Frederick thought coffee too expensive an indulgence for common use in his kingdom, saying he was himself reared on beer soup, which was surely good enough for peasants and common fellows, as he called his people.  He wrote directions to his different cooks with his own hand the better to pamper his appetite with every variety of the dishes and sauces he liked best.  He stinted Voltaire in sugar while a guest in his palace, or gave it to him cheap and bad.  He praised him face to face, and ridiculed him behind his back.  Napoleon played blind-man’s buff at St. Helena.  He lost his temper at his coronation on perceiving that some of the princesses of his family who were to act as trainbearers were not in their right places.  Caesar was versed in all the ceremonials of State.  It was said that he would even have been a perfect Roman gentleman but for a habit of putting one of his fingers in his hair.  Yet such a master of forms gave grave offence to the Roman Senate by not rising when they intended him a compliment; so unwise was he in small things.  Cromwell in a frolic threw a cushion at Ludlow, who in turn threw one at him.  He bedaubed with ink the face of one of the justices, who, with Cromwell himself, had just been condemning Charles to the block.  Peter the Great travelled about with a pet monkey, which unceremoniously jumped upon the King of England’s shoulder when the latter visited the Czar in London.  Some great men have played leap-frog; some practised this affectation, some that.  The book of history records too amply the child-like diversions among those who have flourished on the summits of renown.  We hear of none of this in Washington; no idle whimsies, no studied or foolish eccentricities; none of the buffoonery of ripe years.  They were not in him; or if they were, self-discipline extirpated them, as it did the bad ambition and moral callousness that have disfigured too many of the great names of the earth, ancient and modern; whilst his matchless purity and deathless deeds raise him above them all.  This verdict is already more than half pronounced by the most enlightened and scrutinizing portions of mankind, and time is silently extending its domain as he is longer tried by the parallels of history, and by the philosophy of greatness itself.

Before his fame, steadily ascending from its adamantine foundation, gave signs that it was to encircle the globe, some imagined him too prudent.  Some thought him devoid of sensibility; a cold, colossal mass, intrenched in taciturnity, or enfolded in a mantle of dignity.  The sequel disclosed that his complete mastery over passion, moving in harmony with his other powers and faculties, lent its essential aid towards his unrivalled name.  Opinion and passion were strong in him.  The latter existed in vehemence; but he put the curb upon it, turning it into right directions, and excluding it otherwise from influence upon his conduct.  He stifled his dislikes; he was silent under sneers and disparaging innuendoes