THE DEATH OF LINCOLN.

HENRY WARD BEECHER. EXTRACT.

REPUBLICAN institutions have been vindicated in this experience as they never were before; and the whole history of the last four years, rounded up by this cruel stroke, seems, in the providence of God, to have been clothed, now, with an illustration, with a sympathy, with an aptness, and with a significance, such as we never could have expected nor imagined.

Even he who now sleeps has, by this event, been clothed with new influence. Dead, he speaks to men who now willingly hear what before they refused to listen to. Now his simple and weighty words will be gathered like those of Washington; and your children and your children's children shall be taught to ponder the simplicity and deep wisdom of utterances which, in their time, passed, in party heat, as idle words. Men will receive a new impulse of patriotism for his sake, and will guard with zeal the whole country which he loved so well. I swear you, on the altar of his memory, to be more faithful to the country for which he has perished. They will, as they follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that slavery against which he warred, and which, in vanquishing him, has made him a martyr and a conqueror. I swear you, by the memory of this martyr, to hate slavery with an unappeasable hatred. They will admire and imitate the firmness of this man, his inflexible conscience for the right; and yet his gentleness, as tender as a woman's, his moderation of

spirit, which not all the heat of party could inflame, nor all the jars and disturbances of this country shake out of its place. I swear you to an emulation of his justice, his moderation, and his mercy. Dead, dead, DEAD, he yet speaketh.

Is Washington dead? Is Hampden dead? Is David dead? Is any man that ever was fit to live dead? Disenthralled of flesh, and risen in the unobstructed sphere where passion never comes, he begins his illimitable work. His life now is grafted upon the infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life can be. Pass on, thou that hast overcome!

Your sorrows, O people, are his peace! Your bells, and bands, and muffled drums sound triumph in his ear. Wail and weep here; God makes its echo joy and triumph there. Pass on!

Four years ago, O Illinois! we took from your midst an untried man, and from among the people. We return him to you a mighty conqueror. Not thine any more, but the nation's; not ours, but the world's. Give him place, O ye prairies!

In the midst of this great continent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads who shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patriotism. Ye winds that move over the mighty places of the West, chant his requiem! Ye people, behold a martyr whose blood, as so many articulate words, pleads for fidelity, for law, for liberty!

MY CAPTAIN.

WALT WHITMAN. ON THE DEATH OF LINCOLN.

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weathered every rock, the prize we sought

is won;

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But, O heart! heart! heart!

Leave you not the little spot,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up, for you the flag is flung,- for you

trills;

the bugle

For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths, for you the shores a-crowding;

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

O Captain! dear father;

This arm I push beneath you;

It is some dream that on the deck

You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still; My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor

will;

But the ship, the ship, is anchored safe, its voyage closed and done;

From fearful trip, the victor ship comes in with object

won.

Exult, O shore, and ring, O bells!

But I, with silent tread,

Walk the spot my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD. EXTRACTS.

THE slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion, and watchfulness. It debases those whose toil alone can produce wealth and resources for defence to the lowest degree of which human nature is capable, to guard against mutiny and insurrection, and thus wastes energies which otherwise might be employed in national development and aggrandizement.

The free system educates all alike, and by opening all the fields of industrial employment and all the departments of authority to the unchecked and equal rivalry of all classes of men, at once secures universal contentment and brings into the highest possible activity all the physical, moral, and social energies of the whole state.

Hitherto, the two systems have existed in different states, but side by side with the American Union. This has happened because the Union is a confederation of

states. But in another aspect the United States constitute only one nation. Increase of population, which is filling the states out to their very borders, together with a new and extended net-work of railroads, and an internal commerce, which daily becomes more intimate, is rapidly bringing the states into a higher and more perfect social unity. Thus, these antagonistic systems are continually coming into closer contact, and collision results.

Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free-labor nation.

ODE ON DECORATING THE GRAVES OF THE CONFEDERATE DEAD.

HENRY TIMROD.

SLEEP Sweetly in

your humble graves,

Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause!
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause.

In seeds of laurel in the earth,

The blossom of your fame is blown.