the oath of office; and listeners who heard Abraham Lincoln for the second time repeat, “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,” went from the impressive scene to their several homes with thankfulness and with confidence that the destiny of the country and the liberty of the citizen were in safe keeping.  “The fiery trial” through which he had hitherto walked showed him possessed of the capacity, the courage, and the will to keep the promise of his oath.

Among the many criticisms passed by writers and thinkers upon the second inaugural, none will so interest the reader as that of Mr. Lincoln himself, written about ten days after its delivery, in the following letter to a friend: 

“DEAR MR. WEED:  Every one likes a compliment.  Thank you for yours on my little notification speech, and on the recent inaugural address.  I expect the latter to wear as well as, perhaps better than, anything I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular.  Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.  To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world.  It is a truth which I thought needed to be told, and, as whatever of humiliation there is in it falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it.”

Nothing would have more amazed Mr. Lincoln than to hear himself called a man of letters; but this age has produced few greater writers.  Emerson ranks him with Aesop; Montalembert commends his style as a model for the imitation of princes.  It is true that in his writings the range of subjects is not great.  He was chiefly concerned with the political problems of the time, and the moral considerations involved in them.  But the range of treatment is remarkably wide, running from the wit, the gay humor, the florid eloquence of his stump speeches, to the marvelous sententiousness and brevity of the address at Gettysburg, and the sustained and lofty grandeur of his second inaugural; while many of his phrases have already passed into the daily speech of mankind.

A careful student of Mr. Lincoln’s character will find this inaugural address instinct with another meaning, which, very naturally, the President’s own comment did not touch.  The eternal law of compensation, which it declares and applies to the sin and fall of American slavery, in a diction rivaling the fire and dignity of the old Hebrew prophecies, may, without violent inference, be interpreted to foreshadow an intention to renew at a fitting moment the brotherly goodwill gift to the South which has already been treated of.  Such an inference finds strong corroboration in the sentences which closed the last public address he ever made.  On Tuesday evening, April 11, a