About two miles back from the river, and behind the city, is Vassar College, the foremost educational institution for women in the world. The splendid buildings stand in grounds covering two hundred acres, attractively laid out, and the main building, modelled after the Tuileries, with high surmounting dome, is five hundred feet long. From Sunset Hill, their highest eminence, there is a panorama of the Hudson for forty miles. This college was the gift of Matthew Vassar, a wealthy Poughkeepsie merchant and brewer, of English birth, who desired to make it the most complete foundation of its kind, and gave and bequeathed $1,000,000 besides the land, there being over $400,000 expended upon the buildings. His nephews have since made large additional gifts. Here is provided a complete mathematical, classical and English education for several hundred female students. Its main building is the chief structure of Poughkeepsie. There are art galleries, a museum, library and observatory. The museum of American birds is the most complete existing, there is a fine gallery of water-colors, and a collection of ancient weapons and armor, including the halberd of King Francis I. The founder, having an ample fortune and no children, devoted the closing years of his life to this beneficent work, the college being begun in 1861 and opened in 1865. He labored assiduously at its development and died at his post of duty. Three years after the opening, when attending the annual meeting of the trustees, while reading his address, he was suddenly stricken with death. CROM ELBOW TO KINGSTON.