It is needless to say that Mr. Lincoln received no damage from his term of service in Washington, but we know of nothing which shows so strongly the perilous fascination of the place as the fact that a man of his extraordinary moral and mental qualities could ever have thought for a moment of accepting a position so insignificant and incongruous as that which he was more than willing to assume when he left Congress. He would have filled the place with honor and credit-- but at a monstrous expense. We do not so much refer to his exceptional career and his great figure in history; these momentous contingencies could not have suggested themselves to him. But the place he was reasonably sure of filling in the battle of life should have made a subordinate office in Washington a thing out of the question. He was already a lawyer of skill and reputation; an orator upon whom his party relied to speak for them to the people. An innate love of combat was in his heart; he loved discussion like a medieval schoolman. The air was already tremulous with faint bugle-notes that heralded a conflict of giants on a field of moral significance to which he was fully alive and awake, where he was certain to lead at least his hundreds and his thousands. Yet if Justin Butterfield had not been a more supple, more adroit, and less scrupulous suitor for office than himself, Abraham Lincoln would have sat for four inestimable years at a bureau-desk in the Interior Department, and when the hour of action sounded in Illinois, who would have filled the place which he took as if he had been born for it? Who could have done the duty which he bore as lightly as if he had been fashioned for it from the beginning of time? His temptation did not end even with Butterfield's success. The Administration of General Taylor, apparently feeling that some compensation was due to one so earnestly recommended by the leading Whigs of the State, offered Mr. Lincoln the governorship of Oregon. This was a place more suited to him than the other, and his acceptance of it was urged by some of his most judicious friends [Footnote: Among others John T. Stuart, who is our authority for this statement.] on the ground that the new Territory would soon be a State, and that he could come back as a senator. This view of the matter commended itself favorably to Lincoln himself, who, however, gave it up on account of the natural unwillingness of his wife to remove to a country so wild and so remote. This was all as it should be. The best place for him was Illinois, and he went about his work there until his time should come.