[Footnote 3: The intelligent reader will, of course, properly appreciate the provincial admiration of Mr. Littlepage, who naturally fancied his own best was other people's best. The Trinity of that day was burned in the great fire of 1776. The edifice that succeeded it, at the peace of 1783, has already given place to a successor, that has more claim to be placed on a level with modern, English, town church-architecture, than any other building in the Union. When another shall succeed this, which shall be as much larger and more elaborated than this is compared to its predecessor, and still another shall succeed, which shall bear the same relation to that, then the country will possess an edifice that is on a level with the first-rate Gothic cathedral-architecture of Europe. It would be idle to pretend that the new Trinity is without faults; some of which are probably the result of circumstances and necessity; but, if the respectable architect who has built it, had no other merit, he would deserve the gratitude of every man of taste in the country, by placing church-towers of a proper comparative breadth, dignity and proportions, before the eyes of its population. The diminutive meanness of American church-towers, has been an eye-sore to every _intelligent_, travelled American, since the country was settled.--EDITOR.] [Footnote 4: The site of the present City Hotel.--ED.] [Footnote 5: Now, de Lancey Street.--ED.] [Footnote 6: This patroon must have been Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, who lived to be a bachelor of forty before he married. If there be no anachrenism, this gentleman married Miss Van Cortlandt, one of the seven daughters of Stephanus Van Cortlandt, who was proprietor of the great manor of Cortlandt, West Chester county, and who, in his day, was the principal personage of the colony. The seven daughters of this Colonel Van Cortlandt, by marrying into the families of de Lancey, Bayard, Van Rensellaer, Beekman, M'Gregor--Skinner, &c. &c. brought together a connection that was long felt in the political affairs of New York. The Schuylers were related through a previous marriage, and many of the Long Island and other families of weight by other alliances. This connection formed the court party, which was resisted by an opposition led by the Livingstons, Morris, and other names of _their_ connection. This old bachelor, Jeremiah Van Rensellaer, believing he would never marry, alienated, in behalf of his next brother and anticipated heir, the Greenbush and Claverack estates,--portions of those vast possessions which, in our day, and principally through the culpable apathy, or miserable demagogueism of those who have been entrusted with the care of the public weal, have been the pretext for violating some of the plainest laws of morality that God has communicated to man.--EDITOR.] [Footnote 7: Pronounced On-na-_kay_, I believe.--EDITOR] CHAPTER III.