Page:Republican Court by Rufus Griswold.djvu/176

ively ornamented. In the principal transparency were seen figures of the Graces, exceedingly well executed, among a pleasing variety of patriotic emblems, and trees, flowers, arches, and fountains; and in the windows were moving pictures, so skilful in design and accomplishment as to present the illusion of living panoramas, "the whole," according to Fenno's Gazette, " affording a new, an animated, and an enchanting spectacle."

Mr. Lear mentions, in a diary which he kept at the time, that in the beginning of the evening the President, Colonel Humphreys, and himself, went in a carriage to the houses of Chancellor Livingston and General Knox, where they had a full view of the fireworks, and that they returned home at ten o'clock, on foot, the throng of people in the streets being so great as not to permit a carriage to pass.

V.

Under these favorable auspices, surrounded and sustained by the most able and eminent men of the country, and encouraged by the most enthusiastic demonstrations of popular respect and affection, Washington entered upon that career of civil administration in which the sagacious student of history recognizes as much bravery of temper, solidity of understanding, and steady and unselfish devotion to the common welfare, as had marked that military conduct which caused Frederic, the hero of Prague, Rosbach, and Lissa, to send him his sword, inscribed, "From the oldest general in Europe to the greatest general in the world," and Napoleon to hail him as "the Great Washington."