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whose letters this volume contains? His military talents were early celebrated; 

 first in the service of Great Britain, and afterwards in that of America. His 

 powers as a statesman, and as the founder of a Constitution, which, with British 

 prejudices, I may consider as inferior to our own, but which promises to secure the 

 happiness of the great nation it was formed to govern, cannot possibly be 

 questioned. His public virtue, as the uncorrupted magistrate of a free people, who 

 reluctantly received supreme authority, when it was judged necessary for the public 

 good for him to assume it, and who anxiously wished to resign it into their hands, 

 when it could be done with public safety, can hardly be equalled in history. His 

 literary endowments were unquestionably of a superior order. His letters in this 

 collection, his addresses to the American Congress, and his farewell oration when 

 he quitted, for the last time, the Presidency of the United States, are models of 

 r*oh species of composition. His closing a well-spent life, after a short illness, 

 without having his strength or faculties impaired by any previous disorder, or any 

 untoward circumstances having occurred that could materially affect his feelings, or 

 c ould possibly tarnish his fame, is an uncommon instance of good fortune. The 

 $c;ene in which he acted also, and the object which he achieved, are the most 

 Memorable which history furnishes. For it was such a man alone, who, by 

 combining the force and commanding the confidence of thirteen separate states, 

 could have dissolved those ties which subjected America to Europe, and to whom 

 the political separation of two worlds is to be attributed. But, above all, what 

 distinguished this celebrated warrior arid statesman is, that to all those military and 

 public talents, and to those literary endowments, which are so rarely united in the 

 same person, he added the practice of every virtue that could adorn the private 

 individual. It were in vain for me to attempt adequately to express the ideas I 

 entertain of a character, in every respect so peculiarly splendid. The pen of the 



