one of the heirs of the Damen estate which a hundred years ago consisted of a flourishing farm covering the whole distance between Wall street and Maiden lane. Samuel Verplanck is building a large house near the city hall, on the old property, and the Cuylers, Startins, Roosevelts, and other people of fashion have moved into the street. The two lofty churches cast their shadows over all, and the lordly officers of the government pass in and out of the capitol building of the colony, investing the locality with great dignity and interest. An unsightly object at the foot of Wall street is hidden from view by the handsome trees. For more than half a century a slave-mart has existed, where the traffic in negroes has been as conspicuous from day to day as the buying and selling of potatoes. It is on record that in 1762 the Wall-street residents heroically complained of this slave-mart as a public nuisance. But the good people never thought of asking that it should be abolished! They simply petitioned for its removal to some other part of the city.

The first newspaper you take up contains the following advertisement: "New negroes; men, women, boys and girls; just imported. To be sold, cheap for cash. By James Sackett, in the main street, near the Fly Market."

Its

Wall street divested of this blemish is irresistibly fascinating. signs of promise in 1768 are not remarkable-there is no suggestion of its prospective overleaping its natural limits to plant towns, cities, and railroads in every part of the continent. But it touches the past. We can almost see the brush fence marking its site, built in the previous century to keep the bears and Indians out of the pastures below, where the cattle grazed, and which stood for nine years, until the wooden wall took its place from which the street was named. These reminiscences serve to convince us that the world moves-that nothing stands still. For many decades all there was of the little city of New York lay between this wall and the Battery, and it was during that period that Mr. Houghton, from the platform of the New York Historical Society at one of its late meetings, conducted his audience through the streets of New York on foot, to prove in the most conclusive manner that carriages were then an unnecessary extravagance.

Great changes have indeed occurred. The city has pushed over the wall, leaped its site, and spread fully as far to the north as its extent south of Wall street. From one of the tall steeples you can see its outline to the north marked by four church edifices, standing like ecclesiastical outposts on the frontiers-St. George's chapel, in Beekman street; the New Brick church, first opened at the beginning of 1768, opposite the green, or “in

church, in Fulton street, 000, the rival of St. Paul's in

tended common," at Beekman street; St. Paul's chapel, in Broadway, one year old; and the North Dutch nearly completed at a cost of $60,architectural pretensions.

One needs no better evidence of community than such lavish outlay

New York is not compactly built, street and the common, but the are more or less scattered, there are houses with yards and shrubbery about them, and there are fine churches, monster sugarhouses, and flat-looking markets. The ugliest of the latter stands in the middle of Broadway, at Liberty street. There are three newspapers published in the city, weeklies, two of which appear every Monday and the other on Thursday,

the material prosperity of a for religious uses. however, between Wall buildings, large and small, some pretty new dwelling

each containing (so they announce) "the freshest advices, foreign and domestick." The city of 1768 has one theatre, a little red wooden building in John street, and it has a college "for the study of polite literature." This seat of learning arrests our attention. It is called King's college and it is the pride of the town. It stands on the shore of the Hudson, between Murray and Barclay streets, surrounded by a wide stretch of picturesque pastoral scenery. The structure is only about one-third of its intended size, and, in the language of a contemporary, “is an elegant stone edifice, three complete stories high, with four staircases, twelve apartments in each story, a chapel, a hall, a library, a museum, an anatomical theatre, and a school for experimental philosophy.'

A high fence surrounds the building, inclosing also a large court and garden. A porter attends at the front gate, which is locked at nine o'clock at night in the winter and ten in the summer, after which hour the names of all those who come in are duly reported to the president. All students except those of medicine are obliged to lodge and diet in the college unless they are particularly exempted by the president.

The matter of college diet becomes interesting with the actual bill of fare in hand, prepared by the college faculty. The learned Dr. George H. Moore has recently published it entire in a brochure on Columbia College, and it is appetizing to note that tea or coffee and bread-and-butter are served to the young men every morning for breakfast, that they have roast beef and pudding for dinner on Sundays, corned beef and mutton pye for dinner on Thursdays, and fish on Saturdays, with dishes equally distracting to scholars on the other days of the week. Suppers the year round are of bread-and-butter and possibly cheese-or the remainder of dinner.

The pupils of this new college are instructed in mathematics, natural philosophy, astronomy, geography, history, chronology, rhetoric, natural law, physic, logic, ethics, metaphysics, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, modern languages, belles-lettres, and whatever else tends to accomplish them as gentlemen. Annexed to the college is a grammar school for the preparation of those who wish to take a full course. The medical department announces in the newspapers a course of anatomical lectures for the current year, the first part exhibiting "the system of Dry Bones." This is prob ably the first introduction of dry bones into a lecture course.

We are just in time to attend the annual commencement exercises of the college on May 17, 1768. It is a legal holiday-business is suspended throughout the city. The morning dawns with fair skies and the atmosphere is cool and beguiling. Handsomely dressed people are out early,

Myles Looken

gentlemen in black satin small-clothes, white or yellow embroidered satin vests, and velvet or cloth coats of every color in the rainbow. Their shoes are fastened with gorgeous buckles and their heads crowned with powdered wigs and cocked hats. It is a noteworthy fact to be remembered that gentlemen in going to dinners or the theatre in full dress often carry their hats in their hands in order not to disturb their curlsbut they are generally on their heads in the morning. The ladies are ornamental in their attire, but it is an age when they do not surpass the gentlemen. They wear the richest of silks and satins of brightest colors, the court hoop is in vogue, and the hair and the hat rise on the top of the head to a marvelous height. The centre of attraction this morning is St. Paul's chapel, recently finished in the most expensive and ornate manner. It is filled with an intensely fashionable and appreciative audience. The streets along the line of the procession are thronged early. Finally the college gate swings ajar, and the president, the professors, and the students appear, all in their robes, and march solemnly with measured step through Murray street-a mere country road and a trifle dusty-which has a grassy pathway on one side, and turning into Broadway the procession passes down under the row of trees in full leaf to St. Paul's. The young president of the college, Rev. Myles Cooper, looks hardly thirty-three, but that is his exact age. He was sent over from England six years ago to assist the aged Dr. Johnson, first president of the institution, and the following year, Dr. Johnson resigning, he was installed president. He had been chosen by the sagacious and accomplished prelate, Archbishop Secker, who considered him very bright and promising. He had already received the degree of master of arts from Oxford university, in England, where he had won a fine reputation for classical learning. He from the first took a spirited interest in the affairs of the young college, and won the esteem and confidence of the older professors and of the clergy of the city. Before his coming, however, while he was on the ocean, consternation seized the governors of the college with a fatal grip, for the new professor was not only a very young man, but a bachelor. Therefore they added this codicil to their code of laws: "Resolved, that no woman, on

any pretext whatever (except a cook), be allowed to reside within the college for the future, and that those who are now there be removed as soon as conveniently may be."

Judging from the portrait of President Cooper which adorns the library of the New York Historical Society, the precaution may not have been overwhelmingly necessary. But if not dangerously handsome, the young president was witty, well-informed, and something of a poet. Before coming to America he had written all sorts of verses-including some very dull stanzas on sacred themes-and printed a volume which he circulated among his friends. He was socially inclined, and an active member of a literary club which mixed up a little literature with a great deal of hilarity.

Benjamin Moore

The graduates at this commencement interest us. comes first, a fine-looking youth of twenty, who is to distinguish himself in the years to come as rector of Trinity church, bishop of the diocese, and president of this very college. Gouverneur Morris follows, a tall stripling of sixteen, whose sense of humor combined with perfect self-confidence renders his features a curious study. He has a natural gift for declamation, which in part accounts for his having been chosen to deliver the graduating address for the class. It is entitled "Wit and Beauty," and it wins immense applause, despite its Latinisms and stilted phrases and the fact that no one present suspects him as a possible candidate for future greatness. John Stevens is the next in order; age nineteen; walks erect, with eyes drooping as if in deep thought; he is the son of John Stevens, whose house we have seen in lower Broadway, and is destined to pass into history as one of the great inventors of the age. Gulian Verplanck, of the same age as Stevens, belongs to one of the oldest families in the city, whose ancestral acres north of Wall street have already been mentioned. There are honors in store for him in public affairs. James Ludlow is his chum, a thin, graceful, blue-eyed youth of tranquil manners, who belongs to another family of age and influence, descended from the oldest gentry in Great Britain. One of the Ludlows, Carey, has just bought a lot in State street, fifty-two feet front, extending through to Pearl street in the rear, for which he has paid some $5,000, and wishing to beautify the locality before building his contemplated mansion, has ordered three hundred trees planted along the street and on the Battery. The oldest member of the class is Peter Van Schaack, something over twenty-one. He is the hero of a pretty romance, having been privately married during his junior year in college to Elizabeth, the beautiful daughter of Henry Cruger, greatly to the annoyance of both