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to a 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 Carthaginian fiercenefs. While, at every stroke, her forests and her hills re-echoed to her shout, "The sword of the LORD and of WASHING TON!"-Nor was this the vain applause of tiality 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 honours by that which ruins even the great-Vicifsitude. 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 prowefs: 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 in chief. The event justified her most sanguine presages. That invisible hand which girded him at first, continued to guard and to guide him through the suc cefsive stages of the revolution. Nor did he account it a weakness to bend the knee in homage to its supremacy, and prayer for its direction. This was the armour of WASHING TON: This the salvation of his country.

The hope of her reduction at length aban doned; her war of liberty brought, in the estab lishment of independence, to that honourable 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 lefs pure and elevated, the situation of America would have furnished the pretext, as well as the means, of military usurpation. Talents equal to daring enterprize; 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 necefsity, and set the example, of laying down in peace, arms afsumed 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 for ever, a thousand 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.

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But we must not lose, in our sensibility, the remembrance of his penetration, his prudence, his regard of public honour, and of public faith. Abhorring outrage; jealous for the reputation, and dreading the excefses, 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 traquillity of domestic life. Go, incomparable man! to adorn no less the civic virtues, than the splendid atchievements 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 blifs!

The glory of WASHINGTON seemed now complete. While the universal voice proclaimed that he might decline, with honour, 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 afsisted 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 firmnefs 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 pofsefs her unbounded good-will. Those elements of discord which lurked in the diversity of local interest; in the collision of political theories; in the iritations 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 controul and reprefs. His tried integrity, his ardent patriotism, were instead of a volume of argu