CURRENT LITERAT ETRE.
MR. CHOATE ON ALEXANDER HAMILTON.
sidered him the greatest of all his contemporaries, Napoleon not excepted), but by the judgment of posterity. His fame has indeed grown with the greatness of the nation which he did so much to create ;' but although his name has always been familiar to his own countrymen—partly, no doubt, as that of the founder and hero of one of the great political parties of the United States —it is to be feared that it is even yet far from being a household word in this country, like that of other illustrious leaders of men with whom he takes rank. Of late, indeed, something has been done to bring home to readers on this side the greatness of his personality and of his work, not least by Mrs. Atherton in her political romance entitled "The Conqueror " ; but it cannot, un- fortunately, be said that the present American Ambassador to this country, when he made his great countryman the subject of an inaugural address at the University of Edinburgh, selected a subject too trite to be of interest to his hearers. Mr. Choate, distinguished as he is in the law and in public life, and gifted with a high degree of eloquence in speech and in writing, is peculiarly qualified to do justice to the genius of Alexander Hamilton, to his "commanding talents and weight of character," his "unfailing genius for the public service," his "clear political vision," his "devotion to public duty." In a few brilliant pages he traces the main features of Hamilton's career : his romantic and precocious start, his position as the trusted friend and counsellor of Washington, his early labours in war and politics, his connection with the "Federalist"—" thought by many competent authorities to be the greatest book that America has given to the world," and certainly among the greatest treatises on Constitutional law and theory of any age—and last, but not least, his services as the first and greatest of America's Finance Ministers. He aptly quotes on this last point the words of Daniel Webster, who, "borrowing the imagery of the famous miracles," said of him: "He smote the rock of our national resources and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of public credit and it sprang upon its feet! " His tragical death in a duel at the age of forty-seven has done much, as Mr. Choate remarks, to embalm his name in the memory of his countrymen. The unscrupulous political adversary who forced the challenge upon him was Aaron Burr, then Vice-President of the -United States ; and a private diary, to which the present writer has had access, giving an account of his visit to London in 1808, fully bears out the impression of his character inspired by his sinister and fatal action on this occasion.
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