An attempt to analyze the rare combination of talents and faculties which enabled him to accomplish so much in a period so brief may not be uninteresting. His original intellectual endowments were of the highest order. They were not of that character which, while leaving their possessor satisfied with some hasty and superficial conclusions that at the moment seem true, enable him to impress them upon others by fervid and moving language. These are the intellectual traits most frequently exhibited by the ablest men whom our public life brings into notice; but they do not make up the _scientific_ mind which Governor Tilden's pre-eminently was. At the beginning of his intellectual manhood he clearly perceived that the whole moral world was as rigidly as the physical world subject to an order, an arrangement, a law; and that all policies, whether in government, in finance, or in business, not founded upon a recognition of this truth would result in confusion and mischief. Naturally attracted to the study of the public economy of States, his first aim was to discover the laws governing every part of that extensive domain. Whether the theme was expenditure, taxation, private or public justice, internal improvements, or any form of public administration, he would make no utterance until his brooding mind had reached what he conceived to be the underlying truth; and the same trait was manifest in him where the purpose was not to refute or establish a general policy, but to ascertain, in a particular case, the truth upon a disputed question of fact.