demagogism, to be found in the public utterances of Mr. Lincoln. He has always addressed the intelligence of men, never their prejudice, their passion, or their ignorance.

The First American.

Extract from Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration, July 21, 1865.

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

V.

Whither leads the path
To ampler fates that leads?
Not down through flowery meads,
To reap an aftermath

Of youth's vainglorious weeds;
But up the steep, amid the wrath.
And shock of deadly-hostile creeds,
Where the world's best hope and stay
By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way,
And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds.
Peace hath her not ignoble wreath,

Ere yet the sharp, decisive word

Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword
Dreams in its easeful sheath;

But some day the live coal behind the thought,
Whether from Baäl's stone obscene,

Or from the shrine serene

Of God's pure altar brought,

Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and pen
Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught,
And, helpless in the fiery passion caught,
Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men:

Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed
Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued,
And cries reproachful: "Was it, then, my praise,
And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth;
I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;
Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase,
The victim of thy genius, not its mate!"
Life may be given in many ways,
And loyalty to Truth be sealed
As bravely in the closet as the field,
So bountiful is Fate;

But then to stand beside her,
When craven churls deride her,
To front a lie in arms and not to yield,
This shows, methinks, God's plan
And measure of a stalwart man,
Limbed like the old heroic breeds,

Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth,

Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

VI.

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief,

Whom late the Nation he had led,

With ashes on her head,

Wept with the passion of an angry grief :
Forgive me, if from present things I turn
To speak what in my heart will beat and burn,
And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.
Nature, they say, doth dote,

And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote:

For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
Of the unexhausted West,

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.
How beautiful to see

Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed,
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,
Not lured by any cheat of birth,

But by his clear-grained human worth,
And brave old wisdom of sincerity!
They knew that outward grace is dust;
They could not choose but trust

In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,
And supple-tempered will

That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.

His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, Fruitful and friendly for all human-kind, Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest

stars.

Nothing of Europe here,

Or then, of Europe fronting mornward still,
Ere any names of Serf and Peer

Could Nature's equal scheme deface
And thwart her genial will;

Here was a type of the true elder race,

And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face

to face.

I praise him not; it were too late;

And some innative weakness there must be

In him who condescends to victory

xlvi LINCOLN'S PERSONAL APPEARANCE

Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait,
Safe in himself as in a fate.
So always firmly he:

He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide,

Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide.

Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,

But at last silence comes;

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,
Our children shall behold his fame,

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
New birth of our new soil, the first American.

Lincoln's Personal Appearance.*

BY WILLIAM H. HERNDON.

He was about six feet four inches high, and when he left this city was fifty-one years old, having good health and no gray hairs, or but few on his head. He was thin, wiry, sinewy, rawboned; thin through the breast to the back, and narrow across the shoulders; standing, he leaned forward was what may be called stoop-shouldered, inclining to the consumptive by build. His usual weight was one hundred and sixty pounds. His organization-rather his structure and functions-worked slowly. His blood had to run a long distance from his heart to the extremities of his frame, and his nerve-force had

* From an address delivered in Springfield, Illinois, December 12, 1865.

to travel through dry ground a long distance before his muscles were obedient to his will. His structure was loose and leathery; his body was shrunk and shrivelled, having dark skin, dark hair,-looking woe-struck. The whole man, body and mind, worked slowly, creakingly, as if it needed oiling. Physically, he was a very powerful man, lifting with ease four hundred or six hundred pounds. His mind was like his body, and worked slowly but strongly. When he walked, he moved cautiously but firmly, his long arms and hands on them, hanging like giant's hands, swung down by his side. He walked with even tread, the inner sides of his feet being parallel. He put the whole foot flat down on the ground at once, not landing on the heel; he likewise lifted his foot all at once, not rising from the toe, and hence he had no spring to his walk. He had economy of fall and lift of foot, though he had no spring or apparent ease of motion in his tread. He walked undulatory, up and down, catching and pocketing tire, weariness, and pain, all up and down his person, preventing them from locating. The first opinion of a stranger, or a man who did not observe closely, was that his walk implied shrewdness, cunning,-a tricky man; but his was the walk of caution and firmness. In sitting down on a common chair he was no taller than ordinary men. His legs and arms were, abnormally, unnaturally long, and in undue proportion to the balance of his body. It was only when he stood up that he loomed above other men.

Mr. Lincoln's head was long and tall from the base of the brain and from the eyebrows. His head ran backwards, his forehead rising as