he wrote: "Here, then, I am nestled in one of the most remarkable, romantic, and delicious spots in the world. . . . It absolutely appears to me like a dream,

or as if I am spell-bound in some fairy palace."

In 1829 he left Spain and went to London as Secre

His English In recognition of his

tary of Legation to the Court of St. James. friends gave him a warm welcome. valuable work as a writer, the Royal Society of Literature presented him with a medal, and the University of Oxford gave him the degree of D.C.L. In 1832 he left England for America. I

His long sojourn abroad had not weakened his love for his native land. Soon after reaching New York he wrote to his brother Peter that he had been in a tumult of enjoyment ever since his arrival, was pleased with everything and everybody, and was as happy as mortal could be. During the year he made a tour in the West, in company with a party of commissioners who were to treat with the Indians. Astoria, written at the suggestion of John Jacob Astor, in part the work of Mr. Pierre M. Irving, the Tour on the Prairies, and the Adventures of Captain Bonneville, give many of his western experiences. In 1842 he went again to Spain; this time as United States Minister. The appointment was made through the influence of Daniel Webster. Already the now distinguished author had refused to run for Congress, had objected to the use of his name in the election of mayor, in New York, and had declined the secretaryship of the Navy. Nothing but the sense of duty and the consciousness of his special fitness for the position could have induced him to leave again his native land, above all to tear himself from " Sunnyside," the home he had made for himself and his nieces at Tarrytown on the Hudson. His warm interest in Spanish affairs and his friendly

relations with Spaniards of high position caused him to be most successful in discharging his duties as minister through a somewhat troubled period.

He returned to New York in 1846, having reached the age of sixty-three. Increasing years failed to lessen his literary activity. The Life of Washington, begun before his mission to Spain, engaged his attention for the remainder of his life. The Life of Goldsmith and Mahomet and His Successors both appeared in 1849, and a collection of sketches, entitled Wolfert's Roost, in 1855. He died at "Sunnyside" on the 28th of November, 1859.

Irving's life of seventy-six years covers a period characterized by momentous changes social, intellectual, and political. He was born in the early days of the Republic, when the stage coach and the sailing vessel furnished the most rapid means of conveyance and communication. When he died, the slow-going world of his boyhood was no more - done away by steam and electricity. The wilderness, which in his youth lay distant but a few hours from New York, had retreated to the far West. A great conflict was about to free his native land from the system of slavery, one of the familiar institutions of his boyhood. As a young man he had watched the early triumphs and the fall of the first Napoleon; and as an old man he had seen the rise to power of Napoleon III. and Eugénie, one of whom had been his guest at "Sunnyside," while the other, when a child in Granada, had sat upon his knee. When he began to write there was but one man in America who had made a reputation in the domain of pure literature. - Charles Brockden Brown; in his later years the names of those now best known in American letters Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, and their contemporaries were on the lips of all.

In reading the biography and the letters of this first distinguished American writer, one is struck by his aloofness from the strenuous life of the century. He, the spokesman of the youngest of the nations, looked ever toward the past. The great intellectual movement which owed its origin to the discoveries of modern science and to rapid changes in social conditions left him almost untouched. This seems the more strange from the fact that his public duties took him frequently to the centres of thought and action, while the positions which he held made it impossible for him to keep entirely out of contemporary politics. He followed of necessity the bent of his genius. By nature he was the contemplator of mankind, not the participator in man's struggles. He loved to withdraw from the present, with its bare and often ugly facts, to a past sufficiently remote to have about it the halo of romance. This is why he cared for Spain, with its tales of Moor and Christian, with its dream-haunted Alhambra; why when a youth he wandered, gun in hand, on the shores of the Hudson or among the valleys of the Catskills, peopling the solitudes with the creatures of his imagination.

If Irving felt small interest in important movements, he cared greatly for human beings. He lived at "Sunnyside," surrounded by those whom he loved; his brothers were as dear to him as his own life; his friendships stood the test of time and change. He would often speak of some charming woman or of some noble man whom he had chanced to meet, recalling them through long stretches of years, as one recalls a delightful vision. His letters abound in references to children; for in every land he found youthful comrades who listened with wideeyed wonder to his tales of knights or fairies. Even the little Queen of Spain was first of all a "dear child," not

a royal personage, in the thought of the kindly American minister.

It is this human sympathy, this social quality, that gives to his productions their characteristic flavor. In reading him we enjoy the companionship of one who shows us with sincere delight the beauty in nature and in human life that has made his own existence a joy. He reminds one of Addison; but he is more simple and more broadly human, a friend rather than a teacher. His humor is less subtle than Addison's; his intellect less keen.

In the lives of his own countrymen Irving has been an influence of much importance. Coming, as he did, at a time when Americans in general had little appreciation of beauty in any form, he opened their eyes to the loveliness that lay at their very doors the loveliness of wild nature. He made them feel the glory of the Hudson and the charm of the Catskills. At his transmuting touch the legends that clung to the secluded valleys of Eastern New York became the folklore of the American people. His countrymen were provincial, and he broadened their horizon. Through his eyes they looked beyond the Atlantic, and across that wider and deeper sea which divides the present from the past. In his writings he gave them one of the best gifts that a man can bestow upon his fellows- a source of refined and ennobling pleasure.

While the Knickerbocker, History is the most purely original of Irving's productions, while the biographies and histories have the value that results from conscientious work combined with literary skill, the Sketch Book is on the whole the most characteristic expression of the author's genius. Irving was at his best in short sketches. If not the originator of the modern short story, he was certainly the writer who gave to that species of literary composition its artistic form. There are greater histories

than the Conquest of Granada, and biographies that show a stronger grasp than the Columbus or the Washington; but it is not easy to find a short story that excels Rip Van Winkle.

Some of the articles in the Sketch Book have lost their freshness because the themes of which they treat have become hackneyed; others, like the Little Britain and the Mutability of Literature, possess an interest only for those who love to get away from the actual world and lose themselves in a dreamy past. The Wife, a sketch that in its day was fervently admired, rings false in the ear of the average modern reader - although he who knows Irving well cannot but feel that the sentiment which inspired it was genuine. Notwithstanding these drawbacks the Sketch Book as a whole possesses rare literary merit. The language in which it is written is a trifle antiquated because of its leisurely flow and its swelling periods; but the reader who delights in musical prose, in prose which expresses by its form the varying mood of the writer, may well go to this volume. The Rip Van Winkle is an artistic gem; the sketch of Westminster in its solemn harmony suggests the very spirit of the ancient abbey; the description of Baltus Van Tassel's farm, in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, is the work of a master; and there is scarcely a piece in the book that does not contain passages of genuine beauty.

Like all true artists, Irving at his best has a style that defies analysis. It is the expression of the whole nature of the man. His goodness, his kindliness, his love of beauty, his sense of humor, all these and something more which cannot be defined go to produce what we know as Irving's style. It is these qualities embodied in literary form that make the Sketch Book one of the treasures of American literature.