He was an educated, but not a learned man. He read well and
remembered what he read, but his life was, from the beginning, a
life of action, and the world of men was his school. He was not a
military genius like Hannibal, or Caesar, or Napoleon, of which
the world has had only three or four examples. But he was a great
soldier of the type which the English race has produced, like
Marlborough and Cromwell, Wellington, Grant, and Lee. He was
patient under defeat, capable of large combinations, a stubborn
and often reckless fighter, a winner of battles, but much more, a
conclusive winner in a long war of varying fortunes. He was, in
addition, what very few great soldiers or commanders have ever
been, a great constitutional statesman, able to lead a people
along the paths of free government without undertaking himself to
play the part of the strong man, the usurper, or the savior of
society.

He was a very silent man. Of no man of equal importance in the
world's history have we so few sayings of a personal kind. He was
ready enough to talk or to write about the public duties which he
had in hand, but he hardly ever talked of himself. Yet there can
be no greater error than to suppose Washington cold and
unfeeling, because of his silence and reserve. He was by nature a
man of strong desires and stormy passions. Now and again he would
break out, even as late as the presidency, into a gust of anger
that would sweep everything before it. He was always reckless of
personal danger, and had a fierce fighting spirit which nothing
could check when it was once unchained.

But as a rule these fiery impulses and strong passions were under