the French and British ships-of-war in the harbour. On the steps of Trinity Church, Gouverneur Morris, with the four sons of the deceased by his side, pronounced a solemn oration in memory of his slaughtered friend; and when they had laid him in the earth, and the parting volley had been fired over his remains, the vast crowd dispersed in silence, and each man carried to his home the impression of a profound grief. Nor was this feeling confined spread rapidly through the to New York. It Union, and found utterance in every variety of form. Speeches, and sermons, and poems innumerable were composed in honour of Hamilton, towns and villages in all parts of America were called after his name, and never, since the death of Washington, has any event produced so universal an expression of sympathy on that continent, as the untimely and lamentable end of the great Federalist. Well might they grieve for him, who had left none like himself in all the wide area between the Atlantic and Pacific, and to whom the subsequent history of America has furnished no equal. Into the forty-seven years of his mortal career, he had compressed such an amount of difficult and laborious service, as few men have ever rendered to any country in the longest term of human existence; and, when he fell, his great powers were in their meridian fulness, and their exercise was never more needed than at the moment of their loss. Every generous and every selfish consideration combined to make his death a subject for national mourning. And so, in the first days of remorseful sorrow, America wept for Hamilton as for her favourite son -and then, with the strange inconsistency of democracies, forgot at once his precepts and his example, and yielded to the downward current that was bearing her far away from all the principles of his life. CHAPTER XVIII. THE DEMOCRACY. WT ITH Hamilton fell the last hopes of the Federalist party. Burr's fatal shot had destroyed more than his great rival. It had cut the ground from under his own feet, and left Jefferson in undisputed possession of the field. From the day of the duel, Burr ceased to be a political leader, and his name was held in horror by the great majority of his countrymen. A coroner's jury returned a verdict of Murder, and the Vice-President had to fly and conceal himself until the first fury of the people had blown over. After a time, his friends seem to have obtained a promise that no criminal proceedings would be taken against him ; but his position was gone, and he was in most respects a ruined man. Driven from his profession, overwhelmed with debts, abandoned by one faction, and denounced by the other, he appeared to have no choice but to sink into obscurity and be forgotten. It was under these circumstances, that his wonderful energy contrived a scheme of matchless daring, which only proved how true had been the instinct of Hamilton, when he warned his country against placing power in the hands of this reckless ad venturer. The United States had just acquired Louisiana by purchase from France, but the Spaniards still held extensive possessions to the West of the Mississippi, and the border-land was inhabited by a wild, unsettled population, not very strict in their allegiance to any power. After the death of Hamilton, Burr went to travel in the South-Western regions, descending the Ohio in a boat, and afterwards proceeding in the same manner to New Orleans-a voyage which, with stoppages by the way, took him sixtyseven days. He returned on horseback through the wilderness, halted at Natchez, Nashville, and other places, made himself well acquainted with the habits and feelings of the people of those parts, and, if he is not much belied, conceived the most magnificent project that ever dazzled the eyes or mingled with the dreams of ambition. He hoped that a war with Spain was at hand; but, whether |