it had threatened him. He loved life and tasted of it
deeply, but the courage which never forsook him made him ready to face
the inevitable at any moment with an unruffled spirit. In this he was
helped by his religious faith, which was as simple as it was profound.
He had been brought up in the Protestant Episcopal Church, and to that
church he always adhered; for its splendid liturgy and stately forms
appealed to him and satisfied him. He loved it too as the church of
his home and his childhood. Yet he was as far as possible from being
sectarian, and there is not a word of his which shows anything but
the most entire liberality and toleration. He made no parade of his
religion, for in this as in other things he was perfectly simple and
sincere. He was tortured by no doubts or questionings, but believed
always in an overruling Providence and in a merciful God, to whom he
knelt and prayed in the day of darkness or in the hour of triumph with
a supreme and childlike confidence.

* * * * *

As I bring these volumes to a close I am conscious that they speak, so
far as they speak at all, in a tone of almost unbroken praise of the
great man they attempt to portray. If this be so, it is because I
could come to no other conclusions. For many years I have studied
minutely the career of Washington, and with every step the greatness
of the man has grown upon me, for analysis has failed to discover
the act of his life which, under the conditions of the time, I could
unhesitatingly pronounce to have been an error. Such has been my
experience, and although my deductions may be wrong, they at least
have been carefully and slowly made. I see in Washington a great
soldier who fought a trying war to a successful end impossible without
him; a great statesman who did more than all other men to lay the
foundations of a republic which has endured in prosperity for more
than a century. I find in him a marvelous judgment which was never at
fault, a penetrating vision which beheld the future of America when it
was dim to other eyes, a great intellectual force, a will of iron,
an unyielding grasp of facts, and an unequaled strength of patriotic
purpose. I see in him too a pure and high-minded gentleman of
dauntless courage and stainless honor, simple and stately of manner,
kind and generous of heart. Such he was in truth. The historian and
the biographer may fail to do him justice, but the instinct of mankind
wil