USA > New York > Old New York : or, Reminiscences of the past sixty years > Part 12
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HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
of Dutch regularity, save the old pear tree of the farm of the redoubtable Peter Stuyvesant, well known as still flourishing in foliage and in fruit, in its 220th year, at the corner of Thirteenth street and Third Avenue. If tradition be true, the biographer of this venerable tree, in his ac- count, in the London Horticultural Transactions, ought not to have omitted the curious fact, that of its importation from Southern Europe, and of its having once occupied the old fort held by Stuyvesant and delineated by Vander Donck. If all this be authentic, the old pear tree enhances our admiration as the last living thing in exist- ence since the time of the Dutch dynasty.
Order demands that our first notice of the most striking of our ornamental grounds should be an account of the Battery, and its historical associate, White Hall. Few, perhaps, are well informed of the origin of that well-recorded name, and long-lived historical location. John Moore, the last on the list of the members of the " Social Club," died in New York in 1828, in his 84th year. He was a grandson of Colonel John Moore, who was an eminent mer- chant of this city, and one of the Aldermen, when it was a great distinction to possess that honor : he was also a member of his Majesty's Provincial Council at the time of his death in 1749. The Colonel resided at the corner of Moore (so called after his demise by the corporation) and
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WHITE HALL .- BOWLING GREEN.
Front streets, in the largest and most costly house in this city at that time, and called " White Hall " from its color, and which gave the name afterwards to the neighboring street. It is scarcely necessary to add, that this great edifice was de- stroyed by the fire which laid waste the city in September, 1776, three days after the British ob- tained possession of it. Of the Bay and harbor, and of the Battery itself, I need say nothing after the successful description of Mrs. Trollope, and many other writers. The first time I entered that charming place, was on the occasion of the funeral of General Washington. The procession gathered there and about the Bowling Green : the Battery was profusely set out with the Lombardy poplar trees : indeed, in 1800-'4 and '5, they infested the whole island, if not most of the middle, northern, and many southern States. Their in- troduction was curious. The elder Michaux, under the direction of Louis XVI., had been sent to America, from the Garden of Plants of Paris : he brought out with him the gardener, Paul Saunier, who possessed, shortly after, horticultural grounds of some extent in New Jersey. The Lombardy tree promised every thing good, and Paul spread it. It was pronounced an exotic of priceless value ; but like many things of an exotic nature, it polluted the soil, vitiated our own more stately and valuable indigenous products : and at length
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HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
we find that American sagacity has proscribed its growth, and is daily eradicating it as uncongenial and detrimental to the native riches of American' husbandry.
In glancing at other beautiful plots, if I am controlled by the definition of the dictionary, I must omit special mention of that once famous spot of ground called the Park, situated in front of our City Hall, inasmuch as artistic taste and corporation sacrilege caused the cutting down of the more conspicuous and beautiful trees, the syca- mores, the maple, the walnut, and the Babylo- nian willows of the growth of ages, which consti- tuted its woodland, in order to favor the populace with an improved view of the architectural front of our then recently erected marble edifice. In its actual condition (lucus non lucendo) it were too latitudinarian to speak of the Old Commons as a park, at the present day. Yet the Liberty Boys have perpetuated it in our early history, and Clinton's Canal has given it a modern glorifica- tion, by the far-famed meeting of the tens of thousands opposed to the madness of party strife, at which the venerable Colonel Few presided, aided by John Pintard as secretary, to enter their protest against the unhallowed legislative pro- scription in 1824.
At the period to which our associations are mainly confined, Washington Square, which a wise
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POTTER'S FIELD.
forethought of our city fathers some time since converted into an eligible park, was not then con- templated. It is known to you all to have been our Golgotha during the dreadful visitations of the Yellow Fever in 1797, 1798, 1801, and 1803, and many a victim of the pestilence, of prominent celebrity, was consigned to that final resting-place on earth, regardless of his massive gains, or his public services. I shall only specify one individ- ual whose humble tombstone was the last of the sepulchral ornaments removed thence : I allude to Dr. Benjamin Perkins, the inventor of the metal- lic tractors, a charlatan, whose mesmeric delu- sions, like clairvoyance in these our own days, had something of a popular recognition, and whose confidence and temerity in the treatment of his case, yellow fever, by his own specific, terminated in his death, after three days' illness. Not many years had elapsed, after the formation of this ex- tensive park, ere its adjacent grounds were en- richcd by the erection of that prominent marble edifice, the New York University, through the liberality of the friends of learning, and the instru- mentality of the Rev. Dr. James M. Matthews, subsequently created its first Chancellor. St.
John's Park, now richly entitled to that designa- tion from the philosophy of the vegetable econo- my which was evinced at its laying-out, in the selection, association, and distribution of its trees,
2
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HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
by the late Louis Simond, the distinguished trav- eller and artist, (for the vegetable as well as the animal kingdom has its adjuvants, its loves, and its hatreds,) had no existence at the time to which we more directly refer, the period of our incorpo- ration. If a botanical inquirer should investigate the variety of trees which flourish in the St. John's Park, he would most likely find a greater number than on any other ground, of equal size, in the known world.
If what everybody says be true, then is Sam- uel B. Ruggles entitled to the meed of approba- tion from every inhabitant of this metropolis, for the advantageous disposition of the Union Place Park, and its adjacent neighborhood. It was the lot of this enterprising citizen to manifest an en- larged forecast during his public career in mu- nicipal, equally effective as he had evinced in state affairs. How well grounded this assertion is, can easily be comprehended by any one who reads the public document on this great subject. The forethought and capacity of Mr. Ruggles are mani- fested throughout. All his measures on the various movements from time to time recommended even by most intelligent individuals, and his prophetic declarations on the enlargement of the canal, and the early and convenient completion of the great work, may be cited as characteristic of a strong and comprehensive intelligence. The State has
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RUGGLES .- UNION PLACE.
indecd at times been disfigured by the prejudices and mental inaptitudes of such governors as Yates and Bouck, but the period is at hand, under the administration of Governor King, when the canal boat of two hundred and twenty tons will find a practical navigation through the whole range of this mighty channel, in place of the eighty and ninety ton boats, accommodated to the capacity of the original work. The memorable vessel in which Columbus discovered America, was only of one hundred and ten tons burden .*
The equestrian statue of Washington, exe- cuted with artistic ability by Brown, and erected in this square through the patriotic efforts of Col. Lce, aided by our liberal merchants, adds grace to the beauty of that open thoroughfare of the city. There is a story on this subject, which, I hope, will find embodiment in some futurc edition of Joe Miller. Colonel Lce had assiduously collected a subscription for this successful statue ; among others, towards the close of his labors, he honored
* Sce the Progress of the city of New York for the last fifty years: a Lceture delivered before the Mechanies' Society, by Charles King, LL.D., President of Columbia College. Among other most interesting matters, it contains a noble tribute to the large and sagacious views of Mr. Ruggles and his enlightened patriotism. The commercial metropolis of the Union can never forget those master minds who have so effectively promoted her great scheme of internal improvement : their names are ever to be cherished as household words.
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HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
an affluent citizen of the neighborhood, by an application for aid in the goodly design. " There is no need of the statue," exclaimed the votary of wealth ; " Washington needs no statue ; he lives in the hearts of his countrymen ; that is his statue." " Ah ! indeed," replied the colonel, " does he live in yours ?" "Truly, he does," was the reply. " Then," added the colonel, "I am sorry, very sorry, that he occupies so mean a tene- ment."
I trust I am not vulnerable to the charge of diverging too far from an even path, into every field that may skirt the road, if, while on the sub- ject of Gardens and Parks, I commemorate one other of superior claims to consideration, and which at the time we have so often alluded to, had arrived to a degree of importance which might almost be called national ; I mean the Elgin Bo- tanic Garden, founded by the late Dr. David Hosack, in 1801, and at the period of our incor- poration, justly pronounced an object of deep in- terest to the cultivators of natural knowledge, and to the curious in vegetable science. Those twenty acres of culture, more or less, were a triumph of individual zeal, ambition, and liberality, of which our citizens had reason to be proud, whether they deemed the garden as conservative of our indige- nous botany, or as a repository of the most pre- cious exotics. The eminent projector of this dis-
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ELGIN BOTANIC GARDEN.
tinguished garden, with a princely munificence, had made these grounds a resort for the admirers of nature's vegetable wonders, and for the stu- dents of her mysteries. Here were associated, in appropriate soil, exposed to the native elements, or protected by the conservatory and the hot- house, examples of vegetable life, and of variety of development-a collection that might have captivated a Linnæus, or a Jussieu ; and here, indeed, a Michaux, and a Barton, a Mitchill, a Doughty, a Pursh, a Wilson, or a Le Conte, often repaired to solve the doubts of the cryptogamist, or to confirm the nuptial theory of Vaillant.«
* Several of these distinguished disciples of the school of wis- doni have already found judicious biographers, who have recorded their services in the fields of natural knowledge. We still want the pen to describe the labors of Pursh, the author of the Flora America Septentrionalis. His adventurous spirit, his hazardous daring, and his indomitable energy, present an example of what a devotee in an attached calling will encounter. He was for several years the curator of the Elgin Botanic Garden, and widely travelled through the United States. Lambert, the author of the " Ameri- can Pines," afforded him great aid in the production of his vol- umes, and cherished, as I personally know, great regard for the benefits Pursh had conferred on American botany. Michaux has been more fortunate. The biographical memoir of this most emi- nent man, recently giveu to the public in the "Transactions of the American Philosophical Society," by ELIAS DURAND, of Philadel- phia, himself a lover of botanical science, is a most grateful tribute to the character and merits of this intrepid explorer of the Ameri- can soil. Michaux was the only child of André Michaux, reudered no less famous by his "Oaks of North America," and by his "Flo- ra," than the son by his "Forest Trees." Young Michaux, under
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HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
Here the learned Hosack, then Professor of Botany in Columbia College, gave illustrations to his medical class, and to many not exactly within the circle of professional life, of the natural and artificial systems of nature. I shall never forget those earlier days of my juvenile studies, when the loves and habits of plants and of trees were first expounded by that lucid instructor, and with what increased delight the treasures of the Jardin des Plantes of Paris, just arrived, through the kind- ness of Monsieur Thouin, were added to the great collection of exotics in this New York Garden. It was a general rule with that able instructor, to terminate his spring course by a strawberry festi-
parental guidance, was early initiated into the cultivation of bo- tanical pursuits; the story of his life, as given us by Mr. Durand, enhances our estecm of his heroic labors, and posterity must ever thank this enlightened biographer for the exposition lic has made of the contributions to physical knowledge, and especially to ar- boriculture, which the instrumentality of Michaux has effected. Hc lived a long life, notwithstanding his innumerable perils, dying so late as in October, 1855, at the age of 85 years. Every Ameri- can who visits the Garden of Plants of Paris, must be struck with the number and the richness of the American Forest Trees which flourish therein ; they furnish but one of many examples of the practical zeal and services of the Michauxs, father and son. It is to be hoped that, cre long, some competent botanist will favor us with an account of the amiable Douglass, whose tragical end is still involved in obscurity. We know little of him save that our botanical catalogue is enriched with the "Pinus Douglassii." Greater merits, and more modesty, were never blended in one individual.
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DAVID HOSACK.
val. "I must let the class see," said the teacher, " that we arc practical as well as theoretical : the fragaria is a most appropriate aliment : Linnæus cured his gout and protracted his life by strawber- ries." " They are a dear article," I observed, " to gratify the appctite of so many." "Yes, indeed," he rejoined, "but in due time, from our present method of culture, they will become abundant and cheap. The disciples of the illustrious Swede must have a foretaste of them, if they cost me a dollar a piece."
Had Dr. Hosack done no more by his efforts at the Elgin Garden, than awaken increased de- sires in the breast of his pupil Torrey for natural knowledge, he might be acknowledged a public benefactor, from the subsequent brilliant career which that eminent naturalist, with Professor Gray, has pursued in the vast domain of botanical inquiry. But I am happy to add, with that social impulse which seems to be implanted in the breast of every student of nature, which the frosts of eighty-eight winters had not chilled in Antoine L. Jussieu, and which glowed with equal benignity in the bosom of the intrepid Ledyard, on Afric's sandy plains, and in the very heart of the adven- turous Kane amidst the icy poles, Hosack is not forgotten. Willdenow tells us, that the crowning glory of the botanist is to be designated by some plant bearing his name. Since the death of Dr.
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HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
Hosack, the botanical nomenclature enrolls no less than sixteen species of plants of different regions under the genus Hosackia. Time and circum- stances have wrought great changes in this once celebrated place, the Elgin Garden.
Pleasing as might be the theme, I can only make a brief allusion to one other spot, which has peculiar claims to notice, derived from many cir- cumstances. I mean the Grange, once occupied as the seat or country residence of the lamented Hamilton, and now belonging to the property of the late W. G. Ward, a name of revolutionary re- nown. This beautiful retreat is about eight miles from the city, and some one or two miles from Manhattanville, on high ground, and commanding a view both of the East and North rivers. It is especially to be noted as remaining little or in no wise altered from the condition in which it was held by the patriotic soldier and statesman : it has been kept in wholesome preservation for half a century, and still remains unmolested by the spirit of improvement. The thirteen gum trees, with their characteristic star leaf, forming a beau- tiful coppice, still stand before the door of the mansion, as originally planted by Hamilton him- self, in token of the union and perpetuity of the original thirteen States of the American republic, -an association deeply fixed in the heart of the exalted patriot. On these grounds were often
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COLUMBIA COLLEGE.
seen, in his latter days, in his morning and eve- ning wanderings, the celebrated ornithologist, Au- dubon, whose zeal in natural history and rural affairs abated not a jot in his extremest age and feebleness.
Columbia College, that venerable and venera- ted seat of classical learning, was justly proud of her healthy and beautiful locality, laved almost up to the borders of her foundation by the flowing streams of the Hudson, and ornamented by those majestic sycamores planted by the Crugers, the Murrays, and the Jays, fifty years before our in- corporation, but which city progress has recently so agonizingly rooted out. Well might Cowen, in his Tractate on Education, have extolled this once delectable spot as an appropriate seat for intellec- tual culture in the New World.
As a graduate for nearly half a century, an overweening diffidence must not withhold from me the trespass of a moment concerning my Alma Mater. The faculty, when I entered within its walls, was the same as occupied them when our Historical Society was organized, and on a former occasion, at one of your anniversaries, I bore tes- timony to the cordial support which that body gave to our institution at its inception. The be- nignant Bishop Moore was its president ; Dr. Kemp, a strong mathematician, ably filled several departments of science ; impulsive and domineer-
2*
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HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
ing in his nature, there were moments with him when a latent benevolenee towards the student quiekened itself, and he may be pronouneed to have been an effective teacher. It has been pro- mulgated that he gave early hints of the praetica- bility of the formation of the Erie Canal. I have never seen satisfactory proofs of such forethought in any of his disquisitions. He died shortly after that great measure was agitated : he might have conversed on the subjeet with Clinton, Morris, Eddy, Colles, and Fulton. Yet I think I might, with perhaps equal propriety, because I had an interview with old William Herschel, fancy myself a diseoverer of the nature of the milky way. Kemp was clever in his assigned duties, but had little ambition to traet beyond it. He was devoid of genius, and laeked enterprise.
Dr. Bowden, as the Professor of Moral Philos- ophy, was a courteous gentleman, a refined seholar, and a belles-lettres writer. Like many others of a similar type, his controversial pen earried pun- geney with its ink, while in personal eontaet with his opponents, his eautious and modulated utter- anee neither ruffled the temper nor invoked vehe- mence in reply. Professor Me Viekar, so long his successor, has given the life and character of this excellent man with graphie aeeuraey, and our late departed and mueh lamented associate, Ogden Hoffman, has furnished a portrait of his virtues in
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PETER WILSON.
an occasional address with the fidelity and attrac- tiveness of the limner's art.
Our Professor of the Greek and Latin tongues, was the late Dr. Wilson : he enjoyed through a long life the reputation of a scholar ; he was a devoted man to his calling, and a reader of wide extent. His earnestness in imparting knowledge was unabated through a long career, and had his intellectual texture been more plastic, he had proved himself to his scholars a triumphant ex- positor. He seemed to want the discipline of a morc refined and general scholarship ; at times harassed in his classical exegesis, he became the veriest pedagogue, and his derivative theory and verbal criticism, were often provocatives of the loudest laughter. The sublimity of Longinus was beyond his grasp, and he only betrayed his hardi- hood when he attempted to unfold the beauties of the Sapphic Ode. He was enamored of Josephus and the history of the Jews, and recreated in the narrative of that ancient people of Israel ; so much so as to enter with warmth into measures the better to secure their spiritual salvation ; and if the newspapers, often our best authority, are to be relied on, associated himself with a Society for the Conversion of the Israelites ; and it is affirmed, he secured, after years of effort, one at least, with- in the sheepfold of Calvinistic divinity. Dr. Wil- son, though cramped with dactyls and spondees.
1146207
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HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
was generous in his nature, of kindly feelings, and of great forbearance towards his pupils. Few of our American colleges have enjoyed the blessings of so earnest a teacher for so long a term of years ; and the occurrence is still rarer, that so conscien- tious a professor has been followed by a successor of at least equal zeal in his classical department, and who is still further enriched with the products of advanced philology and critical taste.#
Columbia College has seen her centurial course. While I feel that that noticeable asterisk prefixed to the names of her departed sons will ere long mark my own, I cannot but recognize the renown she has acquired from the men of thought and action whom she has sent forth to enrich the na- tion. Let us award her the highest praiscs for the past, while we indulge the fondest hopes for the future, and a great future lies before her. The eminent men who have successively presided over her government, from her first Johnson to her present distinguished head, Dr. King, have uni- formly enforced with a fixed determination, clas- sical and mathematical acquisitions, without which a retrograde movement in intellectual disci- pline and in practical pursuits must take place. While I accede to this indubitable truth, I may prove skeptical of the often repeated assertion of
* Charles Anthon, LL.D.
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COLUMBIA COLLEGE.
my old master, Wilson, that without the elassies you can neither roast a potato nor fly a kite. It is currently reported that the fiseal powers of Co- lumbia College are more commanding than ever ; henee the duty becomes imperative, to enlarge her portals of wisdom in obedienee to the spirit of the age. Let her proelaim and confirm the riches of elassie lore ; let its eulture, by her example, be- come more and more prevalent. Her statutes as- sure us she spreads a noble banquet for her guests ; but, diselaiming the monitorial, let her bear in mind the sanitory precept of the dietetist, that variety of aliment is imperative for the full devel- opment of the normal condition. The apieian dishes of the aneients did not always prove eondi- mental, and the rising glory of an independent people, not yet of her own age, has need of, and seeks relief in, the acquisition of new pursuits, and in the exereise of new thoughts eorresponding with the novelty of their condition and the wants of the republie.
I had written thus much eoneerning my ven- erable Alma Mater, and was eontent to leave her in the enjoyment of that repose, if so she desired, which revolving years had not disturbed, when lo ! popular report and the publie journals announee that new life has entered into her constitution. The lethargy which so long oppressed her, she has thrown off ; she has found relief in the quiekened
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HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.
spirit of the times, and in the doings of those in- tellectual bodies which surround her, and which modern scicnee has called into being. Let me, an humble individual, venture to give her the assur- ances of a mighty population, in whose midst she stands, that the learned and the enlightened, the honest and the true, of every quarter, hail her ad- vent in unmeasured aceents of praise. In the moral, in the scholastic, in the scientific world, her friends rise up to greet her with warmest approba- tion ; there are already manifested throughout the land outward and visible signs of joy at her late movements, and her alumni everywhere cherish an inward and genuine rejoicing at anticipated bene- fits. She has found out by the best of teachers, experience, that apathy yields not nutrition ; that there is a conservatism which is more liable to de- stroy than to protect. From Aristotle down to the present time, the schoolmen have affirmed that laughter is the property of reason, while the excess of it has been considered as the mark of folly. It needs no eart team to draw the parallel. Liberated by the inereascd wisdom of the age, she now comes forth in new proportions, and puts on the habiliments of one conscious that her armor is fitted for the strongest eontest, and ready to enter the field of competition with the most heroic of her compecrs. The desire on all sides to extend the empire of knowledge, opens the widest area
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