that the speaker felt it.  The single flaw in the Cooper Institute speech has already been cited, the narrow view of Western respectability as to John Brown.  For the rest, this speech, dry enough in a sense, is an incomparably masterly statement of the then political situation, reaching from its far back origin to the precise and definite question requiring decision at that moment.  Mr. Choate, who as a young man was present, set down of late years his vivid recollection of that evening.  “He appeared in every sense of the word like one of the plain people among whom he loved to be counted.  At first sight there was nothing impressive or imposing about him; his clothes hung awkwardly on his giant frame; his face was of a dark pallor without the slightest tinge of colour; his seamed and rugged features bore the furrows of hardship and struggle; his deep-set eyes looked sad and anxious; his countenance in repose gave little evidence of the brilliant power which raised him from the lowest to the highest station among his countrymen; as he talked to me before the meeting he seemed ill at ease.”  We know, as a fact, that among his causes of apprehension, he was for the first time painfully conscious of those clothes.  “When he spoke,” proceeds Mr. Choate, “he was transformed; his eye kindled, his voice rang, his face shone and seemed to light up the whole assembly.  For an hour and a half he held his audience in the hollow of his hand.  His style of speech and manner of delivery were severely simple.  What Lowell called ’the grand simplicities of the Bible,’ with which he was so familiar, were reflected in his discourse. . . .  It was marvellous to see how this untutored man, by mere self-discipline and the chastening of his own spirit, had outgrown all meretricious arts, and found his way to the grandeur and strength of absolute simplicity.”

The newspapers of the day after this speech confirm these reverent reminiscences.  On this, his first introduction to the cultivated world of the East, Lincoln’s audience were at the moment and for the moment conscious of the power which he revealed.  The Cooper Institute speech takes the plain principle that slavery is wrong, and draws the plain inference that it is idle to seek for common ground with men who say it is right.  Strange but tragically frequent examples show how rare it is for statesmen in times of crisis to grasp the essential truth so simply.  It is creditable to the leading men of New York that they recognised a speech which just at that time urged this plain thing in sufficiently plain language as a very great speech, and had an inkling of great and simple qualities in the man who made it.  It is not specially discreditable that very soon and for a long while part of them, or of those who were influenced by their report, reverted to their former prejudices in regard to Lincoln.  When they saw him thrust by election managers into the Presidency, very few indeed of what might be called