"Moses and Aaron were united." Never, it is believed, has there been any collision or friction in the working of this arrangement. The only thing to be regretted is that of late years the contemptible principle of "rotation in office," superseding the old principle of "steady habits," has too much deprived the Corporation of the dig. nity and strength which it ought to receive from its alliance with the State. Senators who have been elevated to office because it was their turn, and who are sure to be displaced next year because they will have had their day of honor, if they happen to be desig nated by lot as "Senior Senators," can hardly be expected to take much interest in the one meeting of the Corporation which takes place each year.

The memorable "Act for enlarging the powers and increasing the funds of Yale College," saved the institution. It brought to the treasury a net amount of about forty thousand dollars. Out 'of that sum, administered with exemplary economy, building after building, arranged according to a plan which Mr. Hillhouse and the artist Trumbull had devised, was added to the line of col

lege edifices. Under the administration of President Dwight, which began three years after the passage of that act, the course of studies, the system of government, and the provisions and arrangements for instruction, were gradually but rapidly modified to meet the exigencies of the times. The increased resort of students was more than parallel with the increase of accommodations. In process of time, as the poverty of the institution, in relation to the work it had to do, was made the more conspicuous by its growing usefulness and its spreading renown, friends and benefactors began to appear, whose donations or legacies still kept it from sinking. Its Alumni in all parts of the Union, came to its aid. New departments of instruction in the learned professions were organized, and to some extent endowed; and before Mr. Hillhouse ceased to be treasurer, the college became, in fact, a university though not affecting the grandeur of so lofty a name.

It is not strange then, that when, in his old age, he had relinquished all other offices and public employments, and had retired into the bosom of his family, where he was preparing himself for his last repose, he still retained his official connection with the college. On the 18th of December, 1832, the sudden death of the Assistant Treasurer, Stephen Twining, Esq., threw upon him an unusual and urgent pressure of business, in preparation for the Prudential Committee of the Corporation. On the 29th of Decem. ber, he attended the meeting of that Committee. About noon,

after a session of several hours, he returned to his house, as he had gone out, hale, erect, cheerful, with no weakness in his step and no dimness in his eye. He sat down with the family, and while conversing with them, began to open the letters which had come to hand that morning. As he was reading a letter on college business, he rose from his chair, and without saying anything, went into his bedroom. Only a moment had passed when his son, having occasion to speak to him, followed him. But the old man was asleep. He had lain down quietly upon his bed, and a gentle touch from some kind angel had released him from his labors.

Those who have a personal remembrance of Mr. Hillhouse are growing few. But of the vividness with which his form and looks and character rise before their minds at the mention of his name, after the lapse of so many years since he was carried to his grave, it is difficult to give a just impression. This brief narrative of his long life, and of his many public services, cannot convey to those who never saw him, any adequate notion of what he was s; still less can the writer hope to set before them by any analysis, or to portray by any art of word-painting, the remarkable and memora ble peculiarities of the man.

Physically, as well as in his characteristic moral and mental constitution, he was cast in a heroic mold. Without any extraordinary personal beauty-without any statuesque symmetry or finish of figure and features-his face and person were such that no stranger could look upon him for a moment without looking again and saying to himself, 'That is no ordinary man.' Tall, long-limbed, with high cheek-bones, swarthy, lithe in motion, lightness in his step, and strength and freedom in his stride, he seemed a little like some Indian Chief of poetry or romance-the Outalissi of Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming-the Massasoit or King Philip of our early history as fancy pictures them-so much so that with a kind of affectionate respect he was sometimes called "the Sachem."

It has already been said that his genius and the constitutional elements of his character were such as might have achieved distinction in a military career. The blood of the old Pequot-queller, John Mason, and of the heroic defenders in the siege of Derry was mingled in his veins; and it is safe to say that nobody ever saw him frightened or disconcerted. But mere courage qualifies no man to be a leader. He had that sort of natural leadership among his equals; that special faculty of influence over men, that power of winning their full confidence and of making them willing to follow where

he led, which is given only in nature's patent of nobility. He had an intuitive knowledge of men, whoever they were with whom he had to do without any suspiciousness in his nature, or any slowness in yielding his confidence, he was rarely deceived in those whom he trusted. His prompt discernment of exigencies, and the exhaustless fertility of his resources, gave him an instan. taneous quickness of adaptation to whatever emergency. It was by this military combination of qualities in his mental constitution and development, that he accomplished so much for the town he lived in, for his native State, and for his country.

Had he been a selfish man-had his nature lacked the glow and charm of living sympathies-the development and organization of his entire character would have differed from what it was. His spontaneous and genial affectionateness, not only in his family but in every relation-his frank heartiness in all intercourse with friends and neighbors-his ready sensibility to whatsoever things are true or honest, or just, or pure, or lovely or of good report— in a word, the generosity of his nature, even more than the undoubted superiority of his intellectual powers, commanded the full confidence of all who had to do with him and of all who knew him. What was admired and honored in James Hillhouse was, not the man's extraordinary ability-not his eloquence or his wit-not the depth and reach of his learning, or the acuteness and power of his logic, but the man himself. It was his integrity, in the original and largest sense of that word-the wholeness of his manly nature with all manly affections and sympathies as well as manly powers, that commanded homage. In his earlier years, before he had given himself up entirely to public affairs, he was rising to eminence as an advocate, arguing cases with distinguished success before the highest tribunals; and sometimes when Hamilton and Burr, with the splendor and authority of the one and the unscrupulous genius and cunning of the other, were both arrayed against him. He could not undertake a cause without first gaining in his own mind an assurance of its justice; and when he came to the argument, with his most unaffected honesty and earnestness in every word and look, that assurance of his being in the right communicated itself to those who heard him. The nature of the confidence which his fellow-citizens had in him may be illustrated by a story that is still repeated in New Haven, and is not without a moral. Long ago, when parties had hardly been organized in Connecticut, it happened that a leading man whose name is not essential to the point of the story, but of whom we may say that

he had aspirations as well as opinions, went out on some occasion from New Haven into one of the neighboring towns to make a political speech. The school-house, in which the orator held forth, was filled with plain but thinking farmers, who gave a silent attention while he tried to show them with plausible arguments and at great length, how much they were wronged by the then existing administration of their public affairs. When he had finished, one of his hearers rose and gave him this conclusive reply: "Mr.you are a larned man, and you know a great deal more than we but we know one thing, and that is that Jemmy Hillhouse is an honester man than you be."

do;

The combination of simplicity and dignity in Mr. Hillhouse was altogether unique. The simplicity and the dignity being alike unaffected, were not merely combined; they were one and the same thing. They were the perfectly unconscious manifestation of a strong and self-reliant mind, rich with various knowledge and the shrewdest common sense, controled by the highest moral principles, and alive with every manly affection and every honorable sensibility. With what statesmanlike propriety and force of expression, and with what command of classical English, he could discuss high questions of government, is sufficiently shown on some of the foregoing pages by extracts from the Congressional debates; yet his speaking on all occasions was characterised by that ancient New England pronunciation which was simply the pure and true pronunciation of our mother tongue as it was before the reign of Charles II., but which is now so rarely heard from educated persons or in connection with refinement of thought and manners. His ordinary colloquial discourse, often humorous, often full of the most interesting personal reminiscences, always instructive, was enriched with quaint New England idioms and homely Connecticut proverbs. In all this there was no lack of dignity, for his way of speaking was simply antique, not vulgar. His peonunciation was such as Milton used, and Hampden; and even those Doric colloquialisms of his were, for the most part, such as Brewster and Winthrop, Haynes and Eaton, might have brought with them from England. Yet it would be an injustice to his memory if the reader should think of him as using purposely the antique style in anything, or imagine his old age as decorated with the wig and the shoe buckles which old men wore when he was young. As he did not affect the antique in speech, he was equally above all affectation of the antique in costume. He was not per

forming a part in a play, and had therefore no occasion to dress in character. Doubtless he wore knee-buckles and powdered hair when he was young; but in his venerable age, when buckles and powder had gone out of fashion, they could have added nothing to his dignity. Those little archaisms of dress are sometimes grace. ful in an old man, and dignified; but they would hardly have befitted him. He was as dignified with his coat off and with a scythe in his hands, leading the mowers across the field, and cutting the widest swarth of all, as when he stood conspicuous and honored in the Senate, or on a Sabbath morning walked to the house of prayer with patriarchal grace, beneath the stately elms which his own hands had planted. Everybody in his presence felt his dignity; but the dignity was in the man, not in the manHis dignity was not put on, and could not be put off. It was nothing else than his transparent simplicity, continually revealing an unaffected nobleness of soul.

ner

None will suppose that in a public career so long as his, and so full of the most various activity, and with so much independence and resoluteness of mind, he encountered no unfriendly opposition and no reproach from "evil tongues." With all the traits that made him popular, with all his tact in guiding and influencing men, and with all the kindliness of his disposition, he was still just the man to encounter, now and then, some unexpected and violent hostility. Nor was he by nature "slow to wrath." He was so constituted that he had a quick and impetuous sensibility to injury and especially to insult. Yet his religious principles and habits suffered him to harbor no resentment. As a Christian man he had learned to restrain his vindictive feelings, to bear injury with patience, and to repel insult and make it contemptible by the dignity and magnanimity of meekness.

As

This last mentioned feature in his character might be referred in part to his habitual regard for other interests than his own. he was not living for himself it was the easier for him to be mag. nanimous under any personal wrong. Not only so, but the large. ness of the plan on which he lived, helped to lift him above the depression of whatever personal disappointments and sorrows were in his lot, and to illuminate the entire sphere of his activity and his enjoyments. In words that were spoken at his burial, "He aimed at the public good. He lived for his country. Thus his activity was activity freed from the corrosion of selfishness, and in all his toil there was a consciousness of noble purposes which