explain themselves, and are vindicated by events, and form at last the
constants of human understanding. A character of the first order of
greatness, such as seems to pass out of the limits and course of
ordinary life, often lies above the ken of intellectual judgment; but
its merits and its infirmities never escape the sleepless perspicacity
of the common sentiment, which no novelty of form can surprise, and no
mixture of qualities can perplex. The mind--the logical
faculty--comprehends a subject, when it can trace in it the same
elements, or relations, which it is familiar with elsewhere: if it finds
but a faint analogy of form or substance, its decision is embarrassed.
But this other instinct seems to become subtler, and more rapid, and
more absolute in conviction, at the line where reason begins to falter.
Take the case of Shakespeare. His surpassing greatness was never
acknowledged by the learned until the nation had ascertained and settled
it as a foregone and questionless conclusion. Even now, to the most
sagacious mind of this time, the real ground and evidence of its own
assurance of Shakespeare's supremacy, is the universal, deep, immovable
conviction of it in the public feeling. There have been many acute
essays upon his minor characteristics; but intellectual criticism has
never grappled with Shakespearian art, in its entireness and grandeur,
and probably it never will. We know not now wherein his greatness
consists. We cannot demonstrate it. There is less indistinctness in the
merit of less eminent authors. Those things which are not doubts to our
consciousness, are yet mysteries to our mind. And if this is true of
literary art, which is so much within the sphere of reflection, it may
be expected to find more striking illustration in great practical and
public moral characters.

These considerations occur naturally to the mind in contemplating the
fame of Washington. An attentive examination of the whole subject, and