changed hands during the British occupation, it was easy to foresee what confusion must ensue. Everybody whose house had once been, for ever so few days, in the hands of a Tory now rushed into court with his action of trespass. Damages were rated at most exorbitant figures, and it became clear that the misdeeds of the enemy were about to be made the excuse for a carnival of spoliation, when all at once the test case of Rutgers _v._ Waddington brought upon the scene a sturdy defender of order, an advocate who was soon to become one of the foremost personages in American history. [Sidenote: Alexander Hamilton.] Of all the young men of that day, save perhaps William Pitt, the most precocious was Alexander Hamilton. He had already given promise of a great career before the breaking out of the war. He was born on the island of Nevis, in the West Indies, in 1757. His father belonged to that famous Scottish clan from which have come one of the most learned metaphysicians and one of the most original mathematicians of modern times. His mother was a French lady, of Huguenot descent, and biographers have been fond of tracing in his character the various qualities of his parents. To the shrewdness and persistence, the administrative ability, and the taste for abstract reasoning which we are wont to find associated in the highest type of Scottish mind he joined a truly French vivacity and grace. His earnestness, sincerity, and moral courage were characteristic alike of Puritan and of Huguenot. In the course of his short life he exhibited a remarkable many-sidedness. So great was his genius for organization that in many essential respects the American government is moving to-day along the lines which he was the first to mark out. As an economist he shared to some extent in the shortcomings of the age which preceded Adam Smith, but in the special department of finance he has been equalled by no other American statesman save Albert Gallatin. He was a splendid orator and brilliant writer, an excellent lawyer, and a clear-headed and industrious student of political history. He was also eminent as a political leader, although he lacked faith in democratic government, and a generous impatience of temperament sometimes led him to prefer short and arbitrary by-paths toward desirable ends, which can never be securely reached save along the broad but steep and arduous road of popular conviction. But with all Hamilton's splendid qualities, nothing about him is so remarkable as the early age at which these were developed. At the age of fifteen a brilliant newspaper article brought him into such repute in the little island of Nevis that he was sent to New York to avail himself of the best advantages afforded by the King's College, now known as Columbia. He had at first no definite intention of becoming an American citizen, but the thrilling events of the time appealed strongly to the earnest heart and powerful intelligence of this wonderful boy.