of its purpose. The timid, whom it was expected to frighten, it has simply scared into the reception of the idea that the only way to escape civil war is by the election of over a hundred and twenty Republican Representatives to the Fortieth Congress. The courageous, whom it was intended to defy, it has only exasperated into more strenuous efforts against the insolent renegade who had the audacity to make it.
Everywhere in the loyal States there is an uprising of the people only paralleled by the grand uprising of 1861. The President's plan of reconstruction having passed from a policy into a conspiracy, his chief supporters are now not so much his partisans as his accomplices; and against him and his accomplices the people will this autumn indignantly record the most overwhelming of verdicts.
ART.
MARSHALL'S PORTRAIT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
When we consider the conditions under which the art of successful line-engraving is attained, the amount and quality of artistic knowledge implied, the years of patient, unwearied application imperiously demanded, the numerous manual difficulties to be overcome, and the technical skill to be acquired, it is not surprising that the names of so few engravers should be pre-eminent and familiar.
In our own country, at least, the instinct and habit of the people do not favor the growth and perfection of an art only possible under such conditions.
So fully and satisfactorily, however, have these demands been met in Marshall's line-engraving of the head of Abraham Lincoln, executed after Mr. Marshall's own painting, that we are induced to these preliminary thoughts as much by a sense of national pride as of delight and surprise.
Our admiration of the engraving is first due to its value as a likeness; for it is only when the heart rests from a full and satisfied contemplation of the face endeared to us all, that we can regard it for its artistic worth.
Mr. Marshall did not need this last work, to rank him at the head of American engravers; for his portraits of Washington and Fenimore Cooper had done that already; but it has lifted him to a place with the foremost engravers of the world.
The greatness and glory of his success, in this instance, are to be measured by the inherent difficulties in the subject itself.
The intellectual and physical traits of Abraham Lincoln were such as the world had never seen before. Original, peculiar, and anomalous, they seemed incapable of analysis and classification.
While the keen, comprehensive intellect within that broad, grand forehead was struggling with the great problems of national fate, other faculties of the same organization, strongly marked in the lower features of his face, seemed to be making light of the whole matter.
His character and the physical expression of it were unique, and yet made up of the most complex elements;—simple, yet incomprehensible; strong, yet gentle; inflexible, yet conciliating; human, yet most rare; the strangest, and yet for all in all the most lovable, character in history.
To represent this man, to embody these characteristics, was the work prescribed the artist. Instead of being fetters, these contradictions seem to have been incentives to the artist. Justice to himself, as to an American who loved Lincoln, and justice to the great man, the truest American of his time, appear also to have been his inspiration.
Neglected now, this golden opportunity might be lost forever, and the future be haunted by an ideal only, and never be familiarized with the plain, good face we knew. For what could the future make of all these caricatures and uncouth efforts at portraiture, rendered only more grotesque when stretched upon the rack of a thousand canvases? No less a benefactor
