And it must also be recorded that if he had learned how to conduct himself in the presence of persons superior to himself in position, age, and culture,--and it will be remembered that Lord Fairfax was an able contributor to the "Spectator" (which Washington was careful to study while at Greenway,)--this youth no less followed the instruction of his 108th rule: "Honour your natural parents though they be poor." His widowed mother was poor, and she was ignorant, but he was devoted to her; being reverential and gracious to her even when with advancing age she became somewhat morose and exacting, while he was loaded with public cares. I am no worshipper of Washington. But in the hand of that man of strong brain and powerful passions once lay the destiny of the New World,--in a sense, human destiny. But for his possession of the humility and self-discipline underlying his Rules of Civility, the ambitious politicians of the United States might to-day be popularly held to a much lower standard. The tone of his character was so entirely that of modesty, he was so fundamentally patriotic, that even his faults are transformed to virtues, and the very failures of his declining years are popularly accounted successes. He alone was conscious of his mental decline, and gave this as a reason for not accepting a third nomination for the Presidency. This humility has established an unwritten law of limitation on vaulting presidential ambitions. Indeed, intrigue and corruption in America must ever struggle with the idealised phantom of this grand personality.