d fast, my boys,
the Southern troops are coming to support you!" And we hear Lafayette
exclaim, "Never did I behold so superb a man!" We see him again at
Princeton dashing through a storm of shot to rally the wavering troops;
he reins his horse between the contending lines, and cries: "Will you
leave your general to the foe?" then bolts into the thickest fray.
Colonel Fitzgerald, his aid, drops his reins and pulls his hat down over
his eyes that he may not see his chieftain fall, when, through the smoke
he reappears waving his hat, cheering on his men, and shouting: "Away,
dear Colonel, and bring up the troops; the day is ours." "Coeur de
Lion" might have doffed his plume to such a chief, for a great knight
was he, who met his foes full tilt in the shock of battle and hurled
them down with an arm whose sword flamed with righteous indignation.

As children pore over the pictures in their books where they can read
the words annexed to them, so we linger with tingling blood by such
inspiring scenes, while little do we reck of those dark hours when the
aching head pondered the problems of a country's fate. And yet there is
a greater theater in which Washington appears, although not so often has
its curtain been uplifted.

For it was as a statesman that Washington was greatest. Not in the sense
that Hamilton and Jefferson, Adams and Madison were statesmen; but in a
larger sense. Men may marshal armies who cannot drill divisions. Men may
marshal nations in storm and travail who have not the accomplishments of
their cabinet ministers. Not so versed as they was he in the details of
political science. And yet as he studied tactics when he anticipated
war, so he studied politics when he saw his civil role approaching,
reading the history and examining the principles of ancient and modern
confederacies, and making notes of their virtues, defects, and methods
of operation.

His pen did not possess the facile play and classic grace of their pens,
but his vigorous eloquence had the clear ring of our mother tongue. I
will not say that he was so astute, so quick, so inventive as the one or
another of them--that his mind was characterized by the vivacity of wit,
the rich colorings of fancy, or daring flights of imagination. But with
him thought and action like well-trained coursers kept abreast in the
chariot race, guided by an eye that never quailed, reined by a hand that
never trembled. He had a more infallible discrimination of cir