posing character; and I find, from incidental notices of it here and there, in legal publications in England, that it receives a just and liberal praise. This is as it should be.

Mr. Huntington, in his memoir, refers to the Commentaries thus: "As lucid, terse, and pure in style as the Commentaries' of Blackstone, and resembles them in logical exactness of expression and cogency of reasoning; yet in breadth of scholarship and copiousness of learning, the American jurist was superior to his English predecessor, drawing illustrations, parallels and arguments from the Roman law and the jurisprudence of Continental nations, and discussing subjects which Blackstone was unable from lack of knowledge to include in his work, such as Commercial and Maritime Law, the Law of Nations, and Equity Jurisprudence."

In Marvin's Treatise we find: "England has only one Blackstone, and the American rival equals him in classic purity and elegance of style, and surpasses him in extent and copiousness of learning. What do Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries contain of Equity Jurisprudence, of the Laws of Nations, and the several titles of Commercial Law, which are discussed with such richness and accuracy by Chancellor Kent? Scarcely nothing; and a comparison of other titles in the two works show the American author to have surpassed his rival in comprehensiveness of research and fullness of illustration, and to have equaled him in clearness and cogency of reasoning."

This great jurist after a long life of usefulness to himself and value to his country, died in the fullness of years, without the impairment of a single faculty to the day of his death-aged eighty-four years.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, one of the most prominent

characters in the history of American civilization, sprung form the depths of obscurity and the most abject poverty. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was an idle, shiftless being; a roamer, "satisfied with indifferent shelter, and a diet of corn bread and milk." Upon his marriage to Nancy Hanks, he took her to live in a shed in one of the alleys of Elizabethtown, in Hardin county, Kentucky. It was still standing in 1866, "to witness for itself the wretched poverty of its inmates.”

Soon wearying of the town, and true to his nomadic nature, Thomas Lincoln took up some land about thirteen miles distant, on Nolin creek, with the intention of becoming a farmer, where in a miserable cabin surrounded by a landscape of utter desolation, on the 12th of February, 1809, the illustrious Abraham Lincoln was born. Here he remained until he reached the age of four years, when his father, possessed of the spirit of roaming again, moved to another spot some six miles distant, where the land was fertile. The legend says that here the elder Lincoln "bestirred himself most vigorously, and actually got into cultivation the whole of six acres." There he remained for some time, young Abraham approaching his ninth year before it was time for the family to start on another tramp. While living on Nolin's fork, the future great President hunted ground-hogs, fished and indulged in all those other sports familiar to primitive civilization; civilization; was once nearly

drowned, saved only by the extraordinary efforts of his companions.

In the fall of 1816, Thomas Lincoln built a boat, on which he floated down the Ohio river to a place called "Thompson's Landing." There he sold his rude craft, wandered off into the wilderness of Indiana again to seek an abiding place. He did not have to travel very far, about sixteen miles only from the river, before he found a spot he thought would suit him; an easy matter, for he was not particularly fastidious in his choice of a location. After making a selection, he trudged on foot all the way back to Kentucky for his wife and family, loaded all his household effects, evidently not very extensive, on two horses, and packed through to Thompson's Landing. Besides their limited amount of bedding, the entire outfit consisted of one oven and lid, one skillet and lid, and some tinware. Arriving in due time at the landing, he hired a team and loaded it with what he had left at the time he came there with his boat, and the things he had packed on the horses, he moved out on the land he had selected, which is now known, and is famous "The Lincoln Farm."

as,

Starting in with a full quarter section, he relinquished half to the Government, contenting himself with eighty acres. The region abounded in deep forests, and as game was plenty, he could supply his larder without giving much attention to the cultivation of the soil, an occupation to which he was evidently much opposed.

His cabin is described as follows: "It had no window, door or floor. There was no furniture worthy the name, even by the most rigid construction. Three-legged stools, constructed in the crudest manner, served the purpose of chairs. The bedstead was made of poles stuck in the cracks of the logs in one corner of the cabin, while the other end rested in the crotch of a forked stick sunk in the earthen floor. On these were laid some