was a profoundly silent man.  The gospel of silence has been preached in these latter days by Carlyle, with the fervor of a seer and prophet, and the world owes him a debt for the historical discredit which he has brought upon the man of mere words as compared with the man of deeds.  Carlyle brushed Washington aside as “a bloodless Cromwell,” a phrase to which we must revert later on other grounds, and, as has already been said, failed utterly to see that he was the most supremely silent of the great men of action that the world can show.  Like Cromwell and Frederic, Washington wrote countless letters, made many speeches, and was agreeable in conversation.  But this was all in the way of business, and a man may be profoundly silent and yet talk a great deal.  Silence in the fine and true sense is neither mere holding of the tongue nor an incapacity of expression.  The greatly silent man is he who is not given to words for their own sake, and who never talks about himself.  Both Cromwell, greatest of Englishmen, and the great Frederic, Carlyle’s especial heroes, were fond of talking of themselves.  So in still larger measure was Napoleon, and many others of less importance.  But Washington differs from them all.  He had abundant power of words, and could use them with much force and point when he was so minded, but he never used them needlessly or to hide his meaning, and he never talked about himself.  Hence the inestimable difficulty of knowing him.  A brief sentence here and there, a rare gleam of light across the page of a letter, is all that we can find.  The rest is silence.  He did as great work as has fallen to the lot of man, he wrote volumes of correspondence, he talked with innumerable men and women, and of himself he said nothing.  Here in this youthful journal we have a narrative of wild adventure, wily diplomacy, and personal peril, impossible of condensation, and yet not a word of the writer’s thoughts or feelings.  All that was done or said important to the business in hand was set down, and nothing was overlooked, but that is all.  The work was done, and we know how it was done, but the man is silent as to all else.  Here, indeed, is the man of action and of real silence, a character to be much admired and wondered at in these or any other days.

Washington’s report looked like war, and its author was shortly afterwards appointed lieutenant-colonel of a Virginian regiment, Colonel Fry commanding.  Now began that long experience of human stupidity and inefficiency with which Washington was destined to struggle through all the years of his military career, suffering from them, and triumphing in spite of them to a degree unequaled by any other great commander.  Dinwiddie, the Scotch governor, was eager enough to fight, and full of energy and good intentions, but he was hasty and not overwise, and was filled with an excessive idea of his prerogatives.  The assembly, on its side, was sufficiently patriotic, but its members came from a community which for more than half a century