The Shasta courier., 1867-03-23
Elihu Burritt OH Abraham Lincoln.

Elihu BurrIle. now in England, has re-
Gently publshsd characteristic treatise on
The Mission of Great Suffering" which
is represented in English papers work of
singular interest One says 1t discourses
of suffering, It's mission and its power, with
wonderful profuncity, intelligence and
pathos." In the last chapter, Mr. Burritt
comes naturally to the tragic events of the
present day, among which an appropriate
place is given to
TIE LIFE AND DEATH OF LINCOLN.
We now come to another event which
moved powerfully the whole of Christendom,
and produced an effect upon the. foremost
nations which no occurrence of that or other
order had ever accomplished. 1t was an
event that came in moment with no pre-
monition Ii was the sud en- extinction Of
one human life except its light. There was
an honest hearted man who came up out of
the commonest walks of the people, and was
raised to the Presidential chair of the Amer
lean Republic to represent and execute its
will. The lifting up of that man to fill this
high place. split the nation In sunder. The
chasm was dark and wide. The struggle to
close it on one side and widen 1t on the other
was long and terrible. Half a million of
precious lives were thrown into the breach.
and it ran red and deep with the best blood
of the severed nation. The tall, gaunt man
IF furrowed face and paintive eyes. who
stood in his place with steady faith and rur-
pose, being in the stature of his elevation
what Saul was to the Israeites from his
shoulders upwards, was from beginning to
end the butt of satire and denunclatlon,
much at home and more abroad. In Ger
tain sense the people of the North might
have said, lie bore the iniquities of US all.
For all who hated the Northern cause. hit
him and bruised his spirit with their hard
and cruel sayings.
'In addition to all this burden of reproach
piled upon his shoulders. because they were
higher than the peoples whose he was and
whom he served, bis personal ant cedents
and associations were thrown in his face in
all the epithets that ridicule could invent
Foreign satrists lampoOned him with their
witticisms and carcatured him with thrir
pencils. Friends fell away and foes fell on
him, as the sanguinary conflict went on from
year to year. The furrOws of his face deep
ened the sallow ridges of his brow showed
the mole walks of care were ploughlng night
and day his inner soul But as those sad +,
deem and solemn eyes withdrew further
inward. they beamed with the old steady
light of faith and hope. And according to
his faith was it given to see that for which
his spirit prayed with longing most intense.
He saw the long and bloody struggle con
cuded He saw the wide rent in the nation
closing. With a foot on either side. he
stretched outhis long, gaunt arms and essay
ed to press the two sections, like estranged
sisters. to his broad ard tender breast.
Ills was a great life, but his death was
greater still--the greatest, perhaps, that had
moved the world for a thousand years
When he stood with his tender arms around
the North and South, holding them to his
heart that both might soften theirs at its
spirit, his life's work was done. Then be.
gan the sublime mission of his death. While
those sunken eyes were shining with the
gladness of his soul at the glimpse given him,
as to Moses on Pisgah's top, of the Canaan
side of his country's future. in a moment
their light was quenched forever on earth
An assassin pierced his brain as with bolt
of lightning; and he fell, and great was the
fall of that single man. With him fell a
million enemies of his cause and country at
home and abroad If the last act of his life
was to close the rift in continent, the first
act of his death was to close the chasm be
tween two hemispheres. Never before was
England brought so near to this country
In the great overflow of her sympathy the
mother country was flooded and tided towards
her first born daughter weeping at the bier
of the great departed and she bent over the
mourner with words of tender condolence.- =
Blood is thicker than wafer; and the latent
instincts of nature came forth in generous
speech and sentiment towards sorrowing
nation. In that overflow of fellow feeling,
the sympathy with the South and its un.
righteous cause vas drowned, or burnt up
by a spirit of Indignation at the taking off,
which seemed to consume at a breath the
animus that had sided with secession
There was light as well as heat in that fire ;
and in the light thousands of Southern svm-
pathizers saw in a different aspect the cause
they had upheld"