for the murder of the
greatest statesman of his age?

Yet Hamilton lives, although the victim of his rival. He lives in the
nation's heart, which cannot forget his matchless services. He is still
the admiration of our greatest statesmen; he is revered, as Webster is,
by jurists and enlightened patriots. _No_ statesman superior to him has
lived in this great country. He was a man who lived in the pursuit of
truth, and in the realm of great ideas; who hated sophistries and lies,
and sought to base government on experience and wisdom.

"Great were the boons which this pure patriot gave,
Doomed by his rival to an early grave;
A nation's tears upon that grave were shed.
Oh, could the nation by his truths be led!
Then of a land, enriched from sea to sea,
Would other realms its earnest following be,
And the lost ages of the world restore
Those golden ages which the bards adore."

AUTHORITIES.

Hamilton's Works; Life of Alexander Hamilton, by J. T. Morse, Jr.; Life
and Times of Hamilton, by S. M. Smucker; W. Coleman's Collection of
Facts on the Death of Hamilton; J. G. Baldwin's Party Leaders; Dawson's
Correspondence with Jay; Bancroft's History of the United States;
Parton's Life and Times of Aaron Burr; Eulogies, by H. G. Otis and Dr.
Nott; The Federalist; Lives of Contemporaneous Statesmen; Sparks's Life
of Washington.

JOHN ADAMS.

1735-1826.

CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP.

The Adams family--on the whole the most illustrious in New England, if
we take into view the ability, the patriotism, and the high offices
which it has held from the Revolutionary period--cannot be called of
patrician descent, neither can it viewed as peculiarly plebeian. The
founder was a small farmer in the town of Braintree, of the
Massachusetts Colony, as far back as 1636, whose whole property did not
amount to L100. His immediate descendants were famous and sturdy
Puritans, characterized by their thrift and force of character.

The father of John Adams, who died in 1761, had an estate amounting to
nearly L1,500, and could afford to give a college education at Harvard
to his eldest son, John, who was graduated in 1755, at the age of
twenty, with the reputation of being a good scholar, but by no means
distinguished in his class of twenty-four members. He cared more for
rural sports than for books. Following the custom of farmers' sons, on
leaving college he kept a school at Worcester bef