with joyous gratitude, as they crowded round to hail their deliverer, baring their heads in reverence before him, and he with instinctive courtesy standing with uncovered head in response-emblem of democratic liberty and equality;— this journey is his triumphal procession; this throng of emancipated slaves, his imperial escort; the benedictions of these new-made freemen are his crown,the crown of democratic sovereignty.

There is now but one remaining glory that can be accorded. The strict laws of tragedy require that the hero shall die for the truth he has lived for-shall fall in the hour of triumph. And so the President must fall. Does Providence therefore direct the assassin's blow? By no means: only as the providential laws surround, limit, and penetrate every contest between good and evil. But the deadly blow is aimed by the hand of the foe. It is the last, desperate, maddened effort of the struggling combatant. It is the crowning wickedness of the rebellion and slavery. The evil principle of the drama must culminate as well as the good, it must develop all its inherent and hidden horrors of evil; it must leave no seed of crime that belongs to itself unfruitful; it must leave not the smallest vestige of honor attached to its name. And so, filled with revenge, mad with defeat, inspired with demoniac frenzy, it puts forth all the remaining energy of its mortal strength to slay the man whom it recognizes as the incarnation of all the principles that have contended against it, and the leader of the hosts that have defeated it in battle. It slays him; and thereby, according to the moral intent of the drama, brands itself with everlasting infamy, while it lifts him to an immor

tal glory, and saves forever the truth to which his life was devoted. The assassin's crime is the rebellion's infamy, and his and freedom's apotheosis. The President falls. But over his grave the nation has a new birth-a resurrection. He seals his testament with his blood, and sanctifies republican truth forever. The President falls. But over his grave his spirit rises into the renowned halls of the celestial heroes, welcomed amid the triumphant songs of a nation redeemed, a people emancipated, a country saved.

With the hero's triumphant departure from earth the drama is ended; but the Spirit of the drama lingers, and utters an epilogue for the awe-struck, listening spectators; and this is the epilogue it speaks:

The President falls: for "where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator." The President falls. But his testament remains with us: for a testament is of force after men are dead." The testament remains. The nation, humanity, the world, are its legatees; but we, the people of this generation, are its executors: and we have given sacred bonds, written and attested on many a battle-field with our kindred's blood, that we will administer it,-administer it with exact and impartial justice to all classes and castes and races among us,-in order "that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

June 4, 1865.

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