ately earnest and eloquent expression to that reverent and profound desire which filled all hearts-so universal was a religious sense of the importance of the occasion - the military began to march from their respective quarters, with flaunting banners, and the liveliest music. The principal companies were Captain Stakes's troop of horse, equipped in the style of Lee's famous partisan legion; Captain Scriba's German Grenadiers, with blue coats, yellow waistcoats and breeches, black gaiters, and towering cone-shaped caps, faced with bear-skin; Captain Harsin's New York Grenadiers, composed, in imitation of the guard of the great Frederick, of only the tallest and finest-looking young men of the city, dressed in blue coats with red facings and gold lace broideries, cocked hats with white feathers, and white waistcoats and breeches, and black spatterdashes, buttoned close from the shoe to the knee; and the Scotch Infantry, in full highland costume, with bagpipes.

Ralph Izard, Tristram Dalton, and Richard Henry Lee, on the part of the Senate, and Charles Carroll, Egbert Benson, and Fisher Ames, on the part of the House of Representatives, had been appointed a joint committee of arrangements, and the procession was formed under the immediate direction of Colonel Morgan Lewis, in Cherry street, opposite the President's house, at twelve o'clock. After the military came

The Sheriff of the City and County of New York,
The Committee of the Senate,

GEORGE WASHINGTON,

The Committee of the House of Representatives,

John Jay, Secretary for Foreign Affairs,

Henry Knox, Secretary of War,

Robert R. Livingston, Chancellor of the State of New York,

Distinguished Citizens.

The procession having marched through Queen, Great Dock, and Broad streets, until opposite Federal Hall, the troops formed a line

on each side of the way, through which the President, with his attendants, was conducted to the chamber of the Senate, where the members of the House of Representatives had a few minutes before assembled, and at the door the Vice President received him and waited upon him to the chair.

The Vice President then said, "Sir, the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States are ready to attend you to take the oath required by the Constitution, which will be adminis tered by the Chancellor of the State of New York."

The President answered, "I am ready to proceed."

The Vice President and the Senators led the way, and, accompanied by the Chancellor, and followed by the Representatives, and other public characters present, he then walked to the outside gallery, from which Broad street and Wall street, each way, were perceived to be filled, as with a sea of upturned faces, but as silent as if the immense concourse had been of statues instead of living men.

The spectacle must have been in the highest degree interesting and serious. In the centre, between two pillars, was seen the commanding figure of Washington, in a coat, waistcoat, and breeches, of fine dark brown cloth, and white silk stockings, all of American manufacture, plain silver buckles in his shoes, his head uncovered, and his hair dressed in the prevailing fashion of the time. On one side stood the Chancellor, in a full suit of black cloth, and on the other the Vice President, dressed more showily, but like the President entirely in American fabrics. Between the President and the Chancellor was Mr. Otis, Secretary of the Senate, a small short man, holding an open Bible upon a rich crimson cushion, and conspicuous in the group were Roger Sherman, General Knox, General St. Clair, Baron Steuben, and others whose names were equally dear and familiar to the people.

A gesture of the Chancellor arrested the attention of the im

mense assembly, and he pronounced slowly and distinctly the words of the oath. The Bible was raised, and as the President bowed to kiss its sacred pages, he said audibly, "I swear," and added, with fervor, his eyes closed, that his whole soul might be absorbed in the supplication, "So help me God!"

Then the Chancellor said, "It is done," and, turning to the mul titude, waved his hand, and with a loud voice exclaimed, "Long live George Washington, President of the United States!"

Immediately the air was filled with acclamations and the roar of cannon; the President bowed, and again and again the welkin rung with the plaudits of happy and grateful citizens, who felt that Heaven had granted all their reasonable petitions, and that the New Era dreamed of by sages and celebrated by orators and bards was now completely inaugurated.

"The scene," writes one who was present to his correspondent in Philadelphia, "was solemn and awful beyond description. It would seem extraordinary that the administration of an oath, a ceremony so very common and familiar, should in so great a degree excite the public curiosity; but the circumstances of the President's election, the impression of his past services, the concourse of spectators, the devout fervency with which he repeated the oath, and the reverential manner in which he bowed down and kissed the sacred volume, all these conspired to render it one of the most august and interesting spectacles ever exhibited..... It seemed, from the number of witnesses, to be a solemn appeal to Heaven and earth at once. In regard to this great and good man I may perhaps be an enthusiast, but I confess that I was under an awful and religious persuasion, that the gracious Ruler of the Universe was looking down at that moment with peculiar complacency on an act which to a part of his creatures was so very important." Under this impression, he proceeds to say that when the Chancellor proclaimed

Washington President, his sensibility was so excited that he could do no more than wave his hat with the rest, without the power of joining in the repeated acclamations which rent the air.

Few persons are now living who witnessed the induction of the first President of the United States into his office; but walking, not many months ago, near the middle of a night of unusual beauty, through Broadway-at that hour scarcely disturbed by any voices or footfalls except our own-Washington Irving related to Dr. Francis and myself his recollections of these scenes, with that graceful conversational eloquence of which he is one of the greatest of living masters. He had watched the procession till the President entered Federal Hall, and from the corner of New street and Wall street had observed the subsequent proceedings in the balcony.

III.

THE President, members of the Congress, and other dignitaries and distinguished characters, having returned to the Senate chamber and taken their seats, Washington arose and delivered a short inaugural speech, alike remarkable as a display of modesty, dignity, and wisdom. Among the vicissitudes of his life, he said, none could have filled him with greater anxieties than his election to the Presidency. "On the one hand I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years; a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions of my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most expe