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PRECOCIOUS FROM NECESSITY.

105

This occurred at Mount Vernon, and Washington, who was evidently the main dependence and assistant in his brother's affairs throughout his illness, now took charge, by his brother's direction, of his business, and also of his family, consisting of his widow and one daughter, sickly from her birth. The widow married again, the daughter died, and the estate of Mount Vernon became, by Lawrence's will, the property of George Washington, and an inseparable appendage to that illustrious name for ever. He very soon took up his abode there, and commenced a system of improvements which he carried on, with various interruptions, for the rest of his life.

Thus it would seem that from a very early time, a premature manhood was forced upon him, by the circumstances of his life and the duties required of him. It is true these circumstances and duties evidently owe their force to his fitness, and from them we gather what manner of person he was. When other boys are apt to be "sowing their wild oats," he was quietly laying the foundation of fame and fortune. Too soon, we

might say, of an ordinary mind in an ordinary body; for it is true, as a general rule, that the finest and most satisfactory development is slow. But in this case we can only study and wonder, and recognize the Divine hand.

On the 4th of November, 1752, at Fredericksburg Lodge, George Washington, then not quite twenty-one years of age, was initiated an apprentice in "the An

5*

cient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons." On the 3d of March, 1753, he was advanced to the second degree of fellow-craft; and on the 4th of August next after, he was made a Master Mason.

Afterwards, as the Grand Master of the Masons of the United States, he laid the corner-stone of the Capitol, at Washington; and, last of all, he was buried with Masonic honors, by the lodge of which he was the first Master. No wonder the Masonic order is proud to claim him, and to display the tokens of his membership which still remain.

He is thus referred to as a Mason, in a centennial oration delivered by Rev. Dr. Tyng, in 1852 : "Never was our fundamental principle of justice more beautifully or perfectly realized by man. Every foot of his wall was built in rigid conformity to the square and the plummet. You may trace the principle in all his own private accounts. To be in debt was, in his judgment, to be in slavery, a slavery to which no Free Mason could be honorably subjected. For years his books were kept by his own hands, in the most beautiful style of neatness and punctuality. He maintained a perfect oversight of his own business, detecting any mismanagement or carelessness in others, and habitually choosing never to rely upon others to do that which he could do for himself. In his management of public trusts, during the whole eight years' campaigns of the Revolution, he kept an exact account of all expenditures in the public service, and exhibited them in his

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DISINTERESTEDNESS-TOLERATION.

107

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own handwriting to Congress at the close of the war; not only refusing any remuneration for the services he had performed, but faithfully declaring himself largely a willing loser, in amounts of his own private funds, which had been expended in the public service. Nor was he less distinguished by one other great principle, Love, which wrought in beneficence to the needy, in forgiveness to the penitent, in the kindest and most liberal construction of the motives and characters of other men; in the strongest emotions of private friendship, and in the perfect toleration of the religious conscience of mankind."

CHAPTER XI.

Contemporary history-George II. and his court-Rudeness of manners-General corruption-Incorrect spelling-Swift-Pope-Bolingbroke-Chesterfield-Lady

M. W. Montague-Burke-Pitt-Marlborough-Admiral Vernon-Duke of Cumberland-Flora Macdonald-C. J. Fox-George III.-Wolfe-Burns-CowperContinental European sovereigns.

REMEMBERING how indistinct were my own juvenile ideas of contemporaneous history, I shall here turn aside to offer the younger part of my readers a few particulars of the time during which Washington lived, from his birth upward, in order that the impression made by his biography may be more clear, and the contrast between himself and some of his contemporaries more striking.

To begin with the monarch to whom he first owed allegiance. George the Second was in the fifth year of his long reign in February, 1732, when the greatest of his subjects was born.

This monarch was mean and profligate in his life and character, and the bad example of the sovereign was but too clearly reflected in the lives of the officers. of the government and the higher nobility. A histo

WASHINGTON'S CONTEMPORARIES.

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rian observes of that reign that "greatness of soul was a quality non-existent in court or cabinet." It was noticed as a wonderful piece of virtue, when a member of Parliament refused a bribe of a thousand pounds from the Prince of Wales. Such being the state of things at the fountain head of authority and honor, we may easily draw conclusions as to the general character of those who were sent out to rule the distant colonies. Corruption was at its most daring point, and an avaricious and unprincipled sovereign would like best the official who was most adroit in extorting money from those beneath him. The great Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, who ruled England for thirty years, and who is said to have held the vile sentiment that "every man has his price," was at the height of his power. He was born in 1676, and died in 1745.

As to the tone of morals tolerated at the English court at the time, we may mention that a First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Berkeley, proposed to the King the secret removal of the Prince of Wales-a most infamous son, openly detested by both his father and mother-offering to send him away to America, "where he would never be heard of again."

As to manners, one of the young princesses, at a levée, purposely pulled the chair from under Lady Deloraine, who was about to sit down; and the lady, to avenge the insult, retorted it upon the king himself, by withdrawing his chair, and affording the court the spectacle of the monarch in the most awkward of all posi