life, and made his success and his praise their own.

Profoundly impressed with confidence in God's providence, and exemplary
in his respect for the forms of public worship, no philosopher of the
eighteenth century was more firm in the support of freedom of religious
opinion, none more remote from bigotry; but belief in God, and trust in
his overruling power, formed the essence of his character. Divine wisdom
not only illumines the spirit, it inspires the will. Washington was a
man of action, and not of theory or words; his creed appears in his
life, not in his professions, which burst from him very rarely, and
only at those great moments of crisis in the fortunes of his country,
when earth and heaven seemed actually to meet, and his emotions became
too intense for suppression; but his whole being was one continued act
of faith in the eternal, intelligent, moral order of the universe.
Integrity was so completely the law of his nature, that a planet would
sooner have shot from its sphere than he have departed from his
uprightness, which was so constant that it often seemed to be almost
impersonal. "His integrity was the most pure, his justice the most
inflexible I have ever known," writes Jefferson; "no motives of interest
or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his
decision."

They say of Giotto that he introduced goodness into the art of painting;
Washington carried it with him to the camp and the Cabinet, and
established a new criterion of human greatness. The purity of his will
confirmed his fortitude: and as he never faltered in his faith in
virtue, he stood fast by that which he knew to be just; free from
illusions; never dejected by the apprehension of the difficulties and
perils that went before him, and drawing the promise of success from the
justice of his cause. Hence he was persevering, leaving nothing