A collection of the expressions of sympathy and condolence which came to Washington from foreign governments, associations, and public bodies of all sorts, was made by the State Department, and afterward published by order of Congress. It forms a large quarto of a thousand pages, and embraces the utterances of grief and regret from every country under the sun, in almost every language spoken by man. But admired and venerated as he was in Europe, he was best understood and appreciated at home. It is not to be denied that in his case, as in that of all heroic personages who occupy a great place in history, a certain element of legend mingles with his righteous fame. He was a man, in fact, especially liable to legend.... Because Lincoln kept himself in such constant sympathy with the common people, whom he respected too highly to flatter or mislead, he was rewarded by a reverence and a love hardly ever given to a human being. Among the humble working people of the South whom he had made free this veneration and affection easily passed into the supernatural. At a religious meeting among the negroes of the Sea Islands a young man exprest the wish that he might see Lincoln. A gray-headed negro rebuked the rash aspiration: "No man see Linkum. Linkum walk as Jesus walk; no man see Linkum."... The quick instinct by which the world recognized him even at the moment of his death as one of its greatest men, was not deceived. It has been confirmed by the sober thought of a quarter of a century. The writers of each nation compare him with their first popular hero. The French find points of resemblance in him to Henry IV; the Dutch liken him to William of Orange: the cruel stroke of murder and treason by which all three perished in the height of their power naturally suggests the comparison, which is strangely justified in both cases, tho the two princes were so widely different in character. Lincoln had the wit, the bonhomie, the keen practical insight into affairs, of the Bearnais; and the tyrannous moral sense, the wide comprehension, the heroic patience of the Dutch patriot, whose motto might have served equally well for the American President--_"Saevis tranquillus in undis."_ European historians speak of him in words reserved for the most illustrious names.