Her husband mourned her departure sincerely and long. And well he might, for she was his guardian angel. After her death he was drawn more and more into politics, and gave way at length to an ambition for political place and distinction, which lessened bis usefulness, impaired his dignity, and embittered his closing years. Upon the summit of a commanding hill, in Marshfield, which overlooks the ocean, is the spot prepared by Daniel Webster for the burial-place of his family. There his own remains repose, and there, also, those of three of his children. There, too, he erected a marble column to the memory of their mother, which bears the following inscription: "GRACE WEBSTER. WIFE OF DANIEL WEBSTER: DIED JANUARY THE 21st, io28. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." ALEXANDER HAMILTON. IN the British West Indies, near that Danish group which, they say, Mr. Seward desires to purchase for the United States, there is a circular island containing about twenty square miles, named Nevis. It now contains a population of eleven thousand, and produces for export every year about a hundred thousand dollars' worth of sugar. This island has a governor, and a legislature of fifteen members; it has five parishes, and a public revenue about as large as the salary of our president. To this island, a Scotchman named Hamilton emigrated about the year 1747, and established himself in business as a merchant. He married there a lady of French descent, the daughter of a physician. The fruit of this union was a boy, who lived to be the celebrated Alexander Hamilton, of American history. The mother of this distinguished man had a short and unhappy life. Her first husband was a Dane, a man of wealth, with whom she lived miserably, and from whom she was finally divorced. Soon after her marriage with the father of Alexander Hamilton, he became a bankrupt, and saved scarcely anything from the wreck of his estate. While Alexander was still a young child, she died, but not before she had made an indelible impression upon the character and memory of her son. His mother dead, and his father a poor and dependent man, the boy was taken home by some relations of his mother who lived upon one of the adjacent Danish islands, where he learned the French language, and became an eager reader of books in both French and English. In his twelfth year he was a merchant's clerk or apprentice, a situation little to his taste, but the duties of which he discharged with perfect fidelity. At that early day, as at the present time, it was customary for the West Indians to send their children to school in New York and Philadelphia. One of the earliest letters of Hamilton that we possess, is one written by him when he was twelve years of age to a boy of his acquaintance who had gone away to be educated in New York. re To confess my weakness, Ned," he wrote, "my ambition is prevalent; so that I contemn the grovelling 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 am no philosopher, you see, and may be justly said to build castles in the air; my folly makes me ashamed, and beg you will 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." This was a curious passage to come from the pen of a merchant's boy in a little island of the sea, at a period so early as 1769. Certainly there was small chance of "preferment" for him in the West Indies, nor did there seem any likelihood of his transfer to a more promising scene. For three years he served in the counting-house, and acquired therein something of that knowledge of figures and that aptitude for finance which he afterwards turned to so good an account. An accident, as it seems, decided his destiny. When he was fifteen years of age he had the opportunity of witnessing one of those terrific hurricanes which occasionally sweep over the islands of the Caribbean Sea, prostrating in their course the works of man and the trees of the forest. He wrote a description of this storm, which was published in a newspaper, and handed about in the group as a great wonder for so young a writer. His engaging manners, also, had made him many friends, who, it appears, were all of one opinion, that so valuable a mind ought not to remain uncultivated. Accordingly, he was sent to New York for education. On his arrival, he was placed in a school at Elizabethtown, in New Jersey, - a place where many families of distinction then resided, whose acquaint ance he formed, and who were afterwards of use to him. In a few months he entered the college in New York which was then called King's College, but is now known as Columbia; where, besides pursuing the usual course, he attended lectures upon anatomy, with the intention of becoming a physician. At college he was distinguished in the debating society, and he wrote comic poems, ridiculing the Tory editors of the day. It was while still a student of the college that he made his first public address to the citizens of New York. His son tells us that he was then accustomed to walk several hours each day under the shade of some noble trees which stood in Batteau Street (now called Dey Street) talking to himself, or deeply meditating upon the mighty events transpiring about him. This strange habit attracted the attention of those who lived near, to whom he was only known as "the young West Indian," and some of them engaged him in conversation, and thus discovered the vigor and maturity of his mind. A great political meeting was to be held in the city, to which all the Whigs were looking forward with eager expectation, and his new friends, who had been struck with his patriotic sentiments, urged him to address this meeting. At first he recoiled from the ordeal; but, as the meeting went on, and several important points remained untouched by the speakers, he took courage, and presented himself to the people. His son says, in his biography of Hamilton: "The novelty of the attempt, his youthful countenance, his slender and diminutive form, awakened curiosity and arrested attention. Overawed by the scene before him, he at first hesitated and faltered; but as he proceeded almost unconsciously to utter his accustomed reflections, his mind warmed with the theme, his energies were recovered; and, after a discussion, clear, cogent, and novel, of the great principles involved in the controversy, he depicted in glowing colors, the long-continued and long-endured oppressions of the mother country; he in sisted on the duty of resistance, pointed to the means and certainty of success, and described the waves of the rebellion sparkling with fire and washing back on the shores of England the wrecks of her power, her wealth, and her glory. The breathless silence ceased as he closed; and the whispered mur mur, 'It is a collegian — it is a collegian!' was lost in loud expressions of wonder and applause at the extraordinary eloquence of the young stranger. He was then but seventeen years of age, and yet from that time to the end of his life he could be considered a public man. While still in college, he was one of a military company who used to drill in a part of the city very near where Harper's bookstore now stands. The company were called " Hearts of Oak," and it was this youthful band which removed the cannon from the Battery, under the fire of a British man-of-war, that killed several citizens and one of Hamilton's own comrades. This was the first conflict of arms which took place in the State of New York. At nineteen he was captain of artillery, and employed part of his last remittance from home in equipping his company. The most important event in this part of his life was his attracting the notice of General Washington. Soon after the retreat from New York, when the American army occupied the upper part of Manhattan Island, Hamilton was employed in constructing an earthwork. Washington noticed the alert and vigorous young officer, and marked the intelligence and skill which he was displaying in the erection of his fort. The general entered into conversation with him, invited him to headquarters, and thus began a friendship with him which, with the exception of one brief interval, terminated only with the general's life. During the terrible New Jersey campaign, Hamilton's artillerymen did excellent service in the rear of the army, checking the advance of the British; and by the time. the battle of Trenton turned the tide of ill-fortune, the company was reduced to twenty-five men. Ere long, General Washington invited Captain Hamilton to accept a position on his staff, which Hamilton did, to his lasting regret. His quick and ardent mind fretted under the caution and delay necessitated by General Washington's position; nor did he relish writing despatches, when other men were performing service in the field. This impatience and discontent led |