phrase-by Goeller, German annotator of Thucydides, in illustration of a passage of the Greek author: Addo locum Washingtonis Irvingii Hist. Novi Eboraci, lib. vii. cap. 5.* To humor the pleasantry preliminary advertisements were inserted before the publication in the Evening Post, calling for information of "a small elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by the name of Knickerbocker," etc., who had left his lodgings at the Columbian Hotel in Mulberry street; then a statement that the old gentleman had left " a very curious kind of a written book in his room," followed by the announcement of the actual book "in two volumes duodecimo, price three dollars," from the publishers Inskeep and Bradford-to pay the bill of his landlord.

To the last revised edition of this work in 1850, which contains some very pleasant additions, the author has prefixed an "Apology," which, however, offers little satisfaction to the irate families who have considered their honor aggrieved by the publication of this extravagant burlesque for the incorrigible author insists upon it that he has brought the old Dutch manners and times into notice, as proved by the innumerable Knickerbocker hotels, steamboats, ice-carts, and other appropriations of the name; and has added not only to the general hilarity but to the harmony of the city, the popular traditions which he has set in vogue “forming a convivial currency; linking our whole community together in good humor and good fellowship; the rallying points of home feeling; the seasoning of civic festivities; the staple of local tales and local pleasantries." We should attach little importance to the subject had it not been made a matter of comment in the New York Historical Society, in an address before which body it was gravely held up to reprehension. The truth of the matter is that the historians should have occupied the ground earlier, if possible, and not have given the first advantage to the humorist. We do not find, however, that the burlesque has at all damaged the subject in the hands of Mr. Brodhead, who has at length brought to bear a system of original investigation and historical inquiry upon the worthy Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam; or deteriorated a whit the learned labors of O'Callaghan, who has illustrated the early Dutch annals with faithful diligence. The style of Knickerbocker is of great felicity. There is just enough flavor of English classical reading to give the riant, original material, the highest gusto. The descriptions of nature and manners are occasionally very happy in a serious way, and the satire is, much of it, of that universal character which will bear transplantation to wider scenes and interests. The laughter-compelling humor is irresistible, and we may readily believe the story of that arch wag himself, Judge Brackenridge, exploding over a copy of the work, which he had smuggled with him to the bench.

In 1810 Irving wrote a biographical sketch of the poet Campbell, which was prefixed to an edition of the poet's works published in Philadelphia. The circumstance which led to this was Irving's acquaintance with Archibald Campbell, a brother

Classical Museum, Oct., 1849.

+ The author's Apology, preface to edition of Knickerbocker, 1848.

of the author, who was then residing in New York, and who was desirous of finding a purchaser for an American edition of "O'Connor's Child," which he had just received from London. To facilitate this object Irving wrote the preliminary sketch from facts furnished by his brother. It afterwards led to a personal acquaintance between the two authors when Irving visited England. In 1850, after Campbell's death, when his "Life and Letters," edited by Dr. Beattie, were being republished by the Harpers in New York, Irving was applied to for a few preliminary words of introduction. He wrote a letter, prefixed to the volumes, in which he speaks gracefully and nobly of his acquaintance with Campbell, many of the virtues of whose private life were first disclosed to the public in Dr. Beattie's publication.

After the perpetration of the Knickerbocker, Irving engaged with two of his brothers in mercantile business, as a silent partner. The second war with Great Britain then broke out, when he took part in the spirit of the day; edited the Analectic Magazine, published at Philadelphia, by Moses Thomas, writing an eloquent series of biographies, accompanying portraits of the American Naval Captains; and, in 1814, joined the military staff of Governor Tompkins as aidede-camp and military secretary, with the title of Colonel. When the war was ended the next year, he sailed for Liverpool in the month of May, made excursions into Wales, some of the finest counties of England, and to the Highlands of Scotland, intending to visit the continent. The commercial revulsions which followed the war overwhelmed the house with which he was connected, and he was thrown upon his resources as an author. Repairing to London his excursions and his observations on rural life and manners furnished materials for some of the most attractive portions of his Sketch Book. The publication of this was commenced in New York, in large octavo pamphlets, a style afterwards adopted by Dana in his "Idle Man," and Longfellow in his "Outre Mer." When the first volume had appeared in this form it attracted the notice of Jerdan, who received a copy brought over from America by a passenger, republished some of the papers in his Literary Gazette,* and a reprint of the whole was in prospect by some bookseller, when the author applied to Murray to undertake the work. The answer was civil, but the publisher declined it. Irving then addressed Sir Walter Scott, by whom he had previously been cordially received at Abbotsford, on his visit in 1819, of which he has given so agreeable an account in the paper in the Crayon Miscellany,t to secure his assistance with Constable. Scott, in the most friendly manner, promised his aid, and offered Irving the editorial chair of a weekly periodical to be established at Edinburgh, with a salary of five hundred pounds, but he had too vivid a sense of the toils and responsibilities of such an office to ac

Autobiography of William Jerdan, ii. 288.

+ Scott had been an admirer of Irving's early writings, having received a copy of Knickerbocker, not long after its publication, through Mr. Henry Brevoort. Irving carried him a letter of introduction from Campbell, to whom Scott sent a message, thanking him for "one of the best and pleasantest acquaintances I have made this many a day."-Lockhart's Scott, ch. xxxix.

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cept it. He put the first volume of the Sketch Book to press at his own expense, with John Miller, February, 1820; it was getting along tolerably, when the bookseller failed in the first month. Scott came to London at this time, reopened the matter with Murray, who issued the entire work, and thenceforward Irving had a publisher for his successive works, "conducting himself in all his dealings with that fair, open, and liberal spirit which had obtained for him the well merited appellation of the Prince of Booksellers." Murray bought the copyright for two hundred pounds, which he subsequently increased to four hundred, with the success of the work.

Wathengte drving

In 1820 Irving took up his residence for a year in Paris, where he became acquainted with the poet Moore, and enjoyed his intimacy with the best English society in the metropolis. In the spring of 1821, Moore speaks in his Diary of Irving's being hard at work writing his Bracebridge Hall, having in the course of ten days written about one hundred and thirty pages of the size of those in the Sketch Book, adding, "this is amazing rapidity." Bracebridge Hall, or the Humourists, is a series of sketches of English rural life, holiday customs, and refined village character of Sir Roger de Coverley portraiture, centring about a fine old establishment in Yorkshire. The characters of Master Simon, Jack Tibbetts, and General Harbottle do credit to the school of Goldsmith and Addison. The Stout Gentleman, the Village Choir, the delicate story of Annette Delarbre display the best powers of the author; while the episodes of the Dutch tales of Dolph Heyliger and the Storm Ship relieve the monotony of the English description.

The winter of 1822 was passed by Irving at Dresden. He returned to Paris in 1823, and in the December of the following year published his Tales of a Traveller, with the stories of the

Author's Preface to the Revised Edition of Sketch Book, 1848. VOL. II-1

Nervous Gentleman, including that fine piece of animal spirits and picturesque description, the Bold Dragoon, the series of pictures of literary life in Buckthorne and his Friends-in which there is some of his happiest writing, blending humor, sentiment, and a kindly indulgence for the failures of life, the romantic Italian Stories, and, as in the preceding work, a sequel of New World legends of Dutchmen and others, built upon the writer's invention in the expansion of the fertile theme of Captain Kidd, the well known piratical and money-concealing adventurer. For this work Moore tells us that Murray gave Irving fifteen hundred pounds, and "he might have had two thousand."* These books were still published in the old form in numbers in New York, simultaneously with their English appearance.

The following winter of 1825 was passed by Irving in the South of France, and early in the next year he went to Madrid, at the suggestion of Alexander H. Everett, then minister to Spain, for the purpose of translating the important series of new documents relating to the voyages of Columbus, just collected by Navarrete. For a translation was substituted the History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus,t to which the Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus were afterwards added. The Columbus was published in 1828, and the English edition brought its author three thousand guineas. A tour to the South of Spain in this and the following year provided the materials for A Chronicle of the Conquest of Grenada, and The Alhambra, or the New Sketch Book. The latter is dedicated, May, 1832, to Wilkie, the artist, who was a companion with the author in some of his excursions. Irving spent three months in the old Moorish palace. He some time after in America, published his Legends of the Conquest of Spain (in 1835), which with his Mahomet and his Successors (1849-50) complete a series of Spanish and Moorish subjects, marked by the same genial and poetic treatment; the fancy of the writer evidently luxuriating in the personal freedom of movement of his heroes, their humor of individual character, and the warin oriental coloring of the theme.

He

In July, 1829, Irving left Spain for England, having been appointed Secretary of Legation to the American Embassy at London, when Mr. M'Lane was Minister. He retired on the arrival of Van Buren. The University of Oxford conferred on him in 1831 the degree of LL.D. arrived in America on his return, May 21, 1832, after an absence of seventeen years, and his friends at New York commemorated his arrival by a public dinner, at which Chancellor Kent presided. A few months later, in the summer, Irving accompanied Mr. Ellsworth, one of the commissioners for removing the Indian tribes west of the Mississippi, in his journey, which he has described in his Tour on the Prairies, published in the Crayon Miscellany in 1835. His Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey formed another volume of the series. In 1836 he published his

Astoria, attracted to the subject by an early fond-| ness for the character of the trappers and voyageurs whom he had seen in his youth in Canada. He was assisted in the preparation of this work by his nephew, Mr. Pierre M. Irving.*

Another undertaking of a similar character was his Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U.S.A., in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West, prepared from the MSS. of that traveller, but made an original work by the observation and style of the writer. From 1839, for two years, Irving contributed a series of papers monthly to the Knickerbocker Magazine. Among these tales and sketches are two narratives, The Early Experiences of Ralph Ringwood, and Mountjoy, or some Passages out of the Life of a Castle Builder. A number of these papers, with some others from the English Annuals and other sources, have been collected in 1855 in a volume, with the title of Wolfert's Roost.

In February, 1842, he was appointed Minister to Spain, an office which he occupied for the next four years. He then returned home, and has since

Sunnyside.

continued to reside at his cottage residence, "Sunnyside," near Tarrytown, on the banks of the Hudson, the very spot which he had described years before in the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," as the castle of the Heer van Tassel, illuminated with the throng of country beauties, and that prodigality of "a genuine Dutch country tea-table," in the presence of which the mouth of the schoolmaster Ichabod watered, and his skin dilated as it embraced the ample cheer. Of this neighborhood, Irving also wrote in that tale of his youth:-" If ever I should wish for a retreat, whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remainder of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley." At this retreat since his last return from Europe he has lived, in the midst of a family circle composed of his brother and his nieces,

An interesting communication from Irving on this subJect, contradicting a story of Mr. Astor having paid him five thousand dollars to "take up the MSS." will be found in the Literary World for November 22, 1851. The only compensation Irving received was his share of the profits from his publisher.

hospitably entertaining his friends, occasionally visiting different portions of the country, and einploying his pen in the composition of his Life of Washington, the first volume of which, as we write, is in progress through the press. The preparation of this, the publication of Oliver Goldsmith, a Biography, an enlargement of a life which he had prefixed to an edition in Paris of that author's works, adapting the researches of Prior and Forster, and a revised edition of his own writings published by Putnam, of which several of the volumes have been published in a more costly form, enriched by the vigorous and refined designs of Darley, have been his latest literary productions.

In estimating the genius of Irving, we can hardly attach too high a value to the refined qualities and genial humor which have made his writings favorites wherever the English language is read. The charm is in the proportion, the keeping, the happy vein which inspires happiness in return. It is the felicity of but few authors, out of the vast stock of English literature, to delight equally young and old. The tales of Irving are the favorite authors of childhood, and their good humor and amenity can please where most literature is weariness, in the sick room of the convalescent. Every influence which breathes from these writings is good and generous. Their sentiment is always just and manly, without cant or affectation; their humor is always within the bounds of propriety. They have a fresh inspiration of American nature, which is not the less nature for the art with which it is adorned. The color of personality attaches us throughout to the author, whose humor of character is always to be felt. This happy art of presenting rude and confused objects in an orderly pleasurable aspect, everywhere to be met with in the pages of Irving, is one of the most beneficent in literature. The philosopher Hume said a turn for humor was worth to him ten thousand a year, and it is this gift which the writings of Irving impart. To this quality is allied an active fancy and poetic imagination, many of the choicest passages of Irving being interpenetrated by this vivifying power. On one or two occasions only, we believe, in some stanzas to the Passaic River, some delicate lines, descriptive of a painting by Gilbert Stuart Newton,* and a theatrical address, once pronounced by Cooper at the Park Theatre, has he ever put pen to verse; but he is an essential poet in prose, in many exquisite passages of vivid description from Westminster Abbey and English rural scenery to the waste beauties of the great region beyond the Mississippi. Parallel with the ruder but more

An old philosopher is reading, in this picture, from a folio, to a young beauty who is asleep in a chair on the other side of the table. It is a fine summer's day, and the warm atmosphere is let in through the open casement. These are the lines which Irving wrote at his friend Newton's request, as a description of the picture :

THE DULL LECTURE.

Frostie age, frostie age,
Vain all thy learning;
Drowsie page, drowsie page,
Evermore turning.

Young head no lore will heed,
Young heart's a reckless rover,
Young beauty, while you read,
Sleeping dreams of absent lover.

robust and athletic writings of Cooper, the volumes of Irving improved American society, and rendered the national name beloved and respected abroad. Both, to the honor of the country, have never lacked admirers from the start; both have been followed by diligent schools of imitators, and their books will continue to be read together, with equal honor, as the complement of each other.

We may here properly introduce some notices of the elder brothers of Washington Irving, who, together with himself, established the family reputation in literature. They were four :-William, Peter, Ebenezer, and John Treat. All were engaged in literary or professional life except Ebenezer, who pursued a mercantile career.

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WILLIAM IRVING was born in New York, August 15, 1766. He commenced life as an Indian trader, residing at Johnstown and Caughawaga on the Mohawk, from 1787 to 1791. married a sister of the author, James K. Paulding, November 7, 1793. At the date of Salmagundi he was a merchant at New York, with the character of a man of wit and refinement, who had added to a natural genial temperament the extensive resources of observation, and a fresh experience of the world, gathered in his border life. The part which he took in Salmagundi was chiefly the contribution of the poetical pieces, which are mainly from his pen-the letters and proclamations, the humorous and sentimental verse, "from the mill of Pindar Cockloft." These poems are in a happy vein, and if separately published with the author's name, would have long since given him a distinct place in the collections of the American literati. In furtherance of the prevailing humor of the book, they celebrate the simpler manners of former days, and the eccentricities and scandals of the passing time. The satire is pungent and good-natured, and the numbers felicitous. A few stanzas will show how pleasantly Pindar Cockloft, Esq., blended mirth with sentiment.

VISION OF TWO SISTERS IN A BALL-ROOM.

How oft I breathe the inward sigh,
And feel the dew-drop in my eye,
When I behold some beauteous frame,
Divine in everything but name,
Just venturing, in the tender age,
On Fashion's late new-fangled stage!
Where soon the guileless heart shall cease
To beat in artlessness and peace;
Where all the flowers of gay delight
With which youth decks its prospects bright,
Shall wither 'mid the cares-the strife-
The cold realities of life!

Thus lately, in my careless mood,
As I the world of fashion viewed,
While celebrating great and small,
That grand solemnity-a ball,
My roving vision chanced to light
On two sweet forms, divinely bright;
Two sister nymphs, alike in face,
In mien, in loveliness and grace;
Twin rose-buds, bursting into bloom,
In all their brilliance and perfume;
Like those fair forms that often beam,
Upon the eastern poet's dream:

For Eden had each lovely maid
In native innocence arrayed,-
And heaven itself had almost shed
Its sacred halo round each head!

They seemed, just entering hand in hand,
To cautious tread this fairy land;
To take a timid hasty view,
Enchanted with a scene so new.
The modest blush, untaught by art,
Bespoke their purity of heart;
And every timorous act unfurled
Two souls unspotted by the world.

Oh, how these strangers joyed my sight,
And thrilled my bosom with delight!
They brought the visions of my youth
Back to my soul in all their truth,
Recalled fair spirits into day,
That time's rough hand had swept away!
Thus the bright natives from above,
Who come on messages of love,
Will bless, at rare and distant whiles,
Our sinful dwelling by their smiles!

Oh! my romance of youth is past,
Dear airy dreams too bright to last!
Yet when such forms as these appear,
I feel your soft remembrance here;
For, ah! the simple poet's heart,
On which fond love once played its part,
Still feels the soft pulsations beat,
As loth to quit their former seat.
Just like the harp's melodious wire,
Swept by a bard with heavenly fire,
Though ceased the loudly swelling strain,
Yet sweet vibrations long remain.

Full soon I found the lovely pair
Had sprung beneath a mother's care,
Hard by a neighbouring streamlet's side,
At once its ornament and pride.
The beauteous parent's tender heart
Had well fulfilled its pious part;
And, like the holy man of old,
As we're by sacred writings told,
Who, when he from his pupil sped,
Poured two-fold blessings on his head,-
So this fond mother had imprest
Her early virtues in each breast,
And as she found her stock enlarge,
Had stampt new graces on her charge.

The fair resigned the calm retreat,
Where first their souls in concert beat,
And flew on expectation's wing,
To sip the joys of life's gay spring;
To sport in fashion's splendid maze,
Where friendship fades, and love decays.
So two sweet wild flowers, near the side
Of some fair river's silver tide,

Pure as the gentle stream that laves
The green banks with its lucid waves,
Bloom beauteous in their native ground,
Diffusing heavenly fragrance round:
But should a venturous hand transfer
These blossoms to the gay parterre
Where, spite of artificial aid,
The fairest plants of nature fade;
Though they may shine supreme awhile,
Mid pale ones of the stranger soil,
The tender beauties soon decay,
And their sweet fragrance dies away.

Blest spirits! who enthroned in air,
Watch o'er the virtues of the fair,
And with angelic ken survey,

Their windings through life's chequered way:

Who hover round them as they glide
Down fashion's smooth deceitful tide,
And guard them o'er that stormy deep
Where Dissipation's tempests sweep:
Oh, make this inexperienced pair,
The objects of your tenderest care.
Preserve them from the languid eye,
The faded cheek-the long drawn sigh;
And let it be your constant aim
To keep the fair ones still the same:
Two sister hearts, unsullied, bright
As the first beam of lucid light,
That sparkled from the youthful sun,
When first his jocund race begun.

So when these hearts shall burst their shrine,
To wing their flight to realms divine,
They may to radiant mansions rise
Pure as when first they left the skies.

In his poem entitled Tea, which is "earnestly recommended to the attention of all maidens of a certain age," there is this introduction of the time-out-of-mind scandal associated with that beverage.

In harmless chit-chat an acquaintance they roast, And serve up a friend, as they serve up a toast, Some gentle faux pas, or some female mistake, Is like sweetmeats delicious, or relished as cake; A bit of broad scandal is like a dry crust,

It would stick in the throat, so they butter it first
With a little affected good-nature, and cry
"No body regrets the thing deeper than I."
Our young ladies nibble a good name in play,
As for pastime they nibble a biscuit away:
While with shrugs and surmises, the toothless old
dame,

As she mumbles a crust she will mumble a name ;
And as the fell sisters astonished the Scot,
In predicting of Banquo's descendants the lot,
Making shadows of kings, amid flashes of light,
To appear in array and to frown in his sight;
So they conjure up spectres all hideous in hue,
Which, as shades of their neighbors, are passed in
review.

In the more concentrated social humors of that day, there was opportunity for much satirical pleasantry, which is now lost among the nuinerous interests of metropolitan life. The fops and belles were then notabilities and subjects to be cared for by men of wit and society. One of the clever pleasantries of William Irving of that now distant time, which has never before appeared in print, was recently called up for us by Washington Irving, who recited the lines from memory, and kindly furnished us with a copy. It is in a style formerly in vogue in the days of Pindar and Colman-a trifle in allusion to an absurdity in the whisker line of the fops in the early years of the century.

Sir! said a barber to a thing going by his shop,
Sir, said he, will you stop

And be shaved? for I see you are lathered already,
I've a sweet going razor, and a hand that is steady.
Sir! damme, said the creature standing stiff on two
feet,

Damme, Sir, do you intend to bore one in the

This fashion of lathered whiskers and a rat's tail behind,

Is the most ojusest thing that you can find.
And what makes it more ojus to me, is that,
It's a sure sign of a Tory or a harry stuck cat.
For mark it when you will, I assert it before ye,
The larger the whisker the greater the tory.

To the prose of Salmagundi William Irving furnished occasional hints and sketches, which were worked up by his brother. Among these were the letters of Mustapha in numbers five and fourteen, the last of which is the amusing sketch of the political logocracy. Mr. Irving was in Congress from 1813 to 1819. He died in New York, November 9, 1821.

PETER IRVING, the second brother, was born October 30, 1771. He studied medicine, without, however, devoting himself to the profession, though it gave him the title of Doctor through life. He was proprietor and editor of the Morning Chronicle newspaper, the first number of which he published in New York, October 1, 1802. This paper was in the democratic interest, and for the time was a warm advocate of Burr. It had among its contributors, besides the editor's brothers, Washington and John T. Irving, Paulding, William A. Duer, and Rudolph Bunner. As a tender to the daily, a more convenient method of parrying the opposition, and serving a temporary purpose on the eve of an election, the Corrector, a weekly newspaper, the work of several hands, was issued anonymously in March and April, 1804. Dr. Irving would probably have returned the compliments of the articles which his brother Washington had published in his newspaper, by contributing to Salmagundi, but he was abroad travelling in Europe during the time that work was issued. He left in December, 1806, and returned in January, 1808. He then projected with his brother the work which afterwards grew in the hands of the latter into Knickerbocker's New York; but before it was written sailed for Europe at the beginning of 1809, and remained there until the spring of 1836, when he embarked for home. In this period a novel appeared from his pen in New York, from the press of Van Winkle in 1820. It was, as its title intimates, an adaptation from the French, though with extensive alterations, Giovanni Sbogarro: A Venetian Tale [taken -It is a from the French], by Percival G

stirring tale of piratical adventure, in a now somewhat exploded school of fiction, and is written in a happy style.

Dr. Irving did not long survive his return to America. He died at his residence in New York, June 27, 1838.

EBENEZER IRVING was born January 27, 1776. He has long since retired from mercantile life, and his residence with his brother is one of the

pleasing associations of the family home at Sunnyside.

JOHN T. IRVING was born May 26, 1778. He studied the profession of the law, in which he acquired a reputation that secured him, on the creation of the Court of Common Pleas for the city and county of New York in 1821, the appointment of First Judge. He presided in this court for seventeen years, till his death. As a judge, he is worthily pronounced to have been "in many