In truth he was a most difficult man to know.

Carlyle, crying out through hundreds of pages and myriads of words for the "silent man," passed by with a sneer the most absolutely silent great man that history can show.

Washington's letters and speeches and messages fill many volumes, but they are all on business.

They are profoundly silent as to the writer himself.

From this Carlyle concluded apparently that there was nothing to tell,--a very shallow conclusion if it was the one he really reached.