to the beneficent agency of the Supreme Being. Charitable and humane, he was liberal to the poor, and kind to those in distress. As a husband, son, and brother, he was tender and affectionate. Without vanity, ostentation, or pride, he never spoke of himself or his actions, unless required by circumstances which concerned the public interests. As he was free from envy, so he had the good fortune to escape the envy of others, by standing on an elevation which none could hope to attain. If he had one passion more strong than another, it was love of his country. The purity and ardor of his patriotism were commensurate with the greatness of its object. Love of country in him was invested with the sacred obligation of a duty; and from the faithful discharge of this duty he never swerved for a moment, either in thought or deed, through the whole period of his eventful career.

Such are some of the traits in the character of Washington, which have acquired for him the love and veneration of mankind. If they are not marked with the brilliancy, extravagance, and eccentricity, which in other men have excited the astonishment of the world, so neither are they tarnished by the follies nor disgraced by the crimes of those men. It is the happy combination of rare talents and qualities, the harmonious union of the intellectual and moral powers, rather than the dazzling splendor of any one trait, which constitute the grandeur of his character. If the title of great man ought to be reserved for him, who cannot be charged with an indiscretion or a vice, who spent his life in establishing the independence, the glory, and durable prosperity of his country, who succeeded in all that he undertook, and whose successes were never won at the expense of honor

justice, integrity, or by the sacrifice of a single principle, this title will not be denied to Washington.*

JARED SPARKS was born at Willington, Conn., May 10, 1789, and died at Cambridge, Mass., March 4, 1866. He graduated at Harvard College in 1815, studied theology at Cambridge, and also became one of the conductors of the North American Review, of which he was sole proprietor and editor in 1823-30. He was chaplain of the House of Representatives in 1821; McLean professor of history at Harvard in 1839-49, and president in 184952, when he resigned on account of ill health. Mr. Sparks published a number of extremely important historical and biographical works, "which show thorough research, candid judgment, dispassionate criticism, and accuracy and simplicity of style." The " Writings of George Washington with life of the author," 12 vols., 8vo, Boston, 1834-7, cost him nine years of labor, including researches in 1828 in the archives of London and Paris, then opened for the first time for historical purposes. Vol. I, which contains the Life of Washington, and from which we quote, was published (with Vol. XII) in 1837, and was issued for separate sale in 1839, '53, '54 and 1855. An abridgment by the author was published in 1843-2 vols.,

12mo.

* Compare Mallet du Pan, page 129.—ED.

LORD BROUGHAM.

1838.

How grateful the relief which the friend of mankind, the lover of virtue, experiences when, turning from the contemplation of such a character, (Napoleon,) his eye rests upon the greatest man of our own or of any age; the only one upon whom an epithet so thoughtlessly lavished by men, to foster the crimes of their worst enemies, may be innocently and justly bestowed! In Washington we truly behold a marvellous contrast to almost every one of the endowments and the vices which we have been contemplating; and which are so well fitted to excite a mingled admiration, and sorrow, and abhorrence. With none of that brilliant genius which dazzles ordinary minds; with not even any remarkable quickness of apprehension; with knowledge less than almost all persons in the middle ranks, and many well educated of the humbler classes possess; this eminent person is presented to our observation clothed in attributes as modest, as unpretending, as little calculated to strike or astonish, as if he had passed unknown through some secluded region of private life. But he had a judgment sure and sound; a steadiness of mind which never suffered any passion, or even any feeling to ruffle its calm; a strength of understanding which worked rather than forced its way through all obstacles,— removing or avoiding rather than overleaping them. If profound sagacity, unshaken steadiness of purpose, the entire subjugation of all the passions which carry havoc through ordinary minds, and oftentimes lay waste the fairest prospects of greatness,-nay, the discipline

of those feelings which are wont to lull or to seduce genius, and to mar and to cloud over the aspect of virtue herself,-joined with, or rather leading to the most absolute self-denial, the most habitual and exclusive devotion to principle, if these things can constitute a great character, without either quickness of apprehension, or resources of information, or inventive powers, or any brilliant quality that might dazzle the vulgar,—then surely Washington was the greatest man that ever lived in this world uninspired by Divine wisdom, and unsustained by supernatural virtue.

Nor could the human fancy create a combination of qualities, even to the very wants and defects of the subject, more perfectly fitted for the scenes in which it was his lot to bear the chief part; whether we regard the war which he conducted, the political constitution over which he afterwards presided, or the tempestuous times through which he had finally to guide the bark himself had launched. Averse as his pure mind and temperate disposition naturally was from the atrocities of the French Revolution, he yet never leant against the ✓ cause of liberty, but clung to it even when degraded by the excesses of its savage votaries. Towards France, while he reprobated her aggressions upon other states, and bravely resisted her pretensions to control his own, he yet never ceased to feel the gratitude which her aid to the American cause had planted eternally in every American bosom; and for the freedom of a nation which had followed the noble example of his countrymen in breaking the chains of a thousand years, he united with those countrymen in cherishing a natural sympathy and regard. Towards England, whom he had only known as a tyrant, he never, even, in the worst times of French turbulence at

home, and injury to foreign states, could unbend from the attitude of distrust and defiance into which the conduct of her sovereign and his Parliament, not unsupported by her people, had forced him, and in which the war had left him. Nor was there ever among all the complacent self-delusions with which the fond conceits of national vanity are apt to intoxicate us, one more utterly fantastical than the notion. wherewith the politicians of the Pitt school were wont to flatter themselves and beguile their followers,-that simply because the Great American would not yield either to the bravadoes of the Republican envoy, or the fierce democracy of Jefferson, he therefore had become weary of republics, and a friend to monarchy and to England. In truth his devotion to liberty, and his intimate persuasion that it can only be enjoyed under the republican scheme, constantly gained strength to the end of his glorious life; and his steady resolution to hold the balance even between contending extremes at home, as well as to expel any advance from abroad incompatible with perfect independence, was not more dictated by the natural justice of his disposition, and the habitual sobriety of his views, than it sprang from a profound conviction that a commonwealth is most effectually served by the commanding prudence which checks all excesses, and guarantees it against the peril that chiefly besets popular governments.

His courage, whether in battle or in council, was as perfect as might be expected from this pure and steady temper of soul. A perfect just man, with a thoroughly firm resolution never to be misled by others, any more than to be by others overawed; never to be seduced or betrayed, or hurried away by his own weaknesses or selfdelusions, any more than by other men's arts; nor ever to be dis