In this guise he appears as a man of lofty intellect, vast moral force, supremely successful and fortunate, and wholly apart from and above all his fellow-men.

This lonely figure rises up to our imagination with all the imperial splendor of the Livian Augustus, and with about as much warmth and life as that unrivaled statue.

In this vague but quite serious idea there is a great deal of truth, but not the whole truth.

It is the myth of genuine love and veneration springing from the inborn gratitude of man to the founders and chiefs of his race, but it is not by any means the only one of its family.
There is another, equally diffused, of wholly different parentage.
In its inception this second myth is due to the itinerant parson, bookmaker, and bookseller, Mason Weems.

He wrote a brief biography of Washington, of trifling historical value, yet with sufficient literary skill to make it widely popular.