This editorial work threw him into agreeable relations with some of the most brilliant and celebrated men of his day. His familiar associates included William Cullen Bryant, Chancellor Kent, Lewis Gaylord Clarke, Colonel William Leete Stone, and a score of others, some of whose names have a prominent place in this chapter. The honourary degree of Master of Arts was conferred upon him by Columbia College, his companions upon that occasion being Bryant and Halleck. We may be permitted one further quotation from this representative Hudson River poet. It is from a short poem called Indian Summer, written in 1828: Light as love's smiles, the silvery mist at morn Floats in loose flakes along the limpid river; The blue bird's notes upon the soft breeze borne. As high in air he carols, faintly quiver;

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The weeping birch, hke banners idly waving, Bends to the stream, its spicy branches laving; Beaded with dew, the witch elm's tassels shiver; The timid rabbit from the furze is peeping, And from the springy spray the squirrel 's gaily leaping.

In 1850, while occupying a government position at Washington, Hoffman was stricken with mental disorder, from which he did not recover. He lived in retirement thirty-four years, outliving his companions and his fame. Fitz-Greene Halleck, whose name is on our roster next to that of Paulding, was a Connecticut boy. His first visit to New York was made in 1808, and was an event to which the metropolis may point with pride, for no native-born son of Manhattan, with the blood of all the Dams and Bilts and Blinkers in his veins, ever became more intimately associated with the city. His celebrated friendship for Joseph Rodman Drake, -- a memory embalmed in the exquisite tribute of verse that he paid at the latter 's death -- commenced in 181 3, when the future author of Marco Bozzaris had been two years away from his Connecticut skies.