Perhaps in all history there is no example of such great and long continued injustice as that of the British press during the war toward Mr. Lincoln. His death shamed them into decency. While he lived they sneered at his manners. Let them turn to their own Cromwell. They said his person was ugly. Has the world recognized the ability of Mirabeau, or that of Henry Brougham, notwithstanding their ugliness? They made scurrile jests about his figure, as though a statesman must be necessarily a sculptor's model! They were facetious about his dress, as though a greater than a Fox or a Chatham must be a Beau Brummel. They were horrified by his jokes. If the same had been told by the patrician Palmerston, instead of the plebeian Lincoln, they would not have lacked the "Attic salt," but would have rivaled Dean Swift or Sidney Smith. It has been truly said there is one parallel only, to English journalism's treatment of Lincoln, and that is to be found in their treatment of Napoleon. "The Corsican Ogre," and the "American Ape," were phrases coined in the same mint. But the great Corsican was England's bitter foe; Lincoln was never provoked either by his own or his country's wrongs, to hostility against Great Britain. Yet at the great Martyr's grave, even this injustice changed to respect and reverence; even "Punch" repented and said-- "Yes he had lived to shame me from my sneer, To lame my pencil, and confute my pen; To make me own this hind, of princes _peer_, This rail-splitter a true-born _King_ of men." The place Mr. Lincoln will occupy in history, will be higher than any which he held while living. His Emancipation Proclamation is the most important historical event of the nineteenth century. Its influence will not be limited by time, nor bounded by locality. It will ever be treated by the historian as one of the great landmarks of human progress. He has been compared and contrasted with three great personages in history, who were assassinated,--with Cæsar, with William of Orange, and with Henry IV. of France. He was a nobler type of man than either, as he was the product of a higher and more Christian civilization. The two great men by whose words and example our great continental Republic is to be fashioned and shaped are Washington and Lincoln. Representative men of the East, and of the West, of the Revolutionary era, and the era of Liberty for all. One sleeps upon the banks of the Potomac, and the other on the great prairies of the Valley of the Mississippi. Lincoln was as pure as Washington, as modest, as just, as patriotic; less passionate by nature, more of a democrat in his feelings and manners, with more faith in the people, and more hopeful of their future. Statesmen and patriots will study their record and learn the wisdom of goodness. END OF BOOK ADVERTISEMENTS ENGRAVED PORTRAIT OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.