affection.  His elocution was handsome, his address easy, polite, and insinuating.  By his merit he had acquired the unlimited confidence of his general, and was making rapid progress in military rank and reputation.  But in the height of his career, flushed with new hopes from the execution of a project the most beneficial to his party that could be devised, he is at once precipitated from the summit of prosperity, sees all the expectations of his ambition blasted, and himself ruined.  The character I have given of him is drawn partly from what I saw of him myself, and partly from information.  I am aware that a man of real merit is never seen in so favorable a light as through the medium of adversity.  The clouds that surround him are so many shades that set off his good qualities.  Misfortune cuts down little vanities, that in prosperous times, serve as so many spots in his virtues; and gives a tone to humanity that makes his worth more amiable.

“His spectators, who enjoy a happier lot, are less prone to detract from it through envy; and are much disposed by compassion to give the credit he deserves, and perhaps even to magnify it.”

NOTE—­No.  V. See Page 377

On the first of May, 1781, General Washington commenced a military journal.  The following is a brief statement of the situation of the army at that time.  “I begin at this epoch, a concise journal of military transactions, &c.  I lament not having attempted it from the commencement of the war in aid of my memory:  and wish the multiplicity of matter which continually surrounds me, and the embarrassed state of our affairs, which is momentarily calling the attention to perplexities of one kind or another, may not defeat altogether, or so interrupt my present intention and plan, as to render it of little avail.

“To have the clearer understanding of the entries which may follow, it would be proper to recite, in detail, our wants, and our prospects; but this alone would be a work of much time, and great magnitude.  It may suffice to give the sum of them, which I shall do in a few words, viz: 

“Instead of having magazines filled with provisions, we have a scanty pittance scattered here and there in the different states.

“Instead of having our arsenals well supplied with military stores, they are poorly provided, and the workmen all leaving them.—­Instead of having the various articles of field equipage in readiness to deliver, the quartermaster general is but now applying to the several states (as the dernier ressort) to provide these things for their troops respectively.  Instead of having a regular system of transportation established upon credit—­or funds in the quartermaster’s hands to defray the contingent expenses of it—­we have neither the one or the other; and all that business, or a great part of it, being done by military impressment, we are daily and hourly oppressing the people, souring their tempers, and alienating their affections.  Instead of having