[Illustration: VAN RENSSELAER MANOR-HOUSE, 1765.] In the southern part of the city, on Clinton Street, is a bronze tablet which designates the sister of the Manor-House, the Schuyler mansion, built by the wife of General Philip Schuyler while he was in England in 1760. This historic relic stands on a plateau above the street, surrounded by a remnant of the original garden, but the broad avenue, shaded by elms, which once gave approach to the mansion from the river, is overgrown with houses. Though used at present as an orphan asylum under the charge of the Order of St. Francis de Sales, it retains substantially its original features. It is a dignified and spacious house; not remarkable architecturally, but fragrant with history. Here Burgoyne enjoyed his imprisonment. Here Washington, Lafayette, Count de Rochambeau, Baron Steuben, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Aaron Burr, and other notable men of old were entertained. Here Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler were married, December 14, 1780. Besides famous guests and weddings, its chief feature of historic interest is the staircase, apropos of which, we quote from Mr. Marcus Reynolds’s article on _The Colonial Buildings of Rensselaerswyck_ in _The Architectural Record_ of 1895. “Here is shown the famous tomahawk mark. In 1781 a plan was made to capture General Schuyler and take him to Canada. A party of tories, Canadians and Indians surrounded the house for several days, and at length forced an entrance. The family took refuge in the upper story, leaving behind in their haste the youngest member of the family, Margaret Schuyler, afterward the wife of the patroon. An elder sister going to rescue the infant, was pursued by an Indian, who threw his tomahawk at her as she fled up the stairs. The weapon entered the hand-rail near the newel, and the mark is still shown, which would be conclusive evidence if the same story were not told of the Glen house in Schenectady, the only house unburnt in the massacre of 1690.” [Illustration: SCHUYLER MANSION, 1760.] With all its historic associations, Albany is not conspicuous for the scenery it has furnished for the enchantments of poetry and romance; still it is not altogether destitute of literary honors. Its colonial life figures in the _Satanstoe_ of the great Fenimore Cooper and in Harold Frederick’s _In the Valley_. The Normanskill, which tumbles into the Hudson at the south end of the city, flows through the Vale of Tawasentha, the scene of Longfellow’s Hiawatha. The hills and forests about the city suggested many a delicate detail in the woodland rhythms of Alfred Street, who made his home and burial-place in Albany. Its old Dutch life with its sedate charm has been pictured by a living Albanian, Leonard Kip; and probably the house still stands on Pearl Street or Broadway, in which Henry James found the charming girl who stood for his _Portrait of a Lady_.