thoughtful laborers than he does among would-be statesmen. The prodigies of wisdom that fill McDonalds' Works are from the lowliest classes, and God is always calling his heroes from them, and using the weak things of this world to confound the mighty.

Do we really remember how much any physical accomplishment signifies; to shoot well with a rifle, handle a pencil or needle, blow a flute or touch thirty notes a second, perfectly observant of time, chord and spiritual expression? Many seem to think it a mistake that we were put in bodies at all. But it is the highest wisdom. We were given certain inalienable tools, eyes, hands, etc., that with them we might make more tools, with which to pulverize the granite mountains, set the iron flowing in limpid rivers, harden it into steel, trample the rough seas to smooth paths, and use the swift lightning for a post-horse.

The ridiculous schoolmen turned from things to ideas: discussed how many thousand angels could dance on a needle point without jostling each other, while all this world's forces were lying dormant, and the world's progress was only backward. It has often been argued whether man could think without words; in this world at least he can not think much without things. The Psalmist thought it a punishment fit to follow treachery to God that his right hand should forget its cunning. Many do not know that it is treachery to God's plans that their right hands never had any cunning. It has been an astonishment to many that each generation of leaders in the cities comes from the country. It is largely due to the fact that the education by things and tools is superior to that by ideas alone.

The reform methods began in Boston. There are schools without text books; educating the power of observationor rather with the world for a text book. Then come annexes for elementary instruction in the use of the hammer, saw, square, chisel and plane. One hundred and twenty hours' instruction will enable them to produce better results than the ordinary apprentice after two years' work. It seems a little thing to teach how to strike square blows on a given point, to saw to a line at various angles, make mortise and tenon fit exactly, drive nails in all positions without hitting your own; but many a man can learn conic sections easier and with much less educational result.

It is now earnestly recommended by the best educators that such an annex for developing mind by manual education be associated with every school house. It certainly should be with every home. What is needed is to associate thought with work and work with thought, and then every hour of a whole life is a new development. Much has been written in favor of the kindergarten for children before they can read. More ought to be written in favor of a mannergarten for them all the rest of their lives.

Experience in the Clark University, in Atlanta, Georgia, has proved that tools are essential for the best quickening of mind, and that a boy who sleeps over the multiplication table as an abstraction, is vitally alert in calculating the amount of square feet in the floor or the price of weatherboarding on the shop where he works; that a boy who barely knows one end of a hoe from another becomes an acute observer of forms after practicing drafting for even a few lessons.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON.*

I.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:- Revolutions, like all other social phenomena, are evolved out of preëxisting conditions. They spring from the action of antecedent forces. When these forces are present the revolution follows as naturally and inevitably as a conflagration bursts forth from the impact of heat with combustibles. In the seemingly irregular course of human society certain tendencies appear; they gather head; they become confluent with other tendenciesof a like or contradictory nature; they break the barriers which are imposed to restrain them, and sweep away the political outlines of the past. It is thus that the old forms of society are uprooted, that old institutions are prostrated in the dust, and that old customs are destroyed. Without the antecedent forces, no revolution can exist, any more than an uncaused phenomenon can be found in physical nature. With the preëxisting conditions, the revolution is as sure to appear as the sun is to rise, or the tides to follow the moon. It must be understood as a primary truth that the political cataclysms and social disturbances of mankind occur in obedience to a law which prevails alike in the plant, the animal, and the man-the law of progress by evolution, involving the destruction of the old form by the undergrowth of the new.

While it is true that revolutions result from antecedent conditions; while it is true that the general character of a revolution will be determined by the nature of the forceswhich produce it, it is also true that the particular aspect of the struggle, the peculiar bias and direction of the event, will be traceable in a large measure to the personal agency of the men by whom the revolution is directed. Leadership is a necessary part and parcel of every social conflict; and the quality of this leadership determines in no small degree the nature and result of the struggle. This is the point of view, indeed, from which man as an individual seems to exercise the largest influence on the destinies of his race. In a revolution man, as man, becomes colossal. He seems to others, and perhaps to himself, to be a creator of the events among which he moves and acts. The powerful impress of his form and fatherhood is stamped upon. the features of the age and transmitted to the generationsfollowing. In the stormy period of revolt and dissolution, human society receives the impress of the master spirit and bears it forward forever.

Thus it may be seen that general causes, extending back through the centuries, springing from diverse races in different quarters of the globe, and drifting hitherward from the ages past join at last with personal agency and cooperate with the individual wills of men in producing the critical epochs in human history.

In the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, the hereditary impulses. of Brahminism, transmitted for thousands of years; the influence of the Hindoo astrologers in predicting that the return of the Sumbut, 1914, which was completed in the year of the outbreak, would end the domination of Great Britain in India; and the peculiar character of Indian society, fixed by the traditions of centuries-all fretting against the regularity of British discipline and the stubborn precision of the provincial government, were the general causes which produced the outbreak and converted rebellion into revolution. But the personal character of the audacious private, Mungul Pandy; of Nana Sahib, Rajah of Bithoor; of the King of Delhi, and of the ferocious princess of Jhansi, were the personal forces which gave to the re

ual; 2. The Lords Temporal; 3. The Commons. As the word "realm" means a "a kingdom, a state, a region," it is clear that the king or queen can not be a part of it.

and local mutiny into universal massacre.

* A lecture delivered in the Amphitheater at Chautauqua, August, 1881, by James Clarke Ridpath, LL. D.

It would be easy to show that the preeminence of Spain in the fifteenth century was traceable to the superiority of the Visigothic constitution and laws adopted eight hundred years before, at the great councils of Toledo. It would also be easy to show that the prevalence of the spirit of political freedom of the Low Countries was traceable to the predominance of free institutions planted there by the Teutonic tribes, and to the great number of walled towns and chartered cities which, dotting the face of the country, became the nuclei of political agitation; and it would be easy to show that it was the confluence of these two adverse currents in the tides of civilization which caused the revolt of the Netherlands and gave to history one of its most heroic episodes. But it was the personal character and will of the silent Prince of Orange, of Olden Barneveldt, of Count Egmont and Count Horn, and of Maurice of Nassau, that impressed upon the contest its peculiar features of grandeur, turned revolt into reform, and contributed to the annals of mankind the story of the Dutch Republic.

In that great struggle of the seventeenth century, which temporarily overthrew the institutions of England, dethroned and beheaded the king, upheaved the foundations of the monarchy, and revolutionized the social order, we see the action of antecedents older than the Stuart kings, older than the house of Tudor, older than Runnymede, older than England itself. But the immediate character of the conflict, its grandeur and its folly, were determined by the personal prowess, the will, the persistence, and the indomitable heroism of Cromwell and Pym, of Milton and Hampden, of Hugh Peters and Sir Henry Vane.

Likewise in the terrible regeneration of France we behold on the one side the action of forces whose roots, piercing the lethargy of preceding centuries, struck down into the soil of feudalism, taking hold of the house of Capet, twining about all the traditions of legitimacy, and fastening at last on the pretensions of ediæval Rome; while on the other side we see the impulses of democratic opinion, born perhaps in the free cities of the twelfth century, spreading gradually among the people, incorporated by the Encyclopedists in the new French philosophy, springing in little jets of flame through the pages of Rousseau and Voltaire, and finally bursting forth in a tempest of purifying fire. But the peculiar character of the conflict-its violence, its ruinous excesses, its madness, its frenzy, bravado and defiance of heaven and earth, its glory and grandeur and blood, were traceable to the will and purpose and power of Condorcet and Roland, of Mirabeau and Danton, of Robespierre and Marat, of Demouriez and Bonaparte.

It is thus that the local and limited influence of man, combining with the general tides of causation which pulsate through all times and conditions, becomes a factor in the history of his own and succeeding ages. He is a special cause attached to the side of a larger cause and coöperating with it in directing and controlling the events of his epoch. He is the individual atom in the tides of fate-the personal impulse in the general destinies of the world.

The American Revolution was one of the most heroic

events in the history of mankind. It was not lacking in any element of glory. Whether considered with reference to the general causes which produced it, or viewed with respect to the personal agency by which it was accomplished, the struggle of our fathers for liberty suffers not by comparison with the grandest conflicts of ancient or modern times. The motives which those great men might justly plead for breaking their allegiance to the British crown and organizing a rebellion; the patient self-restraint with which they bore for fifteen years a series of aggressions and outrages which they knew to be utterly subversive of the liberties of Englishmen; the calmness with which they proceeded from step to step in the attempted maintenance of

their rights by reason; the readiness with which they
opened their hearts to entertain the new angels of liberty;
the backward look which they cast through sighs and tears
at their abandoned loyalty to England; the fiery zeal and
brave resolve with which at last they drew their swords,
trampled in mire and blood the hated banner of St. George,
and raised a new flag in the sight of the nations; the per-
sonal character and genius of the men who did it-their
loyal devotion to principle, their fidelity, their courage, their
lofty purpose and unsullied patriotism-all conspire to
stamp the struggle with the impress of immortal grandeur.
In their ragged regimentals
Stood the old continentals,
Yielding not,

When the grenadiers went lungeing,
And like hail fell the plunging
Cannon shot;

When the files

Of the Isles,

From the smoky night encampment, bore the banner of the rampant

Unicorn,

And grummer, grummer, grummer rolled the roll of the drummer,

Through the morn!

Let us for a brief space consider what the American Revolution really was. Let us determine, if we may, something of the nature and causes of the great event, and learn thereby its true place in history. Thus shall we be able more fully to appreciate the personal part which the men of our heroic age contributed to the glory of their own and the welfare of after times.

When, in the fifth century, the barbarians burst in upon the Roman Empire of the West and destroyed it, they were under the leadership of military chieftains. These savage leaders believed themselves, and were believed to be, the offspring of the gods of the North-descendants of Woden and Thor. The half Latinized Keltic populations of the Provinces were quickly reduced to serfdom. They were no match for the Teutonic warriors. These chiefs and their followers, coming out of the cheerless woods of the North, found little to admire in the city life of the Romans. They preferred rather to seek for their new abodes the fastnesses of the rocks and the solitudes of the forest. It thus came to pass that in all the country districts of Europe the institutions of feudalism sprang naturally out of the conditions consequent upon the barbarian invasion. In the cities and towns were the remains of old urban activities. Here the municipal system of the Romans was not extinguished. Here was perpetuated the tradition of the glory and the grandeur of the empire. Here the bishops and priests of the papal see labored assiduously to keep alive the remembrance of that great power under whose shadow they had found refuge and strength. And so with perpetual iteration they poured into the ears of the magistrates and barons the story of the grandeur and renown of that mighty dominion which, under the sanction of heaven, had combined in itself all the elements of legitimate authority.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, are the materials out of which has been builded the vast structure called European Monarchy. I can not elaborate. I can only call your attention to the fact that these elements of monarchy were fused in the fiery heats of the Crusades, when all Europe, peasant and lord, serf and nobleman, priest and king, flung themselves with blind fanaticism against the defilers of the holy places of the East. Since that event monarchy has been the central feature in the physiognomy of the West. From the twelfth to the eighteenth century monarchical institutions became the be-all and the end-all of Europe. The annals of the European states became the annals of their kings. In Germany, under Sigismund and Maximilian

I; in Spain, under Ferdinand and Isabella; in France, under Louis XI; and in England, under the Plantagenets and Tudors everywhere the institution of monarchy grew into a power and grandeur unknown since the decadence of the Roman empire. Let us then inquire what this thing called monarchy really was.

1. European monarchy was a colossal edition of feudal chieftainship. The king was simply a suzerain on a gigantic scale. Whatever of arrogance and pride and self-will the baronial warrior of the eleventh century felt in his castle halls, that, the typical European king of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries assumed in grander style in his palace and court. It implied a prince lifted immeasurably above his subjects. It implied a people without political rights, dependent for life and liberty upon the pleasure of the king-peasants and serfs whose property might be taken at will, whose lives might be exposed in lawless wars, whose bodies might be used or abused, whose minds might be rightfully kept in the clouds of perpetual night.

2. Monarchy was the embodiment of ecclesiastical domination over secular society. The king was either the head of the church or its obedient servant. The bishops, for their own good, told the monarch that his right to be king came down out of the skies; that he was by the will of heaven born a prince; that his authority was by the grace of God, and that his person was sacred both by the fact of his royal birth and by the manipulation of the priest on the day of coronation. Thus was the arrogance of the feudal baron bound up with the presumption of the ecclesiastical bigot in the person of the king.

3. As a necessary prop and stay of the system stood a graduated order of nobility: dukes who could touch the hem of the royal garment; marquises who could touch the hem of the duke; knights who could touch the hem of the marquis; lords who could touch the hem of the knight: esquires who could touch the hem of his lordship.

4. As a necessary prop and stay of the graduated nobility stood the principle of primogeniture. For it was manifest that the splendors and virtues of royalty and its dependent orders could never be maintained if the blood in which its glory dwelt was allowed, according to nature's plan, to diffuse and spread into a multitude of vulgar kinsmen.

5. As a necessary prop and stay of the law of primogeniture was the doctrine of entails, by which landed estates and all similar properties should tend to concentrate in certain lines of descent, and thereby be maintained in perpetual solidarity. Not only should the first-born receive the titles and nobility of the father, but he should in like manner inherit the estates to the exclusion of collateral heirs.

6. As to the methods of government, the king should not be hampered by constitutional limitations. Ministers and parliaments were not needed except to carry out the sovereign's mandates; and popular assemblies, in addition to being the hot-beds of sedition, were an impediment to govern. ment and a menace to civil authority.

7. The people existed for the king's pleasure; the world was made for the king to act in; and heaven was originally designed for the king's abode.

Such was the incubus. Sometimes the people struggled to throw it off. In England they struck down the dragon, but he arose and crushed their bones. Under William III, there was a brief spasm of Whig virtue, but with the accession of the Hanoverian blockheads the old methods came back; the Georges adopted the maxims of the Jacobites, and the dog returned to his vomit.

Now, it was against this whole monstrous thing, this whole system of despotic rule, against its principles, against its spirit, against its pretensions, against its tendencies, against its sham methods and bad essence-- that our fathers of the Revolution raised the arm of rebellion. This was the

thing they hurled down and destroyed. Grand insurrection! Glorious sight to see those scattered American colonists, few, penniless, unequipped, smite the brass gods of the Middle Ages, tear away the trappings of tradition and challenge the Past to mortal combat! Our fathers were

heroes.

The other day I saw in the top chamber of Bunker Hill monument two of the four old six-pounders belonging to Massachusetts at the outbreak of the struggle. They are even as battered pop-guns, but, oh! there were men behind them in the days of '76! It was a brave battle, and that is a true thing which Bancroft says when he declares that the report of the rifle of the youthful Washington, as it rang out among the bushes of Great Meadows, on that May morning in 1754 has awakened an echo which shall never cease to reverberate until the ancient bulwarks of Catholic legitimacy shall be thrown down in all the earth.

The American Revolution, like all other political crises of the sort, had two aspects or phases. The first was the phase of destruction, in which the governmental theories of the Middle Ages were attacked and destroyed. The second was the phase of construction, in which a new type of government was erected on the site of the abolished edifice. As a destroying force the revolution swept into oblivion the political traditions of several centuries. As a constructive energy it brought in a vast and promising experiment of political reform. As a destructive agent it seized the old theory of politics by the throat and crushed it to the earth. As a constructive force it reared the American Constitution, established the indissoluble Union of the States, and absolutely reversed the old theory of human government by making the people the rightful source of power, and reducing the political rulers of mankind to the place of public servants. I repeat it, that, taken all in all, it was the most momentous struggle ever recorded in the annals of the world. I desire, then, to review the personal agencies which influenced the Revolution and gave to it its grandeur.

First of all there was Washington. He was the balancewheel of the conflict. He was neither a destroyer nor a builder. He was more of a builder than he was a destroyer. His was the consciousness in which the destructive and constructive forces of the Revolution joined their issues. He was a conservator of force. By the destroyers he was made general-in-chief; by the builders he was made President. If I must tell you the truth, I must say that the destroyers did not like him-distrusted him. If I must speak plainly, I must say that the builders regarded him as their agent and organ rather than as their leader. It was in his broad and conservative nature that the conflicting tides settled to a calm after the battle had been fought and won. It was within the circle of his influence that that strange compromise called the Constitution of the United States became a possibility. It was by the preponderance of his influence that the builders carried their compromise to the people and secured its adoption as the fundamental law of the land. Across his cabinet table the angry surf of the constructive and destructive forces of the Revolution broke in a line of perpetual foam.

At the head of the destroyers stood Jefferson, the two Adamses, Paine, Franklin, and Henry. Of these men, with a slight exception in the case of John Adams and a larger exception in the case of Franklin, not one had the slightest particle of constructive talent. They, and those whom they led, were destroyers pure and simple. They were revolutionists in the first intent. They were levelers and democrats in the old Greek sense of the word. On the pedestal of the statue of Samuel Adams in one of the squares of Boston, is this legend: "He was the organizer of the Revolution." It is certain he never organized anything else!

Let me speak plainly of these great and glorious men. Take Jefferson and Paine. In both of them the aggressive and radical energies of the democratic instinct ran rampant. They were riotous and uproarious in their democracy. They gloried in it. They believed that only one thing was good, and that was to destroy. To them the existing order was deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. So they laid the axe at the root of the tree and said: "Let us cut it up, trunk and branches." Whether any other tree should ever grow there, they cared not so much as a fig. Whether the goodness of fecund nature should rear a palm in the waste or send up thickets of thorns and cactus to cover the spot desolated by their energies, they neither knew nor cared. It was enough that the old tree should be torn out by the roots. Take Patrick Henry. With all deference to the sturdy old patriot, it is but sober truth to say that he could not have constructed a political chicken coop. And if his neighbors had shown skill in that kind of architecture, he would have considered it an insult to his country. Such men were needed in '76, but they were not needed in '87. Of the immortal fifty-six who signed the Declaration of Independence only eight were sent to the Constitutional Convention; and of these only two-Franklin and Sherman-were men of commanding influence. Hildreth says, and says truly, that the leveling democracy of '76 was absolutely unrepresented in the Convention. The destroyers were not there. The men who knocked the little brass gods of the Middle Ages on the head were gone. The revolutionists were at home trimming apple-trees in the Connecticut Valley, or setting tobacco plants on the banks of the James. The work of that destroying democracy which had fired every colony with patriotic zeal and war-like daring was done. Even Massachusetts passed by her giants and sent to the convention Gerry, Gorham, and King. The destroyers lay asleep in their tent, and the builders went forth to build.

had revealed and would have obliterated. When the immortal Lincoln put out his great hand in the shadows of doubt and agony, and groped and groped to touch some pillar of support, it was the hand of the dead Hamilton that he clasped in the darkness. When, on the afternoon of the third of July, Pickett's Virginians went on their awful charge up the slopes of Gettysburg, they met on the summit among the jagged rocks the invincible lines of blue who were there to rise victorious or never to rise at all. But it was not Meade who commanded them, nor Sickles, nor Hancock, nor Lincoln. Behind those dauntless and heroic linesrising like a sublime shadow in the curling smoke of battle -stood the figure of Alexander Hamilton. The civil war was his conflict. Chickamauga and Chancellorsville were his anguish, and Appomattox was his triumph. When the grim-visaged and iron-hearted Lee offered the hilt of his sword to the Silent Man of Galena it was the spirit of the Disruptive Democracy doing obeisance to Hamilton.

I purpose now to note in a few brief paragraphs the principal events in Hamilton's life. He was born in the island of Nevis, one of the British West Indies, on the 11th of January, 1757. His father was a Scotch merchant, and his mother a Huguenot lady whose maiden name was Faucette. She had been first married to a physician named Lavine, with whom she lived for a short time at St. Christopher. But he soon proved to be of no good, and presently procuring a divorce, she returned to Nevis, and was married to the merchant, James Hamilton. By him she had a numerous family of whom only two sons, Thomas and Alexander, reached maturity. The latter was the younger, and bore the name of his paternal grandfather, Alexander Hamilton, of Ayrshire, Scotland.

From his father Hamilton inherited the resoluteness of the Scotch character, a certain tendency to methodical habits, and especially that deductive method of thought for which the Scotch intellect of the eighteenth century was

perception, his perpetual activity, his studious habit, his personal magnetism, and his genius. She died while he was yet a boy, but her manner and voice and spirit remained forever with him in memory.

It is now seventy-six years since Alexander Hamilton yielded up his life. It has remained for our own day to revive his memory, and out of the logic of great events to determine his true place in history. Men are just beginning to understand and appreciate the great part which he played in the stirring drama of his times. As he recedes from us in the distance a clearer parallax is revealing to us the truly colossal grandeur of his character. Even yet we feel that his full proportion is but half seen in the shadow, and that the next generation, rather than this, will behold him in the magnificent outline of completeness.

We now see that the genius of this man has flashed through and illumined whatever is great and glorious in our national history. Just in proportion as the spirit of Hamilton has dominated our institutions, just in that degree has the ark of American civilization been taken up and borne forward in triumph. He has touched us in every crisis. When Daniel Webster poured out the flood of his tremendous argument for nationality, he was only the living oracle of the dead Hamilton. Every syllogism of that immortal plea can be reduced to a Hamiltonian maxim. When the Little Giant of the Northwest blundered across the political stage with his feet entangled in the meshes of Squatter Sovereignty he stumbled and fell among the very complications and pitfalls which Hamilton's prescience

After his mother's death, the lad Hamilton was given to some of her relatives and taken to the neighboring island of Santa Cruz. From the indifferent schools of the sea-port town of this island, by the close of his twelfth year, he had drawn whatever they had to give. He was then placed in the counting-house of Nicholas Cruger, and here he immediately began to display those extraordinary activities which characterized him through life. Such was his proficiency that within a year Cruger went abroad and left young Hamilton, then thirteen years of age, in sole charge of the mercantile house. He conducted the large business and extensive correspondence of the establishment with a dignity and precision which were the marvel of the port. Nor could the foreign merchants who traded with the nouse of Cruger know but that the letters which they received from Santa Cruz were written by the most experienced clerk in the island.

During two years Hamilton remained at the desk of the counting-house, spending his evenings in study. It was here that he laid the foundations of his great acquirements in after years. Here he learned French, which he spoke through life with the ease and elegance of the best native conversers. His principal instructor in this epoch was Dr. Hugh Knox, an Irish Presbyterian clergyman, under whom he made great headway during his stay in Santa Cruz, and by whom he was encouraged in the project of leaving the West Indies for New York. With the increase of knowledge he had grown restless. He pined for a

broader field in which his faculties might expand and his ambition be appeased. Even at the age of twelve we catch a glimpse of the spirit and power which were budding within him. In a letter to young Edward Stevens, of New York, the frank boy Hamilton pens these words of aspiration and promise: "Neddy, my ambition is prevalent so that I contemn the groveling condition of a clerk or the like, to which my fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station. I am confident, Ned, that my youth excludes me from any hopes of immediate preferment, nor do I desire it; but I mean to prepare the way for futurity. I'm no philosopher, you see, and may be said to build castles in the air; my folly makes me ashamed, and beg you'll conceal it; yet, Neddy, we have seen such schemes successful when the projector is constant. I shall conclude by saying, I wish there was a war." Perhaps the vision of Wolfe, falling in death, but rising to immortality from the Heights of Abraham, was before the eyes of the young enthusiast; but how little did he anticipate the more glorious epoch which was so shortly to open for his panting spirit.

In August of 1772, a terrible storm came in upon the Leeward Islands. A remarkable description of it appeared in one of the local papers. The governor of Santa Cruz

was astonished at the vivid details of the destruction. He sought the author, and found him in the young lad Hamilton. Arrangements were immediately made to send the youth abroad, that he might receive such education as his genius merited; and so in October of that year he left the West Indies never to return. He took passage in a vessel for Boston, and from that city proceeded at once to New York. Here he was cordially received by Dr. Rogers, Dr. Mason, and William Livingston. To these distinguished men he brought letters of introduction from his old instructor, Dr. Knox; and by Livingston, who was a retired lawyer, he was taken to a country seat near Elizabeth, New Jersey, and admitted to membership in the family. Here his brilliant faculties and fascinating address made him an immediate favorite. For some months he attended the grammar school at Elizabeth, showing the most intense application and astonishing progress. He seized and devoured all kinds of knowledge with an almost feverish hunger. It was at this period of his life that he formed the habit which he never broke, of talking to himself, saying over and over in a low tone whatever occupied his thought. As he walked he talked, and the thing which he thought was rehearsed in rapid utterance until it had taken the form of a logical proposition never to be shaken from its place. At this time Livingston was the editor of the American Whig, the organ of the popular party in New York. Drs. Rogers and Mason were contributors to this paper, as was also the youthful John Jay, afterwards Livingston's sonin-law. These writers were in the habit of meeting at Livingston's house. Debating clubs and political societies abounded in the neighborhood; and the agitation which was soon to break over the land sent its premonitory thrills into every breast. In the midst of these surroundings, still immersed in his studies, Hamilton's political principles began to be shaped and fashioned.

But he was not yet ready for battle. His preparation, indeed, was but begun. By diligent use of his time he was now ready for a collegiate training. He chose Princeton; but before starting thither he drew up for himself a plan of study which, though it embraced the college curriculum, was both novel and original. On presenting himself to Dr. Witherspoon, then president of Princeton, he made a written request that he might be allowed to adopt his own course and be admitted to all classes which his attainments would justify, with permission to advance from class to class with as much rapidity as his exertions would enable

him to do. The sedate Witherspoon, acting after the manner of men, declared the request incompatible with the rules of the institution, and so young Hamilton was turned away. He at once returned to King's College in the city of New York, renewed his application to Dr. Cooper, the president, and was admitted on his own terms. It must be confessed that for a delicate stripling of fifteen years thus to trifle with the almighty powers of learning was a piece of great audacity.

For two years Hamilton remained at Columbia, applying himself with a diligence and zeal rarely witnessed. History, metaphysics, languages, politics, poetry, economics— | everything was devoured with the hunger of genius. His memoranda show that "Cudworth's Intellectual System,' "Hobbes's Dialogues," "Bacon's Essays," "Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws," "Rousseau's Emilius," "Demosthenes' Orations," and "Aristotle's Politics," were now his favorite books. With these he was not only familiar, but in them had a mastery not often attained even in veteran scholarship. [TO BE CONTINUED.]

VOICES OF THE FRAMINGHAM

BELLS.

"Eternity-Righteousness-Charity." List afar the mellow chiming,

Floating o'er the waters blue!
"Tis the sweet-voiced bells are calling
To the grove of green Lakeview.
Lovely in its summer glory

With its shadowy, leafy dome,
Is the spacious forest temple
Whither listening thousands come,
Where is spread a banquet royal

For the eager, waiting throng,
Where the soul is thrilled, uplifted,
By the power of sacred song.
Hallowed days and blessed teachings
In this templed grove are given,
Seeming with their pure light shining,
Like an open door of Heaven.
From our daily level lifted,

To this sacred Tabor height,
We behold a glorious future,
Life is robed in purer light.
Oft as dawns each day in beauty
Oft as evening shadows fall,
Sound the bells in silver chorus,

With their triune mystic call.
Voices full of holy meaning-

Echoes from Eternity-
Touch the chord of Righteousness,
Wake sweet tones of Charity.
When the golden day is ended,

All in full, rich lessons given,
And the tender benediction

Falls like words of peace from Heaven, Through this grand cathedral pealing, Wake the three-voiced bells again, Give response to holy teaching

With a solemn, sweet Amen. Laden with the grapes of Eschol, To our varied work we go, With a loftier, earnest purpose Well to serve, to learn, to do. Still my spirit lists the voices,

Chiming ever peacefully, Silver bells of "RighteousnessCharity-Eternity."