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his birth-place, in 1839, with his associates Bleecker and Beekman, is a good illustration of the survival of the essential spirit of that great jurist, moralist and theologian, after a quarter of a thousand years since his exile. Verplanck was also an admirer and student of Grotius, and the friendly relation which has existed for so many years between the Episcopal Church to which he belonged, and the Dutch Reformed Church which came so near to it in orthodox conservatism, and differed so far from it in Calvinistic dogmatism, illustrates the Remonstrant leanings of many men who came of the old Dutch race in America. The recent anniversary of the founding of the Dutch Reformed Church here in 1628, and the presence of the rector of Trinity Church, throw light not merely upon a historical fellowship, but upon a certain spiritual affinity.
Young Duyckinck evidently sympathized more with the Remonstrants who fell with Barneveldt and Grotius in 1619, than with their adversaries who triumphed at the synod of Dort. His whole education combined, with his gentle, devout and loyal nature, to make him love the spirit and the worship of the Church of England, which was brought so near to him at home, at college, and by the favorite books of his early years. There was apparently when he was born a certain drift away from the stern and ghostly old theology of the Dutch and English Puritans to more humanity, taste and culture in religion. The babies who made their appearance in the year that welcomed him to the light, may help out our study of the influences that attended him. In 1816 Daniel Huntington, Parke Godwn, Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar and Robert Traill Spence Lowell, with other persons of much mark, came into the world to illustrate the art, the social science, the civic wisdom and the religious life of the new generation. It is well to remember that two years before that date, in 1814, Motley, the best interpreter of Holland, and the champion of its place in universal history, was born; and one year before it, in 1815, William Ellery Channing made his great protest, not for the sect that claimed him and for which he cared so little as a sect, but for the practical basis of religion in the Divine Nature and in human character, a protest which makes his name precious to all who love christianity and distrust human dictation. It is a fact worth recording, that the last sentence in Mr. Duyckinck's Diary in Holland, written April 7, 1839, is this: "Read this evening Channing's noble essay on the character of Fenelon, including his views on human nature." His companion, Harmanus Bleecker, of Albany, appears to have been a disciple of the Massachusetts liberalism of the conservative school, and to have been fond of quoting Buckminster and Channing in behalf of the christian principles of that school.
If we examine thoughtfully the period in which Mr. Duyckinck was trained for his literary career, we shall see its important
