The evening was indeed serene, but it was not destined to be long. Two years were spent in domestic and social duty and pleasure, the old Virginia hospitality being carried to an enormous extent at Mount Vernon, over which General and Mrs. Washington presided, with all that good sense, dignity, and bonhommie united, which seems now to have characterized their home life. Mrs. Washington, content with the greatness described by the wise king, looked well to her maidens, and so managed the affairs of a large establishment that "the heart of her husband could safely trust in her, so that he had no need of spoil." Who knows how much the good management of his household affairs had to do with Washington's superiority to the temptations of gain? The ladies should see to it that they so regulate their habits of expense that their husbands have "no need of spoil." The extravagant tastes of Mrs. Arnold, amiable woman though she was, are known to have heightened her husband's rapacity, and thus added to the incentives which resulted in treason and just ruin. Mrs. Washington, when she was in the highest position in the nation, wore gowns spun under her own roof, and always took care, in her conversation with the ladies about her, to exalt domestic employments, and represent them as belonging to the duty of woman in any station. She was supposed to have written a patriotic paper, published in 1780, called "The Sentiments of American Women," but the authorship has not been ascertained. The energy and consistency of her patriotic feeling was, however, perfectly well understood, and she is said to have borne her part in the conversation of the distinguished company at Mount Vernon, with invariable dignity and sweetness. The General had returned with unction to his rural and agricultural pursuits, keeping up his life-long habit of rising before the sun, and after breakfast making the tour of the plantation on horseback. These employments were somewhat interrupted by the speck of war which troubled our horizon in 1798, on which occasion all eyes were turned to him, and his friends and the President called upon him once more to give his services to the country. His reply was consistent with the tenor of his life, "In case of actual invasion by a formidable force, I certainly should not intrench myself under the cover of age and retirement, if my services should be required by my country in repelling it." Without waiting for his reply, the Senate had appointed him to the post of Commander-in-Chief, and the Secretary at War was despatched immediately to Mount Vernon with the commission, which was at once accepted. This involved Washington once more in a press of correspondence and many anxious duties; and his letters during this time show that his mind had lost none of its fertility or his judgment of its soundness. He predicted at once that France would not invade the United States, and the event justified his foresight. But another Enemy lay in wait for him, and to this one the hero succumbed, in the same manly spirit in which he had battled with an earthly foe. Great suffering was crowded into the twenty-four hours' illness which served to prostrate that vigorous form, and to still that active brain; but he could look up, at the last, and say "I am not afraid to die."
December 14, 1799, was the day of his death, and the 18th of the same month saw him laid, by a weeping multitude, in the family vault at Mount Vernon; not the tomb in which his ashes now repose, but the old one, which he had been planning to rebuild, saying "Let that be done first, for perhaps I shall want it first."
We have thus traced the Father of our Country through all his earthly Homes, to that quiet one by the side of the Potomac, the object of devout pilgrimage to millions yet unborn. One more Home there is for him, even in this changing world that which he possesses in the hearts of his countrymen, one which we cannot picture or describe, but from which he can never be displaced by the superior merit of mortal man. Other heroes may arise, will arise, as the world shall need them, exponents of their times and incarnations of the highest spirit of the race from which they spring; but America can have but one Washington one man in whom the peculiar virtues of the American character found their embodiment and their triumph. In saying this we may well be proud but not vainglorious. If the great truth it implies be not yet known and read of all men, we should be humbled by the thought that we are so slow to follow our immortal leader. Washington's indomitable spirit of freedom, as evident when at nineteen he withstood the English governor, as when in 1774 he "went to church and fasted all day," in sympathy with the people of Boston, in their resolution against the Port Bill; his self-control, the perfection of which made his fierce passions the sworn servants of virtue; his humanity, which no personal suffering or fatigue could blunt, and no provocation extinguish; his manly temper, never daunted by insolence or turned into arrogance by triumph; the respect for the civil virtues which he carried with him through all the temptations and trials of war; the faith in God and man which sustained him, and was indeed the secret of his power and his success, what a legacy are these! All that he accomplished is less to us than what he was. To have left an example that will never need defence or substitution to the end of time; an ideal that will warm the heart and point the aspiration of every true American, when hundreds of millions shall be proud of the name; to stand forth, for ever, as what we, happy citizens of the country in which that great soul was cradled, and to which his heart and life were devoted, think a MAN ought to be what a destiny for him! It is his reward. God has granted his prayers. Nothing earthly would have satisfied him, as we know by what he rejected. He has received that for which he labored. Who dare imagine the complacency only less than divine, with which the retrospect of such a life may be fraught! Let us indulge the thought that when in the heat of party, the lust of power, or the still deadlier hunger for wealth, we depart from his spirit, he is permitted to see that the dereliction is but temporary and limited; that his country is true to him if his countrymen sometimes err; that there is for ever imprinted, on the heart and life of the nation, the conviction that in adherence to his precepts and imitation of his character there is safety, happiness, glory; in departure from that standard, deterioration and decay. It must be so, for can we conceive him blest without this?
As if to stamp the American ideal with all perfection, it is remarkable that Washington stood pre-eminent in manly strength and beauty, and that a taste for athletic exercises kept him, in spite of illnesses brought on by toil, anxiety, and exposure, in firm health during most of his life. His picture at sixty-two, that which he himself thought the best likeness that had been taken of him, exhibits one of the loveliest faces that an old man ever wore. And it is marvellous how any one that ever looked into the clear blue depths of the eye in Stuart's unfinished picture, could be persuaded to believe Washington stern, cold, and unfeeling. Some have even thought it added to his dignity to represent him thus. All the historians in the world could not prove such a contradiction to the stamp of nature. But the picture by Pine the old man, faded somewhat, and a little fallen in outline, wears the face of an angel; mild, firm, modest, sensitive, aspiring, glorious! It meets your gaze with a tenderness that dims our eye and seems almost to dim its own. Of all the portraits of Washington, this and the half-imaginary one made by Mr. Leutze from a miniature taken when Washington was seventeen, are the most touchingly beautiful, and, as we verily believe, most characteristic of the man.
It is proper, though scarcely necessary, to say that this sketch of Washington's life is drawn from Mr. Sparks' history, since no research can discover a single fact overlooked by that faithful and just chronicler.
FRANKLIN
An English traveller in the United States once expressed his astonishment at nowhere finding a monument of Franklin. He regarded it as a new proof of the ingratitude of republics. But if we have erected no columns, nor statues, to the memory of our first great man, we have manifested our gratitude for the services he rendered us, and the hearty appreciation of his character, which is universal among us, in a better, more affectionate and enduring manner. We name our towns, counties, ships, children, and institutions after him. His name is constantly in our mouth, and his benevolent countenance and lofty brow are as familiar to us as the features of Washington. We have Franklin banks, Franklin insurance companies, Franklin societies, Franklin hotels, Franklin markets, and even Franklin theatres. One of our line of battle ships is called the Franklin, and there will be found a Ben Franklin, the name affectionately abbreviated, on all our western lakes and rivers. The popular heart cherishes his memory more tenderly than that of any of our great men. Washington's heroism and lofty virtues set him above us, so that while we look up to him with veneration and awe, we hardly feel that he was one of us. His impossible grandeur forbids the familiar sympathy which we feel for our own kind. But Franklin's greatness is of that kind which makes the whole world kin. In him we recognize the apotheosis of usefulness. He was our Good Genius, who took us by the hand in our national infancy, and taught us the great art of making the most of the world. He warmed our houses by the stove which still bears his name, and protected us from the terrifying thunderbolt by his simple rod. He showered upon us lessons of wisdom, all calculated to increase our happiness, and his wise and pithy apothegms have become an important part of our language. Never before was a young nation blessed with so beneficent and generous a counsellor and guide. The influence of Franklin upon the national character is beyond estimate. He taught us alike by precept and example; and, in his autobiography, he laid the corner stone of our literature, bequeathing us a book which will always be fresh, instructive, and charming, while our language endures, or we look to literature for instruction and entertainment.
Franklin was a pure, unadulterated Englishman; he came of that great stock whose mission it is to improve the world. Though we claim him, and justly, as an American, he was born, and lived the better part of his life, a subject of the English crown. There was never a more thorough Englishman, nor one whose whole consistent life more happily illustrated the Anglo-Saxon character, nor one who was better entitled to be called an American, or who showed a more lively and enduring love for his native soil.
Every schoolboy is familiar with the history of Franklin; his autobiography is our national epic; it is more read than Robinson Crusoe; and our great national museum, the Patent Office, has been filled with the results of ambitious attempts to follow in the path of the inventor of the lightning-rod. One boy reads Robinson Crusoe and runs off to sea, while another reads Franklin's Life and tries for a patent, or begins to save a penny a day, that he may have three hundred pennies at the end of the year. There are writers who have accused Franklin of giving a sordid bias to our national character. But nothing could be more unjust. There is nothing sordid in the teachings of our great philosopher; while the example of his purely beneficent life has, doubtless, been the cause of many of the magnificent acts of private benevolence which have distinguished our countrymen.
Franklin says in his autobiography, in reference to his stove, which has warmed so many generations of his countrymen, and rendered comfortable so many American homes: "Governor Thomas was so pleased with the construction of this stove that he offered to give me a sole patent for the vending of them for a term of years; but I declined it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., that as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by an invention of ours: and this we should do freely and cordially." No, there was no sordidness in the teachings of Franklin.
His immortal biography was commenced at the ripe age of sixty-six, while he was in England, a time of life when most men have lost the power to instruct or amuse with the pen; but it has the ease, the freshness, and the vigor of youth. It was continued at Passy, in France, and concluded in Philadelphia. He was one of the few instances of a precocious genius maintaining his powers to an advanced period of life. There were no signs of childishness in his almost infantile compositions, or of senility in his latest productions.
Every body knows that the grandfather of Doctor Franklin was the sturdy old puritan, Peter Folger, who wrote the homely verses which Mr. Sparks doubts the propriety of calling poetry, and who dwelt in "Sherborn Town." The house in which he lived, and where the mother of Franklin was born, was still in existence but a few years since, though in a very dilapidated condition. We remember making a pilgrimage to it in our boyish days, after reading the Life of Franklin, and wondering in which of its little rooms the grandfather of the philosopher sat, when he penned the lines which the grandson thought were "written with manly freedom and a pleasing simplicity." The house stood near the water, at the head of a little cove, or creek, and near it was a bubbling spring, from which the mother of the philosopher must have often drank. At that time there were no evidences of the surrounding grounds having been cultivated, and a wretched family inhabited the ruin. There are many descendants of Peter Folger still living, some of whom have been eminent for their learning and talents; but, it is a remarkable circumstance, that, though Franklin's father and grandfather each had five sons, who grew up to man's estate, there is not one male descendant living of that name.
Franklin was born on the 6th of January, old style, 1706, in a house that stood on the corner of Milk-street, opposite the old South Church, Boston, in which he was christened. The church is still standing, but the house has been demolished, and, in its place, there is a large and handsome granite warehouse, which is made to serve the double purpose of a store and a monument. On the frieze of the cornice is the inscription in bold granitic letters, the birth-place of Franklin.
We cannot help thinking that it is just such a monument as he would have recommended, if his wishes had been consulted. But the house in which our great philosopher spent his earlier years, and to which his father removed soon after the birth of his youngest son, is still standing, very nearly in the same condition in which it was during his youth. It is on the corner of Hanover and Union streets, and the wooden gilt ball of the old soap-boiler is still suspended from an iron crane, with the inscription Josias Franklin, 1698. The ball is the original one, but it must have been many times regilt and relettered. The building is occupied by a shoe dealer in the lower part, but the upper rooms are in the occupancy of an industrial whose art had no existence until near a century after the death of Franklin's father. A daguerrean artist now takes likenesses in the rooms where the boy-philosopher slept, and sat up late at night to read Defoe's Essay on Projects, and Plutarch's Lives, by the glimmering light of one of his father's own dips. It was here too that he read the Light House Tragedy, after having cut wicks all day; and it was in the cellar of this house, too, that he made that characteristic suggestion to his father, of saying grace over the barrel of beef, which he saw him packing away for the winter's use, to save the trouble of a separate grace over each piece that should be served up for dinner. This anecdote may not be strictly true, but it is perfectly characteristic, and very much like one he tells of himself, when he was the Commander-in-Chief of the military forces of Pennsylvania. The chaplain of his regiment complained to him that the men would not attend prayers, whereupon, says Franklin, "I said to him, 'it is perhaps below the dignity of your profession to act as steward of the rum; but if you were only to distribute it out after prayers you would have them all about you.' He liked the thought, undertook the task, and, with the help of a few hands to measure out the liquor, executed it to satisfaction, and never were prayers more generally and more punctually attended."