to those who had consecrated their blood to the public weal. The Omnipotent, who allots great enjoyment as the meed of great exertion, had ordained that America should be free; but that she should learn to value the blessing by the price of its acquisition. She shall go to a "wealthy place," but her way is "through fire and through water." Many a generous chief must bleed, and many a gallant youth sink, at his side, into the surprised grave; the field must be heaped with slain; the purple torrent must roll, ere the angel of peace descend with his olive. It is here, amid devastation, and horror, and death, that WASHINGTON must reap his laurels, and engrave his trophies on the shields of immortality.. Shall Delaware and Princeton-shall Monmouth and York-But I may not particularize; far less repeat the tale which babes recite, which poets sing, and fame has published to the listening world. Every scene of his action was a scene of his triumph. Now, he saved the republic by more than Fabian caution; now, he avenged her by more than Carthagenian fierceness. While, at every stroke, her forests and her hills reechoed to her shout, "The sword of the LORD and of WASHINGTON!" Nor was this the vain applause of partiality and enthusiasm. The blasted schemes of Britain; her broken and her captive hosts, proclaimed the terror of his arms. Skilled were her chiefs, and brave her legions; but bravery and skill rendered them a conquest more worthy of WASHINGTON. True, he suffered, in his turn, repulse and even defeat. It was both natural and needful. Unchequered with reverse, his story would have resembled rather the fictions of romance, than the truth of narrative; and had he been neither defeated nor repulsed, we had never seen all the grandeur of his soul. He arrayed himself in fresh honors by that which ruins even the great-vicissitude. He could not only subdue an enemy, but what is infinitely more, he could subdue misfortune. With an equanimity which gave temperance to victory, and cheerfulness to disaster, he balanced the fortunes of

the state. In the face of hostile prowess; in the midst of mutiny and treason; surrounded with astonishment, irresolution and despondence, WASHINGTON remained erect, unmoved, invincible. Whatever ills America might endure in maintaining her rights, she exulted that she had nothing to fear from her commander-inchief. The event justified her most sanguine presages. That invisible hand which girded him at first, continued to guard and to guide him through the successive stages of the revolution. Nor did he ac

count it a weakness to bend the knee in homage to its supremacy, and prayer for its direction. This was the armor of WASHINGTON; this the salvation of his country.

The hope of her reduction at length abandoned; her war of liberty brought, in the establishment of independence, to that honorable conclusion for which it had been undertaken, the hour arrived when he was to resign the trust which he had accepted with diffidence. To a mind less pure and elevated, the situation of America would have furnished the pretext, as well as the means, of military usurpation. Talents equal to daring enterprise; the derangement of public affairs; unbounded popularity; and the devotion of a suffering army, would have been to every other a strong, and to almost any other, an irresistible temptation. In WASHINGTON they did not produce even the pain of self-denial. They added the last proof of his disinterestedness; and imposed on his country the last obligation to gratitude. Impenetrable by corrupting influence; deaf to honest but erring solicitation; irreconcileable with every disloyal sentiment, he urged the necessity, and set the example of laying down, in peace, arms assumed for the common defence.* But to separate from the companions of his danger and his glory, was, even for WASHINGTON, a difficult task. About to leave them forever, a thousand

*Morris' Oration.

sensations rushed upon his heart, and all the soldier melted in the man. He, who has no tenderness, has no magnanimity. WASHINGTON could vanquish, and WASHINGTON Could weep. Never was affection more cordially reciprocated. The grasped hand: the silent anguish; the spontaneous tear trickling down the scarred cheek; the wistful look, as he passed, after the warrior who should never again point their way to victory; form a scene for nature's painter, and for nature's bard.

But we must not lose, in our sensibility, the remembrance of his penetration, his prudence, his regard of public honor, and of public faith. Abhorring outrage; jealous for the reputation, and dreading the excesses, of even a gallant army, flushed with conquest, prompted by incendiaries, and sheltered by a semblance of right, his last act of authority is to dismiss them to their homes without entering the capital. Accompanied with a handful of troops, he repairs to the council of the states, and, through them, surrenders to his country the sword which he had drawn in her defence. Singular phenomenon! WASHINGTON becomes a private citizen. He exchanges supreme command for the tranquillity of domestic life. Go, incomparable man! to adorn no less the civic virtues, than the splendid achievements of the field: go, rich in the consciousness of thy high deserts: go, with the admiration of the world, with the plaudit of millions, and the orisons of millions more for thy temporal and thine eternal bliss!

The glory of WASHINGTON seemed now complete. While the universal voice proclaimed that he might decline, with honor, every future burden, it was a wish and an opinion almost as universal, that he would not jeopardize the fame which he had so nobly won. Had personal considerations swayed his mind, this would have been his own decision. But, untutored in the philosophism of the age, he had not learned to separate the maxims of wisdom from the injunctions of

duty. His soul was not debased by that moral cowardice which fears to risk popularity for the general good. Having assisted in the formation of an efficient government which he had refused to dictate or enforce at the mouth of his cannon, he was ready to contribute the weight of his character to insure its effect. And his country rejoiced in an opportunity of testifying, that, much as she loved and trusted others, she still loved and trusted him most. Hailed, by her unanimous suffrage, the pilot of the state, he approaches the awful helm, and grasping it with equal firmness and ease, demonstrates that forms of power cause no embarrassment to him.

In so novel an experiment, as a nation framing a government for herself under no impulse but that of reason; adopting it through no force but the force of conviction; and putting it into operation without bloodshed or violence, it was all-important that her first magistrate should possess her unbounded goodwill. Those elements of discord which lurked in the diversity of local interest; in the collision of political theories; in the irritations of party; in the disappointed or gratified ambition of individuals; and which, notwithstanding her graceful transition, threatened the harmony of America, it was for WASHINGTON alone to control and repress. His tried integrity, his ardent patriotism, were instead of a volume of arguments for the excellence of that system which he approved and supported. Among the simple and honest, whom no artifice was omitted to ensnare, there were thousands who knew little of the philosophy of government, and less of the nice machinery of the constitution; but they knew that WASHINGTON Was wise and good; they knew it was impossible that he should betray them; and by this they were rescued from the fangs of faction. Ages will not furnish so instructive a comment on that cardinal virtue of republicans, confidence in the men of their choice; nor a more salutary antidote against the pestilential principle, that the soul of a re

public is jealousy. At the commencement of her federal government, mistrust would have ruined America; in confidence, she found her safety.

The re-appearance of WASHINGTON as a statesman, excited the conjecture of the old world, and the anxiety of the new. His martial fame had fixed a criterion, however inaccurate, of his civil administration. Military genius does neither confer nor imply political ability. Whatever merit may be attached to the faculty of arranging the principles, and prosecuting the details, of an army, it must be conceded that vaster comprehensions belong to the statesman. Ignorance, vanity, the love of paradox, and the love of mischief, affecting to sneer at the "mystery of government,' have, indeed, taught, that common sense and common honesty are his only requisites. The nature of things and the experience of every people, in every age, teach a different doctrine. America had multitudes who possessed both those qualities, but she had only one WASHINGTON. To adjust, in the best compromise, a thousand interfering views, so as to effect the greatest good of the whole with the least inconvenience to the parts; to curb the dragon of faction by means which insure the safety of public liberty; to marshal opinion and prejudice among the auxiliaries of the law; in fine, to touch the mainspring of national agency, so as to preserve the equipoise of its powers, and to make the feeblest movements of the extremities accord with the impulse at the centre, is only for genius of the highest order. To excel equally in military and political science, has been the praise of a few chosen spirits, among whom, with a proud preference; we enrol the father of our country.

It was the fortune of WASHINGTON to direct transactions of which the repetition is hardly within the limits of human possibilities. When he entered on his first presidency, all the interests of the continent were vibrating through the arch of political uncertainty. The departments of the new government were to be mark