"By drastic lift of pent volcanic fires";

but as the central summit of a mountain range, with all his noble
fellowship of kindred peaks about him, enhancing his unquestioned
supremacy by their glorious neighborhood and their great support.

Among these men whose union in purpose and action made the strength and
stability of the republic, Washington was first, not only in the
largeness of his nature, the loftiness of his desires, and the vigor of
his will, but also in that representative quality which makes a man able
to stand as the true hero of a great people. He had an instinctive power
to divine, amid the confusions of rival interests and the cries of
factional strife, the new aims and hopes, the vital needs and
aspirations, which were the common inspiration of the people's cause
and the creative forces of the American nation. The power to understand
this, the faith to believe in it, and the unselfish courage to live for
it, was the central factor of Washington's life, the heart and fountain
of his splendid Americanism.

It was denied during his lifetime, for a little while, by those who
envied his greatness, resented his leadership, and sought to shake him
from his lofty place. But he stood serene and imperturbable, while that
denial, like many another blast of evil-scented wind, passed into
nothingness, even before the disappearance of the party strife out of
whose fermentation it had arisen. By the unanimous judgment of his
countrymen for two generations after his death he was hailed as _Pater
Patriae_; and the age which conferred that title was too ingenuous to
suppose that the father could be of a different race from his own
offspring.