His whole career is well summed up by Allan Cunningham, his biographer, in few words: "Throughout his life he manifested a strong disposition to be his own minister, and occasionally placed the kingly prerogatives in perilous opposition to the resolutions of the nation's representatives. His interference with the deliberations of the upper house, as in the case of Fox's Indian bill, was equally ill-judged and dangerous. _The separation of America from the mother country, at the time it took place, was the result of the King's personal feelings and interference with the ministry._ The war with France was, in part at least, attributable to the views and wishes of the sovereign of England. His obstinate refusal to grant any concessions to his Catholic subjects, kept his cabinet perpetually hanging on the brink of dissolution, and threatened the dismemberment of the kingdom. He has been often praised for firmness, but it was in too many instances the firmness of obstinacy; a dogged adherence to an opinion once pronounced, or a resolution once formed." The mind, in passing from the unhonored grave of the prince to the last resting-place of the peasant boy, leaps from a kingdom of darkness to one of light. Let us now return to the career of Washington. Throughout the Revolutionary War he carried, like Atropos, in his hand the destinies of millions; he bore, like Atlas, on his shoulders the weight of a world. It is unnecessary to follow him throughout his subsequent career. Honored again and again by the people of the land he had redeemed from thraldom, he has taken his place in death by the side of the wisest and best of the world's benefactors. Assassins did not unglory him in life, nor has oblivion drawn her mantle over him in death. The names of his great battle-fields have become nursery words, and his principles have imbedded themselves forever in the national character. Every pulsation of our hearts beats true to his memory. His mementoes are everywhere around and about us. Distant as we are from the green fields of his native Westmoreland, the circle of his renown has spread far beyond our borders. In climes where the torch of science was never kindled; on shores still buried in primeval bloom; amongst barbarians where the face of liberty was never seen, the Christian missionary of America, roused perhaps from his holy duties by the distant echo of the national salute, this day thundering amidst the billows of every sea, or dazzled by the gleam of his country's banner, this day floating in every wind of heaven, pauses over his task as a Christian, and whilst memory kindles in his bosom the fires of patriotism, pronounced in the ear of the enslaved pagan the venerated name of WASHINGTON!