“I am now, I believe, fixed in this seat, with an agreeable partner for life; and I hope to find more happiness in retirement than I ever experienced in the wide and bustling world.” Most of our readers are familiar with the home of Washington, as it has been presented to them in the many engravings which have found their way to almost every fireside. The mansion, very spacious on the ground floor, was architecturally quite pleasing. It stood upon a smooth, green, velvety lawn, spreading several hundred feet down to the river which washed its eastern base. The prospect it commanded was magnificent. The eminence, in the rear, was crowned with the stately forest. The spacious estate, of two thousand five hundred acres, was divided into many highly cultivated farms. Much of the region was still covered with the forest, which the axe of the settler had never disturbed. Game of every variety abounded on the hills, and in the meadows and streamlets. A nobler hunting ground could perhaps nowhere be found. Washington, when but a stripling, had often ranged its vast expanse, where deer, foxes, and rabbits had found their favorite haunts; and where water-fowl floated, often in countless numbers, upon the creeks and lakelets. In one of Washington’s letters he writes enthusiastically, and yet truly: “No estate in United America is more pleasantly situated. In a high and healthy country; in a latitude between the extremes of heat and cold; on one of the finest rivers in the world--a river well stocked with various kinds of fish at all seasons of the year, and, in the spring with shad, herring, bass, carp, sturgeon, etc., in great abundance. The borders of the estate are washed by more than ten miles of tide water. Several valuable fisheries appertain to it. The whole shore, in fact, is one entire fishery.” Washington was, from his natural disposition, and also from the teachings of his mother, a devout man. The society in the midst of which he was born, and by which he was from childhood surrounded, was aristocratic in all its habits and tastes. Most of the wealthy planters were connected with the aristocratic families of England. They had brought over large sums of money, purchased extensive estates and were living in a style of splendor and of profuse hospitality unknown in any of the other colonies. The governors, in particular, being appointed by the crown and who were generally men of wealth and high birth, endeavored to form their establishments on the pattern of miniature royalty. The Episcopal church, or church of England, was altogether predominant throughout the Dominion. Many of these haughty men maintained it merely as an essential part of the political organization of the British government. But Washington was a religious man in heart and in life. He was vestryman[54] of two parishes: Fairfax and Truro.