And it must also be recorded that if he had learned how to conduct himself in the presence of persons superior to himself in position, age, and culture,—­and it will be remembered that Lord Fairfax was an able contributor to the “Spectator” (which Washington was careful to study while at Greenway,)—­this youth no less followed the instruction of his 108th rule:  “Honour your natural parents though they be poor.”  His widowed mother was poor, and she was ignorant, but he was devoted to her; being reverential and gracious to her even when with advancing age she became somewhat morose and exacting, while he was loaded with public cares.

I am no worshipper of Washington.  But in the hand of that man of strong brain and powerful passions once lay the destiny of the New World,—­in a sense, human destiny.  But for his possession of the humility and self-discipline underlying his Rules of Civility, the ambitious politicians of the United States might to-day be popularly held to a much lower standard.  The tone of his character was so entirely that of modesty, he was so fundamentally patriotic, that even his faults are transformed to virtues, and the very failures of his declining years are popularly accounted successes.  He alone was conscious of his mental decline, and gave this as a reason for not accepting a third nomination for the Presidency.  This humility has established an unwritten law of limitation on vaulting presidential ambitions.  Indeed, intrigue and corruption in America must ever struggle with the idealised phantom of this grand personality.

These Rules of Civility go forth with the hope that they will do more than amuse the reader by their quaintness, and that their story will produce an impression beyond that of its picturesqueness.  The strong probabilities that they largely moulded the character of Washington, and so influenced the human race, may raise the question, whether the old French Jesuits, and the pilgrim, James Marye, did not possess more truly than our contemporary educators, the art and mystery of moral education.  In these days, when ethical is replacing theological instruction, in the home and in the school, there appears danger that it may repeat some of the mistakes of its predecessor.  The failure of what was called Religion to promote moral culture is now explicable:  its scheme of terror and hope appealed to and powerfully stimulated selfishness, and was also fundamentally anti-social, cultivating alienation of all who did not hold certain dogmas.  The terrors and hopes having faded away, the selfishness they developed remains, and is only unchained by the decay of superstition.  On the other hand, the social sentiment has thrown off sectarian restrictions, and an enthusiasm of humanity has succeeded.  It is now certain that the social instinct is the only one which can be depended on to influence conduct to an extent comparable with the sway once exercised by superstitious terrors and expectations of celestial reward.  The child is spiritually a creation of the commune; there can be no other motive so early responsive as that which desires the approval and admiration of those by whom it is surrounded.