Just as dear, just as touching to our national feelings, sensibilities, and emulous gratitude, just as instructive to head and heart, are the cherished and beloved features of our national forefathers. Turn we then a few leaves with interest, perchance with profit. An instinctive delicacy places the elders at the head of the procession. Of course the very first in the book, as in our hearts, is the dear, good face of our great-great-great-grandfather, GEORGE WASHINGTON. How well we all know it. One hundred and twenty-eight original portraits were taken of him, between 1770, when he was thirty-eight years old, and 1796, when he was sixty-four, by various painters, from the elder Peale to Sharpless. The statue of Houdon, ordered by Virginia in 1785, and finished in 1788, perpetuates in marble, to its visitors at Richmond, as its engraved copies have made familiar to all, the full-length majestic figure and port of the wise, thoughtful, and careful General. Yet numerous as are the likenesses, multiplied by various art processes, and scattered through parlors, bedrooms, sheds, cabins, and books, we instantly recognize and instinctively love the noble features of our dear old grandfather. Very grave he is, very sedate, as if he was thinking how it was best to settle in life some of his large household. His thoughts seem so earnest and weighty that we cannot interrupt them. Good and humane as is the face, we cannot bounce in, leap upon his high knees, pull lovingly his long hair, and then scamper away with a sense of unspoken forgiveness in our thumping hearts. O no! There is an awe in his presence, benevolent as it is, a width of responsibility in his thought-beaming face, which stills and hushes us. Very reserved and calm, seldom volunteering a remark, never a laugh, for mere entertainment, he makes ordinary conversation appear like empty chattering. Yet ever gracious is he, ever gentle, well-bred, and self-contained. His reticence is not sour, but thoughtful, his silence the waiting upon a large utterance. Intent and earnest after something he always seems. Even in his relaxation from formal work, and when least occupied, he seems like a good fisherman sitting on the bank, carefully watching the float, and fixed upon securing the nibbles. A noble face! just the frontispiece to a great History, the preface to an Encyclopædia of Moral Philosophy and Political Rights, the trunk of a large genealogical tree, the grandfather of a large, proud family.