HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 373

descended, and then stood entranced and nearly paralyzed by a sense of awe which has not left me to this day. Standing, chiefly in perpendicular positions, around the vault, were thirteen immense coffins, each having thereon the name of one of the thirteen original States. I could see enough through interstices to show me that these were filled with bones, and I knew I was standing in the midst of that noble army of martyrs whose blood had gone up as a holy and acceptable sacrifice on the altar of American freedom. I have felt the thrill of other altar-places; have felt deep emotions at the grave, and sublime sensations upon the mountain-tops; but I am very sure that on no other occasion did I ever feel my whole nature so elevated to a sense. of majestic reverence, as in the presence of that sublime and silent company. Resting on one or two of the coffins which were laid horizontally, was one smaller coffin of the ordinary size of one individual. This was vacant, but had upon its lid the name of ‘Benjamin Romaine,’ as if it was intended that some person of this name yet walking among the liliputians of the earth should, in his dust, be placed here to he among these giant patriots, secure, if with them forgotten upon earth, to rise with them hereafter.”

And there, in that vault, and in the coffin so long and so reverently prepared, was buried Benjamin Romaine (at his death in 1844, at the advanced age of eighty-two)—fit sentinel of that group, who performed deeds of heroic sacrifice, the worthiest which pen, pencil, and monument can celebrate.1

1 Benjamin Romaine (or, as the name should be more properly spelled, Romeyn) was of French extraction, and a native of New York. At the commencement of the Revo. lutionary War he was a mere lad at school, preparing for admission to King’s (now Columbia) College, but upon the occupation of the city by the British army, his father's family retired to the neighborhood of Hackensack, in New Jersey. His studies being thus interrupted by “war’s rude alarms,” he enlisted in the American army, and served several terms of six months each, finally attaining the rank of sergeant, and was engaged in several hotly-contested skirmishes. He was finally taken prisoner, and immured in two of the prisons in New York; from which, after a confinement of seven Weeks, he was released, by exchange, in October, 1781. After the close of the war, his family having suffered considerably in the loss of their property, young Romaine opened a school for both sexes in New York, where he soon established a very good reputation as a teacher—numbering among his pupils Washington Irving, Professor John Anthon, the late Judge J. T. Irving, and others since distinguished in the literary professional, and social circles of the city.