pamper his appetite with every variety of the dishes and sauces he liked
best. He stinted Voltaire in sugar while a guest in his palace, or gave
it to him cheap and bad. He praised him face to face, and ridiculed him
behind his back. Napoleon played blind-man's buff at St. Helena. He lost
his temper at his coronation on perceiving that some of the princesses
of his family who were to act as trainbearers were not in their right
places. Caesar was versed in all the ceremonials of State. It was said
that he would even have been a perfect Roman gentleman but for a habit
of putting one of his fingers in his hair. Yet such a master of forms
gave grave offence to the Roman Senate by not rising when they intended
him a compliment; so unwise was he in small things. Cromwell in a frolic
threw a cushion at Ludlow, who in turn threw one at him. He bedaubed
with ink the face of one of the justices, who, with Cromwell himself,
had just been condemning Charles to the block. Peter the Great travelled
about with a pet monkey, which unceremoniously jumped upon the King of
England's shoulder when the latter visited the Czar in London. Some
great men have played leap-frog; some practised this affectation, some
that. The book of history records too amply the child-like diversions
among those who have flourished on the summits of renown. We hear of
none of this in Washington; no idle whimsies, no studied or foolish
eccentricities; none of the buffoonery of ripe years. They were not in
him; or if they were, self-discipline extirpated them, as it did the bad
ambition and moral callousness that have disfigured too many of the
great names of the earth, ancient and modern; whilst his matchless
purity and deathless deeds raise him above them all. This verdict is
already more than half pronounced by the most enlightened and
scrutinizing portions of mankind, and time is silently extending its
domain as he is longer tried by the parallels of history, and by the
philosophy of greatness itself.