It is no mere official mourning which hangs its sad drapery everywhere. It is not alone that a President of the Republic is, for the first time, assassinated. No; there is a tender grief that characterizes the bereavement of a loved friend, which shows there was something in this man which grappled him to men's hearts as with hooks of steel. But mourning the death of the Chief Magistrate, it becomes us to review the elements of his career as a ruler, which have so endeared him to loyal hearts. If I were to sketch the model statesman, I would say he must have mental breadth and clearness, incorruptible integrity, strength of will, tireless patience, humanity, preserved from demoralizing weakness by conscientious reverence for law, ardent love of country, and, regulating all, a commanding sense of responsibility to God, the Judge of all. These, though wrapped in seeming rustic garb, were found in Abraham Lincoln. He had mental breadth and clearness. In spite of a defective early education, he became a self-taught thinker, and later in life he read widely and meditated profoundly, until he acquired a thorough mental discipline. He possessed the power to comprehend a subject at once in the aggregate and in its details. His eye swept a wide horizon and descried clearly all within its circumference. He was a keen logician, whose apt manner of "putting things" made him more than a match for practiced diplomatists and wily marplots. These were men of might about his council-board, scholars and statesmen, but none arose to his altitude, much less was either his master. That very facetiousness sometimes critcised, kept him from becoming morbid, and gave healthfulness to his opinions, free alike from fever and paralysis. That his was incorruptible integrity, no man dare question. He was not merely above reproach, but eminently above suspicion. Purity is receptive. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall _see God_," is as profound in philosophy as comprehensive in theology. Purity in the realm of moral decision and motive, is a skylight to the soul, through which truth comes direct. Abraham Lincoln was so pure in motive and purpose, looked so intensely after the right that he might pursue it, that he saw clearly where many walked in mist. Without developing the characteristics of the ideal statesman analytically, let us see how they were manifest in his administration.