with gladness never wish to wake,
In deluding sleepings let my Eyelids close
That in an enraptured dream I may
In a rapt lulling sleep and gentle repose
Possess those joys denied by Day."

And it must also be recorded that if he had learned how to conduct
himself in the presence of persons superior to himself in position, age,
and culture,--and it will be remembered that Lord Fairfax was an able
contributor to the "Spectator" (which Washington was careful to study
while at Greenway,)--this youth no less followed the instruction of his
108th rule: "Honour your natural parents though they be poor." His
widowed mother was poor, and she was ignorant, but he was devoted to
her; being reverential and gracious to her even when with advancing age
she became somewhat morose and exacting, while he was loaded with public
cares.

I am no worshipper of Washington. But in the hand of that man of strong
brain and powerful passions once lay the destiny of the New World,--in a
sense, human destiny. But for his possession of the humility and
self-discipline underlying his Rules of Civility, the ambitious
politicians of the United States might to-day be popularly held to a
much lower standard. The tone of his character was so entirely that of
modesty, he was so fundamentally patriotic, that even his faults are
transformed to virtues, and the very failures of his declining years are
popularly accounted successes. He alone was conscious of his mental
decline, and gave this as a reason for not accepting a third nomination
for the Presidency. This humility has established an unwritten law of
limitation on vaulting presidential ambitions. Indeed, intrigue and
corruption in America must ever struggle with the idealised phantom of
this grand personality.

These Rules of Civility go forth with the hope that they will do more
than amuse the reader by their quaintness, and that their story will
produce an impression beyond that of its picturesqueness. The strong
probabilities that they largely moulded the character of Washington, and
so influenced the human race, may raise the question, whether the old
French Jesuits, and the pilgrim, James Marye, did not possess more truly
than our contemporary educators, the art and mystery of moral education.
In these days, when ethical is replacing theological instruction, in the
home and in the school, there appears danger that it may repeat some of
the mistakes of its predecessor. The failure