The English came, but the Dutch remained. The old Holland stock on the bank of the Hudson kept its root in the soil and has made vital contributions to the American hybrid, which have had scant recognition in our popular histories. The fact is, the Dutch were not given to writing books. They had fought for their religion and motherland, and had held them both against the assault of a powerful foe, but the recital of the story they left to the more expert tongues and more eloquent pens of Englishmen. Their type of character and social usage has proved its vigor and worth by its quiet persistence and dominance in New York life of to-day. In old Albany, even under English rule, ideas and customs which had their birth behind the dykes of Holland were conspicuously in the ascendant. [Illustration: PLAN OF ALBANY, 1695.] Albany became a city in 1686 by a judicious charter granted by Governor Dongan. A diagram in the Rev. John Miller’s _Description of the Province and City of New York_, published in London, 1695, gives us an idea of the new-born city. It consisted of about a hundred houses surrounded by a stockade, which was pierced to the north and south by narrow gateways. Above the stockade the most conspicuous objects were the pyramidal roof of the Dutch church at the foot of Jonker Street (now State Street), surmounted by three small cannon, and, on the eminence at the upper end of the street, the bastions of Fort Frederick, which had inherited the responsibilities and honors of the dismantled Fort Orange. For about forty years after the peaceful seizure by the English, the old Dutch church, where the prosperous burghers worshipped, and a Lutheran church of somewhat intermittent life but hospitable to outsiders sufficed for the religious needs of the city. The officers of the garrison, however, and probably most of the soldiers were Church of England men. There was much in the service of the Dutch Church of that day which must have suggested pleasant reminiscence. Christmas, Easter and Whitsunday were festivals brought from Holland, and were duly celebrated in the church and at the fireside. Queerly enough, in the accounts of Pieter Schuyler, the deacon of the Dutch church in 1683 and the first mayor of the city, we read that “the 13th of January was observed as a day of fasting and prayer, to divert God’s heavy judgment from falling on the English nation for the murder of King Charles, martyr of blessed memory,” and that the expenses therefor were seventeen guilders. [Illustration: OLD DUTCH CHURCH, ERECTED IN 1715 ON SITE OF ORIGINAL CHURCH ERECTED IN 1656.]