Pericles, able, accomplished, magnificent, was the representative man of Athens in the time of her highest civilization and prosperity. Richard I. was the representative man of England in the days of chivalry, and Charles II. in the days of gallantry. These men could scarcely have lived in any other age or clime. So Washington could scarcely have had his existence in any other time or country. He could no more have been an Italian of the middle ages, than Machiavelli could have been an American, or Cæsar Borgia an Englishman: no more than the Parthenon could have been a Gothic cathedral, or Westminster Abbey a Grecian temple. He was at once the offspring and the type of American civilization at his time. He was our great forest-bred cavalier, with all the high honor of his ancestral stock of De Wessingtons, with all the hardy firmness of a pioneer, and with all the kindly courtesy of his native State. Among the Adamses and Hancocks, the Lees and Henrys, the Sumpters and Rutledges of that day, he stood forth prominently as the representative man, and as the exemplar of our Revolution, just as that triplex monstrosity of Danton, Marat, and Robespierre, was the exemplar of the French. He was a man of firm adherence to principle. We fought for principle in the revolutionary struggle. He was a man of signal moderation. Such was the spirit of our contest. He had great self-control. Unlike other revolutions, ours advanced not one step beyond the point proposed. Having reached that, it subsided as easily, as gracefully, and as quietly as though the voice of Omnipotence itself had spoken to the great deep of our society, saying: "_Peace, be still._" Could he have lived in ancient days, the strains of immortal verse would have told his deeds, and fond adherents would have numbered him among the gods. Those days are past; but we have yet hearts to admire, and pens to record, and tongues to praise his private virtues and his public worth. And when century after century shall have rolled by, bearing its fruits into the bosom of the past; even when men shall look back to this time, through the haze and mist of a remote and far-off antiquity, if this shall still be a land of freemen, this day shall still be fondly cherished as the anniversary of the birth of Washington; increased reverence shall attend his character, and thickening honors shall cluster around his name. Upon this representative and similitude of the great and honored dead, which we this day put forth before the world, the winds shall blow, the rains shall fall, and the storms shall beat, but it shall stand unhurt amid them all. So shall it be with the fame of him whose image it is. The breath of unfriendly criticism may blow upon it; the storms that betoken moral or social change may break upon it; but it shall stand firmly fixed in the hearts and memories of every true and honest and liberty-loving man who inhabits our land or cherishes our institutions.