e for abstract reasoning which we
are wont to find associated in the highest type of Scottish mind he
joined a truly French vivacity and grace. His earnestness, sincerity,
and moral courage were characteristic alike of Puritan and of Huguenot.
In the course of his short life he exhibited a remarkable
many-sidedness. So great was his genius for organization that in many
essential respects the American government is moving to-day along the
lines which he was the first to mark out. As an economist he shared to
some extent in the shortcomings of the age which preceded Adam Smith,
but in the special department of finance he has been equalled by no
other American statesman save Albert Gallatin. He was a splendid orator
and brilliant writer, an excellent lawyer, and a clear-headed and
industrious student of political history. He was also eminent as a
political leader, although he lacked faith in democratic government, and
a generous impatience of temperament sometimes led him to prefer short
and arbitrary by-paths toward desirable ends, which can never be
securely reached save along the broad but steep and arduous road of
popular conviction. But with all Hamilton's splendid qualities, nothing
about him is so remarkable as the early age at which these were
developed. At the age of fifteen a brilliant newspaper article brought
him into such repute in the little island of Nevis that he was sent to
New York to avail himself of the best advantages afforded by the King's
College, now known as Columbia. He had at first no definite intention
of becoming an American citizen, but the thrilling events of the time
appealed strongly to the earnest heart and powerful intelligence of this
wonderful boy. At a gathering of the people of New York in July, 1774,
his generous blood warmed, till a resistless impulse brought him on his
feet to speak to the assembled multitude. It was no company of
half-drunken idlers that thronged about him, but an assemblage of grave
and responsible citizens, who looked with some astonishment upon this
boy of seventeen years, short and slight in stature, yet erect and
Caesar-like in bearing, with firm set mouth and great, dark, earnest
eyes. His eloquent speech, full of sense and without a syllable of
bombast, held his hearers entranced, and from that day Alexander
Hamilton was a marked man. He began publishing anonymous pamphlets,
which at first were attributed by some to Jay, and by others to
Livingston. When the