gomery Square, and his father before him died in the same house. This very house was attacked by Indians and bravely defended by the women.

Nature cast Hancock in a mould of rare comeliness. He seems to have been physically fashioned for a soldier. Now in his fifty-seventh year (born February 14, 1824) he stands six feet two inches, nearly as tall and as broad as the gigantic hero of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane, Winfield Scott, after whom he was named; and he resembles in speech and bearing that impressive and courtly soldier, who died at West Point, where Hancock was educated, on the 29th day of May, 1866, in the eightieth year of his age. Doubtless Hancock's father and mother, Benjamin Franklin and Eliza- . beth Hancock, were largely influenced by the fascinating incidents of the brilliant hero, who was still suffering from the wounds he had received in repelling the second British invasion of our northern frontier-then bearing the golden honors of Congress, after declining the generous proffers of high political office from the administration of President Monroe. All unconscious of the future military renown of their son, they called him Winfield Scott. His twin brother, Hillary Hancock, a member of the Minnesota Bar, is living much respected in the beautiful city of Minneapolis, Minnesota; his youngest brother, John Hancock, who was also in the army of the Potomac with the General, is now living in Washington City, D. C., an officer

of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. These three boys were the only children.

The father, Benjamin F. Hancock, a respected member of the bar, died at Norristown, in his sixty-eighth year, on the first of February, 1867, and his mother, at an advanced age, died in the same town, two years ago. They were always worthy members of the Baptist churches of Norristown and Bridgeport.

The rapid growth of our country is one of the strongest arguments in favor of republican institutions, and the essential changes of government at different periods, not only diffuse official prizes among the masses, but also make them better acquainted with each other. Peculiar exigencies alone, maintained one party in power, consecutively, for more than a quarter of a century. Alternation in administration, and not mere rotation in office, is the salt that savors and saves at once. The distribution of public trusts among the people, not the wretched plan of removing subordinates at the command of every machine despot, is after all the highest conservatism. West Point and the Naval School are the real colleges of free government. Their acolytes come from all ranks of society, and from all parties and sections; and while they are thoroughly educated, the course of instruction stimulates gentility, emulation, and manly comradeship; and above all, pride of country. The modern magicians, steam

and electricity, add to this individual and general knowledge; and at the end of every decade the citizens have a better knowledge of each other, as well as of the vicinities in which they were respectively born and lived. A boy raised in one place, trained to duty in the army and the navy at another, sent abroad by government into distant sections and seas, becomes, not simply a student of men and manners, but a cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world.

General Hancock was one of the cadets, who have made their native places as renowned as themselves, and there are many who would like to know something of his birthplace, as they study the interesting story of his life. Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, so called after General Richard Montgomery, the Irish-American General, killed at Queenstown, in 1775, only nine years before that county was taken from the larger district of Philadelphia, is one of many. places that preserve the memory of that truehearted martyr of the cause of human liberty. More than any other people, ours cultivate the habit of calling their sons, their shires, their towns, their counties and their states, after the great men who have figured conspicuously in science, literature, and arms. So that while the subject of our sketch bears the proud name of one of the greatest soldiers of the second generation of our civil existence, the district in which he first saw the light