the main current was,
and keep steadily to that. He is still in wild water, but we have
faith that his skill and sureness of eye will bring him out right at
last.

A curious, and, as we think, not inapt parallel, might be drawn
between Mr. Lincoln and one of the most striking figures in modern
history--Henry IV. of France. The career of the latter may be more
picturesque, as that of a daring captain always is; but in all its
vicissitudes there is nothing more romantic than that sudden change,
as by a rub of Aladdin's lamp, from the attorney's office in a country
town of Illinois to the helm of a great nation in times like these.
The analogy between the characters and circumstances of the two men is
in many respects singularly close. Succeeding to a rebellion rather
than a crown, Henry's chief material dependence was the Huguenot
party, whose doctrines sat upon him with a looseness distasteful
certainly, if not suspicious, to the more fanatical among them. King
only in name over the greater part of France, and with his capital
barred against him, it yet gradually became clear to the more
far-seeing even of the Catholic party that he was the only center of
order and legitimate authority round which France could reorganize
itself. While preachers who held the divine right of kings made the
churches of Paris ring with declamations in favor of democracy rather
than submit to the heretic dog of a Bearnois--much as our _soi-disant_
Democrats have lately been preaching the divine right of slavery, and
denouncing the heresies of the Declaration of Independence--Henry bore
both parties in hand till he was convinced that only one course of
action could possibly combine his own interests and those of France.
Meanwhile the Protestants believed somewhat doubtfully that he was
theirs, the Catholics hoped somewhat doubtfully that he would be
theirs, and Henry himself turned aside remonstrance, advice, and
curiosity alike with a jest or a proverb (if a little high, he liked
them none the worse), joking continually as his manner was. We have
seen Mr. Lincoln contemptuously compared to Sancho Panza by persons
incapable of appreciating one of the deepest pieces of wisdom in the
profoundest romance ever written; namely, that, while Don Quixote was
incomparable in theoretic and ideal statesmanship, Sancho, with his
stock of proverbs, the ready money of human experience, made the best
possible practical governor. Henry IV. was as full of wi