My brethren, it is the recognized worth of private character which has extorted this homage! It is not what he has done, but what he has been, which thus attracts the gratitude and respect of this community. Jonathan Goodhue had succeeded, during a long and active life of business, in which he became known to almost all our people through the ordinary relations of trade and commerce, in impressing them with a deep and unquestioning sense of his personal integrity and essential goodness. Collecting its evidence from a thousand untraceable sources, from the unconscious notice of his uniform and consistent life, from the indirect testimony of the thousands who dealt with him, from personal observation, and from the very countenance and manners of the man, this community had become penetrated with the conviction of his changeless virtue, of his spotless honor, of his secret and thorough worth. Other men might have equal integrity, but he had the power of making it indubitably apparent. Other men might have his general worth, but he somehow manifested it in a way to place it beyond cavil, jealousy, suspicion, or indifference. He occupied, what is ever to be viewed as the greatest of all earthly positions, that of a witness to the reality of virtue, and one whose testimony was accepted. Brethren, do we know the greatness of this office? do we recognize that which it supplies, as the profoundest need of society? that which it accomplishes as the most useful and sublime service rendered to men and communities? If we ask ourselves what the public is now so gratefully contemplating in the memory of Jonathan Goodhue, we find that it is not his public services, not his commercial importance, not even his particular virtues and graces. It is the man himself: the pure, high-minded, righteous man, with gentle and full affections, who adorned our nature, who dignified the mercantile profession, who was superior to his station, his riches, his exposures, and made the common virtues more respected and venerable than shining talents or public honors; who vindicated the dignity of common life, and carried a high, large and noble spirit into ordinary affairs; who made men recognize something inviolable and awful even in the private conscience, and thus gave sanctity and value to our common humanity! Yes, my brethren, this was the power, this the attraction, this the value of Jonathan Goodhue's life. He has made men believe in virtue. He has made them honor character more than station or wealth! He has illustrated the possible purity, disinterestedness, and elevation of a mercantile life! He has shown that a rich man can enter the kingdom of heaven. He stands up, by acclamation, as the model of a Christian Merchant.

Here, perhaps, I might better pause, as having said all that needs to be set forth on this occasion. But you will suffer me to dwell with a little discrimination upon so interesting a subject of contemplation. The distinguishing moral traits of Mr. Goodhue were purity of mind, conscientiousness, benevolence, and love of freedom. Perhaps the first was the most striking in a man in his position. Originally endowed with a sensitive and elevated nature, and educated among the pure and good, he brought to this community, at mature age, the simplicity and transparency of a child, and retained to the last a manifest purity of heart and imagination. I think no man ever ventured to pollute his ear with levity or coarse allusions, or to propose to him any object or scheme which involved mean or selfish motives. He shrank, with an instinctive disgust, from the foul, the low, the unworthy; and compelled all to feel that he was a "vessel made to honor," which could admit no noisome or base mixtures in its crystal depths. His purity of mind was still further evinced in the difficulty with which he conceived of bad motives or wrong intentions in others. He had an unaffected confidence in his fellow-creatures, growing out of his own ingenuousness. He was the apologist of all men, seeking explanations of their misconduct which would relieve them of utter condemnation, and often cling to them when deserted by most others. It was remarked by one who enjoyed his daily and familiar intercourse, that he never heard him speak in decisive scorn of any man but in one instance. His purity of mind manifested itself in the childlike character of his tastes, manners, and pleasures. He retained through life the playfulness and the simplicity of a boy, and was as an equal among his own children. His mind seemed to have no fuel for the fiercer passions of manhood. He had no taste for notoriety, influ

ence, social conspicuousness, exciting speculation, or brilliant success. His purity shrank from the soil contracted in such positions and pursuits. And thus he maintained the equanimity, elasticity, and spontaneous cheerfulness of his youth, even to his latest days.

Probably conscientiousness would be first named, by this community, as Mr. Goodhue's characteristic quality. Duty, I doubt not, was the word, if not oftenest upon his lips, most deeply stamped upon his heart. He was accustomed to refer his conduct, in little and in great things, to the court of conscience.

Nor was this sense of duty in him the stern and narrow principle it is sometimes seen to be, even in the good. He had the nicest sense of justice-a most tender and solicitous regard for others' rights, and was ever on the watch to learn and to fulfill his obligations in the least particular to every human creature. His conscientiousness was not more manifest in the undeviating rectitude of his mercantile and commercial career, than in social and domestic life. He was careful to pay honor where honor is due; to lose no opportunity of manifesting respect for worth and virtue; to avoid the least trifling with the feelings or the reputation of others; and to give, at all times, the least possible trouble on his own account. How lofty a sense of honor-how pure and strict an integrity-what high-minded principles he carried with him into business, you are far better able to estimate than I. But if the testimony of the commercial world is to be taken, his counting-room was to him a sanctuary in which he offered the daily sacrifices of justice, truth, and righteousness, and sent up the incense of obedience to that great precept, "Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you." It was the pervading control and influence of this sense of duty, which enabled him to say at the very close of his life: "I am not conscious that I have ever brought evil on a single human being."

And this suggests another characteristic of Mr. Goodhue-his benevolence; which, when I mention it, seems, as each of his other traits does, the most striking of all. Kindness of heart was joined in him with purity of feeling and loftiness and rectitude of conscience. It did not in him take the form of a public philanthropy, although for thirty years he was most assiduous and deeply interested in the duties of a Trustee of the Savings' Bank, and a governor of the hospital-offices which he would not relinquish even amid the infirmities of his few past years, because he loved the intercourse of the sick and the poor. His benevolence was rather a constant and unwearied desire to make all within his reach happy. He loved his race. He was uneasy if cut off, for ever so short a time, from the intercourse of his fellow-creatures. The human face was dear to him, and his heart overflowed with tenderness and good-will towards every creature that bore it. Perhaps no man in the community had a livelier interest in man simply as man. It mattered nothing what his station, condition, faith, country, or color, he loved his kind; loved to make the human heart rejoice; loved to call up even momentary feelings of satisfaction in the breasts of those with whom he had only a passing intercourse. Who so scrupulous as he to discharge the little courtesies of life with fidelity; whose eye turned so quickly to recognize the humblest friend; whose smile and hand so ready to acknowledge the greetings of a most extensive circle of acquaintances? I know nothing of his more substantial services to the suffering and the needy. He was not a man to allow his left hand to know what his right hand did; yet, who can doubt that his charities were as large as his heart and his means? But can we overrate the worth of that beaming goodness which overleaps the barrier of station and wealth, and makes for its possessor a place in the heart of the humblest and most obscure? Love creates love; and the unbounded measure of affection which this community poured out to him, shows how freely he had given his heart to his fellow-men! I dare not speak of the exemplification his benevolence found in the domestic circle, where he knew how to preserve the most manly dignity, while he lavished a woman's heart.

The love of freedom was the most conspicuous mental trait in Mr. Goodhue. He was the earnest advocate of political freedom, of religious liberty, and of free trade. Possessed of a large understanding, cultivated by careful reading, and

early impressed with the principles that moved our republican fathers, he had exercised himself upon all the political, religious, and commercial questions of his time, and upon most had worked himself out into the largest liberty and the clearest light. By conscience, by heart, he was the ardent supporter of human rights. He could bear no restrictions, tolerate no interference here. He had a full and unwavering confidence in the value and the permanency of our institutions, and was not dismayed by any of the discouraging signs of the times. He believed fully in human progress, and delighted in nothing so much as in noticing or recounting the proofs of it. But his strongest feeling was the importance and the necessity of religious liberty and perfect toleration.

I might speak, my brethren, of the simplicity of his manners, his modesty and humility, his great dislike of ostentation in modes of life, dress, equipage, and domestic arrangements. These were the qualities which made him loved as well as respected. No man envied his success, or was jealous of his honors. His wealth built up no barrier between him and his fellow-men, however humble. His circumstances however prosperous, his condition however elevated, did nothing to conceal, to distort, or to color the image of the man himself. He was manifest through all, and appeared in his modest, simple, sincere goodness, from which none felt the least provocation to detract.

I should wrong him, and the place, and the office I fill, did I fail to say, that the foundation of all that was admirable in Mr. Goodhue's character, was piety! A profound reverence and love for God was the central and pervading sentiment of his heart. This was the light and strength of his conscience. To please God, to render himself a pure and acceptable offering in his sight, to do his Maker's will on earth as it is done in heaven-this was the rule and the impulse, and the secret source of his righteous life.

In conclusion, my brethren, I have one witness to produce, in confirmation of the testimony now concluded, whose integrity, humility and reliableness you are, at this moment, least of all disposed to question-I mean, the subject of these observations himself. After Mr. Goodhue's death, a letter was found, written by him only a few months before, and addressed to his family, which forms such a mirror of the man, and contains so much that is interesting and valuable to us and the community, that every scruple of reserve has given way before the urgency which has sought its publication on the present occasion. It may be considered as Mr. Goodhue's dying testament, as it is, next to his good name, the most precious bequest left to his children. Omitting such parts as more directly concern his immediate family, I shall now proceed to lay this letter before you, without comment, as the appropriate proof, enforcement, and moral of this discourse. The paper is dated New York, February 7, 1848, at his residence in this city, and is as follows:

66

Born on the 21st of June, 1783, I am now well advanced on my 65th year. This fact of itself would remind me that the end cannot probably be very far off. But besides, I have, for about two years past, occasionally found an oppression on the chest, on moving quickly, which seems to indicate some derangement in the action of the heart, and this difficulty I think has materially increased within a few weeks. Wishing to offer some observations for the use of my family, should I be suddenly removed from them, I have set down the thoughts that occur to me. "First, then, I thank Heaven, that my lot has been cast in this age, and in this land. I say in this age, for although the evils that exist are abundant, yet I think there has been great gain in the general recognition among a numerous portion of the intelligent part of society, of the importance of the great principles of Peace, Temperance, and respect for the rights of others. And in my own country these principles are more prevalent, I think, than in any other; and there is, moreover, I think, this further encouraging view-that they are constantly making progress throughout the community. I take this view also, that the conditions which go to giving a man the consideration and esteem of his fellow-creatures, to which we all justly attach a value, have more reference to the essentials of character, as intelligence and virtue, and more independence of the extraneous circumstances of official position, family connection, or great wealth. The advantages

of these accidents are of no comparable importance here with what they are in the other countries of the world; and thus temptations to draw men aside from the course of virtuous life, are accordingly so much the less dangerous."

After expressing his gratitude for the blessings of his domestic ties, and the happiness of his home, he says:—

"In those in whom my happiness is more immediately concerned, what equivalent could there be for a departure from a life of uprightness."

And then continues:

"In looking back on my own course of life, I have abundant cause for thank-. fulness; for while desiring humbly to acknowledge the insufficiency of my own merits, yet have I great reason to rejoice that, growing up under the influence of the good and the pure, I have escaped many evils where others have been less fortunate. I have often mentioned that, among my associates in my native town, (Salem,) I scarcely ever heard a profane word.

"I ought to account it another circumstance of thankfulness, that I had the advantage, in early life, of imbibing and cultivating sentiments of perfect toleration and charity for the religious opinions of others, so that I have never for a moment felt the slightest restraint in cherishing all good-will towards the worthy and good, of whatever sect or denomination they might be. At an early period of my life I was thrown, for several months, exclusively into the society of Mohammedans and Brahmins, and there were many among them with whom a mutual regard subsisted. Mere opinion, if squaring even with my own notions of truth, I have ever considered as far less important than right motives. I wish to cherish the most devout reverence for the Great Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Perfect Being, the Great First Cause, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe-our Father, Preserver, and Benefactor; and to keep habitually in view the obligations I owe to him of perfect obedience in all things. What these duties are, I think are more plainly shown in the life and precepts of the Great Teacher, and I wish accordingly to set all value upon them. These he has said are essentially, love to God, and love to man.

"In reference to the style of living, I wish to advise my children against every thing like extravagance, however much they may happen to be favored with the means of indulgence. Things comfortable, if they can afford it, I would not withhold; but I should consider it a rule never to be departed from, that so far as display should be the object, they should never exceed in the slightest degree, the rule which should prevail among the wise and the prudent. An infinitely more deserving object of their regard, in the bestowment of superfluous means should be, I think, the aiding of the great cause of learning and science. I have no doubt that the tendency of society is to lessen the distinctions of rank as regards the accidents of birth and station, and that the great principle of equality is to make progress in the world-and when growing out of a high civilization, it is to be hailed with all welcome. The overthrow of almost any of the institutions of society, in any country, by violence, I should be disposed to deprecate, and I am disposed to abhor revolutions, but to cherish reformation everywhere. "In reference to the closing scene in this world, I wish to express my desire that there be no parade connected with the funeral performances. It would be my desire, that none but the immediate relatives and friends should be called together when the usual religious services should be performed, and that not more than a single carriage should follow the hearse to the cemetery."

After bidding adieu to his family, with a particular reference to every individual having any claim upon his recollection at such a solemn moment, he concludes with these words:

"I pray Heaven to receive my parting spirit."

(Signed)

"JONATHAN Goodhue."

In a postscript is appended the following pregnant after-thought :—

"I add, as a most happy reflection, that I am not conscious that I have ever brought evil on a single human being."

Art. V.-COMMERCIAL CITIES AND TOWNS OF THE UNITED STATES.

NUMBER XVII.

THE CITY OF ALBANY.

ALBANY-ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT-FUR TRADE WITH THE INDIANS AND CANADIANS-THE CENTER OF THE MILITARY OPERATIONS OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT AGAINST THE FRENCH IN NORTH AMERICA -ITS RAPID INCREASE IN COMMERCE AND POPULATION AFTER THE ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION, AND PARTICULARLY AFTER THE COMPLETION OF THE ERIE CANAL-ITS PRESENT TRADE, MANUFACTURES, AND PROSPECTS.

THE settlement of Albany was commenced in the year 1614 by the United New Netherland Co., in the erection of a trading-house on Castle Island, immediately below the site of the present city. This post was fortified with two pieces of cannon and eleven stone guns, and commanded by Jacob Jacobz Elkens, who continued in the employ of the company for four years. In the spring of 1618, the fort on Castle Island was so much injured by the breaking up of the ice in Hudson's River, that it was abandoned, and the post removed a short distance to the south, to the banks of the Norman's Kill. The charter of the New Netherland Co. having expired the same year, the West India Co. was formed, and in 1623 erected Fort Orange, on the site of the present city of Albany. The first governor of Fort Orange was Hans Jorissen Houten.

The government of Holland about this time granted to Killian Van Rensselaer, a pearl merchant of Amsterdam, a tract of land twenty miles in length, on Hudson's River, and forty-eight miles in width, to which was given the title of the Manor of Rensselaerwyck. This manor comprised the present counties of Albany and Rensselaer, the northern portion of the latter excepted, and a part of the present county of Columbia. The city of Albany is situated midway between its eastern and western, and about six miles south of its northern boundary, on the west bank of Hudson's River, near the head of tide-water, and 150 miles from New York.

The Patroon of Rensselaerwyck, for by this title was Killian Van Rensselaer designated in the charter of his manor, sent out from Holland in 1630 a colony of fifty persons, who landed at Fort Orange on the 24th of May, in that year. Other settlers followed in each succeeding year, and were distributed over the territory, and thus laid the foundation of the villages in the vicinity of Albany.

The first foreign arrival at Fort Orange was a vessel called the William, owned by three London merchants, who had commissioned Jacob Jacobz Elkens, above mentioned, as factor or supercargo. The William touched at Fort Amsterdam, now New York, and was forbidden by the governor of that post, Wouter Van Twiller, to ascend the river. Nothing daunted, however, Elkens was determined to attempt the passage. He was successful, and arrived in the neighborhood of Fort Orange in May, 1633. He erected a tent about a mile below the fort, and landing his goods, commenced an active trade with the Indians. The governor of Fort Orange, hearing of this, soon embarked on board a shallop, with a trumpeter, and proceeded to the landing place of Elkens. "By the way," saith the old chronicle, "the trumpet was sounded, and the Dutchmen drank a bottle of strong waters, of three or four pints, and were right merry." They also set up a tent by the side of the English, and endeavored, but to little purpose, to hinder their trade