s the virtues and
labors of some of those illustrious men who, to use his words, "have most
largely contributed to raise or support our national institutions, and to
form or elevate our national character." Las Casas, Roger Williams,
William Penn, General Oglethorpe, Professor Luzac, and Berkeley are among
the worthies whom he celebrates. It has always seemed to me that this is
one of the happiest examples in our language of the class of compositions
to which it belongs, both as regards the general scope and the execution,
and it is read with as much interest now as when it was first written.

Mr. Verplanck was elected in 1820 a member of the New York House of
Assembly, but I do not learn that he particularly distinguished himself
while in that body. In the year following he was appointed, in the General
Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, Professor of the Evidences
of Revealed Religion and Moral Science in its relations to Theology. For
four years he performed the duties of this Professorship, with what
ability is shown by his Treatise on the Evidences of Christianity, the
fruit of his studies during this interval. It is principally a clear and
impressive view of that class of proofs of the Christian religion which
have a direct relation to the intellectual and moral wants of mankind. For
he was a devout believer in the Christian gospel, and cherished religious
convictions for the sake of their influence on the character and the life.
This work was published in 1824, about the time that he resigned his
Professorship.

It was in 1824, that, on a visit to New York, I first became acquainted
with Verplanck. On the appearance of a small volume of poems of mine,
containing one or two which have been the most favorably received, he
wrote, in 1822, some account of them for the New York American, a daily
paper which not long before had been established by his cousin, Johnson
Verplanck, in conjunction with the late Dr. Charles King. He spoke of them
at considerable length and in the kindest manner. As I was then an unknown
literary adventurer, I could not but be grateful to the hand that was so
cordially held out to welcome me, and when I came to live in New York, in
1825, an intimacy began in which I suspect the advantage was all on my
side.

It was in 1825 that he published his Essay on the Doctrine of Contracts,
in which he maintained that the transaction between the buyer and seller
of a commodity should be one