His library was a curious medley of books, if those on military science and agriculture are omitted. There is a fair amount of the standard history of the day, a little theology, so ill assorted as to suggest gifts rather than purchases, a miscellany of contemporary politics, and a very little belles-lettres. In political science the only works in the slightest degree noticeable are Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” “The Federalist,” and Rousseau’s “Social Compact,” and, as the latter was in French, it could not have been read. In lighter literature Homer, Shakespeare, and Burns, Lord Chesterfield, Swift, Smollett, Fielding, and Sterne, and “Don Quixote,” are the only ones deserving notice. It is worthy of mention that Washington’s favorite quotation was Addison’s “’Tis not in mortals to command success,” but he also utilized with considerable aptitude quotations from Shakespeare and Sterne. There were half a dozen of the ephemeral novels of the day, but these were probably Mrs. Washington’s, as her name is written in one, and her husband’s in none. Writing to his grandson, Washington warned him that “light reading (by this, I mean books of little importance) may amuse for the moment, but leaves nothing solid behind.” [Illustration: WASHINGTON’S BOOK-PLATE] One element of Washington’s reading which cannot be passed over without notice is that of newspapers. In his early life he presumably read the only local paper of the time (the _Virginia Gazette_), for when an anonymous writer, “Centinel,” in 1756, charged that Washington’s regiment was given over to drunkenness and other misbehavior, he drew up a reply, which he sent with ten shillings to the newspaper, but the printer apparently declined to print it, for it never appeared.