strings: There is in this last something that suggests music; again we hear the strain of the Leitmotif. Strangely enough, in 1858 Lincoln himself had used a figure not the same as, but suggestive of, this very one now given by Seward. He was speaking of the moral sentiment, the sentiment of equality, in the Declaration of Independence. "That," he said, "is the electric chord in that Declaration, that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world."