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good a mode of utterance to be lost. Irving handled it well. He wished neither to startle us into the acceptance of an almost intuitive revelation, as did Emerson, nor does he endeavour to pack into a few solid lines the essence of life-long thought, as did Bacon; he wished rather to please us wholesomely by letting us look, through his own clear, gently magnifying lenses, at parts of human life that are comfortable and tender and sane. On the whole, he did this best in his Sketch-Book; on the whole, best in the essays here selected from that volume. Let us now speak briefly of these essays in turn.

Many years of invention have modified the conditions of oceanic travel, but The Voyage has not lost its power to portray the spirit of the first voyage to Europe. With quiet, gentle keenness the writer seizes the characteristic facts of life on board a vessel. It is not an account, a chronicle, of a voyage, it is an analysing, a portrayal, of one. Irving's temperate expression may sometimes make us underestimate his real insight: the things he says are not so easy to think of or to say, as they look after he has said them. In the second paragraph, for example, the contrast between travel inland and travel by ocean is not only true, but subtly true. So well does he interpret the real essentials, that save where great changes have been made in the facts of travel, his comments have a present-day validity.

For, in spite of the shortening of the transit, the Atlantic is still broad enough to make the steamer's passage "an excellent preparative." The "vast space of waters," no matter how rapidly crossed, is still a "blank page," —

though not blank in the sense of being uninteresting: the ocean is always the ocean, and there is nothing petty about it. The most striking change in the travel is that the former monotony was left to be dispelled by the individual efforts of the passenger, while now the great transatlantic companies vie with one another to provide constant diversion for the passengers, and games and music often weary by their very abundance. There is a world-wide difference between the sailing packet that bore Irving to his destination, and a modern express steamer, whose wireless telegraphic apparatus makes possible the publication on board of a daily newspaper.

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The five Christmas essays preserve for us a beautiful tradition. Just as in The Voyage Irving was interpreting rather than narrating, - or, to put it more exactly, was using narration to make his interpretation clearer, here, he has set himself the task of conveying to us the true spirit of the English Christmas season, by recording those incidents which seem best to typify its charm. I incline to feel that in this group of essays Irving is at his very best. Nowhere does he more heartily reveal that warm receptiveness— which in an author we call sympathy — of things that are lovely and generous in appearance and in mood. There is something almost musical in the way in which he states and restates and illustrates ⚫ and develops his principal theme, the beautiful hospitality and good fellowship of the people of our race in that Christmas season, which of all the parts of the year is surely the best and noblest.

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There is a sort of natural art in Irving's presentation of his subject. First of all, he sees the Christmas festivities in place: by which I mean that he does not view them as merely interesting, isolated phenomena; he sees the present Christmas as the somewhat changed successor of former days; he feels its religious and moral significance, and he also feels its historical quality. You will not readily find a better illustration of the "historical sense spoken of early in this introduction than are these essays. And you may now the more readily understand the term and the essays, if you will imagine the difference between knowing a person just as he outwardly looks, and knowing a friend when you know his parents and his home life and his family history. To see anything in its proper surroundings, in its place, makes you the more sympathetic interpreter of it, not because you are more indulgent, but because you are more intelligent: you have understood; and upon understanding rests real sympathy, real enjoyment.

Having then, in the first essay, revealed the spirit of the English Christmas, Irving goes on, in the following papers, to illustrate and amplify all that he has spoken of. The first essay ended with a touch recalling his own solitude he is facing, not lightheartedly, yet courageously, a thing that tugs at the heart-strings, the sense of being far away from home or friends in the midst of the merrymaking of a foreign land. The second essay, The StageCoach, interesting in itself, has a fine artistic value as well, in giving what I may term a suspensive effect; the prospect of his loneliness is a veil which the writer does

not rapidly lift. The festivities are coming, but he is a stranger in the land: there should be a natural approach to the intimate participation in the season's hospitalities, and this approach the essay provides. It is no digression; even the long description of the coachman is in key with the rest because of its straightforward heartiness.

The other three Christmas essays constitute really one essay divided into three chapters. Fortunate, indeed, was young Bracebridge's friend, Geoffrey Crayon, who could thus enter into such delightful companionship, and who, we may be sure, was a welcome guest at the feast. It was such a celebration of Christmas as he might have wished to share in, had the choice been in his own hands. For here, shown in all its phases, is the historic Christmas in the midst of the new, the old appearing in the transitory, tradition rubbing shoulders with current custom throughout all the glad observance of the Eve and the Day, in which the Dinner plays its large and hospitable part. A wealth of details - incident and observation is poured out before us. Then the description suddenly comes to a close, and a tender, concluding paragraph shows us the writer again, thoughtful and simple, finehearted, and friendly to his fellow-men.

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The two essays, Rural Life and The Country Church, illustrate once more Irving's general good sense, his perception of distinctions, his ability to touch on essentials and to omit irrelevant points. Judgement and observation unite in his brief comments upon such varying things, in the one essay, as the Englishman's feeling for the coun

try, his love of flowers in country or town, the spirit of the London" season," the fondness for landscape gardening on a large scale, the power of transforming small garden plots into things of beauty; and, in the other essay, the old church, the well-fed vicar (compare him with the vicar in Christmas Day), the distinction between the real nobleman and the upstart, and the unconscious identification of religious and political beliefs. It is more than merely interesting for us to consider, moreover, the national differences involved in the fact that Irving's descriptions of American life are long since out of date, while his descriptions of English life still, in the main, hold good.

The meditation on Westminster Abbey, well written though it is, owes much of its reputation to its wonderful subject. This temple of the great dead of our race leaves no sensitive person unmoved, and imposes even upon the callous the silence of respect. Its spell, in part, passes over from the edifice itself to those serious descriptions of it which, perhaps never with complete success, seek to render its spirit. When one is versed in architecture, he may point out architectural flaws in the Abbey ; when one is versed in literature, he may point out defects in this piece of writing. I cannot regard it as a lapse from critical standards to suggest to the young reader that for the present he accept this sincere, thoughtful, and sympathetic essay for all that it may be worth to him, just as he might visit the Abbey, not as a student of architecture, but as a pilgrim.

The two essays, The Mutability of Literature and The

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