not appear to great advantage in society. It is posterity,
looking with natural weariness at endless volumes of official letters
with all the angles smoothed off by the editorial plane, that has
come to suspect him of being dull in mind and heavy in wit. His
contemporaries knew him to be dignified and often found him stern, but
they never for a moment considered him stupid, or thought him a man at
whom the shafts of wit could be shot with impunity. They were fully
conscious that he was as able to hold his own in conversation as he
was in the cabinet or in the field; and we can easily see the justice
of contemporary opinion if we take the trouble to break through the
official bark and get at the real man who wrote the letters. In many
cases we find that he could employ irony and sarcasm with real force,
and his powers of description, even if stilted at times, were vigorous
and effective. All these qualities come out strongly in his letters,
if carefully read, and his private correspondence in particular shows
a keenness and point which the formalities of public intercourse
veiled generally from view. We are fortunate in having the account of
a disinterested and acute observer of the manner in which Washington
impressed a casual acquaintance in conversation. The actor Bernard,
whom we have already quoted, and whom we left with Washington at the
gates of Mount Vernon, gives us the following vivid picture of what
ensued:--

"In conversation his face had not much variety of expression. A look
of thoughtfulness was given by the compression of the mouth and the
indentations of the brow (suggesting an habitual conflict with, and
mastery over, passion), which did not seem so much to disdain a
sympathy with trivialities as to be incapable of denoting them. Nor
had his voice, so far as I could discover in our quiet talk,
much change or richness of intonation, but he always spoke with
earnestness, and his eyes (glorious conductors of the light within)
burned with a steady fire which no one could mistake for mere
affability; they were one grand expression of the well-known line: 'I
am a man, and interested in all that concerns humanity.' In one hour
and a half's conversation he touched on every topic that I brought
before him with an even current of good sense, if he embellished it
with little wit or verbal elegance. He spoke like a man who had felt
as much as he had reflected, and reflected more than he had spoken;
like one who ha