He was loved and honored by a large body of people in all the various communities in which he had served, and held in tender confidence and trust by the denomination which he had served so faithfully; above all, he had no enemies. Nothing in him challenged envy or criticism. Pure and generous, wise and gentle, disinterested and satisfied with his lot, just self-complacent enough to be genial and agreeable, humble enough to claim and exact nothing beyond what all could accord, he was rarely felicitous in constitution and lot. He had a humor which softened the severity of every trial. He was companionable, conversable, and sympathetic to a rare degree. No one recognized the merits of others with more heartiness and generosity. And his conversation was as free with the heavenly Powers. His heart was unaffectedly pious; his faith confiding instead of over-confident, and his soul equally prepared for life or death. Indeed, he had found heaven in his own lovely temper, his happy domestic ties, his devoted children, and in the profession and fellowship and views he loved and honored. He had nothing but a brief experience of bodily infirmity to weary him of life here, and he used to say that his last years had been his happiest. He has left his peculiar smile, full of happiness and benignity, upon the memory of all his brethren. We should expect to find his grave smiling with flowers, even in winter. His beloved wife, trusted companion of his whole ministry, survives to receive the reverent honor her husband won, not without her aid, for them both, and to hear the cordial testimony to his worth and sanctity, which he does not need. Honorable and faithful children are left, devoted to the ministry and to letters, who will be sure to keep the name of Hosmer alive. But just the like of him who is now so recently departed, we shall not see again! His sweetness, benignity, and fraternal fondness, his wisdom, so free from any taint of self-seeking, his habitual cheerfulness, his substantial happiness embodied in his gracious person and his urbane manners,—how they will be missed East and West in our assemblies and homes! and when and where can we hope to see their likeness? H. W. BELLOWS.

EDITORS' NOTE-BOOK.

THE ATTACK UPON THE PRESIDENT.

The solemn and prayerful suspense in which this country passed its national anniversary and the few succeeding days has given way to a joyful and confident expectation of the President's recovery. Probably there is no instance upon record of such a touching expression of sympathy, almost world-wide. The crime seemed so entirely without provocation, such a blow to republican institutions, in attempting to strike down a man only by the votes of his fellowmen put for a little while in so exalted a position, that, whether from insanity, conspiracy, individual revenge, the culmination of a base system of public spoils, the proof of nihilism or socialism in a democracy, the country was startled out of all its previous conclusions. The extreme views which found a hasty expression, time has begun to temper to juster proportions. At first, we all went back to the day when President Lincoln was assassinated. But then we had just emerged from the convulsions of a vast civil war. Life everywhere in public. station was guarded, society was disorganized, angry passions were at their height; the first consciousness of a dearly-bought victory on one side, and the fresh despair of crushing overthrow on the other, filled the land. There were thousands who, if they had had the courage to carry out so desperate a crime, would have counted it the best service to half of the land if they could kill the Chief Magistrate of the conquering side;, and the feeling rankling in many hearts found at last its expression in one daring assassin. But now how different everything was! The strife of the hard-fought and long-doubtful political campaign was over; the bitter animosities, the scurrilous epithets, the vile accusations, begun without foundation and circulated without inquiry on either side, the disappointment of the defeated, the congratulations of the successful, were all falling into quiet and forgetfulness. Unexampled prosperity came with its heavy increase on every side. A vast stream of emigration set as never before from those disturbed and restless countries where oppression and an

archy had weakened all love of country or all satisfaction of laboring to preserve the domestic ties. The old governments began to speak, as they never had, about the order, the stability, the promise of this New World. We looked at that royal prisoner in his palace by the Neva, guarded at every step, and yet unable to escape the fatal missive, and congratulated ourselves that of such things we had no fear; and withal, the whole nation was preparing to celebrate its national anniversary with unusual demonstration, because of assured unity, power, harmony, and prosperity, when the word was flashed over the land that again the President of the United States had been assassinated. A whole people, as if individually wronged, hung with feverish inquiry upon the successive bulletins of hope and discouragement. As we look back upon those days, they become marked days in human history for the ineffaceable testimony of a whole world's sympathy and greatness and tenderness of heart; it is a beautiful tribute to the better feelings which so surely lie beneath our selfish nature, and which a great blow like this brings for a while at least to the surface and to sovereignty. There was no North, no South, no United States and foreign countries, all were one in a common sentiment of horror and of thanksgiving. Even the contest in New York hushed its bitter strife, and covered up its disgraceful immoralities, and forced its leading actors on to the plane of a decent humanity. The world is so mighty it soon goes on its accustomed way after any so great a tragedy, but it never quite forgets so blessed a lesson.

To the first feeling of surprise, the succeeding outpouring of sympathy, and then the gratitude at the confidently expected recovery of the President, another element must be added. These alone cannot altogether explain the burden of anxiety, of fear in looking into the future, which rested upon the American people. The unexpected and dastardly attack gave a great shock, but it was the thought of the legitimate succession which filled up the measure of woe. The blow at the distinguished and popular Chief Magistrate was enough to cause a national grief; the manner of it turned all into tearful friends, according to the best promptings of the heart; but so far as the vacancy of the presidential office was concerned, this has always been foreseen as one of the possible events and carefully provided against. The sting of death in regard to public characters is very often the regret lest some unworthy person may be thrust into author

ity. Fortunately or unfortunately for the Vice-President's reputation, he was just at that moment engaged in Albany with those who, in the most disgraceful and corrupt manner, amid bribery, immoralities, and every possible political filth, were openly and secretly denouncing and intriguing against the President. Even the lowest sense of demagogism revolted at this in one between whom and the chief office in the land there was but a single life. In a moment that life was stricken down, and the country was appalled at the thought of the succession. Of course, only an unguarded and reckless talker could suppose that this had any direct connection with the attack upon the President. The VicePresident would perhaps be as far removed as any man in America from such an association. We do not know but that his private life is as respectable as the President's. We believe that the shock was as great to him as to any one, that his sympathy was as sincere, that the thought of being so suddenly elevated to the chief magistracy was as overwhelming as it seemed in his first emotions, that the connection of his name with the crime was to him utterly inconceivable, and caused unfeigned surprise and grief. We believe that those transient moments, while he bore himself so well, and which bearing was so grandly appreciated by the American people, would have brought good results if he had been called to the highest office. Next to the expression of a world-wide sympathy, we have seen nothing more touching or beautiful in human nature than this readiness on the part of this people to look with favor upon one whom but a day before there was hardly a paper in the land that was not bitterly denouncing, to believe that all that was good in him had been called out, that the miserable politicians with whom he had been chief in intriguing were to be forsaken, and to hope for the best.

On the other hand, the almost universal feeling and expression from all persons or periodicals (not bound by party lines, or by association with the "spoils " system of office-seeking and officeholding), especially from the prophetic spirit which enters so largely into the religious element and recognizes the indirect influences where the practical mind entirely ignores them, to trace some connection between this system and the crime, cannot be altogether astray. It is not any responsibility which the courts can discover, or adjudge the guiltiness upon any individuals. Nevertheless, the fact of the guilt upon individuals remains. The indirect influences count for the greatest in all the affairs of life.

In our carelessness or our selfishness or our ambition, we go on helping evils until they are piled into the colossal guilt of a vile system which has enfolded a whole land in its pernicious coils. It is astonishing what men, who in every other respect are accounted strictly honorable, will do as part of such a system. They will pay their just debts, they will be active in all benevolent enterprises, they will be prominent in the churches, they will be affectionate and true and self-sacrificing in every domestic relation, they will be devoted and generous parents, and at the same time they will be leaders in every mean intrigue and plotting and corruption by which government offices are to be gained and held for themselves or others, and for want of any high moral standard or perception offer the inconsistent spectacle of private integrity and public dishonor. They are the supporters of a system which breeds every iniquity and crime. They are the persons to whom every country owes its greatest shame of corruption and overthrow; and the popular instinct which feels a connection that no human judgment can trace is far more creditable to the mind and the heart than the inconsistency which denounces the system in one breath and in another denounces those who insist upon the power and responsibility of these indirect influences.

We all know what honorable and in many respects truly religious men upheld the system of slavery. There was no moral awakening to its injustice. But years of discussion brought about that higher moral sense, until at last one held all its supporters indirectly guilty of the crimes which followed from that iniquity. The assassination of Lincoln was by an individual hand, indeed, but that hand was directed afar off by the most honorable defenders of slavery, for a whole generation, culminating in a great civil war, and in a frenzy for revenge. It is as truly so in the poisonous and maddening influence which has spread from our system of seeking, of appointing to, and of claiming the right to, office; and if men of commanding powers or high positions are ready to show any petty revenge rather than not carry their purposes, or secure places for their own friends, what may not be expected of those desperate characters who have nothing to lose? As the lightning, which is sure to strike, though no mortal vision can prophesy where, there will be some one ready to strike the fatal blow, and think in so doing he performs a higher service to his party, or fulfils the very voice of God.