three years free for clearing, at the end of which, the rents or purchase money was paid. By that time, any person who had expended much labour on land, would rather pay a reasonable price or rent for it, than be removed. In the progress of his intercourse with these very vulgar, insolent, and truly disagreeable people, my father began to disrelish the thoughts of going up to live among them. They flocked indeed so fast, to every unoccupied spot, that their malignant and envious spirit, their hatred of subordination, and their indifference to the mother country, began to spread like a taint of infection. These illiberal opinions, which produced manners equally illiberal, were particularly wounding to disbanded officers, and to the real patriots, who had consulted in former times the happiness of the country, by giving their zealous co-operation to the troops sent to protect it. These two classes of people began now to be branded as the slaves of arbitrary power, and all tendencies to elegance or refinement were despised as leading to aristocracy. The consequence of all this was, such an opposition of opinions, as led people of the former description to seek each other’s society exclusively. Winter was the only time that distant friends met there, and to avoid the chagrin resulting from this distempered state of society, veterans settled in the country were too apt to devote themselves to shooting and fishing, taking refuge from languor in these solitary amusements. We had one brave and royal neighbour, however, who saw us often, and was “every inch a gentleman;” this was Pedrom, aunt’s brother-in-law, in whom lived the spirit of the Schuylers, and who was our next neighbour and cordial friend. He was now old, detached from the world, and too hard of hearing to be an easy companion; yet he had much various information, and was endeared to us by similarity of principle. Matters were beginning to be in this state the first winter I went to live with aunt. Her friends were much dispersed; all conversation was tainted with politics, Cromwellian politics too, which of all things, she disliked. Her nephew, Courtlandt Schuyler, who had been a great Nimrod ever since he could carry a gun, and who was a man of strict honour and nice feelings, took such a melancholy view of things, and so little relished that Stamp Act, which was the exclusive subject of all conversation, that he devoted himself more and more to the chase, and seemed entirely to renounce a society which he had never greatly loved. As I shall not refer to him again, I shall only mention here, that this estimable person was taken away from the evil to come two years after, by a premature death, being killed by a fall from his horse in hunting. What sorrows were hid from his eyes by this timely escape from scenes which would have been to him peculiarly wounding!