Note 52 — JOURNAL.

Lowland beauty.—Who this object of Washington's early admiration was, if she had a veritable existence, is not positively known. Irving, followed by Everett and others, accepts the tradition, or rather surmises, that this sobriquet referred to Miss Lucy Grymes of Westmoreland county, who in 1753 married Henry Lee, Esq. Their son was the gallant General Henry Lee, "Lighthorse Harry," of the Revolution. Some recent writers, affect to believe that this draft of a letter is conclusive that there was a real love affair but that Betsy Fauntleroy, of Fredericksburg, Va., was the person referred to, and have published a letter purporting to have been addressed by Washington to William Fauntleroy, Sr., Esq., in Richmond, enclosing one to Miss Betsy, who, it is made to appear, had also refused Washington's addresses. Letters and traditions of this character should be received with caution, for while vague reports and surmises of an affair of the heart may be dilated upon in a bantering way among friends of the parties where there is little or no foundation for the allegation, yet they should be subjected to scrutiny and some positive evidence adduced before they are accepted as historical facts.