High and splendid character, great moral qualities for after-ages to admire, he had beyond any man of modern times.  But to suppose that in other respects he belonged to the ranks of mediocrity is not only a contradiction in terms, but utterly false.  It was not character that fought the Trenton campaign and carried the revolution to victory.  It was military genius.  It was not character that read the future of America and created our foreign policy.  It was statesmanship of the highest order.  Without the great moral qualities which he possessed, his career would not have been possible; but it would have been quite as impossible if the intellect had not equaled the character.  There is no need to argue the truism that Washington was a great man, for that is universally admitted.  But it is very needful that his greatness should be rightly understood, and the right understanding of it is by no means universal.  His character has been exalted at the expense of his intellect, and his goodness has been so much insisted upon both by admirers and critics that we are in danger of forgetting that he had a great mind as well as high moral worth.

This false attitude both of praise and criticism has been so persisted in that if we accept the premises we are forced to the conclusion that Washington was actually dull, while with much more openness it is asserted that he was cold and at times even harsh.  “In the mean time,” says Mr. McMaster, “Washington was deprived of the services of the only two men his cold heart ever really loved.”  “A Cromwell with the juice squeezed out,” says Carlyle somewhere, in his rough and summary fashion.  Are these judgments correct?  Was Washington really, with all his greatness, dull and cold?  He was a great general and a great President, first in war and first in peace and all that, says our caviler, but his relaxation was in farm accounts, and his business war and politics.  He could plan a campaign, preserve a dignified manner, and conduct an administration, but he could write nothing more entertaining than a state paper or a military report.  He gave himself up to great affairs, he was hardly human, and he shunned the graces, the wit, and all the salt of life, and passed them by on the other side.

That Washington was serious and earnest cannot be doubted, for no man could have done what he did and been otherwise.  He had little time for the lighter sides of life, and he never exerted himself to say brilliant and striking things.  He was not a maker of phrases and proclamations, and the quality of the charlatan, so often found in men of the highest genius, was utterly lacking in him.  He never talked or acted with an eye to dramatic effect, and this is one reason for the notion that he was dull and dry; for the world dearly loves a little charlatanism, and is never happier than in being brilliantly duped.  But was he therefore really dull and juiceless, unlovable and unloving?  Responsibility came upon him when