Lady Stirling a la Ferrero, or to embrace the graceful form of the handsome wife of Alexander Hamilton with his brawny arm and whirl her around and around in the graceful and ravishing charms of the minuet.

Occasionally, there have been moral hermits, as the younger Pitt, who had no social passions and needed no social pastimes: but even great men-the world's heroes-have what we may term weaknesses, as Fox and Napoleon, for undue gallantries-Chatham and Walpole for vain display— Washington for land speculating-Hamilton and Burr for amours-Jackson for horse-racing-Clay for poker-and finally Uncle Abe, for printer's type set up by Nasby and A. Ward, showman.

Fact is, we exact altogether too much from our heroes. Every dunce who writes to Longfellow expects a madrigal in reply-every time Jim Blaine takes an evening walk he is expected to accord an interview and to talk in stately terms of diplomacy-whenever Stanley drives out he is looked to for a true account of the rear guard-whenever Benjamin Harrison appears on the platform of a railway train, he will lose lots of votes unless he makes an able and statesmanlike speech-as often as Sir Edwin Arnold is called upon he is expected to vent a miniature "Light of Asia," or otherwise to talk in hexameters. Not only is a hero no hero to his valet, but he also is not so to his neighbors or to his contemporaries. Examine the Boswellian researches, or Pepy's Diaries of your demi-gods, and witness your amazement and consternation. My law preceptor served in Virginia politics with a man whose father was an overseer on a plantation adjacent to Mount Vernon, and from him, by a circuitous route, I learned somewhat of the daily walk and conversation of our greatest American; and on the assumption that he was a man, there was nothing incredible in the narrative; but on the assumption of Ingersoll, that he was but a steel engraving, it was surprising.

Lincoln was raised in the social wilderness; the pastimes

of his neighborhood were (not balls, or hops, but) shindigs or hoe-downs; not concerts, operettas, or recitals, but sings: not theatrical representations, but charades: the light literature of his youth was not Pilpay, or the "Arabian Nights," or even Sam Slick; but "Cousin Sally Dillard," and "Becky Williams' Courtship," and such like trash; and no wonder, with such tuition of the fancy, when he could select for himself he should prefer a "nigger" show, to an opera; a farce, to a tragedy; a circus, to a lecture; a joke book, to Homer's "Iliad."

Any review of the character and individuality of Abraham Lincoln would be incomplete which neglected to note his quality as an orator, inasmuch as his public speeches guided him into the path which terminated at the White Housewhich led to the

"steep,

Where Fame's proud temple shines afar."

There are two kinds of modern oratory: one is of style and the other of substance; the former is startling, gaudy, brilliant and ephemeral, like the balloon, cleaving the empyrean and sailing into circumambient space for a brief