I know no book, except the Bible and Shakespeare, from which so many familiar phrases and expressions have been taken as from his writings and speeches. Somebody has said, "I care not who makes the laws, if I may write the ballads of a nation." The words of Lincoln have done more in the last six years to mold and fashion the American character than those of any other man, and their influence has been all for truth, right, justice, and liberty. Great as has been Lincoln's services to the people, as their President, his influence, derived from his words and his example, in molding the future national character, in favor of justice, right, liberty, truth, and real, sincere, unostentatious reverence for God, is scarcely less important. The Republic of the future, the matured national character, will be more influenced by him than by any other man. This is evidence of his greatness, intellectual, and still more, moral. In this power of impressing himself upon the people, he contrasts with many other distinguished men in our history. Few quotations from Jefferson, or Adams, or Webster, live in the every-day language of the people. Little of Clay survives; not much of Calhoun, and who can quote, off-hand, half a dozen sentences from Douglas? But you hear Lincoln's words, not only in every cabin and caucus, and in every stump speech, but at every school-house, high-school, and college declamation, and by every farmer and artisan, as he tells you story after story of Lincoln's, and all to the point, hitting the nail on the head every time, and driving home the argument. Mr. Lincoln was not a scholar, but where is there a speech more exhaustive in argument than his Cooper Institute address? Where any thing more full of pathos than his farewell to his neighbors at Springfield, when he bade them good-bye, on starting for the capital? Where any thing more eloquent than his appeal for peace and union, in his first Inaugural, or than his defense of the Declaration of Independence in the Douglas debates? Where the equal of his speech at Gettysburg? Where a more conclusive argument than in his letter to the Albany Meeting on Arrests? What is better than his letter to the Illinois State Convention; and that to Hodges of Kentucky, in explanation of his anti-slavery policy? Where is there any thing equal in simple grandeur of thought and sentiment, to his last Inaugural? From all of these, and many others, from his every-day talks, are extracts on the tongues of the people, as familiar, and nearly as much reverenced, as texts from the Bible; and these are shaping the national character. "Though dead, he yet speaketh."