On his return from England, Mr. Jay was met at New York by the news of his election as Governor of the State. He accepted the office, and accordingly resigned the high judicial station, which had conferred additional consequence upon his pacific embassy to England. For six years he continued to hold this distinguished position, marking his administration by a uniform course of duty, firmly and conscientiously performed in a patriotic and Christian spirit. The recommendation of a legislative provision for the better observ ance of the Sabbath, is characteristic of his sentiments on an important subject; while the views which he had long advocated on the subject of negro slavery were carried out in the act of gradual emancipation. In 1801, in his fifty-sixth year, Mr. Jay finally retired from public life, to pass the remainder of his days at the family estate, which had descended to him at Bedford, in Westchester County. His first employment was to build the plain, substantial mansion, still occupied in a third generation by his family, after having been honored by the residence of his benevolent son, the late esteemed William Jay. In this rural retreat, then greatly secluded from city cares and influences, he lived for nearly thirty years, employing himself, as Washington employed himself at Mount Vernon, with the innocent and engrossing pursuits of agriculture, the care of his household, correspondence with his friends-they were often the same friends--or occasionally reviewing the history of the past, more constantly engaged in the be nevolent occupations of philanthropy and religion in the present, till, at the advanced term of four score and four, the reward of a righteous life, on the noon of Sunday, the 17th May, 1829, with mind unimpaired, he passed to "the bosom of his Father and his God." The reflections which arise at the close of such a life, are the best tributes humanity can render in its praise. Here was one who passed through many relations, exposed to peculiar temptation and difficulty, not merely without stain, but clothed in a transcendent robe of purity. His Christian patriotism shed glory upon a cause which needed such aid and such defenders. His grave aspect, reverend in council, covered a heart glowing with the sweet kindnesses and charities of domestic life. We see in his corre spondence, in a certain undress of the mind, a gentle consideration, a playful humor, and unstudied grace of expression, which he must be little read in the evidences of a kindly nature who will misinterpret. Indeed, the literary abilities of Jay were of a high order. In his state papers we have seen him unsurpassed by his most accomplished associates of the Old Congress. Glancing over the volumes of his life and writings, published by his son, we find other evidences of talent as conclusive. The able analysis of the Farewell Address of Washington, in reference to the alleged claim of Hamilton to its composition—a claim which he himself would have been the last to bring for ward-in the letter to his favorite correspondent, Judge Peters, is a masterpiece of literary skill, blending the perhaps be in a better humor with many things in the world than, I think, you now are. I suspect your imagina tion colors high and shades too deep." Jay's habits were simple as to expense, generous as to charities, and all that constituted true comfort and respectability of living. It was his maxim, says his son and biographer, that "a wise man has money in his head, but not in his heart." He supplied the clergyman of Rye with funds to keep six poor boys of the place at school, and the fact was not known till after his death. He declined the proffered honor of the Cincinnati, thinking it did not become members of an associa tion to bestow badges upon themselves. finer powers of the judicial and the in 1778, in the afflictions of life, he asthetic mind. He proves not only writes: "Could we now and then that Washington could have written smoke a few pipes together, you would it, but that it is what he would have written, that its composition was nothing wonderful to him, seeing it was but the expression in words of the acts of his life, in perfect consonance with the Horatian maxim which compels language uninvitedly to follow the foregone matter in the mind, and which treats wisdom as the origin and fount of all good writing. The show of considerations such as these, evinces a philosophical mind, which might have graced many walks of authorship. Let us add a humble touch of nature to our sketch of a man who should be known by our hearths and firesides, in the daily friendship of life, as well as on his pedestal in history. The foreign minister, at the most brilliant period of his career, when he had recently The devout character of Jay temsigned the Treaty of 1783 at Paris, pered all the acts of his life. It was writing from England to his friend, not obtruded upon the world in his Mr. Benson, in America, thinks-of public relations; neither was it withwhat?-of his achievements? of his re- held when the occasion admitted its flected consequence in the glory of his expression. Out of the abundance of country? Not a word of it. His the heart his mouth often spoke; so thoughts are of an old mare which had that in his correspondence we find fre been given him by his father, which quent mention of sacred things. He had been carried off by depredators was a devout believer in Evangelical in the unsettled conflicts about his Christianity, and a sincere adherent to home, and which he now begs, if alive, the Protestant Episcopal Church. In may be recovered without regard to Paris he was surrounded by an atmos price. Have "very good care taken phere of infidelity, but it could not of her, "by which I mean," I mean," he touch him. The faith of his fathers, adds, "she should be well fed and live which had resisted the infuriated per idle." secutions of the seventeenth century, was not to be shaken by the shallow wits of the eighteenth. Consoling his friend, Peter Van Schaack, a royalist prisoner on parole ALEXANDER HAMILTON. THERE are few names of more lasting | Huguenot on the mother's. Students influence, of more permanent regard, in our American history, than that of Hamilton. His fame is blended with the living growth of our commonwealth. While the labors of others survive on the pages of history connected with the past-with the record of wars and struggles, which, while they, perhaps, gain in grandeur by the lapse of time, become every day more strange and foreign to our perceptions; it is his fortune to be associated with a monument of political wisdom, which, often sorely tried and always triumphant, has become the very bond, and, so to speak, guardian genius of the national welfare; that Constitution by which we live and hope to live. How bril liantly Hamilton shot upon the troubled scene of the Revolution; how suddenly and unhappily was the splendid flame extinguished in meridian brightness! The vicinity of the tropics has sent few sons of its burning soil so to calm and temper the rage of men in northern climes. We must look beyond the isles of the Antilles for the secret of this peculiar growth. The parentage of Alexander Hamilton is given by his son and biographer as of mingled Scottish and French ancestry-Scottish on the father's side, of the doctrine of temperaments may find something to ponder over in such a fusion under the genial ray of the southern sun. Given the key, they may unlock with it many cabinets in the idiosyncrasy of the future Hamilton; Scottish perseverance and integ rity, French honor and susceptibility, tropical fervor. Be that as it may, Alexander Hamilton first saw the light in the West India island St. Christophers, Jan. 11, 1757. His father was a trader or captain sailing between the islands of the archipelago, whose business brought him into relation with Nicholas Cruger, a wealthy merchant of Santa Cruz, in intimate relation with New York, in whose counting-house the son was placed at the age of twelve. He was a boy of quick intellect, in advance of his years, and had already made much of limited opportunities of instruction, as we may learn from an exceedingly well penned epistle addressed thus early to a school-fellow who had found his way to New York. In this remarkable letter, the boy seems to have written with prophetic instinct. "To confess my weakness, Ned," he says, "my ambition is preva lent, so that I contemn the grovelling condition of a clerk or the like, to |