his fellow-citizens."

Public testimonials of grief and reverence were displayed in every
part of the Union. Nor were these sentiments confined to the United
States. When the news of Washington's death reached England, Lord
Bridport, who had command of a British fleet of nearly sixty sail of
the line, lying at Torbay, lowered his flag half-mast, every ship
following the example; and Bonaparte, First Consul of France, on
announcing his death to the army, ordered that black crape should be
suspended from all the standards and flags throughout the public
service for ten days.

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.

THE END.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Student's Life of Washington;
Condensed from the Larger Work of Washington Irving, by Washington Irving

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