Hard is the task of the man who at this late day attempts to sayanything new about Washington. But perhaps it may be possible to unsaysome of the things which have been said, and which, though they were atone time new, have never at any time been strictly true.
The character of Washington, emerging splendid from the dust and tumultof those great conflicts in which he played the leading part, has passedsuccessively into three media of obscuration, from each of which hisfigure, like the sun shining through vapors, has received some disguiseof shape and color. First came the mist of mythology, in which wediscerned the new St. George, serene, impeccable, moving through anorchard of ever-blooming cherry-trees, gracefully vanquishing dragonswith a touch, and shedding fragrance and radiance around him. Out ofthat mythological mist we groped our way, to find ourselves beneath therolling clouds of oratory, above which the head of the hero waspinnacled in remote grandeur, like a sphinx poised upon a volcanic peak,isolated and mysterious. That altitudinous figure still dominates thecloudy landscapes of the after-dinner orator; but the frigid, academicmind has turned away from it, and looking through the fog of criticismhas descried another Washington, not really an American, not amazingly ahero, but a very decent English country gentleman, honorable,courageous, good, shrewd, slow, and above all immensely lucky.
Now here are two of the things often said about Washington which need,if I mistake not, to be unsaid: first, that he was a solitary andinexplicable phenomenon of greatness; and second, that he was not anAmerican.
Solitude, indeed, is the last quality that an intelligent student of hiscareer would ascribe to him. Dignified and reserved he was, undoubtedly;and as this manner was natural to him, he won more true friends byusing it than if he had disguised himself in a forced familiarity andworn his heart upon his sleeve. But from first to last he was a man whodid his work in the bonds of companionship, who trusted his comrades inthe great enterprise even though they were not his intimates, and whoneither sought nor occupied a lonely eminence of unshared glory. He wasnot of the jealous race of those who
"Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne";
nor of the temper of George III., who chose his ministers for theirvacuous compliancy. Washington was surrounded by men of similar thoughnot of equal strength—Franklin, Hamilton, Knox, Greene, the Adamses,Jefferson, Madison. He stands in history not as a lonely pinnacle likeMount Shasta, elevated above the plain
"By drastic lift of pent volcanic fires";
but as the central summit of a mountain range, with all his noblefellowship of kindred peaks about him, enhancing his unquestionedsupremacy by their glorious neighborhood and their great support.
Among these men whose union in purpose and action made the strength andstability of the republic, Washington was first, not only in thelargeness of his nature, the loftiness of his desires, and the vigor ofhis will, but also in that representative quality which makes a man ableto stand as the true hero of a great people. He had an instinctive powerto divine, amid the confusions of rival interests and the cries offactional strife, the new aims and hopes, the vital