There is a house a mile and a half below the arsenal, scarcely visible from the road because of trees and shrubbery which conceal it, and, when seen, it would not attract special attention, excepting for the extreme plainness and antiquated style of its architecture. A pleasant lane leads to it from the canal, and the margin of the sloping lawn on its river front, over which stately elms cast their shadows, is swept by the Hudson's tide. It is famous in colonial history as the residence of Colonel Peter Schuyler, of

the Flats, the first Mayor of Albany, and who, as Indian Commissioner, in after years took four kings or sachems, of the Mohawks, to England, and presented them at the court of Queen Anne. After his death, his son Philip, the well-beloved of the Mohawks, who married his sweet cousin Katrina -- the "Aunt Schuyler" immortalised by Mrs. Grant, of Laggan, in her charming pictures of "Albany Society a Hundred Years Ago" -- resided there, and with ample resources dispensed hospitality with a bounteous baud. And yet this is not the identical house in wliich the mayor lived, and his son Philip entertained friends and strangers, but the one built upon its ruins, in the same style, the summer days of which

THE HUDSON.

are so charmingly portrayed by Mrs. Grant. The old one was consumed by fire in the summer of 1759, when Philip had been dead eighteen months, and "Aunt Schuyler," his widow, whose waist he spanned with his hands when they were married forty years before, had grown to such enormous dimensions, that a chair was made for her special use. In that chair she was seated, under the cherry-trees in the lane, one hot day in August, when the eminent Colonel John Bradstreet, riding up, gave her the first intimation that her house was on fire, "With calmness she kept her seat, and gave directions to her servants and neighbours how to check the flames, and to save her most valued articles.