But the real man has been so overlaid with myths and traditions, and so distorted by misleading criticisms, that, as has already been suggested, he has been wellnigh lost.

We have the religious or statuesque myth, we have the Weems myth, and the ludicrous myth of the writer of paragraphs.

We have the stately hero of Sparks, and Everett, and Marshall, and Irving, with all his great deeds as general and president duly recorded and set down in polished and eloquent sentences; and we know him to be very great and wise and pure, and, be it said with bated breath, very dry and cold.

We are also familiar with the common-place man who so wonderfully illustrated the power of character as set forth by various persons, either from love of novelty or because the great chief seemed to get in the way of their own heroes.
If this is all, then the career of Washington and his towering fame present a problem of which the world has never seen the like.

But this cannot be all: there must be more behind.