timable consequences for
ancient Europe, would have been postponed, no one can tell how long,
perhaps for ever. Then the great mind of Washington conceived what the
morally debased, reposing enemy thought impossible. He crossed the
Delaware with his army in the night, amid masses of floating ice, and,
in the twilight of morning, assailed the inactive camp on the other
side. The picture reproduces the moment when the great general,--ahead
of the mass of the army, which had also just embarked, and part of which
are passing off from the shore, and part already struggling with the
driving ice,--is steering to the opposite shore in a small boat,
surrounded by eleven heroic figures, officers, farmers, soldiers, and
boatmen. The tall and majestic form of the man in whose hands at that
hour lay the fate of millions, rises from the group, standing slightly
bent, forward, with one foot on the bottom of the boat, the other on the
forward bench. His mild yet serious and commanding glance seems seeking
to pierce the mist of the farther shore and discover the enemy, while
intimations of the future grandeur of his country rise upon his mind.
Nothing of youthful rashness appears in the expression of this figure,
but the thoughtful artist has depicted the 'heart for any fate' of the
general and statesman in noble, vigorous, and faithful traits. And what
an impulse moves through the group of his companions! Their thought is,
'Forward, invincibly forward, for our country!' This is expressed in
their whole bearing, in every movement, in the eyes and features of all.
Under the influence of this thought they command the raging elements, so
that the masses of ice seem to dissolve before the will and energy of
these men. This is a picture by the sight of which, in this weary and
exhausted time, one can recover health and strength. Let none miss a
draught from such a goblet of nectar. And while we are writing this, it
occurs to us that it was at this very hour seventy-four years ago, in
the ice-cold night, Washington crossed the Delaware. And amid the
ominous concatenation of events which the weak mind calls accident, but
which the clear spirit, whose eye rests on the whole world, regards as
the movement of nature according to eternal laws, there rises from our
soul the ardent prayer that Germany may soon find her Washington! Honor
and fame to the artist whose production has power to work upon the
hearts and inflame the spirits of all that behold