taneous, perhaps irregular, but exuberant, gorgeous, intense and irresistible.

I will not say the Americans have exhibited a Chatham or a Burke. I think their most excellent speakers want the finish of oratory. But the nation appears to me to enjoy a greater aptitude for public speaking, more generally diffused, and more frequently displayed in flights of bold, nervous, and sometimes beautiful eloquence, than any other whatever. In their public bodies, congress, the state assemblies, the bar of the several states, and their numerous political, and academic associations, there is a much greater number of agreeable speakers, than in the similar assemblies of Great Britain, with whom, from the identity of language and similarity in other respects, it seems most natural to compare them. There is no modern people, among whom the opportunities of oratory are so numerous; or the incitements to oratorical excellence so strong. In such a republic as that of the American states, an orator may be a perpetual dictator, for reasons very different from those which produced the same effect in the ancient commonwealths. In them the populace were moved, through their ignorance; here the people may be roused through their universal intelligence. A fertile and solid memory; not that which retains words, but in which ideas are classed, as it were, in a great repository, waiting the orders of the judgment; a rapid conception, which unites, while it conceives ideas; an intrepid and hardy logic, which seizes analogies, without the process of comparison or deduction; a courage irritated rather than abated

by interruptions and difficulties; a happy facility to feel, and yet to restrain the feelings, for passion, which sometimes obscures the intelligence, always fertilizes, when it does not disorder; a mind enlarged by study, fortified by meditation, habituated by writing to the concentration of thought, and rectitude of expression; consummated in any individual of this country, would place its destinies at his disposal.

LETTER VI.

FROM INCHIQUIN.

Dated at Washington.

THE inauguration of the new president took place yesterday, when I was prevented witnessing the ceremony by a cold, which confines me to my chamber. With this letter I have forwarded a newspaper, containing an account of what little ceremonial there was on the occasion, which I accompany with a sketch of the characters of the American presidents.

Of Washington what shall be said? Panegyric cannot be exhausted on his name. The sovereignty of his country was asserted by his energy, and secured by his moderation. His military successes were more solid than brilliant, brilliant as they were; and judgment, rather than enthusiasm, regulated his conduct in battle. In the midst of the inevitable disorders of camps, and the excesses inseparable from a civil war, humanity always found refuge in his tent. In the morning of triumph, and in the darkness of adversity, he was a like serene; at all times tranquil as wisdom, and simple as virtue. After the acknowledgment of American independence, when the unanimous suffrage of a free people called him to administer their

government, his administration, partaking of his character, was mild and firm at home, noble and prudent abroad. Born to opulence, he had nobly increased his patrimony, like the early heroes of Rome, by the labours of agriculture: and though an enemy to vain parade, he wished to environ the manners of republicanism with a becoming dignity. His well regulated mind repulsed every species of extravagance. No one of his fellow-citizens loved liberty more ardently; but no one heard, with a stronger repugnance, the exaggerations of demagogues. In all his negotiations the heroic simplicity of the American president dealt, without vainglory or abasement, with the majesty of kings. His were not the fierce and imposing features which strike all minds; but order and justice, truth, and above all, good sense, were his characteristics: good sense, a quality as rare as it is useful, and as useful in public stations as in private life. Genius elevates, boldness destroys; good sense preserves and perfects. Genius is charged with the glory of empires; but good sense alone can assure their repose and duration. When Washington saw his country raised, in great measure by his personal influence, from distraction and despondency, to an honourable rank among independent nations, actuated by neither fear nor ambition, but desirous of enjoying in private the tranquillity he so greatly contributed to affirm, he retired from the presidency, to live and die a private citizen, when he might have been monarch of the West. But though he relinquished the first place, the first name in America

continued and ever will be Washington. There are prodigious men, who appear at intervals, with the character of greatness and domination. An unknown, supernatural cause sends them forth, when required, to found, or repair the ruins of empires. In vain do such men keep aloof, or mix with the crowd; the hand of fortune raises them suddenly, and they are borne from obstacle over obstacle, from triumph through triumph, to the summit of authority. Inspiration animates their thoughts; an irresistible movement is given to their enterprises. The multitude looks for them in itself, but finds them not; and lifting up its eyes, they are beheld in a sphere resplendent with light and glory. No monarch on his throne was ever so great as Washington in his retirement. No founder of an empire had the same pretensions, looking around on the national power and prosperity he had created, to exclaim, He sunt meæ imagines, hæc nobilitas, non hereditate relicta, sed quæ ego plurimis laboribus et periculis quæsivi.*

* The ancients would have deified such an individual as Washington, and transmitted his name, thus rendered sacred, to the veneration of posterity. No political improvements or national institutions, no course of policy, no mere system, however excellent, can tend so much to make a nation happy and great, as the disinterested exertions of individuals, exalted by their superior talents and virtue. It ought to be one of the first objects of a republican people to enshrine the characters of those men, to whom their prosperity may be even in part ascribed, and with whose names their national character will be associated. Some of the ablest statesmen and historians have pronounced their judgments

I