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opportunity of developing itself, and of manifesting those fixed principles and that noble consistency which reigned alike throughout his civil and his military

career.

The character of Washington may want some of those poetical elements which dazzle and delight the multitude, but it possessed fewer inequalities, and a rarer union of virtues than perhaps ever fell to the lot of one man. Prudence, firmness, sagacity, moderation, an overruling judgment, an immovable justice, courage that never faltered, patience that never wearied, truth that disdained all artifice, magnanimity without alloy. It seems as if Providence had endowed him in a preeminent degree with the qualities requisite to fit him for the high destiny he was called upon to fulfil— to conduct a momentous revolution which was to form an era in the history of the world, and to inaugurate a new and untried government, which, to use his own words, was to lay the foundation" for the enjoyment of much purer civil liberty, and greater public happiness, than have hitherto been the portion of mankind."

The fame of Washington stands apart from every other in history; shining with a truer lustre and a more benignant glory. With us his memory remains a national property, where all sympathies throughout our widely-extended and diversified empire meet in unison. Under all dissensions and amid all the storms of party, his precepts and example speak to us from the grave with a paternal appeal; and his name-by all revered-forms a universal tie of brotherhood-a watchword of our Union.

"It will be the duty of the historian and the

1799.]

CONCLUSION.

321

sage of all nations," writes an eminent British statesman, (Lord Brougham,) "to let no occasion pass of commemorating this illustrious man, and until time shall be no more, will a test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom and virtue, be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Washington."

VOL. V.-21

APPENDIX.

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