glad that we have so sagacious and so able a man ready in war or in peace to aid and to guide us. This is not the time to discuss his qualities as the great general, nor are we qualified for the task; but we may be permitted to say that it is by no means proven, that under the same circumstances he would not have been the equal of the best soldiers the war has produced.

One Napoleonic quality, we certainly know he possessed in a high degree-the power of judging and choosing men. Always, from the first, he recognized the lofty military merit of such men as McClellan, Sherman, Lee, Thomas, and others, and the qualities of that most successful of all of them-our present President.

History will do justice to the great services he rendered his country, while performing his arduous and delicate duties at Washington during the war. His negative services were, perhaps, even more valuable than his positive. Officially associated with civillians claiming to understand the whole art of war, whose policies and plans were constantly changing, a "break" and a balance-wheel were both absolutely needed. We believe that General Halleck was the right man in the right place at the right time, and did as much as any human being could do under those anomalous and fearful circumstances; and posterity, when all is known, will honor him for what he prevented as well as for what he accomplished.

DAVID C. BRODERICK.

I

is a remarkable absurdity for an American biography to commence with the humbleness of the birth of its subject. In this land, it is doubtful if the scion of any family can show a coat-of-arms with quarterings sufficient to entitle him to Maltese knighthood, or satisfactory to an Austrian chamberlain. Almost all family lines, pretentious or honest, will be found not only "waxed at the other end," but nearer still to the gentle propositus, "by some plebeian vocation." There is something ridiculous in the long, barren lines of Ebenezers and Ezekiels hung about the loins of Mayflower progenitors that, like the strings of dried fruit in a New England kitchen, form the pride of the inglorious but not mute Puritan genealogical minds. It is not how long the trailing root has crept below the shallow soil, but how high the oak towers above, that measures our admiration of ancestral qualifications.

Nor is gentility south of Mason and Dixon's line substantial enough to bear the pruning of a heraldic visitation. American agrarianism has proved too much for primogeniture and landed chiefs; and Sir Bernard Burke would look with no small degree of suspicion at even the most flourishing family tree, however illustrated by Virginian generosity or the punctiliousness of South Carolinian honor.

David Colbrith Broderick. therefore, need not piteously and in forma pauperis claim additional credit for obstacles surmounted by him as a poor man in a land

where all start alike comparatively equally light in purse and family influence.

One fact, however, might be noted: he was of Irish extraction. No Yankee angularity marred and narrowed his soul at the outset in life; no Calvinistic superstition or bigotry barred his mind to generous impressions; no New England twang marred or prejudiced his tongue. He was not obliged to carry the pro-slavery burden about, like a hereditary hump, to be guarded from insult and injury. He could therefore assume the character of a national man with more sincerity than most of those who were his coadjutors in political life. Not stunted by New England barrenness, nor rendered perverse by Southern impetuosity, Broderick may well be considered fortunate in his breeding, in spite of the apparent disadvantages of imperfect education and a youth of toil.

He was born in the city of Washington, under the very shadow, as it were, of the Capitol, on the fourth day of February, 1820. His parents were Irish-his father a stonecutter. In Broderick's sixth year, the family moved to New York city, where they settled permanently.

Broderick received but little instruction in those days. Even before his father's death, which occurred in his fourteenth year, he had learned to assist in the occupation his parent pursued. In his seventeenth year, he was apprenticed regularly to the trade, and followed it systematically for some years.

At that period, as well by reason of the necessity which proud poverty must meet to battle with the world, as from the fact that he was an elder brother, and as such had boyish battles to fight, and boyish airs of command to affect, he acquired what might be termed an honest arrogance, not founded in conceit or egotism, but which was a characteristic of physical temperament rather than of his mind. It became part of his manner, as year by year the circumstances which elicited it were changed in character but not in force. But Broderick was a veritable leader of men. Neither want of polish or wealth could deprive him of his place in society, or prevent his standing forth a Saul among his brethren.

Accident, more than any personal taste, made him a publican. In 1841, he kept a place called "Subterranean Hall;" and the year after, another, known as "Republican Hall." This employment, however, must have been a mere makeshift, such as every man in California, however prosperous, has at times been obliged to seize-a sudden and disagreeable refuge from the storms of poverty. He was meanwhile rapidly working his way through the temporary crust of ignorance, and making himself respected and understood among his fellows.

At that time, the Democratic party in New York and elsewhere was gradually falling into two ranks, marked by the energy of different generations-the Old Hunkers and the Young Democracy. To the latter, Broderick was joined; and with it, in the local politics, he soon became identified.

He also was prominent in the Fire organization, and was actively engaged as foreman in the Howard Engine Company No. 34, corner of Christopher and Hudson streets, in his District.

To the routine mind of the East that bends roundshouldered over its ledger, and stares through its wellto-do spectacles with disfavor at organized ruffianism, as embodied in a volunteer Fire Department, there is something inexplicable in the idea that it should form a power in the State; that there should step forth from its ranks men of moral courage, of heroic wills, of promptness in speech and action, rendering their possessors no mean antagonists in forensic dispute. Yet it was from such sources that no small part of the power of the senatorial ex-mason sprung, and by it that his character was somewhat tinctured. His command over men was not the suave, polished, silvery-tongued utterance of cloistered scholarship, nor the crafty hammering of the special legal pleader: it was rather the hoarse, startling outery that thrilled through the fireman's trumpet, and that found its result in the instantaneous comprehension of his hearers, and their almost involuntary acquiescence therein.

In 1842, Broderick's mother died; and two years