we recall the gentle and scholarly Winthrop, the dashing Corcoran, the Highlander Cameron, the youthful, fearless Ellsworth, and Mrs. Caroline M. Kirkland. This charming woman and gifted writer, by her tireless and sincere devotion to the work of the Sanitary Fair, give up her life to the cause of her country as completely as the soldier who fell at the cannon's mouth.

Another great New Yorker, worthy of a place by the side of Wadsworth, has been frequently mentioned in this chapter. None during the serious time of the civil war performed his part with greater resolution, sterner justice, truer dignity, and more unblemished honor than John Adams Dix. The civic robe and the army uniform alike became him.

From the brief sketch given here it will be seen that the Empire City sent forth the last appeal for a peaceful solution of the sectional problem in 1861; that from her gates was forwarded the first relief for beleaguered federal forts; that at the first alarm, her best household regiment marched, with her neighbors of New England, to defend the national capital; and that to those troops, exclusively, was assigned the duty of protecting the White House-the Ark of the Covenant-from threatened danger. Her money was lavishly given, her best blood freely shed; her noblest women hourly strove to restore the Union to its original strength and power; and now, after many years of peace, prosperity, and unity throughout the land, it may truly be said that her labor was not in vain.

BoNwill

FORT LAFAYETTE.

DO WE KNOW GEORGE WASHINGTON?1

BY LEONARD IRVING.

In his introduction Mr. Lodge quotes Professor McMaster's rather ungracious sneer: "General Washington is known to us, and President Washington; but George Washington is an unknown man." In nothing does the criticism on the author of the History of the People of the United States we have somewhere encountered find such illustration or confirmation of its correctness as in these two sentences. Mr. McMaster has given us a brilliant, a vivid account of men's manners and opinions in the period of which he treats, beginning with 1783. But he accomplishes this mainly by reproducing upon his pages, as the result of infinite industry and a wonderful memory, the contemporary expressions or descriptions found in the newspapers of the day. We do, indeed, get a little wearied and confused at the conflicting sentiments which greet us from time to time, and we need to look closely to see just when he shifts the kaleidoscope from one journal or set of opinions to another. Nevertheless, we get a living picture of the days and years of old with their events, and the people moving athwart them. But-and now we come to our critic's remark—our author is lost whenever he ventures away from his kaleidoscope and treats us to an opinion of his own. He then gives us either "something true that is not new, or something new that is not true," and exhibits a woful lack of ordinary or historic judgment.

This is what is the matter with his judgment of Washington. He departs from the region of clear and undoubted facts. He hints and insinuates at possibilities of ugly discovery. He infers great evils from the half dozen occasions when Washington swore deep oaths, which we take leave to say, with a deep abhorrence of habitual profanity, seem to us simply evidences of the vigorous (and none the less Christian) manhood of Washington; for there are moments in such a life as his when the volcanoes of human nature must find an eruption in some such way. Mr. McMaster sneeringly refers to the fact of his refusing a salary, contrasting it with the story of his extorting a few shillings from a poor stone-mason's widow. Now all this is exceedingly disingenuous. Either Mr. McMaster

1 George Washington. By Henry Cabot Lodge. In 2 vols. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1891. (American Statesmen Series.)

should have said a great deal more, and related fully circumstances to corroborate his insinuations, or he should have said nothing at all. The bare innuendo is not at all historical. And neither is it historical to give half a fact or tell half a story. We are glad to see that Mr. Lodge gives the whole of the story about the mason's widow; and it turns out neither to be, nor to indicate by any means, what Professor McMaster would lead us to believe.

The towering excellence and nobility of George Washington is too much for some people. The Athenians, as Mr. Lodge reminds us, grew very tired of the "just" Aristides, and worked the "oyster-shell" scheme to get him out of their sight. "Men who are loudly proclaimed to be faultless," our author justly remarks, "always excite a certain kind of resentment. It is a dangerous eminence for any one to occupy." And so like the vulture, quick to scent carrion, many persons are eager to discover a fault in Washington, and are unduly excited and hurry to conclusions ahead of those the facts will warrant. It is silly to suppose or maintain that Washington was faultless. He was a splendid, healthy-natured man, and no goody-goody prig. But it is mean to be anxious to show that he possessed traits of meanness. The story of the mason's widow half told shatters our idol far worse than twice as many oaths uttered on suitable occasions. Were it really so, a noble nature would hang his head in sorrow; but before hanging the head, such a man would want to know the whole truth. The iconoclast, however, has not time to read the whole story, but is ready with his innuendo at once.

And it is certainly significant, very encouraging to the honest admirers of Washington, and to those nobler natures who rejoice in a character. that towers far above them, that one and another of these "bad" stories, as they come to be thoroughly read in all their details, fail after all to throw any real discredit upon our hero. The latest case in point is culled from the daily press at the very time of this writing. A paper was read at a woman's club by a lady; and the report went forth that this lady had proved by Washington's own letters, that he denied his mother's request to visit him or live with him at Mount Vernon, on the ground that he would be ashamed of her before his distinguished guests, and would not take the trouble to have her meals sent to her room by the servants. Now this looked pretty black. The buzzards who like to feed on ruined. reputations were delighted, and fastened on this happy revelation at once. One shouted forth his satisfaction in this wise: "If the document is genuine, and its veracity has not been questioned, it would appear that the hero of the hatchet story was not unlike the generality of sons." But

a little caution in receiving, and a little care in investigating, on the part of those who did not quite so much enjoy the odor of carrion, revealed an entirely harmless state of affairs. In the first place, the authoress of the paper read before the woman's club had not drawn the dreadful inferences attributed to her. "She simply meant to illustrate," says one who asked her the question, "the enormous social pressure in those days of which we are prone to think as times of primitive simplicity." And then a perusal of the letter of Washington itself discovers that there is no rude, unfeeling denial of a request, but the most tender solicitude for the comfort, the bodily and mental ease of the aged and devoutly revered parent. Of course, if one has an evil eye, the evil thing may be read in this very letter. But the natural conclusion of the unbiased, well-balanced mind will be such as will leave unsullied the fair reputation of Washington.

And here again, as in the case of Columbus, Irving must come in for his share of the flings from the modern scientific historian. It is a mortal offense for him to have had any admiration for the characters whose lifestory he has so charmingly told us. The genial, gentle, noble-minded, pure-hearted gentleman could not but feel an admiration for his heroes. But these qualities are not scientific, exclaim the critics. Perhaps not; but it is quite as undeniable that Irving was also a truth-loving gentleman, and he had science enough to get at the facts as far as it was possible in his day. He had no special faculty for evil interpretation of facts, but he seems to have had some for a right interpretation. At any rate, this latest book on Washington, written by no contemptible historical scholar, leaves the impression of a character quite as grand and lofty as Irving gave us.

If there is one thing which we gain by the reading of Mr. Lodge's volumes, it is the answer to the question suggested by Mr. McMaster's sneer, "Do we know George Washington, as distinct from General and President Washington?" We arise from their perusal with a very clear idea of the real man throughout the entire career, beginning with early youth and manhood, and ending with the years of retirement which preceded death. It is a pity Mr. McMaster could not have read these volumes earlier; but as many of the facts and incidents upon which Mr. Lodge's presentations of the "man" turn are not absent from Irving's earlier pages, it is somewhat surprising that our brilliant historian should have stood in such helpless distress before the real character of Washington, unable to fathom it, troubled with suspicions of coldness and hardness, haunted by possibilities of unutterable meannesses in private, in contrast with splendid generosity in public.

We shall not need, of course, in these pages to tell the story of a life

so familiar as that of Washington. Our aim will be to take our cue, in treating of it at all, from the book under consideration, but with special reference to an attempt to get before our minds George Washington the man, as his personality reveals itself in the great dividing periods of his life: in early youth and manhood; as soldier and general; and, very briefly, as statesman and president.

Of the earlier years of his life little is known, but much has been invented. The cherry-tree business we have all heard about ad nauseam. For all this mythology about Washington the world is indebted to Parson Weems. The audacity of this man's lying has immortalized himself, and has immortalized a Washington of Weems, hardly now to be dissevered in any mind from the Washington of reality. Mr. Lodge perhaps wisely has devoted several pages to an elaborate and "premeditated" attempt to kill this Weems as a biographer, but we doubt whether any one book can successfully extinguish the stories which this clergyman has scattered abroad. "To enter into any serious historical criticism of these stories," says Mr. Lodge, "would be to break a butterfly." A whole battery aimed at a butterfly would not be apt to hurt the creature greatly; it would merely be pushed gently out of the way by any current of air pressed on in advance of the heaviest cannon ball that succeeded in crossing its flight. Mr. Lodge's artillery of criticism we are afraid is doomed to the same disappointment. Weems' cherry-tree story still lives.

When Washington is sixteen years of age, and is entrusted with his first serious task-a man's work, even at that early age-we begin to get a more definite idea of who he is. This task was the result of an estimate of Washington by an English nobleman, a thorough man of the world, not easily imposed upon by appearances. And what had Lord Fairfax found in this young man? "A high and persistent courage, robust and calm sense, and, above all, unusual force of will and character." Another glimpse of the real George we obtain before he is twenty years old. His brother Lawrence, from whom he inherited Mount Vernon, being very ill with consumption, he accompanied him on a trip to the West Indies, and they spent some time at Barbadoes. Already had George Washington formed the habit of noting down the happenings of the days as they pass, and these notes unmistakably reflect the writer's character: "All through these notes," our author remarks, "we find the keenly observant spirit, and the evidence of a mind constantly alert to learn. We see also a pleasant, happy temperament, enjoying with hearty zest all the pleasures that youth and life could furnish. He who wrote these lines was evidently a vigorous, good-humored young fellow, with a

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