GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK.

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perty in the war for independence, and of which Lord Sheffield afterward said at the breaking out of the war of 1812, "We have now an opportunity of getting rid of that most impolitic treaty of 1794, when Lord Grenville was so

perfectly duped by Jay." While Jay was yet in England he was elected Governor of New York, and was twice re-elected. He, however, declined serving a third term; and also declined a second term as chief justice, to which

he had been nominated and confirmed in 1801. At the end of his second term as Governor of New York he retired from public life, and spent the remainder of his days on his estate in Westchester county, New York, where he died in 1829.

The character of Jay is clearly shown forth in the record of his life. In devotion to his country, in clear judgment, in spotless integrity, he is not sur passed even among the great men of his own time. He was modest, claimed no merit, and seldom alluded to the great events in which he took part. He was generous and charitable, while at the same time exact and careful. It has been beautifully said of him that "He lives in our memories a flawless statue, whose noble lineaments have everything to gain from the clear light of history."

ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

THE ARCHITECT OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM.

MONG all the monuments in the great Cathedral of St. Paul's, in London, the proudest is a simple tablet to the memory of Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of that splendid pile. "Reader," it says, "if thou seekest his monument, look around thee." Turning from structures of brick and stone to an edifice of a nobler kind, we of America have but to look around us to see in the mighty fabric of our national government the monument of ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

In the summer of 1772 that beautiful group of the West Indies known as the Leeward Islands were desolated by a hurricane. While its effects were still visible, and men were looking fearfully into the skies, an account of the calamity appeared in the St. Christopher's Gazette, written with such singular ability that there was great curiosity to discover its author. It was traced to a youth employed in a St. Croix counting-house, a boy of only fifteen, named Alexander Hamilton. He was born in the tiny island of Nevis. His father was a Scotch gentleman, and his mother was of the good Huguenot stock of France. It was a happy day for our young author; a lad who could write in this way, it was thought, should not spend his life in casting up accounts. It was at once determined to send him to New York to complete his education; and in the month of October, in that year, he landed in Boston.

Francis Barber, afterward a colonel, and a brave man in several battles, was at this time principal of a grammar-school of good repute in Elizabethtown, New Jersey; and hither came the young West Indian to be prepared for college, a handsome youth, erect, graceful, eagle-eyed, and "wise in conversa-tion as a man."

Before the end of 1773 he had finished his preliminary studies, and proceeded to Princeton, to inquire of Dr. Witherspoon if he could enter the college with the privilege of passing from class to class as fast as he advanced in scholarship. The president was sorry, but the laws of the institution would not permit. Ham

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