princes. Many of his phrases form part 5 self upon the national mind that without personal effort or solicitation he became the only possible candidate of his party for reëlection, and was chosen by an almost unanimous vote of the Electoral Colleges. His qualities would have rendered his administration illustrious even in time of peace; but when we consider that in addition to the ordinary work of the executive office he was forced to assume the duties of commander-in-chief of the national forces engaged in the most complex and difficult war of modern times, the lectual strength he evinced in that capacity is nothing short of prodigious. After times will wonder, not at the few and unimportant mistakes he may have committed, but at the intuitive knowledge of his business that he displayed. We would not presume to express a personal opinion in this matter. We use the testimony only of the most authoritative names. General W. T. Sherman has repeatedly expressed the admiration and surprise with which he has read Mr. Lincoln's correspondence with his generals, and his opinion of the remarkable correctness of his military views. General W. F. Smith says: I have long held to the opinion that at the close of the war Mr. Lincoln was the superior of his generals in his comprehension of the effect of strategic movements and the proper method of following up victories to their legitimate conclusions. The more his writings are studied in 15 greatness of spirit as well as the intelconnection with the important transactions of his age the higher will his reputation stand in the opinion of the lettered class. But the men of study and research are never numerous; and it is principally as a 20 man of action that the world at large will regard him. It is the story of his objective life that will forever touch and hold the heart of mankind. His birthright was privation and ignorance - not 25 peculiar to his family, but the universal environment of his place and time; he burst through those enchaining conditions by the force of native genius and will; vice had no temptation for him; his 30 course was as naturally upward as the skylark's; he won, against all conceivable obstacles, a high place in an exacting profession and an honorable position in public and private life; he became the fore- 35 most representative of a party founded on an uprising of the national conscience against a secular wrong, and thus came to the awful responsibilities of power in a time of terror and gloom. He met them 40 with incomparable strength and virtue. Caring for nothing but the public good, free from envy or jealous fears, he surrounded himself with the leading men of his party, his worst formidable rivals in public esteem, and through four years of stupendous difficulties he was head and shoulders above them all in the vital qualities of wisdom, foresight, knowledge of men, and thorough comprehension of 50 measures. Personally opposed, as the radicals claim, by more than half of his own party in Congress, and bitterly denounced and maligned by his open adversaries, he yet bore himself with such ex-55 traordinary discretion and skill, that he obtained for the Government all the legislation it required, and so impressed him General J. H. Wilson holds the same opinion; and Colonel Robert N. Scott, in whose lamented death the army lost one of its most vigorous and best-trained intellects, frequently called Mr. Lincoln 'the 45 ablest strategist of the war.' To these qualifications of high literary excellence, and easy practical mastery of affairs of transcendent importance, we must add, as an explanation of his immediate and world-wide fame, his possession of certain moral qualities rarely combined, in such high degree, in one individual. His heart was so tender, that he would dismount from his horse in a forest to replace in their nest young birds which had fallen by the roadside; he could not sleep at night if he knew that a soldier-boy was under sentence of death; he could not, 5 peace in the future, to a faith that God in his own time would give to all men the things convenient to them, he added a charity which embraced in its deep bosom all the good and the bad, all the virtues and the infirmities of men, and a patience like that of nature, which in its vast and fruitful activity knows neither haste nor rest. even at the bidding of duty or policy, refuse the prayer of age or helplessness in distress. Children instinctively loved him; they never found his rugged features ugly; his sympathies were quick and seemingly unlimited. He was absolutely without prejudice of class or condition. Frederick Douglass says he was the only man of distinction he ever met who never reminded him by word or manner of his 10 color; he was as just and generous to the rich and well born as to the poor and humble a thing rare among politicians. He was tolerant even of evil: though no man can ever have lived with a loftier 15 scorn of meanness and selfishness, he yet recognized their existence and counted with them. He said one day, with a flash of cynical wisdom worthy of La Roche- 20 foucauld, that honest statesmanship was the employment of individual meannesses for the public good. He never asked perfection of any one; he did not even insist, for others, upon the high standards he set 25 up for himself. At a time before the word was invented he was the first of opportunists. With the fire of a reformer and a martyr in his heart he yet proceeded by the ways of cautious and practical 30 union to the country which he loved with statescraft. He always worked things as they were, while never relinquishing the desire and effort to make them better. To a hope that saw the Delectable Mountains of absolute justice and 35 with A character like this is among the precious heirlooms of the Republic; and by a special good fortune every part of the country has an equal claim and pride in it. Lincoln's blood came from the . veins of New England emigrants, of Middle State Quakers, of Virginia planters, of Kentucky pioneers; he himself was one of the men who grew up with the earliest growth of the Great West. Every jewel of his mind or his conduct sheds radiance on each portion of the nation. The marvelous symmetry and balance of his intellect and character may have owed something to this varied environment of his race, and they may fitly typify the variety and solidity of the Republic. It may not be unreasonable to hope that his name and his renown may be forever a bond of an affection so impartial, and served — in life and in death with such entire devotion. From Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1887. WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS (1837- ) As one follows chronologically the course of American literature, one notes that beginning in the mid-thirties more and more writers were born outside the New England environment, and that most of those who were to be leaders of the new period came from beyond the Hudson, and even beyond the Alleghanies. One thinks of Harte and Burroughs and James born in New York, and of Mark Twain, Eggleston, Hay, Miller, Lew Wallace, and Howells born in the Midlands. Howells was a native of Ohio and until he was long past twenty he had never been beyond the bounds of his state. He was largely self educated: his college was a country printing office and then a city daily at Columbus, Ohio, supplemented constantly during his boyhood and early manhood by a most remarkable course of reading in all the classics of the world. A campaign life of Lincoln brought him a consulship of four years at Venice — his university course it really was- and he returned at last more really educated and cultured than any of his generation who had had formal academic training. He became, in 1866, assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and from 1871 to 1881 the editor, resigning to take up literary work in New York City in connection with the Century Magazine, and finally with Harper's Monthly, following after an interval George William Curtis as occupant of the Editor's Easy Chair.' He began as a poet, contributed poetry to the early volumes of the Atlantic, and in 1860 with John J. Piatt issued a volume entitled Poems of Two Friends. During his years at Venice he wrote sketches of Italian life, publishing them in 1866 as Venetian Life, and in 1867 adding to them Italian Journeys. His Suburban Sketches, 1871, was a blending of the realistic sketch and the short story in which characterization is predominant. From it to his first novel, Their Wedding Journey, 1872, was only a step. It has slight plot, but much careful study of details and of manners. The strongest work of Howells came after 1881 when he left the Atlantic editorship and devoted himself wholly to literary creation. To this period belong A Modern Instance. The Rise of Silas Lapham, The Minister's Charge, and Indian Summer, and the earliest and best of his parlor comedies like The Mouse-Trap. The list of his novels is a long one, and to them he has added volumes of autobiography, as well as much critical and biographical and essay material. His industry has been remarkable and the level excellence of all his work has been uniformly high. Howells has long been summed up in terms of realism.' He has dealt with the average of American life, and he has drawn his pictures with careful attention to detail and manners and unidealized truth, as he saw the truth. He has the power to make a character actually live before the reader, and he has lightness of touch, especially in his parlor comedies, which are so closely akin to the short story form of the period, and a mastery of dialogue, all of which unite to place him among the rare prose artists like Aldrich. Few American writers have so uniformly expressed themselves with verbal exactness, with felicity of phrasing, and sustained ease of expression. His style is natural and clear, a model of pure and idiomatic English. He seldom touches the deeps of human life; he seldom moves deeply his reader or chastens him with the tragedy of life or convulses him with outright laughter. He is a classicist: restrained, correct, scientific, though in making himself a classicist he was forced to gain control over the romance and the poetry with which nature had freely endowed him. 1 A MODERN INSTANCE 1 CHAPTER XL Halleck woke at daybreak from the drowse into which he had fallen. The train was creeping slowly over the track, feeling its way, and he heard fragments 1 Reprinted from A Modern Instance by special arrangement with the holders of the copyright, Harper and Brothers. of talk among the passengers about a broken rail that the conductor had been warned of. He turned to ask some question, when the pull of rising speed came 5 from the locomotive, and at the same moment the car stopped with a jolting pitch. It settled upon the track again; but the two cars in front were overturned, and the passengers were still climbing from 10 their windows, when Halleck got his be wildered party to the ground. Children com 5' 30 'Fifty miles,' the brakeman called back over his shoulder. 'Don't you worry any, Marcia,' said her father, moving off in pursuit of Flavia. This accident makes it all right for us, if we don't get there for a week.' Marcia answered nothing. Halleck began to talk to her of that Belgian landscape in which he had first seen a windmill, and he laughed at the blank unintelligence with which she received his reminiscences of travel. For the moment, the torturing stress was lifted from his soul; he wished that the breakfast in the miller's house might never come to an end; he explored the mill with Flavia; he bantered the Squire on his saturnine preference for steam power in the milling business; he made the others share his mood; he pushed far from him the series of tragic or squalid facts which had continually brought the end to him in reveries in which he found himself holding his breath, as if he might hold it till the end But this respite could not last. A puff of white steam showed on the horizon, and after an interval the sound of the locomotive whistle reached them, as it came backing down a train of empty cars towards them. They were quickly on their journey again, and a scanty hour before noon they arrived at Tecumseh. They were in the midst of a level prairie that stretched all round to the horizon, 25 really came. where it was broken by patches of timber; the rising sun slanted across the green expanse, and turned its distance to gold; the grass at their feet was full of wildflowers, upon which Flavia flung herself as soon as they got out of the car. By the time Halleck returned to them, she was running with cries of joy and wonder toward a windmill that rose beautiful above the roofs of a group of common- 35 place houses, at a little distance from the track; it stirred its mighty vans in the thin, sweet inland breeze, and took the sun gaily on the light gallery that encircled it. A vision of Belgian plains swept before Halleck's eyes. There ought to be storks on its roof,' he said, absently. 'How strange that it should be here, away out in the West!' said Olive. If it were less strange than we are, here, I could n't stand it,' he answered. 4 The pretty town, which in prospect had worn to Olive Halleck's imagination the blended hideousness of Sodom and Gomorrah, was certainly very much like a New England village in fact. After the brick farmsteads and coal-smoked towns of Central Ohio, its wooden houses, set back from the street with an ample depth of door-yard, were appealingly familiar, and she exchanged some homesick whispers with Marcia about them, as they 45 drove along under the full-leaved maples which shadowed the way. The grass was denser and darker than in New England, and, pretty as the town was, it wore a more careless and unscrupulous air than the true New England village; the South had touched it, and here and there it showed a wavering line of fence and a faltering conscientiousness in its paint. Presently all aspects of village quiet and seclusion ceased, and a section of conventional American city, with flat-roofed brick blocks, showy hotel, stores, paved street, and stone sidewalks, expressed the A brakeman came up with a flag in his hand, and nodded toward Flavia. She's on the right track for breakfast,' he said. 50 'There's an old Dutchman at that mill, and his wife knows how to make coffee like a fellow's mother. You'll have plenty of time. This train has come here to stay till somebody can walk back five 55 miles and telegraph for help.' -- How far are we from Tecumseh ?' asked Halleck. 5 readiness of Tecumseh to fulfil the destiny of every Western town, and become a metropolis at a day's notice, if need be. The second-hand omnibus, which reflected the actuality of Tecumseh, set them down at the broad steps of the courthouse, fronting on an avenue which for a city street was not very crowded or busy. Such passers-by as there were had leisure and inclination, as they loitered by, to turn 10 and stare at the strangers; and the voice of the sheriff, as he called from an upper ⚫window of the court-house the names of absentee litigants or witnesses required to come into court, easily made itself heard 15 above all the other noises. several little tables within the bar, lounged in their chairs, or stalked about laughing and whispering to each other; the prosecuting attorney leaned upon the shoulder of a jolly-looking man, who lifted his face to joke up at him, as he tilted his chair back; a very stout, youngish person, who sat next him, kept his face dropped while the clerk proceeded:· 'And now, on motion of plaintiff, it is ordered by the Court that said defendant be now here three times called, which is done in open court, and she comes not; but wholly makes default herein. And this cause is now submitted to the Court for trial, and the Court having heard the evidence, and being fully advised, find for the plaintiff,- that the allegations of his complaint are true, and that he is entitled by the Court, that said plaintiff be and he is hereby divorced, and the bonds of matrimony heretofore existing between said parties are dissolved and held for naught.' It seemed to Halleck as if the sheriff were calling them; he lifted his head and looked at Olive, but she would not meet his eye; she led by the hand the little girl, 20 to a divorce. It is therefore considered who kept asking, 'Is this the house where papa lives?' with the merciless iteration of a child. Halleck dragged lamely after the Squire, who had mounted the steps with unnatural vigor; he promptly found 25 his way to the clerk's office, where he examined the docket, and then returned to his party triumphant. We are in time,' he said, and he led them on up into the court-room. As the clerk closed the large volume before him, the jolly lawyer as if the record had been read at his request, nodded to the Court, and said, 'The record of the decree seems correct, your honor.' He 30 leaned forward, and struck the fat man's expanse of back with the flat of his hand. Congratulate you, my dear boy!' he said in a stage whisper that was heard through the room. Many happy returns of the day!' A few spectators, scattered about on the rows of benching, turned to look at them as they walked up the aisle, where the cocoa matting, soaked and dried, and soaked again, with perpetual libations of 35 tobacco-juice, mercifully silenced their footsteps; most of the faces turned upon them showed a slow and thoughtful movement of the jaws, and, as they were dropped or averted, a general discharge 4o of tobacco-juice seemed to express the general adoption of the new-comers, whoever they were, as a necessary element of the scene, which it were useless to oppose, and about which it was idle to speculate. 45 Before the Squire had found his party seats on one of the benches next the bar, the spectators had again given their languid attention to the administration of justice, which is everywhere informal with 50 us, and is only a little more informal in the West than in the East. An effect of serene disoccupation pervaded the place, such as comes at the termination of an interesting affair; and no one seemed to 55 care for what the clerk was reading aloud in a set, mechanical tone. The judge was busy with his docket; the lawyers, at their A laugh went round, and the judge said severely, Mr. Sheriff, see that order is kept in the court-room.' The fat man rose to shake hands with another friend, and at the same moment Squire Gaylord stretched himself to his full height before stooping over to touch the shoulder of one of the lawyers within the bar, and his eyes encountered those of Bartley Hubbard in mutual recognition. It was not the fat on Bartley's ribs only that had increased: his broad cheeks stood out and hung down with it, and his chin descended by the three successive steps to his breast. His complexion was of a tender pink, on which his blond mustache showed white; it almost vanished in the tallowy pallor to which the pink turned as he saw his father-in-law, and then the whole group which the intervening spectators had hitherto hidden from him. He dropped back into his chair, and intimated to his lawyer, with a wave of |