higher for its object. It is an extended self-love, mingling with all the enjoyments of life, and twisting itself with the minutest filaments of the heart. It is thus we obey the laws of society, because they are the laws of virtue. In their authority we see, not the array of force and terror, but the venerable image of our country's honor. Every good citizen makes that honor his own, and cherishes it not only as precious, but as sacred. He is willing to risk his life in its defence, and is conscious that he gains protection while he gives it; for, what rights of a citizen will be deemed inviolable when a State renounces the principles that constitute their security? Or, if his life should not be invaded, what would its enjoyments be, in a country odious, in the eyes of strangers, and dishonored in his own? Could he look with affection and veneration to such a country as his parent? The sense of having one would die within him; he would blush for his patriotism, if he retained any, and justly, for it would be a vice. He would be a banished man in his native land.

WASHINGTON AS A CIVILIAN.

However his military fame may excite the wonder of mankind, it is chiefly by his civil magistracy that Washington's example will instruct them. Great generals have arisen in all ages of the world, and perhaps most in those of despotism and darkIn times of violence and convulsion, they rise, by the force of the whirlwind, high enough to ride in it and direct the storm. Like meteors, they glare on the black clouds with a splendor that, while it dazzles and terrifies, makes nothing visible but the darkness. The fame of heroes is indeed growing vulgar; they multiply in every long war; they stand in history, and thicken in their ranks, almost as undistinguished as their own soldiers.

But such a chief magistrate as Washington appears like the pole-star, in a clear sky, to direct the skilful statesman. His presidency will form an epoch, and be distinguished as the age of Washington. Already it assumes its high place in the political region. Like the milky way, it whitens along its allotted portion of the hemisphere. The latest generations of men will survey, through the telescope of history, the space where so many virtues blend their rays, and delight to separate them into groups and distinct virtues. As the best illustration. of them, the living monument to which the first of patriots

would have chosen to consign his fame, it is my earnest prayer to heaven that our country may subsist, even to that late day, in the plenitude of its liberty and happiness, and mingle its mild glory with Washington's.

CHARACTER OF THE NEWSPAPER PRESS.

It seems as if newspaper wares were made to suit a market as much as any other. The starers, and wonderers, and gapers engross a very large share of the attention of all the sons of the type. Extraordinary events multiply upon us surprisingly. Gazettes, it is seriously to be feared, will not long allow room to anything that is not loathsome or shocking. A newspaper is pronounced to be very lean and destitute of matter if it contains no account of murders, suicides, prodigies, or monstrous births.

Some of these tales excite horror, and others disgust; yet the fashion reigns, like a tyrant, to relish wonders, and almost to relish nothing else. Is this a reasonable taste? or is it monstrous and worthy of ridicule? Is the history of Newgate the only one worth reading? Are oddities only to be hunted? Pray tell us, men of ink, if our free presses are to diffuse information, and we, the poor, ignorant people, can get it no other way than by newspapers, what knowledge we are to glean from the blundering lies, or the tiresome truths about thunder-storms, that, strange to tell, kill oxen or burn barns.

Surely, extraordinary events have not the best title to our studious attention. To study nature or man, we ought to know things that are in the ordinary course, not the unaccountable things that happen out of it.

This country is said to measure seven hundred millions of acres, and is inhabited by almost six millions of people. Who can doubt, then, that a great many crimes will be committed, and a great many strange things will happen every seven years? There will be thunder-showers that will split tough white oak trees; and hail-storms that will cost some farmers the full amount of twenty shillings to mend their glass windows; there will be taverns, and boxing-matches, and elections, and gouging, and drinking, and love, and murder, and running in debt, and running away, and suicide. Now, if a man supposes eight, or ten, or twenty dozen of these amusing events will happen in a single year, is he not just as wise as another man

who reads fifty columns of amazing particulars, and, of course, knows that they have happened?

This State has almost one hundred thousand dwellinghouses; it would be strange if all of them should escape fire for twelve months. Yet is it very profitable for a man to become a deep student of all the accidents by which they are consumed? He should take good care of his chimney corner, and put a fender before the back-log, before he goes to bed. Having done this, he may let his aunt or grandmother read by day, or meditate by night, the terrible newspaper articles of fires; how a maid dropped asleep reading a romance, and the bed-clothes took fire; how a boy, searching in a garret for a hoard of nuts, kindled some flax; and how a mouse, warming his tail, caught it on fire, and carried it into his hole in the floor.

Some of the shocking articles in the papers raise simple, and very simple, wonder; some, terror; and some, horror and disgust. Now, what instruction is there in these endless wonders? Who is the wiser or happier for reading the accounts of them? On the contrary, do they not shock tender minds, and addle shallow brains? They make a thousand old maids, and eight or ten thousand booby boys, afraid to go to bed alone. Worse than this happens; for some eccentric minds are turned to mischief by such accounts as they receive of troops of incendiaries burning our cities; the spirit of imitation is contagious, and boys are found unaccountably bent to do as men do. When the man flew from the steeple of the North Church, fifty years ago, every unlucky boy thought of nothing but flying from a sign-post.

Every horrid story in a newspaper produces a shock; but, after some time, this shock lessens. At length, such stories are so far from giving pain that they rather raise curiosity, and we desire nothing so much as the particulars of terrible tragedies. The wonder is as easy as to stare, and the most vacant mind is the most in need of such resources as cost no trouble of scrutiny or reflection; it is a sort of food for idle curiosity, that is ready chewed and digested.

Now, Messrs. Printers, I pray the whole honorable craft to banish as many murders, and horrid accidents, and monstrous births, and prodigies, from their gazettes, as their readers will permit them, and, by degrees, to coax them back to contemplate life and manners, to consider common events with some com

'Massachusetts.

mon sense, and to study nature where she can be known, rather than in those of her ways where she really is, or is represented to be, inexplicable.

Boston Palladium, October, 1801.

CHARACTER OF HAMILTON.

In all the different stations in which a life of active usefulness placed Hamilton, we find him not more remarkably distinguished by the extent, than by the variety and versatility, of his talents. In every place he made it apparent that no other man could have filled it so well; and in times of critical importance, in which alone he desired employment, his services were justly deemed absolutely indispensable. As Secretary of the Treasury, his was the powerful spirit that presided over the chaos.

"Confusion heard his voice, and wild Uproar
Stood ruled."-

Indeed, in organizing the federal government, in 1789, every man of either sense or candor will allow, the difficulties seemed greater than the first-rate abilities could surmount. The event has shown that his abilities were greater than those difficulties. He surmounted them; and Washington's administration was the most wise and beneficent, the most prosperous, and ought to be the most popular, that ever was intrusted with the affairs of a nation. Great as was Washington's merit, much of it in plan, much in execution, will of course devolve upon his minister.

As a lawyer, his comprehensive genius reached the principles of his profession; he compassed its extent, he fathomed its profound, perhaps, even more familiarly and easily than the rules of its practice. With most men law is a trade; with him it was a science.

As a statesman, he was not more distinguished for the great extent of his views, than by the caution with which he provided against impediments, and the watchfulness of his care over the right and liberty of the subject. In none of the many revenue bills which he framed, though committees reported them, is there to be found a single clause that savors of despotic power; not one that the sagest champions of law and liberty would, on that ground, hesitate to approve and adopt.

It is rare that a man who owes so much to nature descends to seek more from industry; but he seemed to depend on in

dustry as if nature had done nothing for him. His habits of investigation were very remarkable; his mind seemed to cling to his subject till he had exhausted it. Hence the uncommon superiority of his reasoning powers-a superiority that seemed to be augmented from every source, and to be fortified by every auxiliary-learning, taste, wit, imagination, and eloquence. These were embellished and enforced by his temper and manners, by his fame and his virtues. It is difficult, in the midst of such various excellence, to say in what particular the effect of his greatness was most manifest. No man more promptly discerned truth; no man more clearly displayed it; it was not merely made visible-it seemed to come bright with illumination from his lips. But, prompt and clear as he was-fervid as Demosthenes, like Cicero full of resource-he was not less remarkable for the copiousness and completeness of his argument, that left little for cavil, and nothing for doubt. Some men take their strongest argument as a weapon, and use no other; but he left nothing to be inquired for-nothing to be answered. He not only disarmed his adversaries of their pretexts and objec tions, but he stripped them of all excuse for having urged them; he confounded and subdued as well as convinced. He indemnified them, however, by making his discussions a complete map. of his subject; so that his opponents might, indeed, feel ashamed of their mistakes, but they could not repeat them. In fact, it was no common effort that could preserve a really able antagonist from becoming his convert; for the truth, which his researches so distinctly presented to the understanding of others, was rendered almost irresistibly commanding and impressive, by the love and reverence which, it was ever apparent, he profoundly cherished for it in his own. While patriotism glowed in his heart, wisdom blended in his speech her authority with her charms.

Unparalleled as were his services, they were nevertheless no otherwise requited than by the applause of all good men, and by his own enjoyment of the spectacle of that national prosperity and honor which was the effect of them. After facing calumny, and triumphantly surmounting an unrelenting persecution, he retired from office with clean though empty hands, as rich as reputation and an unblemished integrity could make him.

The most substantial glory of a country is in its virtuous great men; its prosperity will depend on its docility to learn from their example. That nation is fated to ignominy and servitude, for which such men have lived in vain. Power may