arge and ambitious stars.

The political excitement in the country by this time surpassed every
previous convulsion to such an extent that no man prominent in the
contest could appear on the street without insult. Although he never
knew it, Hamilton, every time he left the house, was shadowed by his son
Philip, Robert Hamilton, Troup, John Church, or Philip Church. For the
Democratic ammunition and public fury alike were centred on Hamilton.
Adams came in for his share, but the Democrats regarded his doom as
sealed, and Hamilton, as ever, the Colossus to be destroyed. The windows
of the bookshops were filled with pamphlets, lampoons, and cartoons. The
changes were rung on the aristocratical temper and the monarchical
designs of the leader of the Federalists, until Hamilton was sick of the
sight of himself with his nose in the air and a crown on his head, his
train borne by Jay, Cabot, Sedgwick, and Bayard. The people were warned
in every issue of the _Aurora, Chronicle_, and other industrious sheets,
that Hamilton was intriguing to drive the Democratic States to
secession, that he might annihilate them at once with his army and his
navy. The Reynolds affair was retold once a week, with degrading
variations, and there was no doubt that spies were nosing the ground in
every direction to obtain evidence of another scandal to vary the
monotony. Mrs. Croix, being Queen of the Jacobins, was safe, so press
and pamphlet indulged in wild generalities of debauchery and rapine. It
must be confessed that Jefferson fared no better in the Federalist
sheets. He was a huge and hideous spider, spinning in a web full of
seduced citizens; he meditated a resort to arms, did he lose the
election. As to his private vices, they saddled him with an entire
harem, and a black one at that.

When Hamilton heard that Adams had asserted that he was the chief of a
British faction, he wrote to the President, demanding an explanation;
and his note had that brief and frigid courtesy which indicated that he
was in his most dangerous temper. Adams ignored it. Hamilton waited a
reasonable time, then wrote again; but Adams was now too infuriated to
care whether or not he committed the unpardonable error of insulting the
most distinguished man in the country. He was in a humour to insult the
shade of Washington, and he delighted in every opportunity to wreak
vengeance on Hamilton, and would have died by his hand rather than
placate him.

Then Hamilton too