President; he was in a position that made it his duty through his sense of right, his love of principle, his constitutional obligations imposed upon him by oath of office, to strike the blow against slavery. But did he do it for love? He himself has answered the question: "I would not free the slaves if I could preserve the Union without it." I use this argument against his too enthusiastic friends. If you mean that this is love for love's sake, then Mr. Lincoln was a warm-hearted man-not otherwise. To use a general expression, his general life was cold. He had, however, a strong latent capacity to love; but the object must first come as principle, second as right, and third as lovely. He loved abstract humanity when it was oppressed. This was an abstract love, not concrete in the individual, as said by some. He rarely used the term

love, yet was he tender and gentle. He gave the key-note to his own character, when he said, "with malice toward none, and with charity for all," he did what he did. He had no intense loves, and hence no hates and no malice. He had a broad charity for imperfect man, and let us imitate his great life in this.

This man, this long, bony, wiry, sad man, floated into our county in 1831, in a frail canoe, down the north fork of the Sangamon River, friendless, pennyless, powerless, and alone, -begging for work in this city,-ragged, struggling for the common necessaries of life. This man, this peculiar man, left us in 1861, the President of the United States, backed by friends and power, by fame, and all human force; and it is well to inquire how.

To sum up, let us say, here is a sensitive, diffident, unobtrusive, natural-made gentleman. His mind was strong and deep, sincere and honest, patient and enduring; having no vices, and having only negative defects, with many positive virtues. His is a strong, honest, sagacious, manly, noble life. He stands in the foremost rank of men in all ages, their equal,-one of the best types of this Christian civilization.-W. H. HERNDON.

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won; The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes, the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen, cold, and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up-for you the flag is flung-for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths-for you the shores

a-crowding;

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that, on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship comes in, with object won;
Exult, O shores; and ring, O bells!

But I, with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen, cold, and dead.-WALT WHITMAN.

WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD was distinguished as a Whig statesman, an opponent of slavery, and one of the founders and leaders of the Republican party. Yet in the close of his career he was so conservative as almost to be classed with its opponents. He was born at Florida, Orange county, New York, on the 16th of May, 1801, and was a son of Samuel S. Seward, who was a physician, merchant, and judge. In his Autobiography, which extends only to 1834, he has recorded interesting anecdotes of his early life. Entering Union College, Schenectady, as a sophomore, in 1816, he studied eagerly Greek, Latin, rhetoric, and moral philosophy, and his early predilection marked his whole career. Leaving the college abruptly for lack of money, he taught school in Putnam county, Georgia, for six months; then returned to college, entering the senior class, and graduated in July, 1820. The subject of his commencement oration was "The Integrity of the American Union." He immediately began the study of law, and being admitted to the bar in October, 1822, he became a resident of Auburn, New York, which was his permanent home thereafter. He was also interested in politics, and was a supporter of John Quincy Adams for the Presidency in 1824, and again four years later. He married, about 1825, Frances A. Miller, a daughter of Judge Elijah Miller, of Auburn.

By his eloquence he gained a high reputation as an advocate and forensic pleader, and in criminal trials he acted almost exclusively as counsel for the defendant.

About 1829 Seward, with Thurlow Weed, a newspaper editor, joined the Anti-Masonic party, which was organized after the disappearance of William Morgan, a tailor, of Batavia, New York, who was charged with revealing Masonic secrets. This party grew rapidly, and by it Seward was elected to the Senate of his State in 1830. In 1833 he made a voyage to Europe, and visited England, Scotland, Holland, Germany and France. When the Anti-Masonic excitement died out, Seward and Weed entered the newly-organized Whig party. The alliance between these political friends lasted throughout life. Weed never held public office, but he became the most potent manipulator of party affairs that had ever been known in New York. Seward was the Whig candidate for Governor of New York in 1834; but he was defeated by William L. Marcy, who was afterwards Secretary of State in President Pierce's administration.

Seward was elected the first Whig Governor of New York in 1838, W. L. Marcy being his defeated competitor. The financial panic and general distress of 1837 had weakened the Democratic party. Seward's Whig policy is shown in his message to the Legislature; he favored liberal appropriations for internal improvements, and advised the prosecution of the work on the canals, the establishment of a Board of Internal Improvements; he wished, also, to elevate the standard of common-school education; to establish school-district libraries; and to reform the organization and practice of courts, especially in chancery. The geological survey of New York State was one of his measures.

In 1839 the executive of Virginia demanded from him the surrender of three colored sailors, accused of having "feloniously stolen a certain slave." Governor Seward refused to surrender them, because "the common law does not recognize slavery, nor make the act of which the parties are accused in this case felonious or criminal." This refusal brought on him a storm of obloquy from Virginia and other Southern States. In the next year the Legislature repealed the law which per

mitted a slaveholder, traveling with his slaves in the State of New York, to hold them for nine months.

In 1840 Seward favored the election of General Harrison for President, and he himself was re-elected Governor. He was gratified to announce that the reforms which he had recommended in his first message had been accomplished or inaugurated. He declined to be a candidate for governor in 1842, and returned to the practice of law. He had left Auburn in 1839 in easy circumstances, and he came back in debt in 1843. He supported Henry Clay for the Presidency in 1844, and made many speeches for him at public meetings. He sought to develop the economical as well as the moral side of the slavery question. In 1848, in a memorable speech at Cleveland, Ohio, he said: "The party of slavery upholds an aristocracy founded on the humiliation of labor as necessary to the existence of a chivalrous republic." Seward's moral courage was as conspicuously displayed in this and other anti-slavery speeches as in his volunteering, against the protest of his partners, friends and neighbors, to defend in court an idiotic negro who had butchered a whole family.

The reaction after the war with Mexico brought the Whigs again into power. Seward advocated the nomination and election of General Taylor to the Presidency, for which he made powerful speeches in New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The same influence, in February, 1849, carried him to the Senate of the United States, when he received 121 votes out of a total of 151. He became one of President Taylor's intimate friends and advisers, and the leader of the administration party in the Senate. In March, 1850, he advocated the admission of California into the Union as a free State, and in his speech uttered the words often quoted, "We hold no arbitary authority over anything. The Constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, and to liberty. But there is a higher law than the Constitution. which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes. For this appeal to a Higher Law than the Constitution, he was denounced as a seditious and dangerous agitator, and a senator even proposed to expel him. It was his persistent habit never to notice the