h little means, never missing an
opportunity, rising superior to every disaster. When he had recovered
Boston he could say, "I have been here months together with not thirty
rounds of musket cartridges to a man, and have been obliged to submit to
all insults of the enemy's cannon for want of powder, keeping what
little we had for pistol-distance. We have maintained our ground against
the enemy under this want of powder, and we have disbanded one army and
recruited another, within musket-shot of two-and-twenty regiments, the
flower of the British Army, while our force has been but little if any
superior to theirs, and at last have beaten them into a shameful and
precipitate retreat out of a place the strongest by nature on this
continent, and strengthened and fortified at an enormous expense."

The character of Washington as a commander recalls in various respects
that of Wellington. In both we see the same dogged perseverance under
all the various phases of fortune; the same strict discipline, hardening
readily into sternness, coupled with the same careful consideration for
the wants and welfare of the soldier; the same patient, constant
attention to every detail of military organization; the same ability in
maintaining a defensive warfare against an enemy superior in force, with
the same quickness to strike a blow in any unguarded quarter; the same
unflinching frankness in exposing the evils of the military
administration of the day. Many of Wellington's despatches from the
Peninsula might almost have been written by Washington. The difference
between them, while the war lasts, is mainly this: that in Wellington
the soldier is all, while in Washington the statesman and the patriot
are never merged in the soldier. Hence, while in after-life Wellington
had to serve his apprenticeship as a statesman after ceasing to be a
soldier, and often bungled over his new craft, Washington's after-life
was simply that of a statesman who had been called to take up arms and
had laid them down again.

In short, though England had never a more successful foe than
Washington, it is impossible not to feel, in studying his character,
that no more typical Englishman ever lived.

Let us now cast a final glance at the state of the world at the close of
the war. Except that an independent state had grown up for the first
time since the downfall of Aztec and Inca empires on the American
continent, and that England had been politically lessened