In the character revealed in these later days are found all the qualities of the earlier unfused Lincoln, excepting only those which began to disappear about 1843, and taken separately they do not appear different from what they once had been. He was still susceptible to fits of melancholy so profound that he felt them to be all but unendurable. On the other hand he was still recklessly humorous, telling funny stories on all occasions, sometimes giving offence by so doing. To a Congressman who showed dislike for his stories he said, "You cannot be more anxious than I have been constantly since the beginning of the war; and I say to you now, that were it not for this occasional vent I should die." The dif ference between the earlier Lincoln and the later is not in the details but in the whole. The same elements have been recom bined in a changed pattern. There are salty, coarse elements in 1864 no less than in 1834, but instead of forming discords they now blend. He has achieved an individual tone all his own, com parable to that amazing unity of discordant elements that pervades and makes inimitable the great masterpieces of literature. His secretaries adored him. One of them, John Hay, has left admir able contemporary sketches of his personality. "The Tycoon (as his secretaries called him) is in fine whack. I have rarely seen him more serene and busy. He is managing this war, the draft, foreign relations and planning a reconstruction of the Union all at once. I never knew with what a tyrannous authority he rules the cabinet until now. The most important things he decides and there is no cavil. . . . There is no man in the country so wise, so gentle and so firm." The measure of his difference from most of the men who sur rounded him is best gauged by his attitude toward the funda mentals of religion. For all his devotion to his cause he did not allow himself to believe that he knew the mind of God with regard to it. He was never so much the mystic as in his later days and never so far removed from the dogmatist. Here was the final flowering of that mood which appears to have lain at the back of his mind from the beginning—his complete conviction of the reality of a supernatural world joined with a belief that it was too deep for man to fathom. His refusal to accept the "com plicated" statements of doctrine which he rejected carried with it a refusal to predicate the purposes of the Almighty. Again, that singular characteristic, his power to devote himself wholly to a cause and yet to do so in such a detached unviolent way that one is tempted to call it passionless. He retained nothing of the tribal forms of religion and was silent while they raged about him with a thousand tongues. Upon this innermost subject the best expression of him is an amazing fragment which he wrote down but which was not intended for any eye but his own. "The
will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party; and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are the best adaptations to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true ; that God wills this contest and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun, He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds." BIBLIOGRAPHY.-The most famous life of Lincoln is by his law part ner, William H. Herndon, in collaboration with J. W. Weik, The True Story of a Great Life (1890). It has been the subject of furious con troversy. Ward H. Lamon, with The Life of Abraham Lincoln (1872), antedated Herndon in publication but drew freely from Herndon's materials. J. W. Weik, who had collaborated with Herndon, brought out long afterward The Real Lincoln (1922). The literature that has grown up about Lincoln numbers literally thousands of volumes. Con spicuous is Abraham Lincoln: A History (1890), by his secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, published with the approval of his son, Robert Todd Lincoln. There are two general collections of his writings: Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay ed. (1905) ; The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, George Haven Putnam and Arthur Brookes Lapsley ed. (1888-1906). Neither of these collections is complete. At intervals new letters are discovered and published ; for example, Uncollected Letters of Abraham Lincoln, first brought together by Gilbert Tracy (1917). Many important details of his origin and early life have been determined by William E. Barton, notably in The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln (192o) ; in The Life of Abraham Lincoln (1925) ; and The Women Lincoln Loved (1927). Recent biographies that deserve attention are Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (1917) ; Lord Charnwood, Abraham Lincoln (1917) ; Nathaniel Wright Stephenson, Lincoln (1922). The Lincoln Memorial Association is publishing gradually a record of his daily life. What promised to be the definitive life of Lincoln was undertaken by Albert J. Beveridge and was to be on the same scale as his monumental life of Marshall. Unfortunately, but two volumes had been completed at the time of his sudden death in 1927. They were published under the title Abraham Lincoln (1928), and supersede everything that has been written on the portion of Lincoln's life previous to 1858. (N. W. S.)