In April, 1887, the _Century Magazine_ had a brief article headed “Lincoln and Lowell,” in which the editor, quoting the pregnant sentence on Lincoln from Lowell’s recently published address on “Democracy,” is reminded that Lowell “was the first of the leading American writers to see clearly and fully, and clearly and fully and enthusiastically proclaim the greatness of Abraham Lincoln.” And after quoting this sixth stanza of the ode, he goes back and recalls the political papers in the _Atlantic_ and _North American Review_, with their references to Lincoln which we have already noted. The next number of the _Century_ contained an article in the nature of a postscript, citing the early judgment of Emerson also on the President. In publishing Nicolay and Hay’s “Life of Lincoln” in the magazine, the editor naturally was interested to recover the impression made by Lincoln when he was comparatively an untried man, on the poets and seers, who have a clearer divination than politicians. He was in correspondence with Lowell and wished if he could to learn what Longfellow and Whittier had then said. Lowell replied under date of 7 February, 1887: “I can recollect nothing about Lincoln by either L. or W., though this would prove nothing. I _do_ remember a debate with Dr. Holmes just after Lincoln’s nomination. It was under the elms in front of the old Holmes house (where he took a photograph of me by O. W. H. and Sun), and he was much exercised in mind because Seward had not been the man. I, who had read Lincoln’s speeches, was entirely content.” The extracts which I have given from Lowell’s letters and essays make it, however, quite clear that the full recognition of Lincoln’s greatness was a growth and not an immediate insight. Nor is this strange. Lowell never saw Lincoln. Had he met him early in his career, and enjoyed the advantage which comes from personal sight, as Hawthorne for example did, there is little doubt that he would have borne away from the interview the impression which was stamped on so many ingenuous minds, and he would have read the President’s utterances by the light of that illuminating countenance. That Lowell did not at once throw away all doubts and accept Lincoln at the valuation he later placed upon him was due to the facts that Lincoln revealed himself only by degrees in his speech and act, and that while he was then making himself known Lowell was cherishing an ideal of his country and its destiny which called for the loftiest expression of patriotism. He was above all eager for a demonstration of high courage and fearless insistence upon national supremacy, when the country seemed rocking with inconstancy. That he should confess in Lincoln the “new American” was an evidence that the pure idealism which had marked Lowell’s political thinking and writing, an idealism moreover conjoined with shrewd practical sense, had at last found, to his profound satisfaction, a great exemplar, and the life and death of this wonderful