There he enjoyed six years of something as nearly approaching calm and happiness as one born under his turbulent star could ever hope to attain. Within those blue granite walls he entertained bountifully and indulged his vehement passion for historic study. Then, in 1844, he went abroad, taking his wife with him. Out of the quiet eddy where he had found rest for six years he pushed into the turmoil of life, never to return. Domestic troubles in a short time overwhelmed him and his rancorous quarrel with Macready commenced, that culminated in the famous Astor Place riots in New York. The celebrated Forrest divorce suit followed, ending in the complete separation of the actor from his wife. Not caring to live again at Fort Hill, as he called his castle, he sold it to the sisters of the Convent of St. Vincent, who were under the direction of Mother Superior Mary Angela Hughes. The school was opened in 1859, though subsequently much enlarged. Although Fort Hill looks diminutive under the imposing wall of the Mount St. Vincent Academy, yet the tallest tower is said to be seventy feet in height. From the Jersey shore, nearly opposite, the wall of the Palisades rises, one of the strange and imposing features with which nature sometimes surprises the geologist and puzzles the artist.

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Fascinating, if not beautiful in general outline, wonderful in detail and often exquisite in colour, the great mass of weather-beaten rock seems to rise out of the very bosom of the river. Deep at its base runs the swift current of the channel and in its crowning belt of trees the clouds drift. Here and there in the wall are deep rifts cut by little torrents that have been industriously mining their way for centuries past.