Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/70

48 has recently been completed (New York, 1888-'93). Biographies have also been published by Mason L. Weems, David Ramsay, James K. Paulding, Charles W. Upham, Joel T. Headley, Caroline M. Kirkland, and Edward Everett Hale. Benson J. Lossing made an interesting contribution to the illustration of the same theme by his "Mount Vernon and its Associations" in 1859. Meanwhile the genius of Washington Irving has illuminated the whole story of Washington's life, public and private, and thrown around it the charms of exquisite style and lucid narrative (5 vols., New York, 1855-'9). An abridgment and revision of Irving's work, by John Fiske (New York, 1888), and "General Washington," by Bradley T. Johnston (1894), have recently appeared. A sketch was prepared by Edward Everett, at the request of Lord Macaulay, for the eighth edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (1853-1860), which was afterward published in a separate volume. To Edward Everett, too, belongs the principal credit of having saved Mount Vernon from the auctioneer's hammer, and secured its preservation, under the auspices of the Ladies' Mount Vernon Association, as a place of pilgrimage. He wrote fifty-two articles for the New York "Ledger," and delivered his lecture on Washington many times, contributing the proceeds to the Mount Vernon fund.