as well as a readiness of mind of a most unusual kind.  Yet while Hamilton was engaged in all this bewildering work, he was evolving the great financial policy, at once broad, comprehensive, and minute, and after the recess in January he laid his ground plan before Congress in his first report on public credit; a state paper which marks an era in American history, and by which the massive corner-stone, from which the great structure of the Federal government has risen, was securely laid.

New York, meanwhile, had blossomed to her full.  Houses had been renovated, and with all the elegance to be commanded.  Many had been let, by the less ambitious, to the Members of Congress from other States, and all were entertaining.  General Schuyler occupied a house close to Hamilton, and his daughters Cornelia and Peggy—­Mrs. Stephen Van Rensselaer—­were lively members of society.  The Vice-President had taken the great house at Richmond Hill, and General Knox as imposing a mansion as he could find.  Washington, after a few months, moved to the McComb house in lower Broadway, one of the largest in town, with a reception room of superb proportions.  Here Mrs. Washington, standing on a dais, usually assisted by Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Hamilton, received, with the rigid formality of foreign courts, all who dared to attend her levees.  She had discarded the simplicity of campaigning days, and attired herself with a magnificence which was emulated by her “Court.”  It was yet too soon to break from tradition, and the Washingtons conducted themselves in accordance with their strong aristocratic proclivities.  Nor did it occur to anyone, even the most ardent Republican, that dignity and splendour were inconsistent with a free and enlightened Republic, until Jefferson began his steady and successful system of plebeianizing the country.

Washington’s levees were frigid; but I have not observed any special warmth at the White House upon public occasions in my own time.  The President, after the company had assembled, entered in full official costume:  black velvet and satin, diamond knee-buckles, his hair in a bag and tied with ribbons.  He carried a military hat under his arm, and wore a dress sword in a green shagreen scabbard.  He made a tour of the room, addressing each guest in turn, all being ranged according to their rank.  At his wife’s levees he attended as a private individual and mingled more freely with the guests; but his presence always lowered every voice in the room, and women trembled with anxiety lest he should not engage them in conversation, while dreading that he might.  The unparalleled dignity, the icy reserve of his personality, had always affected the temperature of the gatherings he honoured; but at this time, when to the height of a colossal and unique reputation was added the first incumbency of an office, bestowed by a unanimous sentiment, which was to raise the United States to the plane of the great nations of Europe, he was instinctively regarded as superhuman, rather as a human embodiment of the Power beyond space.  He was deeply sensitive to the depressing effect he produced, and not a little bored by the open-mouthed curiosity he excited.  A youngster, having run after him for quite a block, one day, panting from his exertions, Washington wheeled about suddenly, and made a bow so profound and satirical that his pursuer fled with a yell of terror.