ngel, with light chestnut hair
and a soft blue eye, in the look of which is a touch of sadness, as if
caused by some dim presentiment of her early death. I remember hearing
Miss Sedgwick say that she should always think the better of Verplanck for
having been the husband of Eliza Fenno. Several of her letters written to
him before their marriage are preserved, which, amidst the sprightliness
natural to her age, show a more than usual thoughtfulness. She rallies him
on being adopted by the mob, and making harangues at ward meetings. She
playfully chides him for wandering from the Apostolic Church to hear
popular preachers and clerks that sing well; which she regards as crimes
against the memory of his ancestors--an allusion to that part of the
family pedigree which traced his descent in some way from the royal line
of the Stuarts. She rallies him on his passion for old books, remarking
that some interesting works had just appeared which must be kept from him
till he reaches the age of three score, when they will be fit for his
perusal. She writes to him from Boston, that he is accounted there an
amazingly plain spoken man--he had called the Boston people heretics. She
writes to him in Stratford, imagining him in Bishop Berkeley's arm-chair,
surrounded by family pictures and huge folios. These letters were
carefully preserved by her husband till his death, along with various
memorials of her whom he had lost; locks of her sunny brown hair, the
diamond ring which he had placed on her finger when they were engaged to
each other, wrapt in tresses of the same bright hair, and miniatures of
her, which the family never heard of till he died; all variously disposed
among the papers in the drawers of his desk; so that whenever he opened
it, he might be reminded of her, and her memory might become a part of his
daily life. With these were preserved some letters of his own, written to
her about the same time, and of a sportive character. In one of these he
laments the passing away of the good old customs, and simple ways of
living in the country, supplanted by the usages of town life. Everybody
was then reading Coelebs in Search of a Wife, and Verplanck who had just
been looking over some of the writings of Wilberforce, sees in it
resemblances to his style, which led him to set down Wilberforce as the
author.

He lived with his young wife five years, and she bore him two sons, one of
whom died at the age of thirty unmarried, and the