PREFACE.

"THE just man does not permit the several elements within him to meddle with one another, or any of them to do the work of others; but he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master, and is at peace with himself: and when he has bound together the three principles within him-which may be compared to the middle, higher, and lower divisions of the scale and the intermediate intervalswhen he has bound together all these, and is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he will begin to act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or some affair of politics or private business."* Such was the ideal leader described in Plato's "Republic;" such was the man who founded the American Republic, nearly two thousand years afterwards.

The mind of George Washington was a singularly welladjusted and evenly-balanced one. His mark was set on

* Plato's "Republic," iv. 443 (Jowett's Translation).

life, not by the unnatural development of any special virtue or vice, but by the due harmony and power which regulated and brought to perfection the various elements of his character. "In him Nature did no miracle, but her best."

The fact of this evenness, and absence of special development, makes the history of his life difficult to write. It is the irregularities, the eccentricities, the ruggedness of a character, which furnish anecdotes and incidents.

The circumstances of Washington's career were indeed varied enough, involved as they were with the principal events of the American assertion of independence, but through them all the man moves on with a calm and stately tread, exhibiting to us perhaps more than anything else the nobility of common sense.

In making the following brief sketch, I have been obliged to dwell upon the outward features of his career to exemplify his character. This must be my excuse if I have seemed to introduce too much of military detail; but at the same time I would have it remembered that it is Washington, and not the history of America, I have tried to sketch.

My chief authority has been the graphic Life by Washington Irving, which I have quoted freely. The other sources from which I have drawn my materials have been "Life and Letters of Washington," edited by Jared Sparks; "Mahon's History of England," "Bancroft's History of the United States," "Upham's Life of Washington," and "Recollections of Mount Vernon," by Lossing.

PREFACE.

I have tried shortly to bring before those who do not know these detailed histories of this great leader of his times some idea of his patriotism and goodness, and to show by the outlines of his life how true is the description of him which Thackeray puts into the mouth of one of his heroes:"To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune, to be daunted by no difficulty, to keep heart when all have lost it, to go through intrigue spotless, and to forego even ambition when the end is acquired. Who can say this is not greatness ?"

F. M. O.