[Footnote 52: Washington's Writings, Vol. IX. p. 488.]
The message at length arrived, and he commenced his journey. In his Diary, he writes; "About ten o'clock, I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic felicity; and, with a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensations than I have words to express, set out for New York, with the best disposition to render service to my country, in obedience to its call, but with less hope of answering its expectations." [Footnote 53]
[Footnote 53: Washington's Writings, Vol. X. p. 461.]
His journey was a triumphal procession; on the road, and in the towns, the whole population came out to meet him, with shouts of applause and prayers in his behalf. He entered New York, conducted by a committee of Congress, in an elegantly decorated barge, rowed by thirteen pilots, representing the thirteen States, in the midst of an immense crowd in the harbor and upon the shore. His own state of feeling remained the same. "The display of boats," says he in his Diary, "which attended and joined on this occasion, some with vocal and others with instrumental music on board; the decorations of the ships, the roar of cannon, and the loud acclamations of the people, which rent the sky as I passed along the wharves, filled my mind with sensations as painful (contemplating the reverse of this scene, which may be the case, after all my labors to do good,) as they were pleasing." [Footnote 54]
[Footnote 54: Marshall's Life of Washington, Vol. V. p. 159.]
About a century and a half before, on the banks of the Thames, a similar crowd and like outward signs of feeling had attended Cromwell to Westminster, when he was proclaimed Protector of the Commonwealth of England. "What throngs! what acclamations!" said his flatterers. Cromwell replied, "There would be still more, if they were going to hang me."
A singular resemblance, and also a noble difference between the sentiments and the language of a corrupted great man and a virtuous great man.
Washington was, with reason, anxious about the task which he undertook. The sagacity of a sage, united to the devotedness of a hero, constitutes the highest glory of humanity. The nation, which he had conducted to independence, and which required a government at his hands, being hardly yet formed, was entering upon one of those social changes which render the future so uncertain, and power so perilous.