December day in 1799. Among them all he will find no words which characterize Washington more impressively and fittingly than those famous words at the close of General Lee's oration:

"First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in the humble and endearing scenes of private life. Pious, just, humane, temperate and sincere; uniform, dignified and commanding, his example was as edifying to all around him as were the effects of that example lasting. To his equals he was condescending, to his inferiors kind, and to the dear object of his affections exemplarily tender. Correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence, and virtue always felt his fostering hand. The purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues. . . Such was the man America has lost! Such was the man for whom our nation mourns! Methinks I see his august image, and hear, falling from his venerable lips, these deep sinking words:

'Cease, Sons of America, lamenting our separation. Go on, and confirm by your wisdom the fruits of our joint councils, joint efforts and common dangers. Reverence religion; diffuse knowledge throughout your land; patronize the arts and sciences; let liberty and order be inseparable companions; control party spirit, the bane of free government; observe good faith to and cultivate peace with all nations; . . . be American in thought and deed. Thus will you give immortality to that union, which was the constant object of my terrestrial labors: thus will you preserve undisturbed to the latest posterity the felicity of a people to me most dear; and thus will you supply (if my happiness is now aught to you) the only vacancy in the round of pure bliss high Heaven bestows.'

*

One of the lectures in the Old South course is to consider "What the World has Thought and Said of Washington." There is a large book, published a dozen years ago, which bears the title of "Character Portraits of Washington as Delineated by Historians, Orators and Divines," in which the compiler, Mr. Baker, has brought together nearly a hundred memorable estimates of Washington by men who personally knew him and by critical students of a later day,

from James Thacher, who records the personal impression which Washington made upon him at West Point in 1778, to the English historians, Lecky and John Richard Green. Each reader will remember the noteworthy tributes which the editor does not include and which would have swelled his volume to many times its size; and we remember two words of peculiar penetration and significance which have been added to the ever growing monument within the dozen years. We think of no higher tribute to Washington as the maker of the nation than that, but a little while before his death, of our own Francis Walker. The true path by which alone the English race may hope to advance to a beneficent supremacy in the world is pointed out with power by Freeman in his essay on "George Washington, the Expander of England." Freeman sees well, as all Englishmen of insight see and say, that the men behind the redoubt at Bunker Hill and not King George's soldiers were the true representatives of the English idea, that Sam Adams. was the bearer of the English idea when England set a price upon his head, and George Washington bombarding the British army out of BosWashington effectually taught England how alone she could hope to expand and what the policies were which would inevitably check and ruin her. Let him, interpreted by the great English historian, teach that lesson anew to America. We cannot here cite Freeman's words. The most striking words of General Walker are these:

ton.

"Chief among the forces which contributed to make the United States a nation, I believe,-largely as the result of recent thinking on the subject,-was the personConscious ality of George Washington.

of a distinctly grudging disposition in respect to the influence of great men upon the political development of peoples, perhaps even subject to a depreciatory spirit respecting their very greatness itself, I yet find myself more and more turning to regard the first President of the United States as in no inconsiderable degree the

maker of the nation. In the experiment authorized and undertaken by the Constitution of 1787-89, not only his transcendent authority among his countrymen, derived from his personal character and from his services in achieving independence, but his lofty bearing in office, his impartiality as between antagonistic sections and competing interests, his prescience respecting the evils of foreign alliances and affiliations, and his fervent Americanism were far more to the future of the country than the fact that the Philadelphia convention had used the phrase, 'We, the people of the United States,' in the preamble of the Constitution. He was to the plastic elements of the country, in the outset to that great political experiment, more than all other statesmen put together. In securing comparative peace between the angry factions of that day; in holding the nation, as no other man could have done, out of the giant struggle between France and England; in impressing respect for law, for public credit, and for the forms of the new government; and in silently, but powerfully and grandly, teaching the lesson of devotion to union, he not only gave time for a fortunate trial of the Constitution, but he contributed a positive force which we cannot overestimate toward its orderly and energetic operation during the first critical years."*

*

* *

have named a date much later than 1810; for the traditions of Jay and Ellsworth were continued to the end of his life in Marshall, whose influence, legal and political, for a full generation, was greater than that of any other man who ever sat on the Supreme bench. The great chief justice was the intimate and trusted friend of Washington to Washington's death. He was, like Washington, a Virginian; he served in the army throughout the Revolution, fighting by Washington's side at Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth, and enduring cheerfully with him the hardships of the terrible winter at Valley Forge; his influence was second only to that of Madison in securing the ratification of the new Constitution by the Virginia convention; and he was the stout defender of Washington's administration. If any man was preeminently fitted to be Washington's biographer, it was this great friend of Washington and most judicial of Americans; and he was induced to undertake the task by Washington's family, who placed in his hands the great collection of Washington's papers. Begun in 1802, four of the five octavo volumes of the work (a volume upon the early history of the American colonies was afterwards placed at the front) were ready for the press in 1804. was a too hurried preparation of so great a work, surveying not only the personal life of Washington but the whole history of the period; and Marshall himself was keenly alive to its defects. It was afterwards revised and compressed; but Marshall was not a literary man, and the charm of the work is very unlike the charm of the life by Irving. Its great value will lie forever in the fact that it is Marshall's work. There was much polemic against it in its day on the part of Jefferson and his friends, who condemned it in advance as a Federalist book, written for electioneering purposes; and how Jefferson and Marshall stood with reference to each other in the politics of the time is best

It

pictured, for Old South students and others, in Henry Adams's magnificent history, where the two men are brought face to face. When all is said, there was probably no man in America who could write of Washington then more impartially than Chief Justice Marshall. That he did write of him we should all be devoutly thankful; and one of the best things that we can do in this centennial year is to make ourselves more familiar with his monumental but neglected work. His summing up of Washington's character at the end is often printed and well known; but none of us can read it too often, as the judgment of one whose opportunity and right to judge were so preeminent:

capa

"General Washington was rather above the common size, his frame was robust, and his constitution vigorous, ble of enduring great fatigue, and requiring a considerable degree of exercise for the preservation of his health. His exterior created in the beholder the idea of strength united with manly gracefulness. His manners were rather reserved than free, though they partook nothing of that dryness and sternness which accompany reserve when carried to an extreme; and on all proper occasions he could relax sufficiently to show how highly he was gratified by the charms of conversation and the pleasures of society. His person and whole deportment exhibited an unaffected and indescribable dignity, unmingled with haughtiness, of which all who approached him were sensible; and the attachment of those who possessed his friendship and enjoyed his intimacy was ardent, but always respectful. His temper was humane, benevolent, and conciliatory; but there was a quickness in his sensibility to anything apparently offensive, which experience had taught him to watch and to correct. In the management of his private affairs he exhibited an exact yet liberal economy. His funds were not prodigally wasted on capricious and ill-examined schemes, nor refused to beneficial though costly improvements. They remained therefore competent to that expensive establishment which his reputation, added to a hospitable temper, had in some measure imposed upon him, and to those donations which real distress has a right to claim from opulence. He made no pretensions to that vivacity which fascinates, or to that wit which dazzles and frequently imposes on the understanding.

More solid than brilliant, judgment rather than genius constituted the most prominent feature of his character.

"As a military man, he was brave, enterprising and cautious. That malignity which has sought to strip him of all the higher qualities of a general has conceded to him personal courage, and a firmness of resolution which neither dangers nor difficulties could shake. But candor will allow him other great and valuable endowments. If his military course does not abound with splendid achievements, it exhibits a series of judicious measures adapted to circumstances, which probably saved his country. Placed, without having studied the theory, or been taught in the school of experience, the practice of war, at the head of an undisciplined, ill-organized multitude which was unused to the restraints and unacquainted with the ordinary duties of a camp, without the aid of officers possessing those lights which the commander in chief was yet to acquire, it would have been a miracle indeed had his conduct been absolutely faultless. But, possessing an energetic and distinguishing mind, on which the lessons of experience were never lost, his errors, if he committed any, were quickly repaired; and those measures which the state of things rendered most advisable were seldom if ever neglected. Inferior to his adversary in the numbers, in the equipment, and in the discipline of his troops, it is evidence of real merit that no great and decisive advantages were ever obtained over him, and that the opportunity to strike an important blow never passed away unused. He has been termed the American Fabius; but those who compare his actions with his means will perceive at least as much of Marcellus as of Fabius in his character. He could not have been more enterprising without endangering the cause he defended, nor have put more to hazard without incurring justly the imputation of rashness. Not relying upon those chances which sometimes give a favorable issue to attempts apparently desperate, his conduct was regulated by calculations made upon the capacities of his army, and the real situation of his country. When called a second time to command the armies of the United States, a change of circumstances had taken place, and he meditated a corresponding change of conduct. modelling the army of 1798, he sought for men distinguished for their boldness of execution not less than for their prudence in counsel, and contemplated a system of continued attack. The enemy,' said the general in his private letters, 'must never be permitted to gain foothold on our shores.'

In

"In his civil administration, as in his military career, were exhibited ample and

sus

repeated proofs of that practical good sense, of that sound judgment which is perhaps the most rare and is certainly the most valuable quality of the human mind. Devoting himself to the duties of his station, and pursuing no object distinct from the public good, he was accustomed to contemplate at a distance those critical situations in which the United States might probably be placed, and to digest, before the occasion required action, the line of conduct which it would be proper to observe. Taught to distrust first impressions, he sought to acquire all the information which was attainable, and to hear, without prejudice, all the reasons which could be urged for or against a particular measure. His own judgment was pended until it became necessary to determine, and his decisions, thus maturely made, were seldom if ever to be shaken. His conduct therefore was systematic, and the great objects of his administration were steadily pursued. Respecting, as the first magistrate in a free government must ever do, the real and deliberate sentiments of the people, their gusts of passion passed over without ruffling the smooth surface of his mind. Trusting to the reflecting good sense of the nation for approbation and support, he had the magnanimity to pursue its real interests in opposition to its temporary prejudices; and, though far from being regardless of popular favor, he could never stoop to retain by deserving to lose it. In more instances than one, we find him committing his whole popularity to hazard, and pursuing steadily, in opposition to a torrent which would have overwhelmed a man of ordinary firmness, that course which had been dictated by a sense of duty. In speculation, he was a real republican, devoted to the constitution of his country, and to that system of equal political rights on which it is founded. But between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos. Real liberty, he thought, was to be preserved only by preserving the authority of the laws and maintaining the energy of government. Scarcely did society present two characters which, in his opinion, less resembled each other than a patriot and a demagogue.

"No man has ever appeared upon the theatre of public action whose integrity was more incorruptible, or whose principles were more perfectly free from the contamination of those selfish and unworthy passions which find their nourishment in the conflicts of party. Having no views which required concealment, his real and avowed motives were the same; and his whole correspondence does not furnish a single case from which even an enemy would infer that he was capable, under any circumstances, of stooping to the employ

ment of duplicity. No truth can be uttered with more confidence than that his ends were always upright, and his means always pure. He exhibits the rare example of a politician to whom wiles were absolutely unknown, and whose professions to foreign governments and to his own countrymen were always sincere. In him was fully exemplified the real distinction which forever exists between wisdom and cunning, and the importance as well as truth of the maxim that 'honesty is the best policy.'

"If Washington possessed ambition, that passion was, in his bosom, so regulated by principles, or controlled by circumstances, that it was neither vicious nor turbulent. Intrigue was never employed as the means of its gratification, nor was personal aggrandizement its object. The various high and important stations to which he was called by the public voice were unsought by himself; and in consenting to fill them, he seems rather to have yielded to a general conviction that the interests of his country would be thereby promoted, than to his particular inclination. Neither the extraordinary partiality of the American people, the extravagant praises which were bestowed upon him, nor the inveterate opposition and malignant calumnies which he experienced, had any visible influence upon his conduct. The cause is to be looked for in the texture of his mind. him, that innate and unassuming modesty which adulation would have offended, which the voluntary plaudits of millions could not betray into indiscretion, and which never obtruded upon others his claims to superior consideration, was happily blended with a high and correct sense of personal dignity, and with a just consciousness of that respect which is due to station. Without exertion, he could maintain the happy medium between that arrogance which wounds and that facility which allows the office to be degraded in the person who fills it.

In

"It is impossible to contemplate the great events which have occurred in the United States under the auspices of Washington, without ascribing them, in some measure, to him. If we ask the causes of the prosperous issue of a war, against the successful termination of which there were so many probabilities; of the good which was produced, and the ill which was avoided during an administration fated to contend with the strongest prejudices that a combination of circumstances and of passions could produce; of the constant favor of the great mass of his fellow citizens, and of the confidence which, to the last moment of his life, they reposed in him;-the answer, so far as these causes may be found in his character, will furnish a lesson well meriting the attention of those who