There Is Nothing Very Special About The House.
Indeed, As A House, It Would Now Be Found Comfortless And
Inconvenient.
But the ground falls well down to the river, and the
timber, if not fine, is plentiful and picturesque.
The chief
interest of the place, however, is in the tomb of Washington and his
wife. It must be understood that it was a common practice
throughout the States to make a family burying-ground in any
secluded spot on the family property. I have not unfrequently come
across these in my rambles, and in Virginia I have encountered
small, unpretending gravestones under a shady elm, dated as lately
as eight or ten years back. At Mount Vernon there is now a cemetery
of the Washington family; and there, in an open vault - a vault
open, but guarded by iron grating - is the great man's tomb, and by
his side the tomb of Martha his wife. As I stood there alone, with
no one by to irritate me by assertions of the man's absolute
supremacy, I acknowledged that I had come to the final resting-place
of a great and good man, - of a man whose patriotism was, I believe,
an honest feeling, untinged by any personal ambition of a selfish
nature. That he was pre-eminently a successful man may have been
due chiefly to the excellence of his cause, and the blood and
character of the people who put him forward as their right arm in
their contest; but that he did not mar that success by arrogance, or
destroy the brightness of his own name by personal aggrandizement,
is due to a noble nature and to the calm individual excellence of
the man.
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