ON THE CHARACTER OF GENERAL WASHINGTON.

WHOEVER has perused the preceding Letters will, I trust, concur with me in the following reflections.

1. That nothing could possibly place the character of this distinguished statesman in a more estimable light, than that of beholding the same individual, whose military exploits had spread his fame over the universe, and who had been invested with supreme power in the country where he was born, in the midst of all his various public avocations, carrying on an extensive correspondence with the native of a distant country, on agricultural and other general inquiries of a similar nature.

2. That those who are blest with a reflecting and philosophic mind, must contemplate with pleasure and delight a person, elevated by the voice of his fellowcitizens to the summit of political authority, who, instead of wishing to aggrandize himself, and to extend his power, was anxiously bent to quit that situation, to which so many others would have fondly aspired, and to return to the comfort and enjoyment of private life; belying thus the insinuations of those malignant spirits who are perpetually railing against the talents and virtues which, conscious of wanting themselves, they do not believe that others can possess.

3. Is there, on the whole, any individual, either in ancient or modern history, who has prouder claims to distinction and pre-eminence, than the great character

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whose letters this volume contains? His military talents were early celebrated; first in the service of Great Britain, and afterwards in that of America. His powers as a statesman, and as the founder of a Constitution, which, with British prejudices, I may consider as inferior to our own, but which promises to secure the happiness of the great nation it was formed to govern, cannot possibly be questioned. His public virtue, as the uncorrupted magistrate of a free people, who reluctantly received supreme authority, when it was judged necessary for the public good for him to assume it, and who anxiously wished to resign it into their hands, when it could be done with public safety, can hardly be equalled in history. His literary endowments were unquestionably of a superior order. His letters in this collection, his addresses to the American Congress, and his farewell oration when he quitted, for the last time, the Presidency of the United States, are models of each species of composition. His closing a well-spent life, after a short illness, without having his strength or faculties impaired by any previous disorder, or any untoward circumstances having occurred that could materially affect his feelings, or could possibly tarnish his fame, is an uncommon instance of good fortune. The scene in which he acted also, and the object which he achieved, are the most memorable which history furnishes. For it was such a man alone, who, by combining the force and commanding the confidence of thirteen separate states, could have dissolved those ties which subjected America to Europe, and to whom the political separation of two worlds is to be attributed. But, above all, what distinguished this celebrated warrior and statesman is, that to all those military and public talents, and to those literary endowments, which are so rarely united in the same person, he added the practice of every virtue that could adorn the private individual. It were in vain for me to attempt adequately to express the ideas I entertain of a character, in every respect so peculiarly splendid. The pen of the

immortal Shakspeare is alone competent to the task, and on the tombstone of the illustrious WASHINGTON let it be engraved

His life was gentle, and the elements

So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world,-This was a man,
take him for all in all,

We shall not look upon his like again.*

*Julius Cæsar, Act V. Scene 5; and Hamlet, Act I. Scene 2.