THE first year of the colonel’s marriage was chiefly spent in New-York, and in visits to the friends of his bride, and other relations. The following years they spent at home, surrounded daily by his brothers and their families, and other relatives, with whom they maintained the most affectionate intercourse. The colonel, however, (as I have called him by anticipation,) had, at this time, his mind engaged by public duties of the most urgent nature. He was a member of the colonial assembly; and, by a kind of hereditary right, was obliged to support that character of patriotism, courage, and public wisdom, which had so eminently distinguished his father. The father of Mrs. Schuyler, too, had been long mayor of Albany—at that time an office of great importance—as including, within itself, the entire civil power, exercised over the whole settlement, as well as the town, and having attached to it a sort of patriarchal authority; for the people, little acquainted with coercion, and by no means inclined to submit to it, had, however, a profound reverence, as is generally the case in the infancy of society, for the families of their first leaders, whom they looked up to, merely as knowing them to possess superior worth, talent, and enterprise. In a society, as yet uncorrupted, the value of this rich inheritance can only be diminished by degradation of character, in the representative of a family thus self-ennobled, especially if he be disinterested. This, though apparently a negative quality, being the one of all others that, combined with the higher powers of mind, most engages affection in private and esteem in public life. This is a shield that blunts the shafts which envy never fails to level at the prosperous, even in old establishments, where, from the nature of things, a thousand obstructions rise in the upward path of merit, and a thousand temptations appear to mislead it from its direct road; and where the rays of opinion are refracted by so many prejudices of contending interests and factions. Still, if any charm can be found to fix that fleeting phantom, popularity, this is it. It would be very honourable to human nature, if this could be attributed to the pure love of virtue; but alas! multitudes are not made up of the wise or the virtuous. Yet the very selfishness of our nature inclines us to love and trust those who are not likely to desire any benefit from us in return for those they confer. Other vices may be, if not social, in some degree gregarious; but even the avaricious hate avarice in all but themselves.