was himself a soldier, and fought with heroism in many of the glorious battles of his country, one of which furInished the theme of his most celebrated work. Herodotus was born only a few years before the great conflict with Xerxes; and Xenophon participated prominently in the remarkable military achievements he has commemorated. The profoundest scholars, acutest poets, most masculine heroes, the best writers and most sagacious statesmen are always polished into enduring elegance, and fortified with the best strength amid the stern realities of life. Such was Alexander Hamilton. He was the indefatigable soldier of the press, the pen and the army; in in each field he carried a sword which, like the one borne by the angel at the gate of Paradise, flashed its guardian care on every hand. In martial affairs he was an adept, in literary excellence he was unexcelled, and in political discernment he was universally acknowledged to be superior among the great. We read his writings. with ever-increasing zest, fascinated by the seductive. charms of his style, and impelled by the opening splendors of his far-reaching and comprehensive thoughts. They accumulate with a beautiful symmetry, and emanate legitimately from his theme. They expand and grow, as an acorn rises into an oak, of which all the branches shoot out of the same trunk, nourished in every part by the same sap, and form a perfect unit, amid all the diversified tints of the foliage and the infinite complexity of the boughs. "That writer would deserve the fame of a public benefactor," said Fisher Ames, "who could exhibit the character of Hamilton with the truth and force that all who intimately knew him conceived it; his example would then take the same ascendant as his talents. The portrait alone, however exquisitely finished, could not inspire genius where it is not; but if the world should again have possession of so rare a gift, it might awaken it where it sleeps, as by a spark from heaven's own altar; for surely if there is any thing like divinity in man it is in his admiration for virtue. "The country deeply laments when it turns its eyes back and sees what Hamilton was; but my soul stiffens with despair," continues Ames, "when I think what Hamilton would have been. It is not as Apollo, enchanting the shepherds with his lyre, that we deplore him; it is as Hercules, treacherously slain in the midst of his unfinished labors, leaving the world overrun with monsters." It is unnecessary to dwell on the unrighteous and fatal event which robbed Hamilton of life—the duel with Aaron Burr at Hoboken, when "A Falcon, tow'ring in his pride of place, |