set eyes on him again, but I feel that, so far as perfect integrity and directness of purpose go, the country will be safe in his hands." Three years had passed, and the political world of America was in that storm of general dissatisfaction in which not a member of Congress would be known as "a Lincoln man," when Motley writes again from Vienna to his mother, "I venerate Abraham Lincoln exactly because he is the true, honest type of American democracy. There is nothing of the shabby-genteel, the would-be-but-couldn't-be fine gentleman; he is the great American Demos, honest, shrewd, homely, wise, humorous, cheerful, brave, blundering occasionally, but through blunders struggling onwards towards what he believes the right." In a later letter he observes, "His mental abilities were large, and they became the more robust as the more weight was imposed upon them." This last sentence, especially if in Lincoln's mental abilities the qualities of his character be included, probably indicates the chief point for remark in any estimate of his presidency. It is true that he was judged at first as a stranger among strangers. Walt Whitman has described vividly a scene, with "a dash of comedy, almost farce, such as Shakespeare puts in his blackest tragedies," outside the hotel in New York where Lincoln stayed on his journey to Washington; "his look and gait, his perfect composure and coolness," to cut it short, the usually noted marks of his eccentricity, "as he stood looking with curiosity on that immense sea of faces, and the sea of faces returned the look with similar curiosity, not a single one" among the crowd "his personal friend." He was not much otherwise situated when he came to Washington. It is true also that in the early days he was learning his business. "Why, Mr. President," said some one towards the end of his life, "you have changed your mind." "Yes, I have," said he, "and I don't think much of a man who isn't wiser to-day than he was yesterday." But it seems to be above all true that the exercise of power and the endurance of responsibility gave him new strength. This, of course, cannot be demonstrated, but Americans then living, who recall Abraham Lincoln, remark most frequently how the man grew to his task. And this perhaps is the main impression which the slight record here presented will convey, the impression of a man quite unlike the many statesmen whom power and the vexations attendant upon it have in some piteous way spoiled and marred, a man who started by being tough and shrewd and canny and became very strong and very wise, started with an inclination to honesty, courage, and kindness, and became, under a tremendous strain, honest, brave, and kind to an almost tremendous degree.