THESE desultory papers should soon have an end. But, having started in the last to speak of what may be called the origins of Lincoln, I learned before I had finished it that a book of importance in this connection is to appear this month, and, since the subject involves at least one acute though not momentous controversy, I shall wait for that book. Meanwhile, I will take opportunity of reproducing with a few prefatory words, a passage concerning Lincoln's attitude to religion which is to be found in my friend Mr. Henry B. Rankin's Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln (G. P. Putnam's Sons). To me, at any rate, it is moving and inspiring, and I have Mr. Rankin's kind permission to give any further publicity to it that I can.

Mr. Rankin himself, as a young man, studied law in the office of Lincoln and Herndon just before Lincoln's Presidency. His vaguer boyish recollections of Lincoln go back to 1846, and his mother knew well not only Lincoln, but his first love Ann Rutledge, and many other personages who figure in his early story. As for the pleasant and unpretending volume in which Mr. Rankin has lately set down his memories, it has a charm for those for whom Springfield, Illinois, and its inhabitants, and the elders among them, and their reminiscences of their own elders have such happy associations as they have for me. Beyond this, a care

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ful student, desirous to know precisely what discount he should take off Herndon's account of Lincoln, could hardly do better than turn to this book. For that, in fact, notwithstanding that the author loyally magnifies his old instructor Herndon to some extent, is the admitted purpose of his writing.

With a fiery Quixotism, unquenched by advanced age, he takes up the cudgels for Mrs. Lincoln, the guardian of Lincoln's health and the assiduous prodder of that ambition of his which, in its self-regarding aspect, probably needed more stimulus than Herndon could suggest. In general, he is apprehensive that the abundance of trivial and more or less grotesque matter published about Lincoln, though intelligible to those who knew him, may mislead others, and serve to obscure 'the clean, plain, simple-mannered man that he always was.' Really, though Mr. Rankin applies the right corrective well, a corrective is not greatly needed. In one point I think he judges amiss. He is indignant at the report that at a time before he knew Lincoln well, he had suffered such grave mental perturbation as made some friends fear for his wits. Now, the evidence of the intense and abnormal depression through which Lincoln passed, more particularly at the time when he broke off his engagement with Mrs. Lincoln, is to be found

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in his own letters. And this detracts in no way from the truth, on which Mr. Rankin recurrently insists and which forms the very core of his personal recollection of him, the splendid sanity, normality, and steady balance of Lincoln. Men who attain in later life to this full true healthiness of mind have often passed through deep waters to get there. And Lincoln did pass through deep waters.

In a far more important point Mr. Rankin, though not in so many words, contradicts, and I think with reason, the view of Herndon and not a few others, that Lincoln's extremely practical and, where logic serves, logical intellect went along with some degree of exceptional insensitiveness on what may roughly be called the poetic side, and perhaps on the side of the affections. For any appreciative reader of Lincoln, or anyone who notes the leading traits of his life, such a view ought to need little refutation, but certainly it was a man sane and normal in the all-roundness (so far as circumstances permit that to any man) of his intellect and of his capacity of being interested, that Mr. Rankin depicts as taking his part in the literary studies of that singular law office at Springfield. That he had his vigorous individual likes and dislikes, with a power of quickly discarding or selecting, that he took against certain slightly eccentric great writers, notably Emerson and Carlyle, that, on the other hand, he loved one or two poems which are not of the first rank, for some personal association, or their congruity with his own deep sense of pathos, all this has sometimes been cited to show that this wholesomely complex and peculiarly mellow man of genius must have been dry and unimaginative, because he was humorous, practical, and reserved. Mr. Rankin's loving sketch of him, as his own kindly

and alert mind recalls him, leaves n room for this shallow opinion.

This shallow opinion never took a absurder form than in the suggestion that he became either indifferent o without faith religiously because h parted firmly from the theology and the church-affiliation of his youn days; or that because in ordinary in tercourse he was silent about hi deeper thoughts, the piety of some of his recorded private talks on specia and affecting occasions was an inven tion of those he had talked to, and the prophetic emotion of some of his publi utterances the mere expression o official decorum.

This strange view had for long it champions, Herndon among them and perhaps has some still. For a true history, though in broad outline of Lincoln's religious attitude, more materials do exist than in the case of most men. As Dr. Barton has piecec it out in The Soul of Abraham Lincoln it is instructive enough, though there is nothing abnormal in the kind of fluctuation and variation with varying moods through which he passed, or unusual in the manifest deepening of his thought and feeling, as age, and real sorrows and heavy responsibilities came. Here, however, the record which I am about to quote shall stand by itself, with one further prefatory word as to its historical worth.

Mr. Rankin tells us that, in 1846, when Lincoln was a candidate for Congress, and a report had been put about that he was an 'infidel' (for which, by the way, the reverend gentleman who was his opponent made ample amends long after), he was present as a child when his own mother asked Lincoln as to the truth of the matter. Of Lincoln's manner and pose as he stood facing those in the room in silence for a few moments, and of his slow, impressive emphasis when he spoke, Mr.

Rankin retains a clear recollection, but, naturally, remembers nothing of the words. More than forty years later, his mother dictated to him, as she remembered it, the substance of what Lincoln said. At first sight, her report so long after, might seem worthless, in spite of her son's assurance of her remarkably tenacious verbal memory. Moreover, the fact that in important points a reported conversation of Lincoln's, years later, expressed the like opinions, cuts both ways. But it is perfectly certain that the old lady would, during the intervening years, have gone over that conversation to herself again and again, and repeated it to many an intimate. Most people familiar with Lincoln's turn of speech and thought will see here very little sign of invention, conscious or unconscious, and will share Mr. Rankin's conviction that a large part of the recorded conversation is unmistakable Lincoln.

'Mrs. Rankin, you have asked me a question opening up a subject that is being thrust into this Congressional campaign, and which I have resolved to ignore. It is one having no proper place, or call for an answer by me, in the political present or future before us. I will not discuss the character and religion of Jesus Christ on the stump! That is no place for it, though my opponent, a minister of His gospel, thinks it is. But in this private circle of friends, with the inquiry coming from you, Mrs. Rankin, who have known me as long as any of my Salem friends, and in some respects more intimately than any of them, I will frankly answer your question. I do not wish what I may say here, now, to be quoted in this Congressional canvass to any one, and I am sure that I can depend that every one of you will respect my wishes. [This they did.]

"At the time you refer to [continued

Mr. Lincoln], I was having serious questionings about some portions of my former implicit faith in the Bible. The influences that drew me into such doubts were strong ones men having the widest culture and strongest minds of any I had known up to that time. In the midst of those shadows and questionings, before I could see my way clear to decide on them, there came into my life sad events and a loss that you were close to, and you knew a great deal about how hard they were for me, for you were, at the time, a mutual friend. Those days of trouble found me tossed amidst a sea of questionings. They piled big upon me, experiences that brought with them great strains upon my emotional and mental life. Through all I groped my way until I found a stronger and higher grasp of thought, one that reached beyond this life with a clearness and satisfaction I had never known before. The Scriptures unfolded before me with a deeper and more logical appeal, through these new experiences, than anything else I could find to turn to, or ever before had found in them.

'I do not claim that all my doubts were removed then, or since that time have been swept away. They are not. Probably it is to be my lot to go on in a twilight, feeling and reasoning my way through life as questioning, doubting Thomas did. But in my poor, maimed, withered way, I bear with me as I go on, a seeking spirit of desire for a faith that was with him of the olden time, who, in his need, as I in mine, exclaimed: "Help thou my unbelief."

'I do not see [he went on to say, after leaving his position on the hearth and resuming his former seat], I do not see that I am more astray though perhaps in a different direction than many others whose points

of view differ widely from each other in the sectarian denominations. They all claim to be Christian, and interpret their several creeds as infallible ones. Yet they differ and discuss these questionable subjects without settling them with any mutual satisfaction among themselves.

'I doubt the possibility, or propriety, of settling the religion of Jesus Christ in the models of man-made creeds and dogmas. It was a spirit in the life that He laid stress on and taught, if I read aright. I know I see it to be so with me.

'The fundamental truths reported in the four gospels as from the lips of Jesus Christ, and that I first heard from the lips of my mother, are settled and fixed moral precepts with me. I

have concluded to dismiss from n mind the debatable wrangles that on perplexed me with distractions th stirred up, but never absolutely settl anything. I have tossed them asi with the doubtful differences which vide denominations-sweeping the all out of my mind among the no essentials. I have ceased to follow su discussions or be interested in the

'I cannot without mental reserv tions assent to long and complicat creeds and catechisms. If the Chur would ask simply for assent to t Saviour's statement of the substan of the law: "Thou shalt love the Lo thy God with all thy heart, and wit all thy soul, and with all thy min and thy neighbor as thyself," Church would I gladly unite with.'

th

THE son of a tailor, Samuel Pepys may be justly described as the first middle-class collector, and critic of objects of art in England. The extravagance of the age in which he lived was perhaps not without effect on his early desires for the acquisition of luxuries. His gradually increasing prosperity may be traced from the day in January 1659-60, when, at the age of twenty-seven, his dinner consisted of plain bread and cheese, to the costly dinners served on silver plates mentioned later. In the same month, too, Pepys laid the foundation of his noble library, now the glory of his alma mater, Magdalene College, Cam

bridge, by the purchase of a Hebre Grammar.

The taste and appreciation of th immortal diarist for the refinemen of life received an early training by h classical education at St. Paul's Schoo and at Cambridge, the effects of whic were apparent from the time of h first visit to Audley End, withou comparison one of the stateliest pa aces in the kingdom,' as Evelyn ha described it a few years earlier. Pepy viewed with mighty admiration th glories of the house, the stateliness the ceilings and of the chimney-piece the splendid pictures, especially th portrait of Henry VIII by Holbeir

then

Descending into the cellar, Pepys and his companion, the landlord of the White Hart Inn at Saffron Walden, drank most admirable drink, and health to King Charles II.

His love of music, one of his cherished joys to the end of his life, is evinced by his playing on his flageolet, which produced an excellent echo among the barrels of wine in the vast cellars. Instructive, as a revelation of his increasing powers of observation and more critical taste, is his account of his later visit to Audley End, when he declared the ceiling, previously el praised for its stateliness, to be less impressive and the staircase exceeding poor. While the house contained a great many pictures, there was only th one good one, the portrait of Henry VIII. The furniture is described as so ancient that he would not find room for it in his own house. From this noble mansion Pepys was taken to the ancient almshouses of Edward VI at Saffron Walden, and was there regaled with a draught of drink from a mazerbowl of wood 'tipt' with silver, which, on being emptied, revealed to his astonished gaze a picture of the Holy Virgin done in silver.*

The first recorded addition to Pepys's collection of plate was made in June 1660, when he accepted a bribe in the shape of five pieces of gold for himself, and a silver can for Mrs. Pepys. If this 'can' was a mug, it is an interesthing ing and early name for this type of drinking vessel-a name which has survived to this day in New England. Shortly afterwards he bought, or was given, the only known piece which has survived from his large collection, namely, the plain caudle-cup exhibited by Miss Cockerell at St. James's Court and illustrated in the catalogue.

*This identical mazer-bowl with silver mounts hall-marked in London in 1507-8, and with a silver disc of the Virgin Mary set in the interior, is still preserved at the almshouse.

At this date, we are introduced to the name of one of London's most opulent goldsmiths in the person of Alderman Edward Backwell, the virtual founder of English banking, but this worthy's name is of more interest in the history of banking than in the annals of the goldsmith's craft, his business having been concerned mainly with banking. He was not a craftsman himself, but a buyer and seller of plate, an intermediary between the craftsmen and the public. To Backwell's shop Pepys betook himself on July 4, 1660, to buy a 'state dish and cup '* in chased work at a cost of £19, as a gift for his patron, William Coventry, afterwards Sir William Coventry.

Although, perhaps, more appropriately included in a section devoted to Pepys's activities as a bibliophile, his purchase of a Bible adorned with silver crosses deserves notice here, on account of the decoration in silver.

The frequent visits of Pepys to the shops of London goldsmiths-Alderman Backwell, Sir Robert Vyner, and others- quickened and stimulated his taste for the masterpieces of that art. A proud moment in his life was on the occasion when his friend and patron, Edward Montagu, first Earl of Sandwich, asked him to buy a piece of plate as a gift for Stephen Fox. The piece selected was a tankard from Beauchamp, the goldsmith in Cheapside. This was displayed at a private dinner given by Fox a few days later to his friends, Mr. and Mrs. Pepys, and others, when the health of Lord Sandwich was drunk with due ceremony

*A'state dish and cup' was a dish or salver on a large foot, and the companion cup was one of the familiar caudle-cups or porringers so popular in the reign of Charles II. Several of these dishes and cups have survived to this day. One of the most interesting pairs, made in London in 1668-9, was presented to Jonas Shish, His Majesty's Master Shipwright at Deptford, by the Duke of York, at the launching of the Royal Charles. This pair is now in the important collection of old English plate of Sir Ernest Cassel.