I hastened to arrive at Mount Vernon, the seat of General Washington, ten miles below Alexandria, on the same river. On this route you traverse a considerable wood, and after having passed over two hills, you discover a country house of an elegant and majestic simplicity. It is preceded by grass-plats; on one side of the avenue are the stables, on the other a green-house, and houses for a number of Negro mechanics. In a spacious back yard are turkies, geese, and other poultry. This house overlooks the Potomack, enjoys an extensive prospect, has a vast and elevated portico on the front next the river, and a convenient distribution of the apartments within. The General came home in the evening, fatigued with having been to lay out a new road in some part of his plantations. You have often heard him compared to Cincinnatus: the comparison is doubtless just. This celebrated General is nothing more at present than a good farmer, constantly occupied in the care of his farm and the improvement of cultivation. He has lately built a barn, one hundred feet in length, and considerably more in breadth, destined to receive the productions of his farm, and to shelter his cattle, horses, asses, and mules. It is built on a plan sent him by that famous English farmer Arthur Young. But the General has much improved the plan. This building is in brick, it cost but three hundred pounds; I am sure in France it would have cost three thousand. He planted this year eleven hundred bushels of potatoes. All this is new in Virginia, where they know not the use of barns, and where they lay up no provisions for their cattle. His three hundred Negroes are distributed in different log-houses, in different parts of his plantation, which in this neighbourhood consists of ten thousand acres. Colonel Humphreys, that poet of whom I have spoken, assured me that the General possesses, in different parts of the country, more than two hundred thousand acres.

Every thing has an air of simplicity in his house; his table is good, but not ostentatious; and no deviation is seen from regularity and domestic economy. Mrs. Washington superintends the whole, and joins to the qualities of an excellent house-wife, the simple dignity which ought to characterise a woman, whose husband has acted the greatest part on the theatre of human affairs; while she possesses that amenity, and manifests that attention to strangers, which render hospitality so charming. The same virtues are conspicuous in her interesting niece; but unhappily she appears not to enjoy good health.