Abigail Adams comes down to posterity, independently of all relations to others, as one of the grandest women of her time. Martha Washington’s only claim to veneration is because she was the wife of Washington. As his wife, her homely virtues and moral rectitude show to unclouded advantage. Personally, her most marked characteristics were her strong natural sense of propriety and fitness and high moral qualities. In these, if she never added lustre to it, she always honored the name of Washington. We see the former characteristic in the fact, that during the Revolution she never wore foreign or costly attire. While all the outer affairs of the estate, to their minutest detail, were superintended by General Washington, in addition to the mighty burdens of state which he bore, Mrs. Washington superintended her handmaidens and spinning-wheels. Looms were constantly plying in her house, and General Washington wore, at his first inauguration, a full suit of fine cloth woven in his own house. At a ball given in New Jersey, in honor of herself, Martha Washington appeared in “simple russet gown,” with a white handkerchief about her neck. To the state _levées_ of New York and Philadelphia she carried the same stately simplicity. A lady of the olden time, a daughter of Virginia, her ideas of court forms and etiquette had all been received from the mother country. Hers was the difficult task to harmonize aristocratic exclusiveness with republican plainness. She was never to forget that she was the wife of the President of a Republic,—and also never to forget that she was to command the respect of the old monarchies who were ready to despise everything poor and crude in the efforts of the new government to maintain itself in poverty, difficulty and inexperience. Thus the social _levées_ of the first President of the United States, at No. 3, Franklin square, New York, were held under the most rigorous and exclusive rules. They were only open to persons of privileged rank and degree, and they could not enter unless attired in full dress. The receptions of Mrs. Washington merely reproduced, on a smaller plan, the customs and ceremonies of foreign courts. The first President and his wife never forgot their personal dignity, and never forgot that they represented a republic which was already an object of interested scrutiny to the whole civilized world. President Washington wrote to his friend Mrs. Macaulay: “Mrs. Washington’s ideas coincide with my own as to simplicity of dress and everything which can tend to support propriety of character without partaking of the follies of luxury and ostentation.”