciated by those who were in sympathy with him. On the morning after his nomination in 1860, the following tribute to the new candidate appeared in the Chicago Press and Tribune:

"One who has been led by providence through all the experiences of a lowly life, through labor and privation, through struggles and sacrifices, into selfreliance, into honest simplicity of life, into nobleness and purity of character, into a love of justice, truth and freedom that he might be fitted for the work."

Lincoln was not an educated man in the formal sense of the word; but for literary compositionof which he became a master-he was supremely well fitted. He had in the first place that love of truth and sincerity which is the foundation of all fine art; and he knew the Bible and Shakespeare so well that he could carry on conversations in quotation. Anyone who knows the Bible as Lincoln knew it has the best culture anywhere available.

The art of literary composition is the art of saying exactly what you want to say in a manner that will make it both clear and impressive to the minds of those who hear or read it. Lincoln's speeches and letters meet this test.

In his statesmanship and public life, Lincoln was a follower of Webster; in his character and dealings with individuals, he was a follower of the Light of the World.

L'

IV

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND

PURITANISM

IKE many men of genius, Hawthorne had no talent for the opportune. This indifference to "timeliness" he exhibited at the start, for out of all the 366 days of the year 1804, he entered the world on the Fourth of July. Never was there a man less of a jingo, less of a chauvinist; never was there one who viewed his native land with more cool detachment; never was there a quieter man, or one who hated more ardently the noise of guns and the noise of oratory; and it is characteristic of his shy humour that he should have been born among the reverberations of demagogues and the racket of firecrackers.

He was born in Salem and came of a long line of Puritan ancestors, one of whom was a Salem witch Judge. Although it will do no good, for the slander will go on circulating just the same, let it be repeated here that there never was any person in New England burned for alleged witchcraft. Some of Hawthorne's forbears were seafarers, his father being a ship-captain. The Puritan basis is so strong in Hawthorne that he was felicitously called by the critic R. H. Hutton the Ghost of New England.

He was graduated from Bowdoin in the class of 1825. That college has given more to literature than any other institution of learning in America, with the single exception of Harvard. One of his classmates was Longfellow, and in the class of 1824 was Franklin Pierce, who afterward became President of the United States. It is rather remarkable that in one small college there should be at the same time among the undergraduates a future President, the most popular of all American poets, and the foremost literary artist of the Western Hemisphere. Although the number of students was inconsiderable, Hawthorne and Longfellow were but slightly acquainted, moved in different sets, and were never intimate. Hawthorne's closest friend was Frank Pierce, to whom he was devoted all his life, and for whom he actually wrote a Campaign Life— as though Raphael should paint an advertising sign.

Hawthorne was not a particularly brilliant or diligent student, but it is pleasant to remember that his English professor had sufficient perception to praise his original compositions. Nor was he dissipated, his head being strong and clear enough to carry him safely through any company. On one occasion, he was caught playing cards, and the two letters he wrote home are so perfectly characteristic of his honesty, independence, and frankness, that they are worth citation. He was wise enough to anticipate the official warning by a private letter to his mother, 30 May 1822: