Here, during the official term of Gen. Hamilton, whose name
the village bears, the capitalists of Albany planted a manufacturing
village. The position is one where the arable forest and farming lands
are bounded by the half arabic waste of the pine plains of the
Honicroisa, whose deep gorges are still infested by the wolf and smaller
animals. The whole valley of the Norman's Kill abounds in lovely and
rural scenes, and quiet retreats and waterfalls, which are suited to
nourish poetic tastes. In these he indulged from his thirteenth year,
periodically writing, and as judgment ripened, destroying volumes of
manuscripts, while at the same time he evinced uncommon diligence at his
books and studies. The poetic talent was, indeed, strongly developed.
His power of versification was early and well formed, and the pieces
which were published anonymously at a maturer period, as "Geehale," and
"The Iroquois," &c., have long been embodied without a name in our
poetic literature. But this faculty, of which we have been permitted to
see the manuscript of some elaborate and vigorous trains of thought, did
not impede a decided intellectual progress in sterner studies in the
sciences and arts.
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