Yet a brilliant writer, the latest historian of the American people, has said: "General Washington is known to us, and President Washington.

But George Washington is an unknown man." These are pregnant words, and that they should be true seems to make any attempt to fill the great gap an act of sheer and hopeless audacity.

Yet there can be certainly no reason for adding another to the almost countless lives of Washington unless it be done with the object in view which Mr.McMaster indicates.

Any such attempt may fail in execution, but if the purpose be right it has at least an excuse for its existence.
To try to add to the existing knowledge of the facts in Washington's career would have but little result beyond the multiplication of printed pages.

The antiquarian, the historian, and the critic have exhausted every source, and the most minute details have been and still are the subject of endless writing and constant discussion.
Every house he ever lived in has been drawn and painted; every portrait, and statue, and medal has been catalogued and engraved.