ven Baptist, seven
Roman Catholic, three Protestant Episcopal, two Universalist, and two
Unitarian churches.

On account of the encircling hills the climate of Worcester is hot in
summer, but somewhat more temperate and less subject to east winds in
winter than that of Boston.

The surrounding country has all the charms that cultivated soil and
undulating hill-and-valley scenery can give. Good roads run in various
directions to the adjacent towns, and strangers often speak of the many
different and delightful drives to be found about Worcester.

Three miles east of the city is the beautiful sheet of water called Lake
Quinsigamond. It is a narrow lake, about five miles long, with thickly
wooded banks, and its surface dotted with picturesque little islands.
Along its shores the Nipmuck Indians are said to have lived and hunted;
and on Wigwam Hill, a wooded eminence overlooking the water, where one
of their encampments is supposed to have been, are still occasionally
found specimens of their rude house utensils.

A large tract of land bordering on the lake has lately been given to the
city by two Worcester gentlemen, and it is expected that in the near
future it will be cleared away and made into a public park. The only
park that the city now possesses, besides the Common, before alluded to,
is a small affair on the west side, at the foot of Elm street, one of
the principal residence streets.

* * * * *

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By George Lowell Austin.

There is something eminently satisfactory in the reflection that, when
the new faith, "That all men are created equal," and that "Governments
are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of
the governed," was finally assailed by the slave-power of America, and
had to pass the ordeal of four years of war, a man born and reared in
poverty, deficient in education, unused to the etiquette even of
ordinary society, and untutored in the art of diplomacy and deception,
had been selected by the people of the United States to become the
representative of the new faith, and the defender of the government
established upon it. This man was ABRAHAM LINCOLN, of Illinois, the
record of whose life, at once important, eventful, and tragic, it is
pleasant to recall.

There are, in my judgment, at least four men associated with the period
of the civil war, who, in their early lives, their struggles, their
training, and the