The former might be more ornate and more satisfactory to the author, but the concrete mode would be more useful and more satisfactory to general readers, yet both methods must be used in order to please all. Do the very best we may, our defects of mental vision, our prejudices, hero-worship, sympathies and antipathies, all will handicap every effort to present an accurate mental likeness of Mr. Lincoln, or any other hero.

I hold in my hand a photograph of Mr. Lincoln, taken in June, 1860, before barbers and tailors and biographers and whiskers had marked him for their own, and had wrought a transformation in his appearance, character and individuality.

The wrinkles, lines, seams and protuberances are all here; so likewise the massive underjaw, indicative of firmness and undaunted purpose; the faithful sun has transferred the rugged lineaments and homely features to the camera, which in its turn has recorded them with fidelity, so that future generations, as well as his own contemporaries, may see him as he appeared in his own person, among men.

Here is a similar picture, taken at the same time, by the same artist, but the wrinkles, folds and protuberances are lacking, for, alas! the retoucher has been abroad in the land, and has abased nature in order to enthrone art.

And the likenesses of Lincoln, so-called, which are in vogue mostly now, are even more hypocritical and comely looking, but they are not likenesses of Lincoln.

In like manner, the biographer masks and disguises his subject until the product of his labors is a romance and not a biography. And many of the biographies, so-called, of Lincoln, are no exception to the rule.

The Apostle Paul, at Mars Hill, preaching to the Athenians, proclaimed that he saw in their City an altar dedicatcd, "To the Unknown God:" and he thereupon declared to them, "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you."

But it will be reserved for another generation to produce

a Paul who can truthfully say of Lincoln: "Whom therefore ye ignorantly contemplate and extol, Him declare I unto you."

And all that I shall attempt to do, is to supply some missing links of biography by offering a few sheaves from that hitherto ungarnered field:-"Life in the Eighth Judicial Circuit," and by adding some corollaries not hitherto discussed.

The usual and ordinary belief is-that the career of the ultimately successful man is an uninterrupted and unbroken series of current successes, from zero to renown or affluence.

In practice, however, it appears that the progress of the successful and unsuccessful, alike, is strewn with current misfortunes, humiliations, checks and disasters, and that the adventurer who shall have attained the goal of ultimate defeat may nevertheless have been highly favored of fortune in life's current journey, while the laurelled victor may have trodden the winepress of humiliation and defeat all his days but the last.

Mr. Lincoln's career as a business man may be thus summarized: After practicing law, and living in the most frugal and economical manner for a quarter of a century, being his own hostler and errand boy, and attending to his own wood pile, cow and pig-pen himself, he had accumulated ten thousand dollars worth of property when he was elected as President of the United States, and having consumed his floating capital in living during 1860, he was compelled to borrow every cent of money which he had in his pocket when he started to Washington, and which he ultimately repaid out of his earliest receipts from his Presidential salary.

His career as a Politician may be thus exhibited: On April 21st, in the year 1832, he was elected to his first office-that of Captain of a Company in the Black Hawk war.

In 1833 he ran for the legislature and was defeated, but he was elected currently thereafter for four successive legislative terms.

In the year 1834 he was appointed by President Jackson as Postmaster of the inconsiderable hamlet of New Salem; and by John Calhoun, to the exceedingly inconsequential office of deputy surveyor of Sangamon County.

In the year 1844 he was an unsuccessful candidate for a nomination for Congress: and, in the year 1846, he was both nominated for, and elected to, a seat in Congress.

In the year 1849 he was an unsuccessful applicant for the office of Commissioner of the General Land Office.

In that same year he was successively tendered and declined the positions of Secretary and Governor of Oregon territory.

In 1854 he was elected to the legislature but declined to take his seat.

In the same year he was a candidate and defeated for, the United States Senate.

In 1858 he was again a candidate, and again defeated for, the United States Senate.

And he was many times a candidate for Presidential Elector, the last time being in 1856, and was uniformly defeated: and was voted for by the Whig party for United States Senator two or three times when that party had about one-third of the votes needful to elect. This embraces his entire political career up to 1860. Is it not a cheerless and disconsolate retrospect?

On January 5th, 1859, the day of Douglas' last election to the U. S. Senate by the legislature-I was alone with Mr. Lincoln from 2 o'clock P. M. till bed-time-and I feel authorized to say that no man in the State was so gloomy, dejected and dispirited, and no man so surely and heartily deemed his life to have been an abject and lamentable failure, as he then considered his to have been. I never saw any man so radically and thoroughly depressed, so completely steeped in the bitter waters of hopeless despair. The surroundings, even, were eloquent of flat, prosaic failure. I found him alone, and

doing nothing but brooding over his griefs and discomfiture; he was in his office, and this office, I will venture to assert, was the dingiest and most untidy law-office in the United States, without exception. My feelings were in unison with his, and our conversation was as cheerless and lugubrious as the sombre surroundings.

Yet, in twenty-two months from that doleful day, this recipient of Fortune's frowns had sounded the highest note on the gamut of success; for 1,857,610 of the elite of the nation had elected him to be the ruler of forty millions of people. I first saw this wonderful man on the third day of June, 1854, on the Danville and Urbana State road, in front of an obscure country tavern called "Bailey's," near the line between Vermillion and Champaign Counties, Illinois.

Judge David Davis, Mr. Lincoln, Leonard Swett and David B. Campbell were together, returning home from the Danville Circuit Court. They were travelling in a two-seated open spring wagon, there being no railways in that region in those days; and an hour later, I saw the same distinguished party which contained a President and Emancipator of a whole race of men in embryo, a United States Senator, U. S. Supreme Court Judge and President of the Senate in embryo, the Attorney General of Illinois, and a candidate for Congress and for Governor in embryo, and who should by due right have been an U. S. Senator from Illinois for thirty years.

It is somewhat singular, that I recollect each one of the other three, specifically; but that, all that I recollect of Mr. Lincoln, is that he was there to make up the four individuals.

The "Nebraska" bill (so called) had become a law, only five days before and, as news was then transmitted, it is probable he had not then heard of its presidential approval; and that portion of this great man's life, which affords material for the biographer, historian, essayist or lecturer, had not yet been reached in the cycle of time: but it was just about to down upon the world.

For this grave political crime, if not indeed moral perfidy;