ment might become a necessary appendage. resolution his mind had never swerved.

From this

While, however, he declined to receive the proffered shares for his own benefit, he intimated a disposition to receive them in trust, to be applied to the use of some object or institution of a public nature. His wishes were complied with, and the shares were ultimately appropriated by him to institutions devoted to public education. Yet, though the love for his country would thus interfere with his love for his, home, the dream of rural retirement at Mount Vernon still went on.

"The more I am acquainted with agricultural affairs," he says, in a letter to a friend in England, "the better I am pleased with them; insomuch that I can nowhere find so much satisfaction as in those innocent and useful pursuits. While indulging these feelings, I am led to reflect, how much more delightful to an undebauched mind is the task of making improvements on the earth, than all the vainglory that can be acquired from ravaging it by the most uninterrupted career of conquest.

"How pitiful, in the age of reason and religion, is that false ambition which desolates the world with fire and sword for the purpose of conquest and fame, compared to the milder virtues of making our neighbours and our fellowmen as happy as their frail convictions and perishable natures will permit them to be!"

He had a congenial correspondent in his quondam brother-soldier, Governor Clinton of New-York, whose spear, like his own, had been turned into a pruninghook.

"Whenever the season is proper and an opportunity offers," writes he to the governor, "I shall be glad to receive the balsam-trees or others which you may think curious and exotic with us, as I am endeavouring to improve the grounds about my house in this way." He recommends to the governor's care certain grape-vines of the choicest kinds for the table, which an uncle of the Chevalier de Luzerne had engaged to send from France, and which must be about to arrive at New-York. He is literally going to sit under his own vine and his own fig-tree, and devote himself to the quiet pleasures of rural life.

At the opening of the year (1785) the entries in his

diary show him diligently employed in preparations to improve his groves and shrubbery. On the 10th of January he notes that the white thorn is full in berry. On the 20th he begins to clear the pine groves of undergrowth. In February he transplants ivy under the walls of the garden to which it still clings. In March he is planting hemlock-trees, that most beautiful species of American evergreen, numbers of which had been brought hither from Occoquan. In April he is sowing holly berries in drills, some adjoining a green-brier hedge on the north side of the garden gate; others in a semicircle on the lawn. Many of the holly bushes thus produced are still flourishing about the place in full vigour. He had learnt the policy, not sufficiently adopted in our country, of clothing his ornamented grounds as much as possible with evergreens, which resist the rigours of our winter and keep up a cheering verdure throughout the year. Of the trees fitted for shade in pasture land he notes the locust, maple, black mulberry, black walnut, black gum, dogwood, and sassafras, none of which, he observes, materially injure the grass beneath them.

Is then for once a soldier's dream realized? Is he in perfect enjoyment of that seclusion from the world and its distractions, which he had so often pictured to himself amid the hardships and turmoils of the camp? Alas, no! The "post," that "herald of a noisy world," invades his quiet and loads his table with letters, until correspondence becomes an intolerable burthen.

He looks in despair at the daily accumulating mass of unanswered letters. "Many mistakenly think," writes he, "that I am retired to ease, and to that kind of tranquillity which would grow tiresome for want of employment; but at no period of my life, not in the eight years I served the public, have I been obliged to write so much myself, as I have done since my retirement." 1 Again-"It is not the letters from my friends which give me trouble, or add aught to my perplexity. It is references to old matters, with which I have nothing to do; applications which often cannot be complied with; inquiries which would require the pen of a historian to satisfy; letters of compliment, as

Letter to Richard Henry Lee.

unmeaning perhaps as they are troublesome, but which must be attended to; and the commonplace business which employs my pen and my time often disagreeably. These, with company, deprive me of exercise, and, unless I can obtain relief, must be productive of disagreeable consequences."

From much of this drudgery of the pen he was subsequently relieved by Mr. Tobias Lear, a young gentleman of New Hampshire, and graduate of Harvard College, who acted as his private secretary, and at the same time took charge of the instruction of the two children of the late Mr. Parke Custis, whom Washington had adopted.

There was another tax imposed by his celebrity upon his time and patience. Applications were continually made to him to sit for his likeness. The following is his sportive reply to Mr. Francis Hopkinson, who applied in behalf of Mr. Pine.

"In for a penny in for a pound,' is an old adage. I am so hackneyed to the touches of the painters' pencil, that I am altogether at their beck, and sit like Patience on a monument,' whilst they are delineating the lines of my face. It is a proof, among many others, of what habit and custom can accomplish. At first I was impatient at the request, and as restive under the operation as a colt is under the saddle. The next time I submitted very reluctantly, but with less flouncing. Now no dray-horse moves more readily to his thill than I to the painter's chair. It may easily be conceived, therefore, that I yield a ready obedience to your request, and to the views of Mr. Pine.'

It was not long after this that M. Houdon, an artist of great merit, chosen by Mr. Jefferson and Dr. Franklin, arrived from Paris to make a study of Washington for a statue, for the Legislature of Virginia. He remained a fortnight at Mount Vernon, and, having formed his model, took it with him to Paris, where he produced that excellent statue and likeness to be seen in the State House in Richmond, Virginia.

Being now in some measure relieved from the labours of the pen, Washington had more time to devote to his plan for ornamental cultivation of the grounds about his dwelling.

We find in his diary, noted down with curious exactness, each day's labour and the share he took in it; his frequent rides to the Mill Swamp, the Dogue Creek, the “Plantation on the Neck," and other places along the Potomac, in quest of young elms, ash-trees, white-thorn, crab-apples, maples, mulberries, willows, and lilacs; the winding walks which he lays out, and the trees and shrubs which he plants along them. Now he sows acorns and buck-eye nuts brought by himself from the Monongahela; now he opens vistas through the Pine Grove, commanding distant views through the woodlands; and now he twines round his columns scarlet honeysuckles, which his gardener tells him will blow all the summer.

His care-worn spirit freshens up in these employments. With him Mount Vernon is a kind of idyl. The transient glow of poetical feeling which once visited his bosom, when in boyhood he rhymed beneath its groves, seems about to return once more; and we please ourselves with noting, among the trees set out by him, a group of young horse-chestnuts from Westmoreland, his native county, the haunt of his schoolboy days; which had been sent to him by Colonel Lee (Light Horse Harry), the son of his "Lowland Beauty."

A diagram of the plan in which he had laid out his grounds still remains among the papers at Mount Vernon; the places are marked on it for particular trees and shrubs. Some of those trees and shrubs are still to be found in the places thus assigned to them. In the present neglected state of Mount Vernon its walks are overgrown, and vegetation runs wild; but it is deeply interesting still to find traces of these toils in which Washington delighted, and to know that many of the trees which give it its present umbrageous beauty were planted by his hand.

The ornamental cultivation of which we have spoken was confined to the grounds appertaining to what was called the mansion-house farm; but his estate included four other farms, all lying contiguous, and containing three thousand two hundred and sixty acres; each farm having its bailiff or overseer, with a house for his accommodation, barns and outhouses for the produce, and cabins for the negroes. On a general map of the estate, drawn out by

Washington himself, these farms were all laid down accurately and their several fields numbered; he knew the soil and local qualities of each, and regulated the culture of them accordingly.

In addition to these five farms there were several hundred acres of fine woodland, so that the estate presented a beautiful diversity of land and water. In the stables near the mansion-house were the carriage and saddle-horses, of which he was very choice; on the four farms there were 54 draught horses, 12 mules, 317 head of black cattle, 360 sheep, and a great number of swine, which last ran at large in the woods.

He now read much on husbandry and gardening, and copied out treatises on those subjects. He corresponded also with the celebrated Arthur Young; from whom he obtained seeds of all kinds, improved ploughs, plans for laying out farm-yards, and advice on various parts of rural economy.

66

Agriculture," writes he to him, "has ever been among the most favoured of my amusements, though I have never possessed much skill in the art, and nine years' total inattention to it has added nothing to a knowledge which is best understood from practice; but with the means you have been so obliging as to furnish me, I shall return to it, though rather late in the day, with more alacrity than ever."

In the management of his estate he was remarkably exact. No negligence on the part of the overseers or those under them was passed over unnoticed. He seldom used many

words on the subject of his plans; rarely asked advice; but, when once determined, carried them directly and silently into execution; and was not easily dissuaded from a project when once commenced.

We have shown, in a former chapter, his mode of apportioning time at Mount Vernon, prior to the Revolution. The same system was, in a great measure, resumed. His active day began some time before the dawn. Much of his correspondence was despatched before breakfast, which took place at half-past seven. After breakfast he mounted his horse which stood ready at the door, and rode off to different parts of his estate, as he used to do to various parts of