ational bounds, and made the name of Washington the
property of all mankind.

This illustrious man, at once the world's admiration and enigma, we are
taught by a fine instinct to venerate, and by a wrong opinion to
misjudge. The might of his character has taken strong hold upon the
feelings of great masses of men; but, in translating this universal
sentiment into an intelligent form, the intellectual element of his
wonderful nature is as much depressed as the moral element is exalted,
and consequently we are apt to misunderstand both. Mediocrity has a bad
trick of idealizing itself in eulogizing him, and drags him down to its
own level while assuming to lift him to the skies. How many times have
we been told that he was not a man of genius, but a person of "excellent
common sense," of "admirable judgment," of "rare virtues"! and, by a
constant repetition of this odious cant, we have nearly succeeded in
divorcing comprehension from his sense, insight from his judgment, force
from his virtues, and life from the man. Accordingly, in the panegyric
of cold spirits, Washington disappears in a cloud of commonplaces; in
the rhodomontade of boiling patriots, he expires in the agonies of rant.
Now, the sooner this bundle of mediocre talents and moral qualities,
which its contrivers have the audacity to call George Washington, is
hissed out of existence, the better it will be for the cause of talent
and the cause of morals; contempt of that is the condition of insight.
He had no genius, it seems. O no! genius, we must suppose, is the
peculiar and shining attribute of some orator, whose tongue can spout
patriotic speeches, or some versifier, whose muse can "Hail Columbia,"
but not of the man who supported states on his arm, and carried America
in his brain. The madcap Charles Townshend, the motion of whose
pyrotechnic mind was like the whiz of a hundred rockets, is a man of
genius; but George Washington raised up above the level of even eminent
statesmen, and with a nature moving with the still and orderly celerity
of a planet round the sun,--he dwindles, in comparison, into a kind of
angelic dunce! What is genius? Is it worth anything. Is splendid folly
the measure of its inspiration? Is wisdom that which it recedes from, or
tends towards? And by what definition do you award the name to the
creator of an epic, and deny it to the creator of a country? On what
principle is it to be lavished on him who sculptures in perishing marble