the Chief Magistrate of his Country. So art has fitly typified his
exalted life in yon plain lofty shaft. Such is his greatness, that only
by a symbol could it be represented. As Justice must be blind in order
to be whole in contemplation, so History must be silent, that by this
mighty sign she may unfold the amplitude of her story.

In 1657, while yet "a Cromwell filled the Stuarts' throne," there came
to Virginia with a party of Carlists who had rebelled against him John
Washington, of Yorkshire, England, who became a magistrate and member of
the House of Burgesses, and distinguished himself in Indian warfare as
the first colonel of his family on this side of the water. He was the
nephew of that Sir Henry Washington who had led the forlorn hope of
Prince Rupert at Bristol in 1643, and who, with a starving and mutinous
garrison, had defended Worcester in 1649, answering all calls for
surrender that he "awaited His Majesty's commands."

And his progenitors had for centuries, running back to the conquest,
been men of mark and fair renown. Pride and modesty of individuality
alike forbid the seeking from any source of a borrowed lustre, and the
Washingtons were never studious or pretentious of ancestral dignities.
But "we are quotations from our ancestors," says the philosopher of
Concord--and who will say that in the loyalty to conscience and to
principle, and to the right of self-determination of what is principle,
that the Washingtons have ever shown, whether as loyalist or rebel, was
not the germ of that deathless devotion to liberty and country which
soon discarded all ancient forms in the mighty stroke for independence?

One hundred and fifty-three years ago, on the banks of the Potomac, in
the county of Westmoreland, on a spot marked now only by a memorial
stone, of the blood of the people whom I have faintly described, fourth
in descent from the Colonel John Washington whom I have named, there
was born a son to Augustine and Mary Washington. And not many miles
above his birthplace is the dwelling where he lived, and near which he
now lies buried.

Borne upon the bosom of that river which here mirrors Capitol dome and
monumental shaft in its seaward flow, the river itself seems to reverse
its current and bear us silently into the past. Scarce has the vista of
the city faded from our gaze when we behold on the woodland height that
swells above the waters--amidst walks and groves and gardens--the white
porch of tha