happiness, and of professional prosperity. He was a happy father, and took an almost unbounded pleasure in his children. Their sweet young natures were to him a perpetual source of delight. He was never impatient with their petulance and restlessness, loved always to be with them, and took them into his heart with a fondness which was unspeakable. It was a fondness so tender and profound as to blind him to their imperfections, and to expel from him every particle of sternness in his management of them.” At this time Mrs. Lincoln was the mother of four children, and though one had passed on to the higher life, her home was one of happiness. Ministered to by a husband who never knew how to be aught but kind to her, and surrounded by evidences of prosperity, her lines had fallen in pleasant places, and she was considered by her friends a fortunate woman. Mr. Lincoln was a hard student and constant reader, and was steadily progressing in knowledge. Thrown among talented and educated gentlemen, and possessing an intense desire for improvement, he had become, during the years of his married life, a superior lawyer and statesman. His was an aspiring nature, striving for the golden truths of sage experience. [Illustration: HOME OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN AT SPRINGFIELD. ] His enemies sometimes speak of him as a man who owed his eminence rather to the contrast between his social and his political rank, between his qualifications and the place in history which it was his fortune to fill, than to his personal character or his political capacity, but the estimate is not a true one. A man so revered as is his memory by all classes of his countrymen, had a character untarnished by corruption, and a moral refinement far above the comprehension of the average public man. He was in his domestic life the embodiment of fidelity and gentleness. His career as a statesman, and not the manner of his death, places him next to Washington in the hearts of Americans. His services to the country rank as the noblest performed in its history after those of Washington. Opportunity, while it did much for him, was not all that made Lincoln great; it was his readiness to meet the emergency when it came; his ability to seize the occasion, and use it to the honor of his country, and his own lasting fame. Mr. Lincoln was so intensely individual in his career, and his life was so devoted to public affairs, that it is with difficulty that a sketch of Mrs. Lincoln can be written that is not largely composed of the events pertaining to the official life of her husband. The White House during her life in it was the reverse of gay. Officials were the chief callers at the mansion, and the movement of armies, and the news from the front occupied the attention of its inmates. She was less fortunate than any lady who had ever preceded her in this respect, and to judge of her success in her position, it is needful to keep in mind the conditions under which the administration existed.