The marvellous perfection, the intrinsic excellence of the Gettysburg speech as a masterpiece of English composition, seem to have escaped the scrutiny of even the most scholarly critics of that day, on this side of the Atlantic. That discovery was made, it must be regretfully owned, by distinguished writers on the other side. The London "Spectator," the "Saturday Review," the "Edinburgh Review," and some other European journals were the first to discover, or at least to proclaim, the classical merits of the Gettysburg speech. It was then that we began to realize that it was indeed a masterpiece; and it dawned upon many minds that we had entertained an angel unawares, who had left us unappreciated. In no country and in no age of the world has the death of any man caused an outpouring of sorrow so universal. Every nation of the earth felt and expressed its sense of the loss to progressive civilization and popular government. In his life and death, thoughtful men in all lands found an inspiring theme. England's greatest thinker, John Stuart Mill, pronounced Abraham Lincoln to be "the greatest citizen, who has afforded a noble example of the qualities befitting the first magistrate of a free people." The London "Times" declared that the news of his death would be received throughout Europe "with sorrow as sincere and profound as it awoke in the United States," and that "Englishmen had learned to respect a man who showed the best characteristics of their race." The London "Spectator" spoke of him as "certainly the best, if not the ablest man ruling over any country in the civilized world." For using in his Gettysburg speech the celebrated phrase, "the government of the people, by the people, and for the people," Mr. Lincoln has been subjected to the most brutal criticism as well as to the most groundless flattery. Some have been base enough to insinuate against that great and sincere man that he was guilty of the crime of wilful plagiarism; others have ascribed to him the honor of originating the phrase entire. There is injustice to him in either view of the case. I personally know that Mr. Lincoln made no pretence of originality in the matter; nor was he, on the other hand, conscious of having appropriated the thought, or even the exact words, of any other man. If he is subject to the charge of plagiarism, so is the great Webster, who used substantially the same phrase in his celebrated reply to Hayne. Both men may have acquired the peculiar form of expression (the thought itself being as old as the republican idea of government) by the process known as unconscious appropriation. Certain it is that neither Lincoln nor Webster originated the phrase. Let us see how the case stands.