Here also, in 1862, a division commander of McClellan’s army was held prisoner. General Charles P. Stone, a graduate of West Point, was blamed for the disaster at Ball’s Bluff. By secret orders of Secretary Stanton, he was arrested at midnight, hurried to New York, and kept forty-nine days in solitary confinement in Fort Lafayette, without trial, charges, or answer to his appeals for a hearing! Congress finally vindicated him and set him free, after one hundred and eighty-nine days’ imprisonment. [Illustration: BROOKLYN INSTITUTE MUSEUM.] The interior of the Fort was burned out in the winter of 1869. Its armament has never been replaced. The dark red circular walls stand at the opposite end of the Bay from the Statue of Liberty, and furnish an impressive contrast, in their memories of an American Bastille. [Illustration: HENRY WARD BEECHER.] On the completion of the new Shore Road, following the contour of the Narrows, an admirable approach upon the bluff overlooking the Bay will lead the visitor to this Golden Gate of the commerce of New York. The traditions of home rule, local self-government, and civic conscience have come down from the early Brooklyn agitations against the government of Peter Stuyvesant. Brooklynites before consolidation with the greater city had a liberal home-rule charter that was first administered under Mayor Seth Low. Through his government, the “Brooklyn plan” became the ideal of other municipalities. The ancient zeal for education and schools has not declined. Besides the college, academy, and public schools, two Brooklyn institutions distinctively illustrate the modern trend of popular municipal education. The Pratt Institute, with its wide and helpful teaching in the industrial arts, is perhaps the most famous of all Brooklyn benevolences. But the enlarged and expanding Brooklyn Institute, with its multiform departments, its generous field of lectureships, and its museum, is destined to become the model for organizations planned to diffuse popular culture in cities. The regard of Brooklyn for the Church and the influence of the clergy on the life of Brooklyn are proverbial. To recall the names of Brooklyn’s clergy is to mention many leaders of the American pulpit. Not a little of their inspiration has come from the influence and history of Brooklyn itself. In its growth from village to city, and then to borough, it has developed along the lines of equality of social opportunity, and thus unconsciously has been reaping the fruits of the lives and examples of its Dutch founders. [Illustration: SEAL OF BROOKLYN.] [Illustration] PRINCETON PLANTING AND TILLING BY WILLIAM M. SLOANE