public. Stuart resided at Germantown, at the period that he painted the portrait of the great American; and the General rode out to sit to him; on one of which occasions, the painter made him the following jocular compliment: "General, I have always felt much indebted to you for your kindness; but my greatest obligation to you is, that you never attempted to paint portraits; for you have had such perfect success in all you have undertaken, that if you had been a painter I should have had no hopes."

Such was GEORGE WASHINGTON; a man, who, made great by nature, and still greater by virtue; self-educated, and depending more on the suggestions of genius than the lessons of science and the precepts of learning, for his preeminent success in life, presents us with a model of human perfection, which, combining simple grandeur with unaffected modesty, has never been equalled by the possessors of supreme authority.

In reviewing with the cool and impartial eye of criticism, the whole range of history, ancient and modern, we meet with no character that can aspire to equal, in all the points of true greatness that of George Washington. Some, it is true, are more splendid and dazzling; others more distinguished for daring enterprise; and others again, more brilliant and illustrious, on account of their profound learning, varied acquirements, glittering eloquence, or commanding and exalted ambition, reckless of consequences, and intent solely upon renown. Indeed, in isolated and detached features of character, he had innumerable superiors; but, in the grand whole, of what constitutes true glory, and makes a hero, without making a villain, Washington had no equal, but stands alone a monument of the beneficence of Heaven in its creation of a great man, whose greatness was combined with virtue, and whose never fading lustre was untarnished by one vice-undimned by one crime. Fallible, it is true, he was; but it was the fallibility of great and well poised genius, which so rarely erred, that men of less exalted natures looked upon him as a standard of perfection, and not without reason; for time and experience put the great seal of wisdom on his deeds, and those most opposed eventually yielded to him their approbation and applause; as if he possessed the faculty of penetrating beyond the mist of human passions around him, to discern the truth which lay unobscured to his eye, in the brightness of the future; and of

shaking off from his mind all those living prejudices which, like devouring insects, prey upon the reason of man, defacing his intellect, obscuring his judgment, and debasing his moral to the grossness of his physical nature.

Rather

We recognise in Washington, the three great characters of a warrior, a statesman, and a legislator. As a general, he was cool, skilful, inventive, and, mixing intrepidity with prudence, he exhibited that happy concord of qualities which could dash on to achieve victory, or with cautious prudence stand aloof from battle, or effect a secure retreat. passive than active in his mind, more disposed to wait for the event, and resist it, than to anticipate it, and miscarry by false calculation, the defective nature of his military material, confirmed him in the habit of this propensity. Gifted with foresight and penetration, he was never taken by surprise; and fertile in expedients, he never suffered himself to sink under the difficulties that surrounded him. His military genius, however, cannot fairly be appreciated by his military practice. His letters breathe the fiery spirit of the curbed war-horse, chafing for action, but restrained by prudence: and having wisdom enough to bend to circumstances, instead of rushing, with reckless and headlong rashness, upon measures pregnant equally with glory, with ruin and defeat. It was a great quality of his mind, to know the exact measure of his strength, and to have prudence not to risk that strength in dubious conflicts, where defeat would have amounted to extirpation, and even victory might have involved ruin. There was wisdom, therefore, blended with his valour; and prudence with his skill and address-qualities which, though not so brilliant as impetuosity and daring, yet were more useful to his country, and more beneficial to mankind.

As a statesman, Washington discarded theory for practice, and preferred experience to speculation. He was a selfformed politician, made by circumstances, observation and practice; not fashioned by books in the solitude of the closet, but created by contact with mankind, and having for his object the happiness of society, instead of the vanity or passions of one portion only of that great family, whose happiness he was destined to promote.

He was a republican, on the broad principles of equal rights and public virtue: advocating rational liberty under the sanction and guarantee of wholesome laws, whose effi

cacy should equally protect virtue, industry and order, from lawless violence, licentious laxity, or disorganising freedom. His political principles are to be discerned in the constitution of the United States; where liberty, reduced into system, breathes nothing but benevolence and love, law and order; and which has extorted the admiration and applause of all mankind, who favour the equal rights of man, in the pursuit and enjoyment of happiness.

In his transactions with foreign nations, as well as in his intercourse with his fellow citizens, his maxim was that of truth, sincerity and frankness. Without making ostentatious professions of his honesty, he was never known to have been guilty of duplicity, deceit, or equivocation. TRUTH was the god of his idolatry; and from native dignity of soul, as well as from an enlightened selfishness, he always held and acted on the principle of honesty being the best policy.

I shall conclude this brief outline of the life of WASHINGTON, by quoting the portrait of his character drawn by the pen of THOMAS JEFFERSON, which, as it cannot be supposed to flatter, must be estimated as rigidly faithful on the side of his defects, and sparingly just to his undeniable merits. Mr. Jefferson says: "I think I knew the General intimately and thoroughly; and were I called on to delineate his character, it should be in terms like these:"

"His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention, or imagination, but sure in conclusion. Hence the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils of war, where hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best; and certainly no general ever planned his battles more judiciously. But if deranged during the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in a readjustment. The consequence was, that he often failed in the field, and rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York. He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern, Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose what

ever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure; his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motive of interest, or consanguinity, of friendship, or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally irritable and high toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendancy over it. If ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath. In his expenses he was honourable, but exact; liberal in contributions to whatever promised utility; but frowning and unyielding on all visionary projects and all unworthy calls on his charity. His heart was not warm in its affections; but he exactly calculated every man's value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it. His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble; the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback. Although, in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation; his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short and embarrassed; yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired by conversation with the world; for his education was merely reading, writing and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day. His time was employed in action chiefly, reading little, and that only in agriculture and English history. His correspondence became necessarily extensive, and, with journalising his agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his leisure hours within doors. On the whole, his character was, in its mass perfect, in nothing bad, in few points indifferent;'and it may truly be said, that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man our everlasting remembrance. For his was the singular destiny and merit of leading the armies of his country successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting its counsels through the birth of a government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying

the laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example."

Too great to study the art, or practice the meanness of adventitious fame, he never devised any measure for effect, or planned means by which to captivate the popular mind by shallow devices. Intrinsically powerful, he disdained the little arts by which pretenders to greatness attempt to catch the plaudits of the credulous ignorant, who are so often deceived by the professions of the demagogue, and imposed on by the slight-hand adroitness of the mountebank.

It was this conscious integrity of soul that made him sensibly alive to the defamation of the public press, which annoyed him beyond all proportion to its importance; and which, had he been able to view his own greatness and purity in its true light, as it struck the public, he would have disregarded in silent contempt, as too feeble and malignant to excite a painful feeling; however it might have been pointed by the malignity of Callender, the hatred of Bache, the ferocity of Duane, or the licentiousness of Freneau.

As such, it is scarcely within the boundaries of human possibility, that the world will ever again behold his paralfel; and it is almost reduced to certainty, that no American will ever arise to extort an equal degree of our veneration, gratitude and love.

END OF THE LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON.