We cordially acquiefce in the reflection that the United States, under the operation of the federal government, have experienced a moft rapid aggrandizement and profperity, as well political as commercial.

While contemplating the caufes that produce this aufpicious refult, we muft acknowledge the excellence of the conftitutional fy item, and the wisdom of the legislative provifions, but we fhould be deficient in gratitude and justice, did we not attribute a great portion of thefe advantages to the virtue, firmness, and talents of your adminiftration, which have been confpicuously displayed in the moft trying times, and on the moft critical occafions. It is, therefore, with the fincereft regret, that we now receive an official notification of your intenfions to retire from the public employments of your country.

When we review the various fcenes of your public life, fo long, and fo fuccefsfully devoted to the moft arduous fervices, civil and military, as well during the ftruggles of the American revolution, as the convulfive periods of a recent date, we cannot look forward to your retirement without our warmeft affections and moft anxious regards accompanying you, and without mingling with our fellow-citizens at large the fincereft wishes for your perfonal happiness that fenfibility and attachment can exprefs.

The most effectual confolation that can offer for the lofs we are about to sustain, arifes from the amimating reflection, that the influence of your example will extend to your fucceffors, and the United States thus continue to enjoy an

GENTLEMEN,

IT affords me great fatisfaction to find in your address a concurrence in fentiment with me on the various topics which I prefented for your information and deliberation; and that the latter will receive from you an attention proportioned to their refpective importance.

For the notice you take of my public fervices, civil and military, and your kind withes for my perfonal happiness, I beg you to accept my cordial thanks. Thofe fervices, and greater, had I poffeffed ability to render them, were due to the unanimous calls of my country; and its approbation is my abundant reward.

When contemplating the period of my retirement I faw virtuous and enlightened men, among whom I refted on the difcernment and patriotifm of my fellow-citizens to make the proper choice of a fucceffor; men who would require no influential example to enfure to the United States "" an able, upright, and energetic adminiftration." To fuch men I fhall cheerfully yield the palm of genius and talents, to ferve our common country; but at the fame time I hope I may be indulged in exprefling the confoling reflection (which consciousness suggefts), and to bear it with me to the grave, that none can ferve it with purer intentions than I have done, or with a more difinterested zeal.

GEORGE WASHINGTON.
CHARACTERS.

Particulars of the earlier years of Mr. Gibbon's Life, and of the course of ftudies which laid the foundation of bis fubfequent celebrity. From memoirs of himself in Lord Sheffield's edition of his pofthumous works.

I was born at Putney, in the county of Surry, on the 27th of April, O. S. in the year one thoufand feven hundred and thirtyfeven; the first child of the marriage of Edward Gibbon, efq. and of Judith Porten. My lot might have been that of a flave, a favage, or a peasant; nor can I reflect with out pleasure on the bounty of nature, which caft my birth in a free and civilized country, in an age of fcience and philofophy, in a family of honourable rank, and decently endowed with the gifts of fortune. From my birth I have enjoyed the right of primogeniture; but I was fucceeded by five brothers and one fifter, all of whom were fnatched away in their infancy. My five brothers, whose names may be found in the parish register of Putney, I fhall not pretend to lament: but from my childhood to the prefent hour I have deeply and fincerely regretted my fifter, whofe life was fomewhat prolonged, whom I remember to have feen an amiable infant. The relation of a brother and a fifter, especially if they do

not marry, appears to me of a very fingular nature. It is a familiar and tender friendship with a female, much about our own age; an affection perhaps foftened by the fecret influence of fex, but pure from any mixture of sensual defire, the fole fpecies of platonic love that can be indulged with truth, and without danger.

The death of a new born child before that of its parents may feem an unnatural, but it is ftrictly a probable, event: fince of any given number the greater part are extinguifhed before their ninth year, before they poffefs the faculties of the mind or body. Without accufing the profufe wafte or imperfect workmanship of nature, I fhall only obferve, that this unfavourable chance was multiplied a gainft my infant exiftence. feeble was my conftitution, so precarious my life, that, in the baptifm of each of my brothers, my father's prudence fucceflively repeated my chriftian name of Edward, that, in cafe of the departure of the eldest fon, this patronymic appellation might be ftill perpetuated in the family.

So

·Uno avulfo non deficit alter. To preferve and to rear fo frail a being, the most tender affiduity was fcarcely fufficient; and my mother's attention was fomewhat di

3

verted

verted by her frequent pregnancies, by an exclufive paffion for her hufband, and by the diffipation of the world, in which his tafte and authority obliged her to mingle. But the maternal office was fupplied by my aunt, Mrs. Catharine Porten; at whofe name I feel a tear of gratitude trickling down my cheek. A life of celibacy transferred her vacant affection to her fifter's firft child my weakness excited her pity; her attachment was fortified by labour and fuccefs: and if there be any, as I truft there are fome, who rejoice that I live, to that dear and excellent woman they must hold themfelves indebted. Many anxious and folitary days did the confume in the patient trial of every mode of relief and amufe ment. Many wakeful nights did the fit by my bed-fide in trembling expectation that each hour would be my laft. Of the various and frequent diforders of my childhood my own recollection is dark; nor do I wish to expatiate on fo difgufting a topic. Suffice it to fay, that while every practitioner, from Sloane and Ward to the chevali er Taylor, was fucceffively fummoned to torture or relieve me, the care of my mind was too frequently neglected for that of my health; compaffion always fuggefted an excufe for the indulgence of the mafter, or the idleness of the pupil; and the chain of my education was broken, as often as I was recalled from the fchcol of learning to the bed of fickness.

As foon as the use of fpeech had prepared my infant reafon for the admiffion of knowledge, I was taught the arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic. So remote is the date, fo vague is the memory of

their origin in myself, that, were not the error corrected by analogy, I thould be. tempted to conceive them as innate. In my childhood I was praifed for the readiness, with which I could multiply and divide, by memory alone, two fums of feveral figures: fuch praise encouraged my growing talent; and had I perfevered in this line of application, I might have acquired fome fame in mathematical ftudies.

After this previous inftitution at home, or at a day-school at Putney, I was delivered at the age of feven into the hands of Mr. John Kirkby, who exercifed about eigh teen months the office of my domeftic tutor. His own words, which I fhall here tranfcribe, infpire in his favour a fentiment of pity and esteem." During my abode in my native county of Cumberland, in quality of an indigent curate, I ufed now-andthen in a fummer, when the pleafantnefs of the feafon invited, to take a folitary walk to the feafhore, which lies about two miles from the town where I lived. Here I would amuse myself, one while in viewing at large the agreeable profpect which furrounded me, and another while (confining my fight to nearer objects) in admiring the vaft variety of beau tiful fhells, thrown upon the beach; fome of the choiceft of which I always picked up, to divert my little ones upon my return. One time among the reft, taking fuch a journey in my head, I fat down upon the declivity of the beach with my face to the fea, which was now come up within a few yards of my feet; when immediately the fad thoughts of the wretched condition of my

family,

of all endeavours to amend it, came crowding into my mind, which drove me into a deep melancholy, and ever and anon forced tears from my eyes." Diftress at last forced him to leave the country. His learning and virtue introduced him to my father; and at Putney he might have found at leaft a temporary shelter, had not an act of indifcretion again driven him into the world. One day reading prayers in the parish church, he most unluckily forgot the name of king George: his patron, a loyal fubject, difmiffed him with fome reluctance, and a decent reward; and how the poor man ended his days I have never been able to learn.

In my ninth year (January 1746), in a lucid interval of comparative health, my father adopted the convenient and cuftomary mode of English education; and I was fent to Kingston upon Thames, to a fchool of about feventy boys, which was kept by Dr. Wooddefon and his affiftants. Every time I have fince paffed over Putney common, I have always noticed the fpot where my mother, as we drove along in the coach, admonished me that I was now going into the world, and must learn to think and act for myself. The expreffion may appear ludicrous; yet there is not, in the course of life, a more remarkable change than the removal of a child from the luxury and freedom of a wealthy houfe, to the frugal diet and ftrict fubordination of a fchool; from the tenderness of parents, and the obfequiousness of fervants, to the rude familiarity of his equals, the infolent tyranny of his feniors, and the rod, perhaps, VOL. XXXVIII.

gogue. Such hardships may feel the mind and body against the injuries of fortune: but my timid referve was aftonished by the crowd and tumult of the school; the want of ftrength and activity disqualified me for the fports of the play-field; nor have I forgotten how often in the year forty-fix I was reviled and buffetted for the fins of my tory an ceftors. By the common methods of difcipline, at the expence of many tears and fome blood, I purchafed the knowledge of the Latin fyntax and not long fince I was poffeffed of the dirty volumes of Phædrus and Cornelius Nepos, which I painfully conftrued and darkly understood.

My ftudies were too frequently interrupted by fickness; and after a real or nominal refidence at Kingston-fchool of near two years, I was finally recalled (December 1747) by my mother's death, which was occafioned in her thirty-eighth year, by the confequences of her laft labour. I was too young to feel the importance of my lofs; and the image of her perfon and converfation is faintly imprinted in my memory. The affectionate heart of my aunt, Catherine Porten, bewailed a fifter and a friend; but my poor father was inconfolable and the tranfport of grief feemed to threaten his life or his reafon. I can never forget the fcene of our first interview, fome weeks after the fatal event; the awful filence, the room hung with black, the mid day tapers, his fighs and tears; his praifes of my mother, a faint in heaven; his folemn adjuration that I would cherish her memory and imitate her virtues; and the fervor with which he kiffed and blessed me Y

as

as the fole furviving pledge of their loves. The ftorm of paffion infenfibly fubfided into calmer melancholy. At a convivial meeting of his friends, Mr. Gibbon might affect or enjoy a gleam of cheerfulness, but his plan of happiness was for ever deftroyed; and after the lofs of his companion he was left alone in a world, of which the bufinefs and pleasures were to him irksome or infipid. After fome unfuccefsful trials he renounced the tumult of London and the hofpitality of Putney, and buried himself in the rural or rather ruftic folitude of Buriton; from which, during feveral years, he feldom emerged.

As far back as I can remember, the house, near Putney - bridge and church yard, of my maternal grandfather appears in the light of my proper and native home. It was there that I was allowed to fpend the greatest part of my time, in fickness or in health, during my fchool vacations and my parents' refidence in London, and finally after my mother's death. Three months after that event, in the fpring of 1748, the commercial ruin of her father, Mr. James Porten, was accomplished and declared. He fuddenly abfconded: but as his effects were not fold, nor the house evacuated, till the Chriftmas following, I enjoyed during the whole year the fociety of my aunt, without much confciousness of her impending fate. I feel a melancholy pleasure in repeating my obligations to that excellent woman, Mrs. Catherine Porten, the true mother of my mind and health. Her natural good fenfe was improved by the perufal of the best books in the English language; and if her rea

Pain

fon was fometimes clouded by prèjudice, her fentiments were never difguifed by hypocrify or affectation. Her indulgent tenderness, the franknefs of her temper, and my innate rifing curiofity, foou removed all distance between us: like friends of an equal age, we freely converfed on every topic, familiar or abftrufe; and it was her delight and reward to obferve the first fhoots of my young ideas. and langour were often foothed by the voice of inftruction and amufement; and to her kind leffons I afcribe my early and invincible love of reading, which I would not exchange for the treasures of India. I fhould perhaps be astonished, were it poffible to afcertain the date, at which a favourite tale was engraved, by frequent repetition, in my memory: the Cavern of the Winds; the Palace of Felicity; and the fatal moment, at the end of three months or centuries, when prince Adolphus is overtaken by Time, who had worn out fo many pair of wings in the purfuit. Before I left Kingston fchool I was well acquainted with Pope's Homer and the Arabian Nights Entertainments, two books which will always please by the moving picture of human manners and fpecious miracles: nor was I then capable of difcerning that Pope's tranflation is a portrait endowed with every merit, excepting that of likeness to the original. The verses of Pope accustomed my ear to the found of poetic harmony: in the death of Hector, and the fhipwreck of Ulyffes, I tafted the new emotions of terror and pity; and feriously difputed with my aunt on the vices and virtues of the he roes of the Trojan war. From Pope's Homer to Dryden's Virgil

was