Its sinking arches once gave back as proud An echo to the war-blown clarion's peal, As gallant hearts its battlements did crowd, As ever beat beneath a vest of steel, When herald's trump on knighthood's haughtiest day Called forth chivalric host to battle fray.

For here amid these woods did he keep court, Before whose mighty soul the common crowd Of heroes, who alone for fame have fought. Are like the patriarch's sheaves to Heaven's chosen bowed- He who his country's eagle taught to soar, And fired those stars which shine o'er every shore.

Literary Associations of the Hudson 255

AndWithin sightsthese and wild soundsravines at which have the hadworld their have birth wonder"d ; Young Freedom's cannon from these glens have thunder'd And sent their startling echoes o'er the earth ; And not a verdant glade nor mountain hoary But treasures up within the glorious story.

And vet not rich in high-soul'd memories only. Is everv moon-kiss'd headland round me gleaming, Each cavern'd glen and leafy valley lonely, And silver torrent o'er the bald rock streaming: But such soft fancies here may breathe around As make Vaucluse and Clarens hallow'd ground.

There was something more than the ordinary' ties of friendship to bind Irving and Hoffman. He was one of that nearer circle to which Matilda l^elonged, though at the time of her death he was liut four }'ears old. On one occasion Irving speaks of him in a letter as "little Charles." In early l^oyhood he was crippled for life by being crushed between a river steamboat and the wharf, an accident that may have driven him to more diligent stud\% by depriving him of many of the active sports of boyhood. He was sent to the old Poughkeepsie Academy, then a somewhat famous school, but ran away because of alleged harsh treatment, and prepared for college under private tuition.