Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Even China has placed in his monument a stone which declares: Can any man of ancient or modern times fail to pronounce Washington peerless? I will add one other tribute of exquisite beauty, from an American source. It is from the most fastidious of critics, Fisher Ames: Consider for a moment, what a reputation it was; such as no man ever before possessed by so clear a title, and in so high a degree. His fame seemed in its purity to exceed even its brightness. Office took honor from his acceptance, but conferred none. Ambition stood awed and darkened by his shadow. For where, through the wide earth, was the man so vain as to dispute precedence with him; or what were the honors that could make the possessor Washington's superior? Refined and complex as the ideas of virtue are, even the gross could discern in his life the infinite superiority of her rewards. Mankind perceived some change in their ideas of greatness; the splendor of power, and even of the name of conqueror, had grown dim in their eyes. They did not know that Washington could augment his fame; but they knew and felt that the world's wealth, and its empire, too, would be a bribe far beneath his acceptance. Works of Fisher Ames, Vol. 2, p. 78. Probably no American public man of Washington's time?certainly none who deserved the name of statesman?differed so entirely in character, mental traits, and political opinion from Washington as Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson left the Cabinet of his great chief of his own accord to become the leader of the party opposed to his policies?a party which took possession of the government four years after Washington's retirement and a little more than one year after Washington's death. But Jefferson, late in his own life, when it was suggested to him that thefame of Washington m...