Milford chronicle., 1893-10-13

perior, If no has an equal, In the English
language. 1t is difficult at least to say
what political speech can vie in logical
force and inpressiveness with his speech
defending the Union in reply to the south
ern separatist Hayne, OF what forensic
speech excels in the same qualities his
speech for the prosecution in the murder
case Of White.
''His style has been compared to the
strokes of a trip hammer which his SEN
tences resembled in measured force, but
not in monotony. The majesty of intellect
atom his beetling brow, and he had the look
and port OF Jove. He was and felt himself
a king It told of him chat when one Of
his notes had fallen due he majestically
waved his hand and said, Let 1t be paid
All men bowed down to him; all men
crowded to hear him. He swayed the opin-
ions of all men, but he did not, like Clay,
win their hearts. He never was a great
party leader. nor was he ever hopeful
candidate for the presidency. 1t must be
added that his moral strength was not
equal to his power Of mind"
''THE BLOOD RED sTARn OF JACKSON.
What Goldwin Smith picturesquely calls
''the blood red star" Of Andrew Jackson
was now in the ascendant;
U4Aksllf An1IEah 4A AtAA INV ~~@AA a.
congress, as we have seen, and had vented
his Jealous spleen on Washington, was
fighter, with an iron will and great powers
Of command, i'll educated, destitute of the
knowledge and the habits of a statesman,
with an uncontrolled temper and almost as
much swayed by passion as any Indian
chief, though, like many an Indian chief,
he could bear himself when he pleased with
dignity and even with grace. That he had
beaten the British at New Orleans was his
title to the headship of the nation, and he
had not lessened his popularity by the law
less execution Of two Englishmen, Ambris-
ter and Arbuthnot, or by some acts OF
equally lawless aggression on Spanish ter
ritory-outrages against which a moral
minority in congress had protested in vain,
while John Quincy Adams, swayed prob
ably by his dislike Of England, had for once
deviated from his moral course and helped
to whitewash the man who was destined to
GUST him from the presidential chair"
LINCOLN A MARVEL OF HISTORY.
Professor Smith now comes down to more
contemporaneous times, and here he paints
his portrait Of Abraham Lincoln:
Abraham Lincoln is assuredly one OF
the maryels of history. holland but Amer
lea has produced his ike This destined
chief of a nation in its most perilous hour
was the son of a thriftless and wandering
settler, bred in the most sordid poverty.
He had received only the rudiments Of edu-
cation, and though he afterward read eager
" such works as were within his reach it
is wonderful that he should have attained
as a speaker and writer mastery of Ian
guage and pure as we'll as effective style.
He could look back smiling on the day
when his long shanks appeared bare below
the shrunken leather .breeches which were
his only neither garment. His frame was
gaunt and grotesque, but mighty. He
stood 6 feet and was said to have lifted
cask full of beer and to have drunk out Of
the bunehole This made him hero with
the Clary Grove boys.
He had a strong and eminently fair un-
derstanding, with great powers of patient
Thought, which he cultivated by the study
of Euclid. In all his views there was
simplicity which had it's source in the sim
plicity of his character His local popular
itv was due largely to his humor and the
stock Of good stories, always pointed,
though not always delicate, which through
life 1t was his delight to collect and
repeat. At the same time he was melan-
choly, touched with the pathOs of human
life, fond of mournful poetry, religious,
though not orthodox, with strong sense
of an overriding Providence, which, when
he was out of spirits sometimes, took the
shal5e of fatalism. His melancholy was
probably deepened by his gloomy surround
ings and by misadventures in love.
LINCOLN WORSHIP.
Admiration has risen to worship, and
Lincoln has, in the minds of some Of his
euloeists, become the greatest statesman
- ,Fl I, ,sea 10 hos
even become a great strategist though it
seems almost certain that he did harm by
Interfering, or allowing his military coun
selors at Washington to interfere, with the
conduct of the war. He said himself that
he had not controlled events, buiAhad been
guided by them. To know how to be guild
ed by events, however, if it is not imperial
genius, is practical wisdom. Lincoln's
goodness of heart, his sense Of duty, his
unselfishness, his freedom from vanity, his
long suffering, his simplicity, were never
disturbed either by power or by opposition.
THE habit which he retained through all
the dark days of his presidency of throwing
his thoughts into the form of pithy stories
and apologues caused him to be charged
with levity. To the charge of levity no
man could be less open. Though he trusted
in Providence, care for the public and sor-
row for the public calamities filled his heart
and sat visibly upon his brow. His state
papers are excellent not only as political
documents, but as compositions, and are
distinguished by their depth of human
feeling and tenderness from those of other
statesmen. He spoke always from his own
heart to the heart of the people. His brief
funeral Grafton over the graves Of those
who had fallen in the war is one of the gems
. Naa.N Lon HrtrnHaN