CHAPTER  X.

AT   THB   NEW   TOEK   BAE.

New Tork in 1783—John Adams's Impressions op the City — The Diffkrb>«
KINDS OF Lawyers — Burr's Quality and Habits as a Lawyer — Anecdotes —
Hamilton and Burr at the Bar — Emoluments of the Bar then — The Tastes
AND Home of Burr — Scenes at Richmond Hill.

Colonel Buee had removed to what we should now call a
small town.

From 1722, when Jonathan Edwards had been accustomed
to go out beyond the suburbs of New York to the banks of
" Hudson's river," and meditate with ecstacy upon the deep
things of his theology, to 1783, when his grandson moved
down from Albany to his fine house in Maiden Lane, to prac¬
tice law in the liberated city, was a period of sixty-one years,
during which New York had increased in population from
eight thousand to twenty-five thousand. It was the second
city in the United States, Philadelphia having a population
nearly twice as numerous. The State of New York, at that
time, had less than three hundred thousand inhabitants, about
a third of the number which now the city alone contains. In
the year 1800, the city could only number sixty thousand in¬
habitants, and the State about half a million. The contract-
edness of Burr's sphere of labor it is necessary to bear in
mind.

When John Adams made his triumphal progress from Bos¬
ton to Philadelphia to attend the first Congress, he stopped a
few days in New York, which he then saw for the first time,
and described in his Diary. He says that he walked to every
part of the city in one afternoon, and after seeing every thing
in it worthy of a stranger's attention, went to the Coffee
House and read the newspapers.   His remarks, however, indi-