His private affairs, his servants, his horses, his arms, even his clothes, have all passed beneath the merciless microscope of history.

His biography has been written and rewritten.

His letters have been drawn out from every lurking place, and have been given to the world in masses and in detachments.

His battles have been fought over and over again, and his state papers have undergone an almost verbal examination.

Yet, despite his vast fame and all the labors of the antiquarian and biographer, Washington is still not understood,--as a man he is unfamiliar to the posterity that reverences his memory.