ess resolved "that it be
recommended to the people of the United States to assemble on the
twenty-second day of February next, in such numbers and manner as may be
convenient, publicly to testify their grief for the death of General
GEORGE WASHINGTON, by suitable eulogies, orations, and discourses, or by
public prayers."

The president was requested to issue his proclamation in accordance with
this resolution, which he did on the sixth of January; and the birthday
of the illustrious Washington, usually celebrated with gayety and
festivity, was made, in the year 1800, an occasion of funeral
solemnities.

The death of Washington produced a profound sensation in Europe. The
English newspapers were filled with eulogies on his character. On
hearing of his death, Lord Bridport, who was in command of a British
fleet of almost sixty sail, at Torbay, on the coast of Devon, ordered
every ship to lower her flag to half-mast; and Bonaparte, then First
Consul of France, announced his death to his army, and ordered black
crape to be suspended from all the flags and standards in the French
service for ten days. In Paris, the citizens showed many demonstrations
of respect; and on the "20th Pluviose" (eighth of February, 1800), Louis
de Fontanes pronounced an impassioned funeral oration in his honor, in
the Temple of Mars.[149]

FOOTNOTES:

[138] In a letter to General Hamilton, written a month afterward, Mr.
Lear says: "To Judge Washington the general left by will all his public
and private papers. A few hours before his death he observed to him--'I
am about to change the scene. I can not last long. I believed from the
first the attack would be fatal. Do you arrange all my papers and
accounts, as you know more about these things than any one
else.'"--_Works of Hamilton_, vi. 424. There must have been a change of
the word _me_ to _him_, in transcribing this letter for the press,
because in no account is the judge mentioned as having been present
during Washington's last sickness.

[139] Mrs. Washington died at Mount Vernon, on the twenty-second of May,
1802, in the seventy-first year of her age.

[140] A picture of the room in which Washington died, and the bed on
which he expired, may be seen in Lossing's _Mount Vernon and its
Associations_.

[141] Custis's Recollections, &c., p. 477.

[142] At the head of the coffin was placed an ornament, inscribed SURGE
AD JUDICUM. At about the middle were the words GLORIA DEO; and upon