Library of the Worlds Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 4 | Page 5

instruction at school taught him not so much
as the orthography or rules of grammar of his own tongue. His culture
was altogether his own work, and he was in the strictest sense a
self-made man; yet from his early life he never seemed uneducated. At
sixteen, he went into the wilderness as a surveyor, and for three years
continued the pursuit, where the forests trained him, in meditative
solitude, to freedom and largeness of mind; and nature revealed to him
her obedience to serene and silent laws. In his intervals from toil, he
seemed always to be attracted to the best men, and to be cherished by
them. Fairfax, his employer, an Oxford scholar, already aged, became
his fast friend. He read little, but with close attention. Whatever he took
in hand he applied himself to with care; and his papers, which have
been preserved, show how he almost imperceptibly gained the power of
writing correctly; always expressing himself with clearness and
directness, often with felicity of language and grace.
When the frontiers on the west became disturbed, he at nineteen was
commissioned an adjutant-general with the rank of major. At
twenty-one, he went as the envoy of Virginia to the council of Indian
chiefs on the Ohio, and to the French officers near Lake Erie. Fame
waited upon him from his youth; and no one of his colony was so much
spoken of. He conducted the first military expedition from Virginia that
crossed the Alleghanies. Braddock selected him as an aid, and he was
the only man who came out of the disastrous defeat near the
Monongahela, with increased reputation, which extended to England.
The next year, when he was but four-and-twenty, "the great esteem" in
which he was held in Virginia, and his "real merit," led the
lieutenant-governor of Maryland to request that he might be
"commissioned and appointed second in command" of the army
designed to march to the Ohio; and Shirley, the commander-in-chief,
heard the proposal "with great satisfaction and pleasure," for "he knew
no provincial officer upon the continent to whom he would so readily

give that rank as to Washington." In 1758 he acted under Forbes as a
brigadier, and but for him that general would never have crossed the
mountains.
Courage was so natural to him that it was hardly spoken of to his praise;
no one ever at any moment of his life discovered in him the least
shrinking in danger; and he had a hardihood of daring which escaped
notice, because it was so enveloped by superior calmness and wisdom.
His address was most easy and agreeable; his step firm and graceful;
his air neither grave nor familiar. He was as cheerful as he was spirited,
frank and communicative in the society of friends, fond of the
fox-chase and the dance, often sportive in his letters, and liked a hearty
laugh. "His smile," writes Chastellux, "was always the smile of
benevolence." This joyousness of disposition remained to the last,
though the vastness of his responsibilities was soon to take from him
the right of displaying the impulsive qualities of his nature, and the
weight which he was to bear up was to overlay and repress his gayety
and openness.
His hand was liberal; giving quietly and without observation, as though
he was ashamed of nothing but being discovered in doing good. He was
kindly and compassionate, and of lively sensibility to the sorrows of
others; so that, if his country had only needed a victim for its relief, he
would have willingly offered himself as a sacrifice. But while he was
prodigal of himself, he was considerate for others; ever parsimonious of
the blood of his countrymen.
He was prudent in the management of his private affairs, purchased
rich lands from the Mohawk valley to the flats of the Kanawha, and
improved his fortune by the correctness of his judgment; but, as a
public man, he knew no other aim than the good of his country, and in
the hour of his country's poverty he refused personal emolument for his
service.
His faculties were so well balanced and combined that his constitution,
free from excess, was tempered evenly with all the elements of activity,
and his mind resembled a well-ordered commonwealth; his passions,

which had the intensest vigor, owned allegiance to reason; and with all
the fiery quickness of his spirit, his impetuous and massive will was
held in check by consummate judgment. He had in his composition a
calm, which gave him in moments of highest excitement the power of
self-control, and enabled him to excel in patience, even when he had
most cause for disgust. Washington was offered a command when there
was little to bring out the unorganized resources of the continent but his
own influence, and authority was