FUNERAL ORATION.

SAD, my fellow-citizens, are the recollections and forebodings which the present solemnities force upon the mind. Five years have not elapsed since your tears flowed for the Father of your country, and you are again assembled to shed them over her eldest son. No, it is not an illusion-would to God it were: your eyes behold it: the urn which bore the ashes of WASHINGTON is followed by the urn which bears the ashes of HAMILTON. Cruel privation!—but I forbear. God's way is in the sea, and his path in the great waters, and his footsteps are not known. It is not for mortals to repine, much less to arraign. Our HAMILTON is removed; and we have nothing left but to recall his image; to gather up his maxims, and to profit by our affliction. Accompany me, therefore, to a short retrospect. I feel that I shall not justify an appointment too imposing to be declined. Your own hearts must supply my deficiency. I aspire to nothing

more than a faint outline of the man whom you loved.

Presages of his future eminence were evolved by the first buddings of intellect in ALEXANDER HAMILTON. The course of the boy, like that of the man, was ardent, rapid, and beyond the reach of his contemporaries. History will hereafter relate that he was numbered among statesmen at an age when in others the rudiments of character are scarcely visible. In the contest with Great Britain, which called forth every talent and every passion, his juvenile pen asserted the claims of the colonies against writers from whom it would derogate to say that they were merely respectable. An unknown antagonist, whose thrust was neither to be repelled nor parried, excited inquiry; and when he began to be discovered, the effect was apparently so disproportioned to the cause, that his papers were ascribed to a statesman who then held a who happy sway in the conncils of his country, has since rendered her the most essential services; and who still lives to adorn her name.* But the truth could not long be concealed. The powers of HAMILTON created their own evidence; and America saw, with astonishment, a laḍ of seventeen in the rank of her advocates, at a time when her advocates were patriots and sages. A distinction thus nobly acquired, and ably maintained, was

John Jay, Esq.

a pledge to the commonwealth, which he lost no time in redeeming. His first step from the college was into a military post; his second into the family and confidence of WASHINGTON. Here he had opportunities of studying a man, from whom no other man was too great to learn; of analyzing those rare qualities which met in his character; and of nourishing his own magnanimity by free communication with the magnanimity of his chief. His sound understanding, his comprehensive views, his promptitude, application, and patience, would have endeared him to a man less discriminating than WASHINGTON; but to him they were inestimable, and they speedily sunk the patron in the friend. The pair became inseparable. While others were indulging in wonted gaiety, they were closeted on matters of state; and the pensive brow of the youth, was often the first intimation of serious design in the veteran.

It was impossible for such a pupil in such a school, not to be conspicuous. The materials furnished by WASHINGTON's experience, by his consummate prudence, by the disclosure of his plans, and of the springs of national operations, fostered the genius of HAMILTON, and fitted him for command. His agency in the correspondence of the commander-in-chief, and in directing the movements of the army, is for the research of his biographer. I pass over his personal valor, not only