He  is  tall  and  well  proportioned,  and  his  personal
appearance  truly  noble  and  majestic."  "  He  is  tall
and  of  easy  and  agreeable  address,"  the  loyalist
Curwen  had  remarked  a  few  weeks  before ;  while
Mrs. John  Adams,  warm-hearted  and  clever,  wrote
to  her  husband  after  the  general's  arrival :  "  Dig-
nity, ease,  and  complacency,  the  gentleman  and  the
soldier,  look  agreeably  blended  in  him. Modesty
marks  every  line  and  feature  of  his  face. Those
lines  of  Dryden  instantly  occurred  to  me,  —

'  Mark  his  majestic  fabric  !     He  's  a  temple
Sacred  by  birth,  and  built  by  hands  divine  ;
His  soul 's  the  deity  that  lodges  there  ;
Nor  is  the  pile  unworthy  of  the  God.'  "

Lady,  lawyer,  and  surgeon,  patriot  and  tory,  all
speak  alike,  and  as  they  wrote  so  New  England
felt. A  slave-owner,  an  aristocrat,  and  a  church-


TAKING    COMMAND. 135

man,  Washington  came  to  Cambridge  to  pass  over
the  heads  of  native  generals  to  the  command  of  a
New  England  army,  among  a  democratic  people,
hard-working  and  simple  in  their  lives,  and  dissent-
ers to  the  backbone,  who  regarded  episcopacy  as
something  little  short  of  papistry  and  quite  equiva-
lent to  toryism. Yet  the  shout  that  went  up  from
soldiers  and  people  on  Cambridge  common  on  that
pleasant  July  morning  came  from  the  heart  and
had  no  jarring  note. A  few  of  the  political  chiefs
growled  a  little  in  later  days  at  Washington,  but
the  soldiers  and  the  people,  high  and  low,  rich  and
poor,  gave  him  an  unstinted  loyalty. On  the  fields
of  battle  and  throughout  eight  years  of   political
strife  the  men  of  New  England  stood  by  the  great
Virginian  with  a  devotion  and  truth  in  which  was
no  shadow  of  turning. Here  again  we  see  exhibited
most  conspicuously  the  powerful  personality  of  the
man  who  was  able  thus  to  command  immediately
the  allegiance  of  this  naturally  cold  and  reserved
people. What  was  it  that  they  saw  that  inspired
them  at  once  with  so  much  confidence  ?    They  looked
upon  a  tall,  handsome  man,  dressed  in  plain  uni-
form, wearing  across  his  breast  a  broad  blue  band
of  silk,  which  some  may  have  noticed  as  the  badge
and  symbol  of  a  certain  solemn  league  and  cove-
nant once  very  momentous  in  the  English-speaking-
world. 