king of Poland, and then a companion of that king's ambassador to Constantinople. Then we see him in England assailing the British ministry with his sarcastic pen, and by his ill nature and perverse judgment, shutting every door to his own advancement. Disappointed and still restless, he came to America in 1773, and travelled through most of the English provinces. In Virginia he met Major Gates, and was induced by that gentleman to purchase an estate near him, in Berkeley county. There he was residing when the war for independence was fairly kindling, and he espoused the cause of the patriots with a zeal that commanded their greatest admiration. He entered the army as the first major-general under Washington, became very popular with the great body of the people, and for awhile disputed a place in their attachment with Washington himself. His ambition soon conquered his prudence, and he became insolent and insubordinate toward his superiors. With apparent collusion with the enemy, he became a prisoner; endeavored, while a captive, to betray his adopted country; was restored to the army by exchange, but soon afterward was suspended from command because of bad conduct on the field of Monmouth; and died in Philadelphia in comparative poverty, in the autumn of 1782, at the age of fifty-one years. He was a brilliant man in many things, but his life exhibited few commendable traits of character. He was bad in morals and manners; profane and extravagant in language, and feared and loved neither God nor man. In his will he bequeathed his soul to the Almighty and his body to the earth, saying: "I desire most earnestly that I may not be buried in any church or churchyard, or within a mile of any Presbyterian or Anabaptist meeting-house; for, since I have resided in this

country, I have kept so much bad company when living, that I do not choose to continue it when dead."

Major Gates was three years the senior of Washington, and is supposed to have been a natural son of Horace Walpole. He was an officer in the British army during the French and Indian war, and was with Braddock in the battle of the Monongahela, where he was severely wounded. He accom

panied General Mockton to the West Indies as his aide-decamp, and expected great preferment after the campaign was over, as he was the bearer to the king of the tidings of the English victory at Martinico. He was disappointed, and, in 1772, he sold his commission of major, came to America, and purchased an estate in Berkeley county, Virginia, beyond the Blue Ridge.

Gates was the opposite of Lee in his social qualities, being a perfect gentleman in his deportment. He, also, espoused the republican cause at the kindling of the war, was appointed the first adjutant-general of the continental army, and arose to the rank of major-general. He was ambitious and vain; and, during the first half of the war, was seeking to take the place of Washington as supreme commander of the American armies.

His last active military command was in South Carolina, in the summer of 1780, where he lost his whole army. He returned to his estate in Virginia, where he lived until 1790, and then removed to a farm on Manhattan Island, near the city of New York. He was a member of the New York legislature one term, and died in the spring of 1806, at the age of seventy-eight years.

Washington was at Mount Vernon only a few weeks at a time, from the summer of 1774 until his retirement from the army in 1783. He was in the first continental Congress, as we have observed, during the autumn of 1774; was absent upon military services much of the time during the winter of 1775, and was a member of the Virginia Assembly in the spring, when Patrick Henry made his famous war speech, which was closed with the burning words: "What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH!"

With these words of Henry ringing in his ears, Washington returned to Mount Vernon, and prepared for a journey to Philadelphia, there to take his seat as a member of the Second

Continental Congress. Just at the close of a mild April day, while he and his neighbor, Bryan Fairfax, with Major Gates, were discussing the stirring events at Williamsburg, connected with the seizure of powder belonging to the colony, by the royal governor, and the bold stand taken by Patrick Henry— events which were then arousing every republican heart in Virginia to action-a messenger came in haste from Alexandria, bearing intelligence of bloodshed at Lexington and Concord. That intelligence made a deep but widely different impression upon the minds of the three friends. The gentle Fairfax, even then inclined to enter the gospel ministry, which he afterward adorned, was drawn, by the ties of consanguinity and ancestral reverence, to the side of the parent country. He was much distressed by the tidings from the east, for he perceived the gathering of a cloud of miseries for his country, and the peril of all pleasant social relations.

Gates, ambitious of military glory, and eagerly looking for the honors and emoluments of office, for which he had long played the sycophant in London, was delighted by this opening of an avenue to a field of action wherein they might be won; while Washington, communing with the intuitions of his loftier spirit, became thoughtful and reserved, and talked little, but wisely, on the subject. But he resolved nobly and firmly to go zealously into whatever conflicts might arise for the defence of the liberties of his country. All regarded the event as the casting away of the scabbard, as the severing blow to colonial allegiance.

These friends parted company on the following day, and toward the evening of the 4th of May, Benjamin Harrison, one of the immortal fifty-six who afterward signed the Declaration

of Independence, came to Mount Vernon, supped, lodged, and breakfasted, and departed with Washington, early in the morning of the 5th, for Philadelphia. They arrived at Chester on the 9th, and, while riding toward Philadelphia, with other southern delegates, were met, five or six miles from the city, by a cavalcade of five hundred gentlemen. Nearer the city, they were met by military companies, and by these, with bands of music, were escorted into and through the city "with great parade.” On the following day, the new England delegates were received in a similar manner; and thus, in the midst of the homage and acclamations of the people, the representatives of thirteen viceroyalties assembled to confederate in the great. work of constructing a new republic.

With the sword of defence in one hand, and the olive-branch of reconciliation in the other, the Congress went on in their solemn labors. The military genius and experience of Washington were continually acknowledged by his being placed as chairman of all the committees appointed for the conduct of military affairs; and to him was entrusted the important task of preparing rules and regulations for an army, and devising measures for the general defence.

Meanwhile, a large, but crude and ill-regulated army, had gathered around Boston, and was keeping the British regulars in close confinement upon that little peninsula. It possessed no other cohesion than that derived from a sense of mutual danger. The Congress perceived this, and resolved to consolidate and organize it by adopting it as a Continental army, with a commander-in-chief and assistant general officers. That adoption was formally made; and on Thursday, the 15th of June, two days before the battle of Bunker's Hill, George