378 THE FEENCH BLOOD IN AIMEEICA 



personal assistance in the field. As for the motives that 

 impelled the foremost among them, the young and gallant 

 Marquis de Lafayette, to leave courtly luxury and ease 

 for camp life in a strange land, no one questions their 

 purity and unselfishness. He is taken at his own words 

 when he tells us his "heart was enlisted" when he 

 ''heard of American independence." We shall not for- 

 get what a comfort this young French nobleman was to 

 Washington, who needed just such inspiration and com- 

 panionship as Lafayette could give. Washington, who 

 was not given to overpraise, said of him, "This noble 

 soldier combines all the military fire of youth with an 

 unusual maturity of judgment." The American com- 

 mander-in-chief relied upon this French officer as upon 

 few men, and the friendship between them was one of the 

 fine outgrowths of the war. On Lafayette's side there 

 was the deference and courtesy not only born of his ex- 

 quisite breeding, but of an intense admiration for a char- 

 acter whose greatness he appreciated from the first ; while 

 Washington also found much to admire in the brilliant 

 young soldier and true gentleman who was as devoted as 

 himself to the cause of human freedom. More than once 

 the American commander had reason to be out of humour 

 with some of the French officers, who assumed too much 

 by reason of their rank at home ; but Lafayette was his 

 comfort and dependence, always to be counted upon in 

 an emergency. 

 Lafayette in After the war Lafayette continued to render all the aid 



the French '' 



Revolution in his powcr to the Eepublic he had helped establish. A 

 man of influence in his own country, he co-operated with 

 the American diplomats, and was a steadfast friend until 

 France came to her Eevolutiou, and his hopes for such 

 liberty there as the American Eepublic knew seemed for- 

 ever blasted. A recent writer ' gives an account of the 

 later years of Lafayette's life, and of the honours paid to 



' Augustus E. Ingram, deputy consul of the United States in Paris. 



