The aspect of Hyde Park from the river had disappointed me, after all I had heard of it. It looks little more than a white house upon a ridge. I was therefore doubly delighted when I found what this ridge really was. It is a natural terrace, overhanging one of the sweetest reaches of the river; and, though broad and straight at the top, not square and formal, like an artificial embankment, but undulating, sloping, and sweeping between the ridge and the river, and dropped with trees; the whole carpeted with turf, tempting grown people, who happen to have the spirits of children, to run up and down the slopes, and play hide-and-seek in the hollows. Whatever we might be talking of as we paced the terrace, I felt a perpetual inclination to start off for play. Yet, when the ladies and ourselves actually did something like it, threading the little thickets and rounding every promontory, even to the farthest (which they call Cape Horn), I felt that the possession of such a place ought to make a man devout if any of the gifts of Providence can do so. To hold in one's hand that which melts all strangers' hearts is to be a steward in a very serious sense of the term. Most liberally did Dr. Hosack dispense the means of enjoyment he possessed. Hospitality is inseparably connected with his name in the minds of all who ever heard it; and it was hospitality of the heartiest and most gladsome kind.
Dr. Hosack had a good library; I believe, one of the best private libraries in the country; some good pictures, and botanical and mineralogical cabinets of value. Among the ornaments of his house I observed some biscuits and vases once belonging to Louis XVI., purchased by Dr. Hosack from a gentleman who had them committed to his keeping during the troubles of the first French Revolution.
In the afternoon Dr. Hosack drove me in his gig round his estate, which lies on both sides of the high road; the farm on one side and the pleasure-grounds on the other. The conservatory is remarkable for America; and the flower-garden all that it can be made under present circumstances, but the neighbouring country people have no idea of a gentleman's pleasure in his garden, and of respecting it. On occasions of weddings and other festivities, the villagers come up into the Hyde Park grounds to enjoy themselves; and persons who would not dream of any other mode of theft, pull up rare plants, as they would wild flowers in the woods, and carry them away. Dr. Hosack would frequently see some flower that he had brought with much pains from Europe flourishing in some garden of the village below. As soon as he explained the nature of the case, the plant would be restored with all zeal and care; but the losses were so frequent and provoking as greatly to moderate his horticultural enthusiasm. We passed through the poultry-yard, where the congregation of fowls exceeded in number and bustle any that I had ever seen. We drove round his kitchen-garden too, where he had taken pains to grow every kind of vegetable which will flourish in that climate. Then crossing the road, after paying our respects to his dairy of fine cows, we drove through the orchard, and round Cape Horn, and refreshed ourselves with the sweet river views on our way home. There we sat in the pavilion, and he told me much of De Witt Clinton, and showed me his own Life of Clinton, a copy of which he said should await me on my return to New-York. When that time came he was no more; but his promise was kindly borne in mind by his lady, from whose hands I received the valued legacy.
We saw some pleasant society at Hyde Park: among the rest, some members of the wide-spreading Livingston family, and the Rev. Charles Stewart, who lived for some years as missionary in the South Sea Islands, and afterward published a very interesting account of his residence there. His manners, which are particularly gentlemanly and modest, show no traces of a residence among savages, or of the shifts and disorder of a missionary life; nor of any bad effects from the sudden fame which awaited him on his return into civilized life. I remember with great pleasure a conversation we had by the river-side, which proved to me that he understands the philosophy of fame, knowing how to appropriate the good and reject the evil that it brings, and which deepened the respect I had entertained for him from the beginning of our acquaintance.
The Livingston family, one of the oldest, most numerous, and opulent in the States, has been faithful in the days of its greatness to its democratic principles. In Boston it seems a matter of course that the "first people" should be federalists; that those who may be aristocratic in station should become aristocratic in principle. The Livingstons are an evidence that this need not be. Amid their splendid entertainments in New-York, and in their luxurious retirements on the Hudson, they may be heard going further than most in defence of President Jackson's idiosyncracy. Their zeal in favour of Mr. Van Buren was accounted for by many from the natural bias of the first family in the state of New-York in favour of the first president furnished by that state; but there is no reason to find any such cause. The Livingstons have consistently advocated the most liberal principles through all changes; and that they retain their democratic opinions in the midst of their opulence and family influence is not the less honourable to them for their party having now the ascendency.
Dr. Hosack and his family accompanied us down to the wharf to see Mr. Stewart off by one boat and our party by another, when, on the third day of our visit, we were obliged to depart. Our hearts would have been more sorrowful than they were if we had foreseen that we should not enjoy our promised meeting with this accomplished and amiable family at New-York.
Dr. Hosack was a native American, but his father was Scotch. After obtaining the best medical education he could in America, he studied in Edinburgh and London, and hence his affectionate relations with Great Britain, and the warmth with which he welcomed English travellers. He practised medicine in New-York for upward of forty years, and filled the Professorship of Botany and Materia Medica in Columbia College for some time. He distinguished himself by his successful attention to the causes and treatment of yellow fever. But his services out of his profession were as eminent as any for which his fellow-citizens are indebted to him. He rendered liberal aid to various literary, scientific, and benevolent institutions, and was always willing and indefatigable in exertion for public objects. One of the most painful scenes of his life was the duel in which Hamilton perished. Dr. Hosack was Hamilton's second, and, probably, as well aware as his principal and others that the encounter could hardly end otherwise than as it did. Dr. Hosack was in New-York with his family the winter after my visit to Hyde Park. He was one day in medical conversation with Dr. M'Vickar of that city, and observed that it would not do for either of them to have an attack of apoplexy, as there would be small chance of their surviving it. Within two weeks both were dead of apoplexy. Dr. Hosack lost property in the great fire at New-York; he over-exerted himself on the night of the fire, and the fatigue and anxiety brought on an attack of the disease he dreaded, under which he presently sank from amid the well-earned enjoyments of a vigorous and prosperous old age. He was in his 67th year, and showed to the eye of a stranger no symptom of decline. His eye was bright, his spirits as buoyant, and his life as full of activity as those of most men of half his years. I always heard the death of this enterprising and useful citizen mentioned as heading the list of the calamities of the Great Fire.
PINE ORCHARD HOUSE.
"But the new glory mixes with the heaven
And earth. Man, once descried, imprints for ever
His presence