Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/155

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SOME GREAT PORTRAITS OF LINCOLN.
341

LIFE MASK OF LINCOLN. 1860. AGE 51.
Made in 1860 by Leonard W. Volk of Chicago. From a photograph taken expressly for McClure's Magazine.

is almost elegant; his form, if stiff and evidently braced by the archaic head-rest, is neither ungainly nor awkward, while his face is interesting and winning. You would call it the face of a poet rather than that of a statesman, and more than one person, on first examining it, has pronounced it the face of Emerson.

II.—The second portrait in the series (page 340) was taken ten years later—in 1858. The contrast is almost violent. The gentleness of the expression has given way to cold intelligence; the almost diffident pose of the head is replaced by one of positively regal determination. Instead of careful brushing and dressing, we see the hair bristling, the necktie awry. When the history of the portrait is known, the contrast is explained. It was taken at one of the most difficult and daring moments of Lincoln's career; at an hour when he had decided to take a course in his debates with Douglas against which all his friends and political associates advised him, and which he himself knew would probably cost him the