he knew him to be an intriguer. He could be silent, he could not feign; simulation and dissimulation formed no part of his character. Reserved, cautious, thinking before he spoke, I can find no act of his civil life which implies the least insincerity, the least want of ingenuousness in the man. *

It has been said Washington was not a great soldier; but certainly he created an army out of the roughest materials, outgeneralled all that Britain could send against him, and in the midst of poverty and distress, organized victory. He was not brilliant and rapid. He was slow, defensive, and victorious. He made "an empty bag stand upright," which Franklin says is "hard." Some men command the world, or hold its admiration by their Ideas or by their Intellect. Washington had neither Original Ideas, nor a deeply cultured mind. He commands by his Integrity, by his Justice. He loved Power by instinct, and strong Government by reflective choice. Twice he was made Dictator, with absolute power, and never abused the awful and despotic trust. The monarchic soldiers and civilians would make him king. He trampled on their offer, and went back to his fields of corn and tobacco at Mount Vernon. The grandest act of his public life was to give up his power; the most magnanimous deed of his private life was to liberate his slaves.

Washington is the first man of his type; when will there be another? As yet the American rhetoricians do not dare tell half his excellence; but the people should not complain.

Cromwell is the greatest Anglo-Saxon who was ever a Ruler on a large scale. In intellect he was immensely superior to Washington; in integrity, immeasurably below him. For one thousand years no

king in Christendom has shown such greatness, or gives us so high a type of manly virtue. He never dissembled. He sought nothing for himself. In him there was no unsound spot; nothing little or mean in his character. The whole was clean and presentable. We think better of mankind because he lived, adorning the earth with a life so noble. Shall we make an Idol of him, and worship it with huzzas on the Fourth of July, and with stupid Rhetoric on other days? Shall we build him a great monument, founding it in a slave pen? His glory already covers the Continent. More than two hundred places bear his name. He is revered as the "The Father of his Country." The people are his memorial. The New York Indians hold this tradition of him. "Alone, of all white men," say they, "he has been admitted to the Indian Heaven, because of his justice to the Red Men. He lives in a great palace, built like a fort. All the Indians, as they go to Heaven, pass by, and he himself is in his uniform, a sword at his side, walking to and fro. They bow reverently with great humility. He returns the salute, but says nothing." Such is the reward of his Justice to the Red Men. God be thanked for such a man.

THEODORE PARKER, clergyman and controversialist, was born at Lexington, Mass., August 24, 1810, and died at Florence, Italy, May 10, 1860. He studied divinity at Cambridge, and was settled over the Unitarian Society at West Roxbury, in June, 1837. Mr. Parker was one of the earliest advocates of temperance and anti-slavery, writing and speaking much in the latter cause especially, and was plain, outspoken and uncompromising, in the utterance of his convictions. He published numerous sermons and addresses, and delivered many lectures. Our extracts are from a lecture on Washington prepared in 1858, and published after his decease with three others, on Franklin, John Adams, and Jefferson, under the title "Historic Americans." Boston, 1870. 12mo.

GEORGE BANCROFT.

1858.

ON the fifteenth day of June (1775), it was voted to appoint a general. Johnson, of Maryland, nominated George Washington; and as he had been brought forward "at the particular request of the people in New England," he was elected by ballot unanimously.

Washington was then forty-three years of age. In stature he a little exceeded six feet; his limbs were sinewy and well proportioned; his chest broad; his figure stately, blending dignity of presence with ease. His robust constitution had been tried and invigorated by his early life in the wilderness, his habit of occupation out of doors, and his rigid temperance; so that few equalled him in strength of arm or power of endurance. His complexion was florid; his hair dark brown; his head in its shape perfectly round. His broad nostrils seemed formed to give expression and escape to scornful anger. His dark blue eyes, which were deeply set, had an expression of resignation, and an earnestness that was almost sadness. *

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His faculties were so well balanced and combined, that his constitution, free from excess, was tempered evenly with all the elements of activity, and his mind resembled a well ordered commonwealth; his passions, which had the intensest vigor, owned allegiance to reason; and, with all the fiery quickness of his spirit, his impetuous and massive will was held in check by consummate judgment.

He had in his

composition a calm, which gave him in moments of highest excitement the power of self-control, and enabled him to excel in patience, even when he had most cause for disgust. Washington was offered a command when there was little to bring out the unorganized resources of the continent but his own influence, and authority was connected with the people by the most frail, most attenuated, scarcely discernible threads; yet vehement as was his nature, impassioned as was his courage, he so restrained his ardor, that he never failed continuously to exert the attracting power of that influence, and never exerted it so sharply as to break its force.

In secrecy he was unsurpassed; but his secrecy had the character of prudent reserve, not of cunning or concealment.

His understanding was lucid, and his judgment accurate; so that his conduct never betrayed hurry or confusion. No detail was too minute for his personal inquiry and continued supervision; and at the same time he comprehended events in their widest aspects and relations. He never seemed above the object that engaged his attention, and he was always equal, without an effort, to the solution of the highest questions, even when there existed no precedents to guide his decision.

In this way he never drew to himself admiration for the possession of any one quality in excess, never made in council any one suggestion that was sublime but impracticable, never in action took to himself the praise or the blame of undertakings astonishing in conception, but beyond his means of execution. It was the most wonderful accomplishment of this man that placed upon the largest theatre of events, at the head of the greatest revolution in human affairs, he never failed

to observe all that was possible, and at the same time to bound his aspirations by that which was possible.

A slight tinge in his character, perceptible only to the close observer, revealed the region from which he sprung, and he might be described as the best specimen of manhood as developed in the south; but his qualities were so faultlessly proportioned, that his whole country rather claimed him as its choicest representative, the most complete expression of all its attainments and aspirations. He studied his country and conformed to it. His countrymen felt that he was the best type of America, and rejoiced in it, and were proud of it. They lived in his life, and made his success and his praise their own.

Profoundly impressed with confidence in God's Providence, and exemplary in his respect for the forms of public worship, no philosopher of the eighteenth century was more firm in the support of freedom of religious opinion; none more tolerant, or more remote from bigotry; but belief in God and trust in His overruling power, formed the essence of his character. Divine wisdom not only illumines the spirit, it inspires the will. Washington was a man of action, and not of theory or words; his creed appears in his life, not in his professions, which burst. from him very rarely, and only at those great moments of crisis in the fortunes of his country, when earth and heaven seemed actually to meet, and his emotions became too intense for suppression; but his whole being was one continued act of faith in the eternal, intelligent, moral order of the universe. Integrity was so completely the law of his nature, that a planet would sooner have shot from its sphere, than he have departed from his uprightness, which was so constant, that it often seemed to be almost impersonal.