they were scarcely more promising for the production of a rebel or, as euphemists will have it, a revolutionist. As has been said, Virginia was a favorite refuge and home of the royalists, who fled from the revenge or displeasure of the Protector. It was, so far as the sentiments of its more refined citizens were concerned, a community of cavaliers, hating Cromwell and, for a century after him, the principles of religion and government which he represented, or was supposed to have represented; hating the roundhead as a personal enemy, and regarding the principle of democracy as a cover for anarchy, and for the worst of tyranny.

Washington's father and half-brothers were rich men, and the wealthy planter of Virginia kept no mean state in those days. In the mode of life of the Washington family, and that of their neighbors, as, for example, the Fairfaxes, many coming from noble, nearly all from aristocratic, families in England, there was everything to foster, in the mind of the child and young man, a respect-nay, a veneration, -for so-called divinely instituted authority, to discourage the belief that he would ever be the champion of a weak people in a struggle with its established rulers-a struggle which the world should call rebellion.

As this biography continues, it will be observed that Washington was only gradually,—indeed very gradually, -educated to the point of regarding with patience even that measure of popular freedom that colonial Virginia knew; he was an aristocrat by tradition, birth, education, and association. Had the possibility of his being a leader in a revolt against the king been whispered to him, when he first espoused the royal service, he would have spurned the suggestion as an insult and an impossibility. So much the more wonderful the event.

Soon after the birth of George, his father removed to a point in Stafford county, opposite Fredericksburg, where he built him a second house, similar to the one in which he had first settled, and which, like its predecessor, has completely passed away. This was the home of George in all his early youth; about it were gathered those associations that in after life came up to him, as some arise before every man, when the word childhood is mentioned. His early education was in no way distinguished from that of other boys about him; he attended the schools of the neighborhood-formal in method and dull in detail, as rural schools are wont to be. He did not learn with especial readiness, but rather with especial accuracy. had once mastered never escaped him, and everything that he acquired in these early days was at his command for instant use, in any emergency, during a busy and eventful life. Day by day, however slow his progress in formal learning, his character was developing, under the formative care of that best of teachers—a good mother. Possessed naturally of a disposition especially sensitive to good influences, her training made his sense of honor, truth, and justice, in boyhood as in later life, acute almost to the

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point of morbidness. Thus, in a childhood, singular for the paucity of the details which have survived, and for its general uneventfulness, we find standing out and constantly quoted, the threadbare story of the cherry tree and the hatchet, which has, in our irreverent day, ceased to become a moral illustration for youth, by reason of the ridicule that its constant repetition has affixed to it. It was no great triumph of veracity; probably few boys would have possessed such enterprise in mischief as to destroy the tree; probably most boys in his place, upon being taxed with the deed, would not have admitted it. To repeat, it is not a very remarkable story, but for one quoted while Benjamin Franklin was still in his prime, it is a very good indication of an undoubted fact, that, in youth as in manhood, Washington would not tell a lie.

It was customary among the more wealthy planters of Virginia at that early day, to send their children to England to be educated, and, while Washington was yet a young child, his brother Lawrence left his home for this purpose, being then a boy of fifteen. When George was not far from seven or eight years of age, this brother returned from abroad, not only a well educated, but a very polished and elegant young gentleman of twentyone years. He had been so fortunate as to acquire the cultivation, while he avoided the vices of English life, and, from the moment of his home-coming, he became an object of admiration, almost approaching worship, to his younger half-brother. George modeled his manners and habits after those of Lawrence, and the latter was doubtless largely influential in forming his opinions as well. He could have found no better model at that time, and the warm sympathy and friendship that survived this youthful veneration, and existed between the two for many years, were of great value to each.

The Washington family had the martial spirit, by undoubted right of inheritance. Very soon after the return of Lawrence to Virginia, war was declared between England and Spain, as a result of naval outrages committed by the latter nation upon the British merchant marine, and Lawrence Washington became a captain in a regiment, raised in the colonies to cooperate with the British army and fleet in the West Indies. With the history of the campaign that followed, this biography is not concerned; it is sufficient to say that Lawrence gained praise and distinction, and returned to his home, intending, after a brief visit, to go to England and cast his fortunes with his army.

The result of Lawrence's military service was to fire George with martial enthusiasm; he drilled his school-fellows in a doubtless very original manual of arms; led them in parades, reviews and mimic battles, and fully determined, as has many a boy of his age, that only the trade of war could satisfy his ambition.

Lawrence did not go to England; he met love and death, two unexpected adversaries that most men sooner or later encounter-which com