o reach the city, crowds turned out to see him
enter in his coach and four."

The aristocratic Dutchmen cherished a great contempt for the
democratic Puritans of New England. One of the distinguished members
of a colonial family in New York, who died in the year 1740, inserted
the following clause in his will:

"It is my wish that my son may have the best education that
is to be had in England or America. But my express will and
directions are, that he never be sent for that purpose, to
the Connecticut colonies, lest he should imbibe in his
youth, that low craft and cunning, so incidental to the
people of that country, which is so interwoven in their
constitutions, that all their acts cannot disguise it from
the world; though many of them, under the sanctified garb of
religion, have endeavored to impose themselves on the world
as honest men."

Usually once in a year the residents in their imposing manorial homes
repaired, from their rural retreats, to New York to make their annual
purchases. After the country passed into the hands of the English,
several men of high families came over. These all held themselves
quite aloof from the masses of the people. And there was no more
disposition among the commonalty to claim equality with these
high-born men and dames, than there was in England for the humble
farmers to deny any social distinction between themselves and the
occupants of the battlemented castles which overshadowed the peasant's
lowly cot.

Lord Cornbury was of the blood royal. The dress and etiquette of
courts prevailed in his spacious saloons. "About many of their old
country houses," writes Mr. Kip,

"were associations gathered often coming down from the first
settlement of the country, giving them an interest which can
never invest the new residences of those whom later times
elevated through wealth. Such was the Van Courtland
manor-house, with its wainscotted room and guest chamber;
the Rensselaer manor-house, where of old had been
entertained Talleyrand, and the exiled princes from Europe;
the Schuyler house, so near the Saratoga battle-field, and
marked by memories of that glorious event in the life of its
owner; and the residence of the Livingstons, on the banks of
the Hudson, of which Louis Philippe expressed such grateful
recollections when, after his elevation to the throne, he