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ADDITIONAL PREFACE.

THE publishers have informed me that several of the books referred to in the notes are not accessible to many of the schools desiring to use "Selections from Irving." I have therefore added a considerable body of notes to those published in the first edition.

In confirmation of what I have before said about the worthiness of Irving to be read and studied in the schools, it gives me great satisfaction to transcribe from so high an authority as Professor Corson of Cornell University, the following extract. It is taken from "The Aims of Literary Study," a little book which I believe ought to be in the hands of every teacher of English in the country:—

"Such an author as Washington Irving, whose matter is always interesting, always delightful, indeed, and whose use is so unaffected and free from strain, would be excellent for young students. Through such an author, their vocabulary could be enlarged in a most pleasing way, and they could hardly, unless very stupid, get false impressions of meaning from the author's nice use of words. They could also be more or less unconsciously impressed as to the peculiar domains of the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin vocabularies of the language; for Irving's writings exhibit everywhere the influence upon his vocabulary of his subject and purpose. According as any composition of his is keyed, so to

versa.

speak, is there a greater or less proportion of Latin or AngloSaxon words. It would be hard to find a Latin word used where its Saxon equivalent, if there is one, would be preferable, or vice Better is it than a mere conformity to the general advice so often given, to use Saxon words in preference to those of Latin origin, to have a nice sense of the peculiar domains of these two chief elements of the language; and this nice sense can be best derived from the reading of authors who wrote unaffectedly and with an unerring feeling of those domains.

"Furthermore, and more than all, students who should read sympathetically all of Irving's works, with the requisite guidance and inspiration from the teacher [and a teacher without inspiring power should have nothing to do with conducting literary studies]1 could hardly help being wholesomely influenced by the genial personality of the author which everywhere informs them. And inspiring power must come from an author's or a teacher's being, and not from his brain.

"Being is teaching, the highest, the only quickening mode of teaching, the only mode which secures that unconscious following of a superior spirit by an inferior spirit—of a kindled soul by an unkindled soul. And so to get at the being of a great author, to come into relationship with his absolute personality, is the highest result of the study of his works."

July, 1895.

The italics here are mine. (Ed.)

I. T.

SELECTIONS

FROM

WASHINGTON IRVING.

THE CAPTURE OF NEW AMSTERDAM BY THE ENGLISH.

GREAT nations resemble great men in this particular, that their greatness is seldom known until they get in trouble; adversity, therefore, has been wisely denominated the ordeal of true greatness, which, like gold, can never receive its real estimation until it has passed through the furnace. In proportion, therefore, as a nation, a community, or an individual (possessing the inherent quality of greatness) is involved in perils and misfortunes, in proportion does it rise in grandeur, and even when sinking under calamity makes, like a house on fire, a more glorious display than ever it did in the fairest period of its prosperity.

The vast empire of China, though teeming with population and imbibing and concentrating the wealth of nations, has vegetated through a succession of drowsy ages; and were it not for its internal revolutions, and the subversion of its ancient government by the Tartars,

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