In addition to the effect on the popular mind of his character and
services was that of his personal presence. If contemporary testimony
can be believed, few men have ever lived who had the power to impress
those who looked upon them so profoundly as Washington. He was richly
endowed by nature in all physical attributes. Well over six feet
high,[1] large, powerfully built, and of uncommon muscular strength,
he had the force that always comes from great physical power. He had
a fine head, a strong face, with blue eyes set wide apart in deep
orbits, and beneath, a square jaw and firm-set mouth which told of a
relentless will. Houdon the sculptor, no bad judge, said he had no
conception of the majesty and grandeur of Washington's form and
features until he studied him as a subject for a statue. Pages might
be filled with extracts from the descriptions of Washington given by
French officers, by all sorts of strangers, and by his own countrymen,
but they all repeat the same story. Every one who met him told of the
commanding presence, and noble person, the ineffable dignity, and
the calm, simple, and stately manners. No man ever left Washington's
presence without a feeling of reverence and respect amounting almost
to awe.
[Footnote 1: Lear in his memoranda published recently in full in
McClure's Magazine for February, 1898, states that Washington measured
after death six feet three and one half inches in height, a foot
and nine inches across the shoulders, two feet across the elbows;
evidently a spare man with muscular arms, which we know to have been
also of unusual length.
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