All he did was sure to be virulently attacked as ultra by one side; all
that he left undone, to be stigmatized as proof of lukewarmness and
backsliding by the other. Meanwhile he was to carry on a truly
colossal war by means of both; he was to disengage the country
from diplomatic entanglements of unprecedented peril undisturbed
by the help or the hindrance of either, and to win from the crowning
dangers of his administration, in the confidence of the people, the
means of his safety and their own. He has contrived to do it, and
perhaps none of our Presidents since Washington has stood so firm
in the confidence of the people as he does after three years of
stormy administration.

(1) See *Revelation,* chapter 3, verse 15.

Mr. Lincoln's policy was a tentative one, and rightly so. He laid
down no programme which must compel him to be either
inconsistent or unwise, no cast-iron theorem to which
circumstances must be fitted as they rose, or else be useless to his
ends. He seemed to have chosen Mazarin's motto, *Le temps et
moi.*(1) The *moi,* to be sure, was not very prominent at first;
but it has grown more and more so, till the world is beginning to be
persuaded that it stands for a character of marked individuality and
capacity for affairs. Time was his prime-minister, and, we began to
think, at one period, his general-in-chief also. At first he was so
slow that he tired out all those who see no evidence of progress but
in blowing up the engine; then he was so fast, that he took the
breath away from those who think there is no getting on safety
while there is a spark of fire under the boilers. God is the only
being who has time enough; but a prudent man, who knows how to
seize occasion, can commonly make a shift to find as much as he