at the head of the American army, effective ridicule became impossible, for the dignity of the cause was seen in that of its leader.  The British generals soon found that they not only had a dangerous enemy to encounter, but that they were dealing with a man whose pride in his country and whose own sense of self-respect reduced any assumption of personal superiority on their part to speedy contempt.  In the same way he brought dignity to the new government of the Constitution when he was placed at its head.  The confederation had excited the just contempt of the world, and Washington as President, by the force of his own character and reputation, gave the United States at once the respect not only of the American people, but of those of Europe as well.  Men felt instinctively that no government over which he presided could ever fall into feebleness or disrepute.

In addition to the effect on the popular mind of his character and services was that of his personal presence.  If contemporary testimony can be believed, few men have ever lived who had the power to impress those who looked upon them so profoundly as Washington.  He was richly endowed by nature in all physical attributes.  Well over six feet high,[1] large, powerfully built, and of uncommon muscular strength, he had the force that always comes from great physical power.  He had a fine head, a strong face, with blue eyes set wide apart in deep orbits, and beneath, a square jaw and firm-set mouth which told of a relentless will.  Houdon the sculptor, no bad judge, said he had no conception of the majesty and grandeur of Washington’s form and features until he studied him as a subject for a statue.  Pages might be filled with extracts from the descriptions of Washington given by French officers, by all sorts of strangers, and by his own countrymen, but they all repeat the same story.  Every one who met him told of the commanding presence, and noble person, the ineffable dignity, and the calm, simple, and stately manners.  No man ever left Washington’s presence without a feeling of reverence and respect amounting almost to awe.

[Footnote 1:  Lear in his memoranda published recently in full in McClure’s Magazine for February, 1898, states that Washington measured after death six feet three and one half inches in height, a foot and nine inches across the shoulders, two feet across the elbows; evidently a spare man with muscular arms, which we know to have been also of unusual length.]

I will quote only a single one of the numerous descriptions of Washington, and I select it because, although it is the least favorable of the many I have seen, and is written in homely phrase, it displays the most evident and entire sincerity.  The extract is from a letter written by David Ackerson of Alexandria, Va., in 1811, in answer to an inquiry by his son.  Mr. Ackerson commanded a company in the Revolutionary war.

“Washington was not,” he wrote, “what ladies would call a pretty man, but in military costume a heroic figure, such as would impress the memory ever afterward.”