than that. Reserved he was, and not
a loose or glib talker, but he always showed his interest and gave
close attention. After Yorktown, when the United States proclaimed to
the world that they were an independent Republic, Europe recognized
that this was indeed a Republic unlike all those which had preceded it
during antiquity and the Middle Age. Foreigners doubted that it could
exist. They doubted that Democracy could ever govern a nation. They
knew despots, like the Prussian King, Frederic, who walked about the
streets of Berlin and used his walking-stick on the cringing persons
whom he passed on the sidewalk and did not like the looks of. They
remembered the crazy Czar, Peter, and they knew about the insane
tendencies of the British sovereign, George. The world argued from
these and other examples that monarchy was safe; it could not doubt
that the supply of monarchs would never give out; but it had no hope
of a Republic governed by a President. It was George Washington more
than any other agency who made the world change its mind and conclude
that the best President was the best kind of monarch.

It is reported that after he died many persons who had been his
neighbors and acquaintances confessed that they had always felt a
peculiar sense of being with a higher sort of person in his presence:
a being not superhuman, but far above common men. That feeling will
revive in the heart of any one to-day who reads wisely in the fourteen
volumes of "Washington's Correspondence," in which, as in a mine,
are buried the passions and emotions from which sprang the American
Revolution and the American Constitution. That George Washington lived
and achieved is the justification and hope of the United States.

THE END

INDEX

Throughout the index, the initial _W_. is used for the name of George
Washington.

Adams, John, his _Diary_ quoted, 57 _n_.;
on committee to confer with Howe, 79;
on Peace Commission, 130;
chosen first Vice-President, 176;
appoints _W_. Commander-in-Chief, in 1799, 217, 240;
letter of _W_. to, 217; 49, 59, 155, 156, 162, 180, 212, 215,
217, 231, 251, 254.

Adams, Samuel, 49, 57, 59, 60, 162, 175, 176.

Addison, Rev. Mr., 253.

Agriculturist, _W_. as an, 37 _ff_.

Albert, Prince, 153.

Alleghany Mts., 7.

American Revolution, 64-126 _passim_;
great extent of field of operations, 67;
really ended with surrender at Yorktown, 126;
nature and results of, 126-128;