Next I remark, as a new corroboration of the modesty ever so prominent in him, that not once throughout the whole of this correspondence does he make any, the slightest, allusion to himself in connection with the Revolutionary War, comparatively recent as it then was.  Besides that the general tenor of the correspondence might have supplied occasions for such allusions, special opportunities were at hand while skirting the battlegrounds and other localities of his military operations in the war, even in his journeys between Mount Vernon and Philadelphia; yet they are never once made.  The casual mention of his “Old Sergeant Cornelius,” whom he happened to want as a workman about his grounds at Mount Vernon, is the sole reference that could wake up the mind to his having had anything to do with the Revolution.  He had helped to pave the way for that great event by the influence of his high character thrown into the scale when the early questions of resistance or submission were in agitation; he had helped it on by his attachment to constitutional liberty at that epoch though his fortune was at stake, and friendships among the highborn and cultivated from the parent State then among his associates in Virginia—­could a bosom like his have been swayed by such thoughts; he had helped it on by the special weight of name he had won in arms fighting side by side with the proud generals and troops of Britain confident of victory, but saved from annihilation by his inborn fearlessness and superiority, when death was all around him and dismay everywhere in Braddock’s disastrous fight—­their silent homage crowning the head of their deliverer; his triumphant sword at Yorktown put the crowning hand to the immortal work—­the work that founded this great nation; yet we could never infer from a word or hint in the course of these letters, from first to last, that he had anything to do with the work, except as the name of “Sergeant Cornelius” incidentally falls from his pen with only a rural object.  What a lesson!  Some extol themselves openly.  Some do it under cover of self-humiliation, called by a French writer the pomp of modesty.  Washington is simply silent; he will slide into no allusions to the great and glorious work of his life in the midst of temptations to it.

Finally:  the charm of these letters is in their being so familiar, so out of the sphere of his correspondence generally, and therefore holding him up in lights that seem new.  Mankind, long familiar with the external attributes and grandeur of his character, looking up to his vast fame as hero and statesman uncertain which predominates, have known less of him at home with his family, his relations and his friends.  The inner parts of his character, the kindlier impulses of his nature, his sympathies with those dear to him, dependent on him, or looking to him for the solace of his kindness, seem to have remained less publicly known.  Mr. Sparks, in his preface to his “Life and Writings,” remarks that “it must be kept in mind that much the larger portion of his life passed on a conspicuous public theatre, and that no account of it can be written which will not assume essentially the air of history.”  He adds, that while in his work “anecdotes are interwoven and such incidents of a private and personal nature as are known, they are more rare than could be desired.”