peacock's feathers," or rather like a " strawberry smoth- ered in cream "! The mode of living at the Manor is exactly after my own heart. You have every variety of rural amuse- ment within your reach, and are left to yourself to occupy your time as you please. We made several charming excursions, and you may suppose how delightful they were, through such beauti- ful scenery, with such fine women to accompany you. They surpassed even our Sunday morning rambles among the groves Digitized by Microsoft® Literary Associations of the Hudson 251 on the banks of the Hudson, when you and the divine H were so tender and sentimental, and you displayed your horse- manship so gallantly by leaping over a three-barred gate. THE RIVER AND CATSKILL MOUNTAINS FROM THE LAWN OF THE MONTGOMERY HOUSE — BARRY TOWN {From a drawings by TV. y. Wilson) It may be remembered that James Renw^ick, at nineteen years of age, succeeded Doctor Kemp as Pro- fessor of Natural History at Columbia College. Irving was highly tickled and, jumping from one extreme to Digitized by Microsoft® 252 The Hudson River the other, addressed him sometimes with exaggerated deference and at others as "my worthy lad." The name of Gouverneur Kemble at once suggests Cockloft Hall, of which he was, by inheritance, the owner. It was near Newark. There the " Lads of Kilkenny" used to hold their informal meetings, as partly told in the Salmagundi papers. Peter Irving and Henry Ogden were both members of that convivial nine, and long afterwards the former alluded in a let- ter to " the procession in the Chinese saloon, in which we made poor Dick McCall a knight; and I, as the senior of our order, dubbed him by some fatality on the seat of honour instead of the shoulder." There was a sort of general family connection be- tween several of those companions. Kemble 's sister, Gertrude, was afterwards the wife of James K. Pauld- ing, while the Paulding and Irving families were also allied by marriage. Paulding was by birth a Dutchess County boy, of Dutch ancestry, whose first widely known work was done in conjunction with Washington Irving, in the Salmagundi papers. In the course of a long life he wrote voluminously, both in prose and verse, though little of his work is familiar to the general reader of to-day. He had a dry and caustic humour, little un- derstood or appreciated by the more serious critics of his day. Novels, histories, fables and allegories, poems and satirical comments upon most of the public questions of the moment flowed from his almost too Digitized by Microsoft® Literary Associations of the Hudson 253 facile pen. Having filled various honourable offices in his native State, he was appointed Secretary of the Navy during the Van Buren administration. His home, near Hyde Park, where he passed in retirement the final years of a busy life, is described in another chapter. In the effervescent period of Cockloft Hall and Salmagundi, his familiar nickname was Billy Tay- lor, from a song that he was fond of singing upon fes- tive occasions. Closely connected with Irving, in that circle of writers that we are wont to group under the general title of Knickerbocker, were, among others, Fitz- Greene Halleck, Charles Fenno Hoffman, Joseph Rodman Drake, Nathaniel Parker Willis, General George P. Morris, Frederick Swartwout Cozzens, the brothers Duyckinck, and Gulian Crommelin Verplanck. These were all associated either by residence or by virtue of some particular work with the Hudson River. Charles Fenno Hoffman was one of the most distin- guished of the coterie. He shared with Morris the leadership among American lyric writers, and filled a large place in the earlier anthologies. Of such as he it was that Walter Savage Landor wrote: "We often hear that such and such things ' are not worth an old song.' Alas, how few things are! " No song in our language is more perfect, after its kind, than Hoffman's famous Sparkling and Bright, that for twenty years was literally on every one's lips: Digitized by Microsoft® 254 The Hudson River . . . in liquid light Does the wine our goblets gleam in, With hue as red as the rosy bed Which a bee would choose to dream in. He sang of the Hudson in an exalted strain, in verse that may sound formal and, perhaps, a little pedantic to our modern ears; but the fashions change in fifty or sixty years, and it is certain that he celebrated her beauties as only a lover could. At West Point, during his early life, Hoffman wrote a poem called Moonlight on the Hudson, from which a brief quotation may be admitted here : What though no cloister grey nor ivied column Along