“Of this noble-hearted man, so full of genial impulses, so self-forgetful, so utterly unselfish, so pure and gentle and good, who lived for us and at last died for us, I feel how inadequate I am to portray his manifold excellence—his intellectual worth—his generous character—his fervid patriotism. Pope celebrated the memory of Robert Harley, the Lord of Oxford, a privy counsellor of Queen Anne, who himself narrowly escaped assassination, in lines that seem prophetic of Mr. Lincoln’s virtues:—
Above all pain, all anger, and all pride,
The rage of power, the blast of public breath,
The lust of lucre, and the dread of death.’
“Murdered, coffined, buried, he will live with those few immortal names who were not born to die; live as the Father of the Faithful in the time that tried men’s souls; live in the grateful hearts of the dark-browed race he lifted from under the heel of the oppressor to the dignity of freedom and manhood; live in every bereaved circle which has given father, husband, son, or friend to die, as he did, for his country; live with the glorious company of martyrs to liberty, justice, and humanity, that trio of Heaven-born principles; live in the love of all beneath the circuit of the sun, who loathe tyranny, slavery, and wrong. And, leaving behind him a record that shows how honesty and principle lifted him, self-made as he was, from the humblest ranks of the people to the noblest station on the globe, and a name that shall brighten under the eye of posterity as the ages roll by—
“ ‘From the top of Fame’s ladder he stepped to the sky.’ ”