The Life Story of Abraham Lincoln - 9

The Life Story of Abraham Lincoln

He is still in wild water, but we have

faith that his skill and sureness of eye will bring him out

right at last. A curious, and, as we think, not inapt

parallel, might be drawn between Mr. Lincoln and one of the

most striking figures in modern history,--Henry IV. of

France. The career of the latter may be more picturesque, as

that of a daring captain always is; but in all its

vicissitudes there is nothing more romantic than that sudden

change, as by a rub of Aladdin's lamp, from the attorney's

office in a country town of Illinois to the helm of a great

nation in times like these. The analogy between the

characters and circumstances of the two men is in many

respects singularly close. Succeeding to a rebellion rather

than a crown, Henry's chief material dependence was the

Huguenot party, whose doctrines sat upon him with a looseness

distasteful certainly, if not suspicious, to the more

fanatical among them. King only in name over the greater

part of France, and with his capital barred against him, it

yet gradually became clear to the more far-seeing even of the

Catholic party that he was the only centre of order and

legitimate authority round which France could reorganize

itself. While preachers who held the divine right of kings

made the churches of Paris ring with declamations in favor of

democracy rather than submit to the heretic dog of

Bearnois,(1)--much as our *soi-disant* Democrats have lately

been preaching the divine right of slavery, and denouncing

the heresies of the Declaration of Independence,-- Henry bore

both parties in hand till he was convinced that only one

course of action could possibly combine his own interests and

those of France. Meanwhile the Protestants believed somewhat

doubtfully that he was theirs, the Catholics hoped somewhat

doubtfully that he would be theirs, and Henry himself turned

aside remonstrance, advice and curiosity alike with a jest or

a proverb (if a little *high,* he liked them none the worse),

joking continually as his manner was. We have seen Mr.

Lincoln contemptuously compared to Sancho Panza by persons

incapable of appreciating one of the deepest pieces of wisdom

in the profoundest romance ever written; namely, that, while

Don Quixote was incomparable in theoretic and ideal

statesmanship, Sancho, with his stock of proverbs, the ready

money of human experience, made the best possible practical

governor. Henry IV. was as full of wise saws and modern

instances as Mr. Lincoln, but beneath all this was the

thoughtful, practical, humane, and thoroughly earnest man,

around whom the fragments of France were to gather themselves

till she took her place again as a planet of the first

magnitude in the European system.