MOUNT VERNON AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS.

N many an ancient volume in the library at Mount Vernon, while the mansion remained in the possession of the Washington family, was the engraved book-plate of the illustrious proprietor, which displayed, as

usual, the name and armorial bearings of the owner. The language of heraldry learnedly describes the family arms of

Washington as "argent, two bars gules in chief, three mullets of the second. Crest, a raven, with wings, indorsed proper, issuing out of a ducal coronet, or." All this may be ininterpreted, a white or silver shield, with two red bars across

it, and above them three spur rowels, the combination appearing very much like the stripes and stars on our national ensign. The crest, a raven of natural color issuing out of a golden ducal coronet. The three mullets or star-figures indicated the filial distinction of the third son.

Back into the shadowy past six hundred years and more we may look, and find the name of Washington presented with "honorable mention" in several counties in England, on the records of the field, the church, and the state. They were generally first-class agriculturists, and eminently loyal men when their sovereigns were in trouble. In that trying time for England's monarch, a little more than two hundred years ago, when a republican army, under the authority of a revolutionary parliament, was hunting King Charles the First, Sir Henry Washington, a nephew of the Duke of Buckingham, is observed as governor of Worcester, and its able defender during a siege of three months by the parliamentary troops under General Fairfax. And earlier than this, when Charles, as Prince Royal, was a suitor for the hand of the Infanta of Spain, we find a Washington attached to his person. The loyal James Howell, who suffered long imprisonment in Flect-street Jail because of his attachment to Charles, was in the train of the Prince while at Madrid; and from that city he wrote to his "noble friend, Sir John North," in the summer of 1623, saying:

"Mr. Washington, the Prince his page is lately dead of a Calenture, and I was at his buriall under a Figtree behind my Lord of Bristol's house. A little before his death one Ballard, an English Priest, went to tamper with him, and Sir

Edmund Varney meeting him coming down the stairs out of Washington's chamber, they fell from words to blows: but they were parted. The business was like to gather very ill bloud, and com to a great hight, had not Count Gondamar quasht it, which I beleeve he could not have done, unless the times had bin favorable; for such is the reverence they bear to the Church here, and so holy a conceit they have of all Ecclesiastics, that the greatest Don in Spain will tremble to offer the meanest of them any outrage or affront."

brothers, true Cavaliers, who could not brook the rule of Cromwell, the self-styled Lord Protector of England. They left their beautiful residence of Cave Castle, north of the IIumber, in Yorkshire, and sought more freedom of life in the virgin soil of the New World. And in later years the representatives of the Washingtons and Fairfaxes, who were neighbors and friends in Virginia, found themselves, in political positions, opposed to those of their ancestors; that of the former being the great leader of a republican army, and of the latter a most loyal adherent of the crown.

The Washingtons who first came to America seem not to have been possessed of much wealth. They brought with them no family plate as evidences of it; for the heiress of the family had given her hand and fortune to an English baronet, the master of the fine estate of Studley Royal, where now the eldest son of the late Earl of Ripon resides. It is believed that there is only one relic of the old Washington family in this country, and that is a small bronze mortar, having the letters "C. W." (the initials of CIMON WASHINGTON) and the date, "1664," cast upon it. That mortar is in In

WASHINGTON MORTAR.

dependence Hall, in Philadelphia.

The Northamptonshire family, from whom George Washington was descended, wore the motto seen upon his bookplate-EXITUS ACTA PROBAT: "The end justifies the means;" and it was borne and heeded by the line from generation to generation, until the most illustrious of them all had achieved the greatest ends by the most justifiable means.

The annexed engraving is from an impression of General Washington's seal, bearing his family arms, attached to the death-warrant of a soldier executed at

Morristown, in 1780. Below it is an engraving of the face of his seal-ring, which also bears his arms and motto; and also of two watch-seals which he wore together in early life. Upon each of the last two is engraved his monogram, one of them being a fac-simile of

WASHINGTON'S SEAL.

his written initials. One of these was lost by Washington himself on the bloody field of Monongahela, where Braddock was defeated in 1755; and the other by his nephew, in Virginia, more than twenty-five years ago. Both were found in the year 1854, and restored to the Washington family.*

Of all the volumes in the Mount Vernon library which contain Washington's bookplate none appears more interesting than Sir Matthew Hale's Contemplations, Moral and Divine, printed at the beginning of the last century. It is well worn by frequent use; for it was from that volume that Washington's mother drew many of those great maxims which she instilled into the mind of her son, and which had a powerful influence in

SEAL-RING.

*This statement is made on the authority of Charles J. Bushnell, Esq., of New York, whose investigations in numismatic science and kindred subjects have been careful and extensive. The engravings of the seals are copied, by his permission, from a work of his now in preparation for the press.