A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin Verplanck | Page 6

three score, when they will be
fit for his perusal. She writes to him from Boston, that he is accounted
there an amazingly plain spoken man--he had called the Boston people
heretics. She writes to him in Stratford, imagining him in Bishop

Berkeley's arm-chair, surrounded by family pictures and huge folios.
These letters were carefully preserved by her husband till his death,
along with various memorials of her whom he had lost; locks of her
sunny brown hair, the diamond ring which he had placed on her finger
when they were engaged to each other, wrapt in tresses of the same
bright hair, and miniatures of her, which the family never heard of till
he died; all variously disposed among the papers in the drawers of his
desk; so that whenever he opened it, he might be reminded of her, and
her memory might become a part of his daily life. With these were
preserved some letters of his own, written to her about the same time,
and of a sportive character. In one of these he laments the passing away
of the good old customs, and simple ways of living in the country,
supplanted by the usages of town life. Everybody was then reading
Coelebs in Search of a Wife, and Verplanck who had just been looking
over some of the writings of Wilberforce, sees in it resemblances to his
style, which led him to set down Wilberforce as the author.
He lived with his young wife five years, and she bore him two sons,
one of whom died at the age of thirty unmarried, and the other has
become the father of a numerous family. Her health failing he took her
to Europe, in the hope that it might be restored by a change of air and
scene, but after languishing a while she died at Paris, in the year 1817.
She sleeps in the cemetery of Pere La Chaise, among monuments
inscribed with words strange to her childhood, while he, after surviving
her for sixty-three years, yet never forgetting her, is laid in the ancestral
burying ground at Fishkill, and the Atlantic ocean rolls between their
graves.
He remained in Europe a little while after this event, and having looked
at what the continent had to show him, went over to England. In his
letters to his friends at home he spoke pathetically of the loss of her
who was the blessing of his life, of the delight with which, had she
lived, she would have looked at so many things in the old world now
attracting his attention; and of the misfortune of his children to be
deprived of her care and guidance. In one of his letters he speaks
enthusiastically of the painter, Allston, with whose genius he was
deeply impressed as he looked on the grand picture of Daniel

interpreting the Dream of Belshazzar, then begun but never to be
finished. In the same letter he relates this anecdote:
"You may expect another explosion of mad poetry from Lord Byron.
Lord Holland, who returned from Geneva, a few days ago, told Mr.
Gallatin that he was the bearer of a considerable cargo of verses from
his lordship to Murray the publisher, the subject not known. That you
may have a higher relish for the new poem, I give you a little anecdote
which is told in London. Some time ago Lord Byron's books were sold
at auction, where a gentleman purchased a splendid edition of
Shakespeare. When it was sent home a volume was missing. After
several fruitless inquiries of the auctioneer the purchaser went to Byron.
'What play was in the volume?' asked he. 'I think Othello,' 'Ah! I
remember. I was reading that when Lady Byron did something to vex
me. I threw the book at her head and she carried it out of the room.
Inquire of some of her people and you will get your book.'"
While abroad, Verplanck fell in with Dr. Mason, who had refused
Stephenson his degree. The two travellers took kindly to each other,
and the unpleasant affair of the college disturbance was forgotten.
In 1818, after his return from Europe, he delivered before this Society
the noble Anniversary Discourse in which he commemorates the
virtues and labors of some of those illustrious men who, to use his
words, "have most largely contributed to raise or support our national
institutions, and to form or elevate our national character." Las Casas,
Roger Williams, William Penn, General Oglethorpe, Professor Luzac,
and Berkeley are among the worthies whom he celebrates. It has
always seemed to me that this is one of the happiest examples in our
language of the class of compositions to which it belongs, both as
regards the general scope and the execution, and it is read with as