Commenting on this, Irving wrote to his brother, Ebenezer :

I have seen what Verplanck says of my work. ... He is one of the honestest men I know of in speaking his opinion. . . . I am sure he wishes me well . . . but were I his bitterest enemy, such an opinion have I of his integrity of mind, that I would refer any one to him for an honest account of me, sooner than to almost any one else.

Mr. Verplanck 's ancestral home was at FishkilJ-onthe-Hudson. There his last years were spent under the roof that his grandfather erected; and there he died, a sober-minded man of many gifts. His friends included nearly all of the literary men of his day, and no citizen was more honoured.

George P. Morris, the " Dear Morris" of so many of Willis's " hurrygraphs" and letters from various places, belongs particularly to the Hudson. Near the village of Coldspring, his " summer seat" (as it used to be the fashion to call one's country home), commanded a noble view of the Highlands, and was the goal of many a pilgrimage. "America's best lyric poet," as Benson J. Lossing calls him, was in intimate relations with most American men of letters in his day. His long

Literary Associations of the Hudson 269

association with TJic Home Joitnial, together with the

wide |)0|)ularity of his songs, made Morris's name a household word where\^er our somewhat embr>'onic literature found its way. One of the best descriptive stanzas by a Hudson