touch with those original experiences out of which the
higher evolution of civilization slowly rises; they knew the soil and
the sky at first hand; they wrested a meagre subsistence out of the
stubborn earth by constant toil; they shared to the full the
vicissitudes and weariness of humanity at its elemental tasks.

It was to this nearness to the heart of a new country, perhaps, that
Mr. Lincoln owed his intimate knowledge of his people and his deep and
beautiful sympathy with them. There was nothing sinuous or secondary
in his processes of thought: they were broad, simple, and homely in
the old sense of the word. He had rare gifts, but he was rooted deep
in the soil of the life about him, and so completely in touch with it
that he divined its secrets and used its speech. This vital sympathy
gave his nature a beautiful gentleness, and suffused his thought with
a tenderness born of deep compassion and love. He carried the sorrows
of his country as truly as he bore its burdens; and when he came to
speak on the second immortal day at Gettysburg, he condensed into a
few sentences the innermost meaning of the struggle and the victory in
the life of the nation. It was this deep heart of pity and love in him
which carried him far beyond the reaches of statesmanship or oratory,
and gave his words that finality of expression which marks the noblest
art.

That there was a deep vein of poetry in Mr. Lincoln's nature is clear
to one who reads the story of his early life; and this innate
idealism, set in surroundings so harsh and rude, had something to do
with his melancholy. The sadness which was mixed with his whole life
was, however, largely due to his temperament; in which the final
tragedy seemed always to be predicted. In that temperament too is
hidden the secret of the rare quality of nature and mind which
suffused his public speech and turned so much of it into literature.
There was humor in it, there was deep human sympathy, there was clear
mastery of words for the use to which he put them; but there was
something deeper and more pervasive,--there was the quality of his
temperament; and temperament is a large part of genius. The inner
forces of his nature played through his thought; and when great
occasions touched him to the quick, his whole nature shaped his speech
and gave it clear intelligence, deep feeling, and that beauty which is
distilled out of the depths of the sorrows and hopes of the world. He
was as unlike B