Class ', I Book .11 9 Copyright N° COPyR^Kf DEPOSIT. ,^l,^^|^J-^ ^ Etched "by Jas. D. Smillie After a. Sketch from life by F. O-CDarley at Sunnyside July 1848 . ■ y^^^^ ^u^ ^^i^^^ ^^^^ ^;.^^>^ ^i^/^ y^^ ^;^^ 2^q^ t^diyt ^T.^^^^u^^- ^ <:iyM^rZii.^ii^Cr -^c^yyi^ ^<'^t/z^^^ A-Tt.^ y^ '^'^^ ^-^.^^/^.Ay/l^^t^ ; ^tnr^ X^^t^ ^^A^ 'i'^^^Cc^.c^ /ict^^.^ -^- S. Poi^ . Si:)e/v/i J^oo^ froTTu i/ic on^fui-aZ tfi- ike pos^sejsioru o^ IliVIXGIAXA: , A MEMORIAL OF W A S H I X CI T X I E y I X G. — Tread light! v on his ashes, re men of genius for he was your kinsman : Weed his grave clean, ve men of goodness,— for he was your brother. Tristbax Shasdt, Chap. CLXXXTI. XEW TOEK: CHAELES B. EICHAKDSOi^, 1860. ^^■v > ^%\ <^\e,0 c^5s %..- Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, By Chakles B. Eichardson, In the Clerk's OiSce of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. CONTENTS. I. MEMORANDA OF THE LITERARY CAREER OF WASHINGTON IRVING. By Evert A. Dutokinck 5 Original Letter from Mr. Irving concerning liis Birth-place — Eeminiscences of Allston — Knickerbocker and its Keception— Life of Campbell — Passages from Moore's Diary — John Neal's Blackwood Criticism — "Columbus" and the Spanish Books — Mr. Brevoort's Notes — Preface to Mr. Bryant's Poems — Letter to " The Plaindealer" — Speech at the Irving Dinner — History of "Astoria" — Life of Washington — Copy- rights — Artist Friends — A Traveller's Visit to the Alhambra — Characteristics. II. THE FUNERAL OF WASHINGTON IRVING. By W. Francis Williams.... 22 The Scene at Tarrytown — Church Services — The Procession. III. PROCEEDINGS OF THE NEW YORK BOARD OF ALDERMEN AND COUNCILMEN 26 The Mayor's Message and Resolutions. IV. RESOLUTIONS OF THE ATHEN^UM CLUB 28 Speech of the Rev. Dr. Osgood. V. PROCEEDINGS OF THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 29 Remarks of the Hon. Ltjther Bradish. Address of President King. Address of Mr. George Bancroft. Characteristics of Washington Irving, the Address of Dr. John W. Francis. VL PROCEEDINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY 36 Address of Henry W. Longfellow. Mr. Everett's Address. Letter from George Sumner. VIL SUNNYSIDE. A Poem. By Henry Theodore Tuckerman 40 Vin. WASHINGTON IRVING. An Editorial of the Evening Post 40 IX. THE LATE WASHINGTON IRVING. An Editorial of the Richmond (S. L) Gazette 41 5. MR.TRVING'S RELIGIOUS CHARACTER. By the Rev. Dr. Creighton 42 XL PA.SSAGE FROM A DISCOURSE BY THE REV. JOHN A. TODD 43 XII. THE REV. DR. CHAPIN'S REMARKS 44 XIIL POSTHUMOUS INFLUENCE. A Passage from a Discourse by the Rev. Dr. William F. Morgan 44 iii Contents. XIV. GOLDSMITH AND IRVING. By Geoege Washington Gkeene 4G XV. IRVING DESCRIBED IN VERSE. By James Russell Lowell 40 XVI. VISITS TO SUNNYSIDE. By N. P. Willis 47 Sunnyside in the Summer of 1857 — A Drive tlirongh Sleepy Hollow — A Later Visit, in 1859 — A Memorandum or Two made after attending Mr. Irving's Funeral. XVIL HALF AN HOUR AT SUNNYSIDE. By Theodore Tilton 50 XVm. A DAY AT SUNNYSIDE. By Osmond Tiffany 53 XIX. ANECDOTE OF WASHINGTON IRVING 54 XX. WASHINGTON IRVING. By George William Curtis 55 XXI. WASHINGTON IRVING. By Frederick S. Cozzens 66 XXIL TABLE-TALK. By James Grant Wilson 58 XXIII. ANECDOTES. By Frederick Saunders 59 XXIV. ICH ABOD CRANE. A Letter from Washington Irving 59 XXV. COCKLOFT HALL. A Reminiscence 60 XXVL IRVING PORTRAITS 61 XXVII. MR. IRVING'S OBJECTION TO PUBLIC DINNERS 62 XXVIII. ANECDOTE OF WASHINGTON IRVING. From The Spirit of the Times . . 62 XXIX. TWO POEMS BY WASHINGTON IRVING 63 XXX. AMERICAN LITERARY COMMISSIONS IN LONDON IN 1822. An Origi- nal Letter by Washington Irving 63 XXXL LIFE AND LETTERS OF IRVING 64 ILL USTRA TlOIfS. I, ORIGINAL PORTRAIT SKETCH OF WASHINGTON IRVING AT SUNNYSIDE, IN JULY, 1848. Drawn from Life by Felix O, C. Darley, and Engraved by Smillie. IL FAC SIMILE PAGE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF THE SKETCH BOOK. A Leap OF "Rip Van Winkle," from the Original in the possession of J. Carson Beevoort, Esq. Errata. — p. xiii, in lines at bottom dele " And ;" for " foemaii," read " soldier ;" for " heard," read " told." iv IRVINGIANA: A MEMORIAL OF WASHINGTON IRVING. MEMORANDA OF THE LITERARY CA- REER OF WASHINGTON IRVING.* BY EVEET A. DUTOKINOK, "Washington Irving was born April 3, 1783, in tlie city of New York. As there has been some little discussion as to the particular spot of his birtli, it may not be amiss, writing for an liistorical magazine, to produce the following decisive testimony on the subject. In a letter, the original of which is before us, to Mr. Henry Panton, dated Sunnyside, Feb. 15, 1850, Mr. Irving states precisely tlie place of his birth. '' The house in which I was born was No. 131 William-street, about half-way between John and Fulton streets. Within a very few weeks after my birth the family moved into a house nearly opposite, which my father had recently purchased; it Avas No. 128, and has recently been pulled down and a large edifice built on its site. It had been occupied by a British commissary during tlie war; tlie hroad arrow was on the street door, and the garden was full of choice fruit-trees, apricots, green- gages, nectarines, &c. It is the first home of which I have any recollection, and there I passed my infancy and boyhood." Mr. Irving was the youngest son of a merchant of the city, William Irving, a native of Scotland, of an ancient knightly stock, who had married Sarah Sanders, an English lady, and been settled in his new country some twenty years. A newspaper correspondent a few years since narrated an anecdote of this early period, of a pleasing character, which, unlike many things of tlie kind, has, we believe, the merit of truth in its favor. The story, as related, is given from the lips of Mr. Irving at a breaktast-table in Washington City. "Mr. Irving said that he re- membered General Washington perfectly. There was some celebration, some public aft'air going on in New York, and the General Avas there to participate in the ceremony. 'My nurse,' said Mr. Irving, ' a good .old Scotchwoman, was very * A portion of this paper is maile up from a previous sketch, pablisticd in "The Cyclopedia of American Literature." anxious for me to see him, and held me up in her arms as he rode past. This, however, did not satisfy her; so the next day, when walking with me in Broadway, she esjiied him in a sliop, she seized my hand and darting in, exclaimed in her bland Scotch : — "Please, yt)ur Excellency, here's a bairn that's called after ye!" General Wash- ington then turned his benevolent face full upon me, smiled, laid his liand upon my head, and gave me his blessing, whicli,' added Mr. Irving earnestly, 'I have reason to believe, lias attended me through life. I was but five years old, j^et I can feel that hand upon my head even now.' "* The early direction of the mind of the boy upon whose infant head the hand of Washington had thus been laid, was much influenced by the tastes of his brotiiers who had occupied tlieiii- selves witli literature. Of these, William, who subsequently became united witli him in the joint authorship of Salmagundi^ was seventeen years liis elder, while Peter, the editor of a later day, was also considerably his senior. With the guidance of these cultivated minds and sound family influences, tlie youth had the good fortune to fall in with a stock of the best old English authors of the Elizabethan as well as of the Au- gustan period, tlie stud\' of which generously un- folded his happy natural disposition. Chancer and Spenser Avere his early favorites; and a bet- ter training cannot be imagined for a youth of genius. His school education Avas the best the times afforded. Though something may be said of the defects of the city academies of those days in comparison Avith the present, Ave are forced to remember that however prodigally the opportu- nities of learning may be increased, the receptive faculties of a boy are limited. There may be more cramming in these times at the feast of the sciences ; but we question Avhether tlie digestion is very materially improved. Few men, at any rate, have ever shown themselves better trained in the pursuit of literature than Washington Irving. The education Avhich bore such early and mature fruit must luiA'e been of the right kind. * This anecdote appeared in the Buffalo Courier, in the winter of 1S53. SiK "Walter Scott's Letter. — Life of Oatvtpbell. birth to naught but unjn-ofitable ■weeds, may form a humble sod of the valley, whence may spring many a sweet wild flower, to adorn my beloved island of Manna-hatta!" Some time after the publication of Kniclcer- tocker^ a copy was sent by the late Mr. Henry ]5revoort, an intimate friend of the author, to Sir Walter Scott. It drew forth the following cordial reply, dated Abbotsford, Api-il 23, 1813 : "My dear Sir, I beg you to accept my best thanks for the uncommon degree of entertain- ment which I Iiave received from the most excellently jocose history of New York. I am sensihle that, as a stranger to American parties and politics, I must lose much of the concealed satire of the piece; but I must own that, looking at the simple and obvious meaning only, I have never read any thing so closely resemhling the stile of Dean Swift as the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker. I have been employed these few evenings in reading them aloud to Mrs. S. and two ladies who are our guests, and our sides have been absolutely sore with laughing. I think, too, there are passages which indicate that tlie author possesses powers of a ditferent kind, and has some touches which remind me much of Sterne. I beg you will have the kindness to let me know when Mr. Irvine takes pen in hand again, for assuredly I shall expect a very great treat, which I may chance never to hear of but through your kindness. Believe me, dear sir, your ohliged and humble servant, Walter Scott."* Praise like" this was likely to create a flutter ill a youthful breast. Irving had afterwards the satisfaction to learn how sincere it was, in per- sonal intercourse with Scott. Lockhart, in the biography of Sir Walter, tells us that the latter had not forgotten tlie Knickeriocker, when, in the summer of 1817, Mr. Irving presented himself at the gate of Abbotsford with a letter of introduction from the poet Campbell. The welcome was prompt and earnest; and the pro- ])osed morning call was changed into that de- lighted residence so fondly revived in the "Visit to Abbotsford" in The Crayon Miscellany^ and largely adopted by Lockhart in the Biography. We have heard Mr. Irving speak of this visit within the last y&ir of his life with boyish de- light. "This," said he, "was to be happy. I felt happiness then." So true and generous was liis allegiance to the noble nature of Sir Walter, who was himself warmly drawn to his visitor. Scott thanked Campbell for sending him such a guest, "one of the best and pleasantest acquaint- ances I have made this many a day." t In the * This copy l3 made from a lithographed fac-simile of the original. Que or two defecls in spelliug, it will be seen, are preserved. t Lockhart's Soott, ch. xxxix. viii later years of Irving at Sunnyside, there was much to remind the privileged visitor of the pil- grimages to Abbotsford, when the radiance of the author of Waverley shed delight on all around. In 1810 Mr. Irving wrote a biographical sketch of the poet Campbell, which was prefixed to an edition of the poet's works published in Philadelphia, and subsequently was printed, "revised, corrected, and materially altered by the author," in the Analectic Magazine. The circumstance which led to this undertaking at that time, was Mr. Irving's acquaintance with Archibald Campbell, a brother of the author, re- siding in New York, and desirous of finding a purchaser for an American edition of O^Connor''s Ghild.^ which he had just received from London. To facilitate this object, Mr. Irving wrote the preliminary sketch from facts furnished by the poet's brother. It afterwards led to a personal acquaintance between the two authors when Mr. Irving visited England. In 1850, after Camp- bell's death, when his Life and Letters., edited by Dr. Beattie, were about to be republished by the Harpers in New York, Mr. Irving Avas ap- plied to for a few preliminary words of introduc- tion. He wrote a letter, prelixed 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. One sentence strikes us as peculiarly charac- teristic of the feelings of Mr. Irving, It is in recognition of this revelation of the poet's better nature that he writes, in words of charity, as he looked back upon the asperities which beset Campbell's career: — "I shall feel satisfaction in putting on record my own recantation of the erroneous opinion I once entertained, and may have occasionally expressed, of the private char- acter of an illustrious poet, whose moral worth is now shown to have been fully equal to his exalted genius." Though Mr. Irving in this later essay speaks slightingly of the earlier composition as written when he was "not in the vein," we have found it, on perusal, a most engaging piece of wi'iting. A paragraph descriptive of the youthful Camp- bell might be taken for a portrait of liimself. Indeed, it often happens that a writer, while drawing the character of another, is simply ])ro- jecting his sympathies, and unconsciously por- traying himself. " He is generally represented to us," says Mr. Irving, in this description of Campbell, "as being extremely studious, but at the same time social in his disposition, gentle and endearing in his manners, and extremely ])rep6ssessing in his appearance and address. With a delicate and even nervous sensibihty, and Ministry of Litkkatuke. — The Skktcii-Eook. n degree of self-diffidence that, at times, is almost ])aintiil, he shrinlreviously been cordially re- ceived at Abbotsford, on his vi.-it in 1817, of which he has given so agreeable an account in the paper in the Crayon Miscellanij), to secure his assistance witii the publislier Constable. Scott, in tiie most friendly manner, promised his aid; and, as an immediate assistance, offered Mr. Ir- ving the editorial chair of a weekly periodica! to be established at Edinburgh, with a salary of five hundred pounds; but the sensitive author, who knew his own mind, had too vivid a sense of the * Auti)biograi)li}' of William Jiidah, ii. 2riS. Thomas Mooke's Diaey. toils and responsibilities of snch an office to ac- cept it. He pnt the first volume of the Sketch Booh to .press at his own expense, with John Miller, February, 1820; it was getting along tol- erably, when the bo(jkseller failed in the first month. It was a liumorous remark of Mr. Ir- ving, that he always brought ill luck to his pub- lishers ; though, with the ardor of a good lover — a more amiable type of character than a good hater — he stuck by them to the end. Sir Wal- ter Scott came to London at tliis emergency, reopened the matter with Murray, who issued the entire work, and tlienceforward Mr. Irving had a publisher for his successive works, " con- ducting 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."* Murraj' bought the copyright for two hundred pounds, which he subsequently increased to four hundred, with the success of the work. In 1820, Mr. Irving took up his residence for a year in Paris, where he became acquainted with the poet Moore, enjoyed liis intimacy, and visited the best English society in the metropolis. Moore's Diary at this period abounds with pleas- ant glimpses of Irving in these social scenes in Paris — at the dinner-parties of London, in com- pany with his intimates, Kenney the dramatist and Newton the artist — and in the more general society of Holland House, and in other distin- guished belles-lettres and social resorts at Long- man's and elsewhere, down to "supper at the Burton Ale House." Moore, as he himself tells us, sought and made the acquaintance of Irving at Meurice's table-dliote in Paris. It was in December, 1820, and his first impression is thus recorded — "a good-looking and intelligent man- nered man." They became friends at once, dined frequently together in company, and admired one another generously. Moore, as usual, is ready to ciironicle the compliments, and somewhat eager to put upon record his valuable sugges- tions. He speaks of Irving's " amazing rapidity" in the composition oi Bracebridge Hall, which Avas written while he was in the vein. At other times he could produce little. Moore tells us that some liundred and thirty pages of the new book were written in the course of ten days. Mr. Irving, however, never liked that spur to most authors, being " dogged by the press," as be terms it in the preface to one of his most agreeable booksy the Life of Goldsmitli, which was mostly written and driven through the printer's hands within the short period of two months. Moore, in several instances, claims his "thun- * Trefaco to the Kevised Edition of the Sketch-Bouk. der." The account of the bookseller's dinner in the story of " Buckthorne and his Friends," in the Tales of a Traveller, which owes every tiling to Irving's handling, Moore says is "so exactly like what I told him of one of tlie Longmans (the carving partner, the partner to laugh at the pop- ular author's jokes, the twelve-edition writers treated with claret, &c.), that I very much fear my friends in Paternoster Row will know them- selves in the picture." Moore tells us tliat he told Irving the story of " the woman with the black collar, and the h.ead falling off," which he had from Horace Smith, which, taking Irving's fancy, appeared in due time, as " The Adven- ture of the German Student," in the Tales of a Traveller. Such reminiscences are the jealous- ies of friendship ; they carry with them no taint of plagiarism. Moore records a pointed rebuke which Cooper, the novelist, once gave Rogers, in his company, when the poet saying of the Life of Columbiis, " in his dry, significant way," that " It's rather long,''^ Cooper turned round on him, and said sharplj", " That's a short criticism." In another passage, Moore, recording a visit of Irving to Sloperton, says: — "Took Irving after dinner to show him to the Starkeys, but he was sleepy, and did not open his mouth ; the same at Elwyn's dinner." He adds, what Geofi"rey Crayon himself would have accepted as a pane- gyric, — " not strong as a lion, but delightful as a domestic animal." This somnolence of Irving in company was a joke of the wits, doubtless exaggerated, but probably with some foundation. Yet his sensi^ tive organization left him a poor sleeper at night, D'Israeli, in his Vivian Grey, is the father of this story in his introduction of Geoffrey Crayon: "'Poor Washington! poor Washington!' said Vivian, writing ; ' I knew him well in London. He always slept at dinner. One day, as he was dining at Mr. Ilallam's, they took him, when asleep, to Lady Jersey's rout; and to see the Sieur Geoffrey, when he opened liis eyes ii^i the illumined saloons, was really quite admirable, quite an Arabian tale !' " We find these exaggerated tales of Irving's sleepiness in company long kept up as a tradition among dull diners-out. Miss Bremer, in 1849, in her Homes of the New World, is deliglited with his vivacity at table ; perhaps taking the excejjtion as a personal compliment to herself, for she had heard the old story, without much surprise, she says, as dinner-parties generally go. Bracehridge Hall, or the Himorists, the suc- cessor of The Sketch Book, is a series of pictui'es of English rural life, hcjliday customs, and refined village character of the Sir Roger de OoverJy por- traiture, centring about a fine old establishment John Neal's Blackwood Ckiticism. in Yorkshire. Tlie characters of Muster Simon, Jack Tibbetts, and General Harbottle do credit to tiie school of Goldsmitli and Addison. Tlie Stout Gentleman, the Village Choir, the delicate story of Annette Delarbre display the best pow- ers of the author; while the episodes of the Dutch tales of Dolph Heyliger and the Storm Ship, among the happiest passages of his genius, relieve tlie monotony of the English description. The winter of 1822 was ])assed by Mr. Irving at Dresden. He returned to Paris in 1823, and in the December of the following year ])ublished liis Tales of a Traveller^ witli tiie stories of the Nervous Gentleman, including that line piece of animal spirits and picturesque description, the B(jld Dragoon, tlie series of pictures of literary life in Buckthorne and his Friends — in which there is some of his most felicitous writing, blending humor, sentiment, and a kindly indul- gence for the frailties of life, — the romantic Italian Stories, and, as in the preceding work, a sequel of New World legends of Dutchmen and their companions, built up by the writer's in- vention in the expansion of the fertile theme of Captain Kidd, the well-known piratical and money-concealing adventurer. For this work Moore tells us tiiat Murray gave Mr. Irving fif- teen hundred pounds, and " he might have had two thousand."* These books were still pub- lished in the old form in numbers in New York, simultaneously Avith their English appearance. It was about this time that John Neal, in a sei'ies of lively and egotistical papers in Black- tcood^ on " American Writers," published rather a detailed account of Irving and his writings. In the course of it we meet with this personal description of Geoffrey Crayon. It is freely sketched, but has the rough likeness of a good caricature: — "He is, now, in liis fortieth year ; about tive feet seven; agreeable countenance; black hair; manly complexion ; tine hazel eyes, when lighted up, heavy in general ; talks better than he writes, when worthily excited; but falls asleep — literally asleep in his chair — at a formal dinner-party, in high life; half the time in a revery ; little impediment — a sort of uneasy, anxious, catching respiration of the voice, when talking zealously; writes a small, neat hand, like Montgomery, Allan Cunningham, or Shee (it is like that of each) ; indolent; nervous; ir- ritable; easily depressed; easily disheartened; very amiable ; no appearance of especial refine- ment; nothing remarkable, nothing uncommon about him ; — precisely such a man, to say all in a word, as people would continually overlook, pass by without notice, or forget, after dining with him, unless, peradventure, his name were * Diary, June IT, 1S24. mentioned; in which case — odds bobs! — they are all able to recall something remarkable in his way of sitting, eating, or looking — though, like Oliver Goldsmitli himself, he had never opened his mouth, while they were near; or sat, in a high chair — as'far into it as he could get — with his toes just reaching the floor." Neal was the first, we believe, to point out the occasional high poetical qualities in Irving's style. He stickled for a passage in the " Life of Perry," in the AnaJectic Magazine, picturing the "apparition" of the sea-fight to the natives on Lake Erie: "The bosoms of peaceful lakes Avhich, but a short time since, were scarcely nav- igated by man, except to be skimmed by the ligiit canoe of the savage, have all at once been ploughed by hostile ships. The vast silence that had reigned for ages on those mighty waters, was broken by the thunder of artillery, and the aftriglited savage stared with amazement from his covert, at tiie sudden apparitioji of a sea- fiyld amid the solitudes of the wilderness."* Again, after some fine compliments to The Sketch Boolc^ we are told " The touclies of poetry are everywhere; but never where one would look for them. * * The '■dusty Sflendor' of Westminster Abbey — the ' ship staggering'' over the precipices of the ocean — the shark '■darting, nice a, spectre^ through the hlue ^caters,'' — all these tilings are poetry. We could mention fifty more passages, epithets, words of power, which no mere prose writer would have dared, under any circumstances, to use. They are like the 'invincible locks' of Milton — revealing the god, in spite of every disguise. * * * When we come upon the epithets of Geoffrey, we feel as if we had found accidentally, after we had given up all hope, some part or parcel which had always been missing (as everybody could see, though no- body knew where to look for it), of the very thoughts or words with which he has now coupled it forever. Let us give an illustration. " Who has not felt, as he stood in the solemn, strange light of a great wilderness; of some old, awful ruin — a world of shafts and arches about him, like a druidical wood — illuminated by the sunset — a visible, bright atmosphere, coming through colored glass — who has not felt as if he would give his right hand for a few simple words — the fewer the better — to describe the appear- ance of the air about him? Would he call it s]}lendor? — it isn't splendor: dusty? — it would be ridiculous. But what if he say, like Irving, dusty splendor? — will he not have said all that can be said ? Who ever saw those two words associated before ? who would ever wish to see them separated again ?" * Analectic Magazine, Dec, 1S13. Columbus and the Spanish Books. Tlie winter of 1825 was passed by Mr. Irving in the Sontli of France;* and early in the fol- lowing year he went to Madrid, at the suggestion of Alexander H. Everett, then minister to Spain, for the purpose of translating the important se- ries of new documents relating to the voyage of Columbus, just collected by Navarrete. Por a translation was substituted the History of the Life and Voyages of Ghr'istopher Columlnis^ to which the Voyages and Discoveries of the Com- panions of Columbus were afterwards added. The Columbus was published in 1828; and the English edition brought its author, with an ex- pansion of his fame, a substantial return in three thousand guineas. It also gained him a high lionor in tlie receii)t of one of the lifty-guinea gold medals, provided by George IV. for emi- nence in historical writing, its companion being assigned to llallam. A tour to the South of Spain in this and the following year provided the materials for A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, and The Alhaml)ra, or the Rew Sketch- Book. The latter is dedicated, May, 1832, to Wilkie, the artist, who was a companion with the author in some of his excursions. Mr. Irving spent three months in the old Moorish palace. lie some time after, in America, published his Legends of the Conquest of Spain (in 1835); wiiich, with his Mahomet and his Successors (18-19-50), complete a series of Spanish and Moorish subjects, marked by the same genial and ])oetio treatment; the fancy of the writer evidently luxuriating in the personal freedom of movement of his heroes, their humor of indi- vidual character, and the Avarm oriental color- ing of the whole. If the author liad any prefer- ences for his writings, they were for these fas- cinating themes. He abandoned himself to the mystical charm of the East — that fertile iileas- ure-ground of the imagination, about which still hangs sometliing of the childliood of the world; a land of idle ease and magical incantations, where new generations are constantly entertained with the unexluiusted fable. " He loved" (perhaps bet- * An idle story of Irving in Italy appears at this time to have bt^en cirpul.'ited among the literary triflers in London. It found its way into Blackwoud^ii Maions is of a much graver nature, for it implies a charge of hypocrisy and double dealing which I indignant- ly repel as incom[)atible with my nature. You intimate that" 'in |)ublishing a book of my own, 1 prei)are one preface for my countrymen full of amor patrice, and professions of home feeling, and another for the London nuirket in which such professions are studiously omitted.' Your infer- ence is that these professions are hollow, and intended to gain favor with my countrymen, and that they are omitted in tiie London edition tlirough fear of olfending English readers. "Were I indeed chargeable with such baseness, I should well merit the contempt you invoke upon my head. As I give you credit, sir, for i)robity, I was at a loss to think on what you could ground such an imputation, until it occurred to me that some circumstances attending the publication of my Tour on the Prairies, might have given rise to a misconception in your mind. " It may seem strange to tliose intimately ac(piainted with my character, that I should think it necessary to defend myself from a charge i>f (liipliriti/ ; but as m.-iiiy of your readers may know me as little as you appear to do, I must again be excused in a detail of facts. " When my Tour on the Prairies was ready fnr the jiress, I sent a manuscript copy to Eng- land for i)nblication, and at the same time, i)ut a copy in the press at New York. As this was my xiv first appearance before the American public since my return, I was induced, while the work was printing, to modify the introduction so as to exi^ress my sense of the unexjjected warmth with which I had been welcomed to my native place, and my general feelings on finding myself once more at home, and among my friends. These feelings, sir, were genuine, and were not ex- pressed with half the warmth with which they were entertained. Circumstances alluded to in that introduction had made the reception I met with from my countrymen, doubly dear and touching to me, and had tilled my heart with atfectionate gratitude for their unlooked-for kindness. Li tact, misconstructions of my con- duct and misconceptions of my character, some- what similar to those I am at present endeavor- ing to rebut, had a]>peared in the public press, and, as I erroneously supposed, had prejudiced the mind of my countrymen against me. The professions therefore to which you have alluded, were uttered, not to obviate such prejudices, or to win my way to the good will of my country- men, but to express my feelings after their good will had been unecpiivocally manifested. While I thought they doubted me, I remained silent ; when 1 found they believed in me, I spoke. I have never been in the habit of beguiling them b}' fulsome professions of patriotism, tiiose clieap passports to public favor ; and I think I might for once have been indulged in briefly touching a chord, on which others have harped to so much advantage. "Now, sir, even granting I had 'studiously omitted' all those professions in the introduction intended for the London market, instead of giv- ing utterance to them after that article had been sent otf, where, I would ask, would have been the impropriety of the act? What had the Brit- ish imblic to do with those home greetings and those assurances of gratitude and afiection which related exclusively to my countrymen, and grew out of my actnal position with regard to tiiem? There was nothing in them at which the IJritish reader could possibly take olfence ; the omitting of them, therefore, could not have argued 'ti- midity,' but would have been merely a matter of good taste; for they would have been as much out of place repeated to English readers, as would have been my greetings and salutations to my family circle, if repeated out of the window for the benefit of the passers-by in the street. "I have no intention, sir, of imputing to you any malevolent feeling in the unlooked-for attack you have m.ade upon me: lean see no motive you have for sucii hostility. I rather think you have acted from honest feelings, hastily excited by a' misajjprehension of tacts; and that you liave been a little too eawr to give an instance TiiH Ikying Dixnek. of that 'i)lain(k'aling' which you have recently adopted as your war-cry. Plaindealiiijj, sir, is a great merit, when accompanied hy maL!;nanimity, and exercised with a just and generous spirit; but if puslied too far, and made the excuse for indulging every impulse of passion or prejudice, it may render a man, especially in your situation, a very ott'ensive, if not a very mischievous mem- ber of the community. Such I sincerely hoi)e and trust may not be your case; but this hint, given in a spirit of caution, not of accusation, may not be of disservice to you. "In the present instance I have only to ask that you will give this article an insertion in your paper, being intended not so much for yourself, as for those of your readers who may have been prejudiced against me by your ani- madversions. Your editorial position of course gives you an opportunity of connnenting upon it according to the current of your feelings ; and, whatever may be your comments, it is not i)rob- ablo that they will draw any further reply fron) me. Recrimination is a miserable kind of re- dress in which I never indulge, and I have no relish for the warfare of the pen." With all the gentleness of Geoffrey Crayon^ Mr. Irving was a high-spirited man where honor, duty, or the proprieties were at stake. We have anticipated, however, the course of our narrative; for this correspondence took place in 1837. Mr. Irving arrived in America, at New York, on his return. May 21, 1832, after an absence of seventeen years. A public diimer was at once projected by his friends and the most eminent persons of the city. It took ])lace at the City Hotel on the 30th May. Mr. Irving had his old friend and literary associate, Mr. Paulding, on one side, and Chan- cellor Kent on the other. Bishoj) Onderdonk said grace, and Dr. Wainwright returned thanks. Mr. Gallatin was present, with many foreign and native celebrities.* Mr. Vcrplanck was ab- sent at the session of Congress. The President of the meeting, Ciiancellor Kent, welcomed the illustrious guest to his native land, in a speech of good taste and feeling. His appreciation of Irving's early American ])roductions, and not less, of his later, was warm and enthusiastic. The History of Diedrich Knicher'bocher has * We may add tlie names of others present at this dinner, who ottered toasts: Philip Hone, William Turner, Charles Kin;;, JudKe Irving, General bantander, Lt.-Gov. Livingston, Ciiancellor W;ihvorth, General Scott, Commodore Chauncey, William A. J>u<'r, M. M. Noah, Prosper M. Wctmore, James Law.t extent; when I beheld a glorious sunsiiine light- ing up the spires and donies, some familiar to memory, others new and unknown, and beam- ing upon a forest of masts of every nation, ex- tending as far as the eye could reach ? I have gazed with admiration upon many a fair city and stately harbor, but my admiration was cold and inelfectual, for I was a stranger, and had no pro])erty in the soil. Here, however, my heart throbbed with i)ride and joy as I admired. I had a birthright in the brilliant scene before me : 'This Avas my own, my native land!' " It has been asked can I be content to live in this country? AVhoever asks that question must have but an inadetory of Astoria.^ "Now, sir, I beg to int'orm you that this is not the History of Astoria. Mr. Gallatin was misinformed as to the jiart he has iissigned mo in it. The work was undertaken by me through a real relish of the subject. li.i the course of visits in early life to Canada, I had seen much of the magnates of the Northwest Company^ and of the hardy trappers and fur-traders in their employ, and had been excited by their stories of adventurous expeditions into the ' Indian coun- try.' I was sure, therefore, that a narrative, treating of them and their doings, could not fail to be full of stirring interest, and to lay open regions and races of our country as yet but little known. I never asked nor received of Mr. Astor a farthing on account of the work. He paid my nepiiew, who was then absent practising law in Illinois, for coming on, examining, and collating maimscript journals, accounts, and other docu- ments, and prejiaring what lawyers would call a brief, for ine. Mr. Fitzgreene Hulleck, who. was with Mr. Astor at the time, determined what the compensation of my nephew ought to be. When the brief was finished, I paid my nephew an ad- ditional consideration on my own account, and out of my own purse. It was the compensation paid by Mr. Astor to my nephew which Mr. Gal- latin may have heard of, and supposed it was paid to myself; but even in that case, the amount, as reported to him, was greatly exaggerated. " Mr. Astor signified a wish to have the work brought out in a superior style, supposing that it was to be done at his expense. I replied that it must be i)roduced in the style of my other works, and at my ex[)enso and risk ; and that whatever profit I was to derive from it must be from its sale and my bargain with the publishers. This is the true History of Astoria, as far as I was concerned in it. " huriiig my long intimacy wiili ^Ir. Astor, Compliment fkom Daniel Webster. commeiiciiii; wlien I was a Voung man, and end- ini^MJiily with his deatli, I never cume under a IK'Cuniary obligation to him of any kind. At a ti)ne of public pressure, when, having invested a part of my very moderate means in wild lands, , I was straitened and obliged to seek aocommo- dations from moneyed institutions, he repeatedly urged me to accept loans from liim, but I always declined. He was too proverbially rich a man for me to permit the shadow of a pecuniary favor to rest on our intercourse. "The only moneyed transaction between us was my purchase of a share in a town he was found- ing at Green Bay; for that I paid cash, though he wished the amount to stand on mortgage. The land fell in value; and some years after- wards, when I was in Spain, Mr. Astor, of his own free-will, took back the share from ray agent, and repaid tlie original ])urchase-money. This, I repeat, was the only moneyed transaction that ever took place between us ; and by this I lost four or five years' interest of my investment. "My intimacy with Mr. A. was perfectly in- dependent and disinterested. It was sought ori- ginally on his part, and grew up, on mine, out ot the friendship he spontaneously manifested for me, and the confidence he seemed to repose in me. It was drawn closer when, in the prose- cution of my literary task, I became acquainted, from liis papers and Ids confidential conversa- tions, with the scope and power of his mind, and the grandeur of his enterprises. His noble project of the Astor Libijaky, conceived about the same time, and which I was solicitous he should carry into execution during his lifetime, was a still stronger link of intimacy between us! " He was altogether one of the most remark- able men I have ever known: of penetrating sagacity, massive intellect, and possessing ele- ments of greatness of which the busy world around him was little aware ; who, like Malte- Brun, regarded him ' merely as a merchant seek- ing his own profit.' " Very respectfully, your friend and servant, ' " "Washington Ikving." Though made up from the most unpromising material of a commercial correspondence fre- quently carried on under great disadvantages with gaps and deficiences which had to be siip! phed from the scanty stock of published travels '" t'le West, the skill of the writer overcame all difficulties. His own conception of the artistical requirements of the subject, happily fulfilled by his adroit pen, is expressed in the concluding paragraph of the Introduction:— " The work I here present to the public is necessarily of a rambling and somewhat disjointed nature, com- prising various expe<]irions and adventures bv 3 ■' land and sea. The facts, however, will prove to be linked and banded together by one great scheme, devised and conducted by a master- spirit; one set of characters, also, continues throughout, appearing occasionally, though some- times at long intervals, and the whole enterprise winds up by a regular catastrophe ; so that the work, without any labored attempt at artificial construction, actuallv possesses much of that variety so much sought after in works of fiction, and considered so important to the interest of every history." Another undertaking of a similar character was the_ Adventtires of Captain BonnevilU, U.S.A., in the Eochtj Mountains and the Far West, prepared from the ]\rSS. of that traveller but made an original work by the observation and style of the writer. Commencing with 1839, for the two following years, Mr. Irving contributed a series of papers monthly to the Kn ickerbocler Maqazine. Among these tales and sketches are two narratives of some length. The Early Experiences of Ralph Ringwood, and Mountjoy, or some Passages out oj the Life of a Castle Builder. A number of these papers, with some others from the Englisli Annuals and other sources, were collected in 1855 in a volume, with tlie title of Wolfert's Roost. In February, 1842, Mr. Irving was ajjpointed Minister to Spain, an ofiice which he occupied for the next four years. The nomination was entirely unsought for, and was a compliment paid him by Daniel Webster, who announced it to him in a dispatch bearing his honorarv title. It was the first notice he received of it. On his return to America he took up his i)ermaneiit residence at his cottage, "Sunnvside," near Tar- rytown, on the banks of the iliulson, the very spot which he had described vears before in the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," lis the castle of the Herr van Tassel, and of the neighborhood of which he had said :— " If ever I should wish for a retreat, whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly awav the remainder of a troubled life, I know of^ione more promising than this little valley." At this retreat, looking out upon the river which he loved so well, he continued to live, in the midst of a family circle composed of his brother and his nieces, hospitably entertaining his friends, occasionally visiting difterent jxHlions of the country, and employing his pen in the composi- tion of his Life of Wa.shiugtoti, the last volume of which passed through tlie press the present year. The preparation of this great work, tlie publication of Oliver Gohhmith] a Biography, an enlargement of a life which he had jji-efixed to an edition in Paris of that author's works, xvii The Life of Washington. adapting the researches of Prior and Forster, and a revised edition of liis own writings pub- lislied by Putnam, of which several of the vol- nines have been issued in a more costly form, enriched by tlie vigorous and refined designs of Darley, were the literary em[)loyments of his closing years. His retirement at Suiinyside was all tliat liis youthful fancy painted, and more than experience of the world could have prom- ised. His age was not exempt from infirmities ; but it was spared many of the sufferings common to mortality. And wiien lie came to die, his soul passed to iieaven the nearest way. His death, on tlie niglit of November 28, 1859, when he had Just retired from his cheerful family circle, was instantaneous. We now return to the concluding literary la- bor of the life we have thus traced to its close. Tlie preface to the first volume of the Wash- ington bears date 1855. Two volumes were published in that year; a third in the following; a fourth in 1857; the fifth, and concluding por- tion, in 1859. It was the completion of a work to which, in his own words prefixed to the last volume, '•'• the author had long looked forward as the crowning effort of his literary career." Con- tinuing this retrospect, Mr. Irving relates that " the idea of writing a life of Washington entered at an early day into his mind. It was especially l)ressed upon his attention nearly thirty years ago, while he was in Europe, by a proposition of tiie late Mr. Archibald Constable, the eminent ])ublien, and direct; or if, ovlw- Genius of Irving. — Habits of Composition. powered by adverse circumstances, lie deviate into error, it is but inoiiientary — he soon resumes bis onward and lionorable career, and continues it to the end of his pilgrimage." -The finest description, perhaps, of the Ameri- can climate ever written is from the pen of Ir- ving. It occurs in an out-of-the-way slcetch of the Cat-skills in the Booh of the Picturesque^ published a few years ago. " Here let me say a word in favor of those vicissitudes which are too often made the subject of exclusive repining. If they annoy us occasionally by changes from hot to cold, from wet to dry, they give us one of the most beautiful climates in the world. They give us the brilliant sunshine of the south of Europe with the fresh verdure of the north. They tioat our summer sky with clouds of gorgeous tints or fleecy* whiteness, and send down cooling showers to refresh the panting earth and keep it green. Our seasons are all poetical ; the plienomena of our heavens are full of sublimity and beauty. Winter with us has none of its proverbial gloom. It may have its howling winds, and thrilling frosts, and whirling snow-storms ; but it has also its long intervals of cloudless sunshine, when the snow-clad earth gives redoubled brightness to the day ; Avhen at night the stars beam with intensest lustre, or the moon floods the whole landscape with her most limpid radiance — and then the joyous outbreak of our spring, bursting at once into leaf and blossom, redundant with vegetation, and vociferous with life! — and the splendors of our summer ; its morning voluptu- ousness and evening glory; its airy palaces of sun-gilt clouds piled up in a deep azure sky; and its gusts of tempest of almost tropical grandeur, when the forked lightning and the bellowing thunder volley from the battlements of heaven and shake the sultry atmosphere — and the sub- hme melancholy of our autumn, magnificent in its decay, withering down the pomp and pride of a woodland country, yet reflecting back from its yellow forests tlie golden serenity of the sky — surely Ave may say that in our climate 'the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firma- ment showeth forth his handywork : day unto day utteretli speech ; and night unto night show- eth knowledge.' " In estimating the genius of Irving, we can hardly attach too high a value to the refined (pialities and genial humor which have made his writings favorites wherever the English language is read. The charm is in the proportion, the keeping, tlie happy vein which inspires happi- ness in return. It is the felicity of but few au- thors, out of the vast stock of English literature, to delight equally yuuug and old. The tales of Irving are the favorite authors of childhood, and their good humor and amenity can pleay where most literature is weariness, in the sick-room of the convalescent. Every influence which breathes from these writings is gt)od and generous. Their sentiment is always just and manly, without cant or aflectation ; their humor is always within the bounds of propriety. They have a fresh inspira- tion of American nature, which is not the less nature for the art Avith which it is adorned. Tlie color of personality attaches us througliout to the author, whose humor of character is always to be felt. This happy art of presenting rude and confused objects in an orderly pleasur- able 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 occa- sions only, we believe, — in some stanzas to the Passaic Eiver, 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 ex- quisite passages of vivid description from West- minster Abbey and English rural scenery to the waste beauties of the great region beyond the Mississippi. In composition, Mr. Irving's style flowed easily, though in common with most writers of original genius he had his favoring moods and seasons. Some of his best works were struck off at a heat. He took pleasure in writing when he could have his own way, and nurse a subject in his mind. The many hours passed at his desk in the absorbing pursuit of tracing his small, neat manuscript pages, were among his happiest. His principles of composition were few and sim- ple. He recommended short and direct phrases in writing, with as few long words as possible, avoiding the use of conjunctions and expletives. On looking over his books we find that he is much less indebted to the Latin element of the language, for the flow of his composition, than we had supposed. He would, doubtless, have concurred with the advice of S3'dney Smith to a young author, to improve his style by striking out every other word. He attributed his ease in writing, we have heard it stated, to the early training which lie received at his iirst school, where this branch of education was much insisted upon. He would write out the compositions of many of his school- fellows, and adapc his style to that of the one whose task he had undertaken. This is the re- marli of one who knew him well. But whatever xxi Pp:rsonal Tbaitc direction may thus have been given to his ])()\vors, Ave suspect that, as in the case of Oliver (iolilsiiiith, a hapj))' instinct was liis cliief guide, and that he found liis way to his place in English literature, with but little aid from schoolmasters or preceptors. Good British autlun-s were his jirofessors; Ins college was the library wdiere the learned doctors were the wits of Queen Anne, and such kindly instructors as Sterne, Johnson, and above all, Goldsmith ; but his uni- versity was the world. " He read much as a boy," remarks our nar- rator, " and always liad entertaining books in his desk i'ov a stealthy perusal, when the master's eve was turned. He was not a very deep classi- cal scholar, not having received a collegiate edu- cation, but his deficiencies in this respect were amply compensated by his thorough ease in the use of plain, terse English, in which he was ex- celled by none. In reading, his memory of facts was not good, but he would grasp the spirit of a narrative, and conjure up a coloring of his own, which indelibly impressed it upon his mind, and was used as occasion required."* We have said that the university of Irving was the world. He was never a very bookish man in the restricted sense; he was oftener to be found in good company than in the library, in the fields and streets than in the study ; yet he was not a man of action in crowds. His life was a happy compromise between literature and society. A meditative disposition threw him upon himself; he was not cramped by pedan- try, nor was his mind volatilized or lost in the dissijiations or business of the world. It was early remarked by one of the most subtle and powerful critics whom America lias produced, Mr. Dana, the author of that more deeply-graven " Sketch Book," The Idle Man, that " Irving's wit and humor do not appear to come of reading witty and humorous books ; but from the world acting upon a mind of that cast, and putting those powers in motion." t We have now concluded our brief sketch of the literary career of Washington Irving. It would I)e an injustice to his memory, and a re- l)roach to ourselves, not to say a word of those sterling moral qualities which were the secret springs nurturing, in the image of Jeremy Tay- lor, the " fair spreading tree" of his reputation in his books. He was intimately and essentially, in small things and in great, an honest, honorable man. His judgment was sound, and his course always straightforward ; so tliat he attained suc- cess Avitliont craft or chicanery, which were en- tirely foreign to his nature. A modest simplicity ♦ MS. Notes by Mr. J. Carson Brevoort. t North American Uoview for 1S19. Article — "Tlie Sketch Book." .\.\ii guided him in every thing. A beneficent deity had given him neither ])overty nor riches, and had removed far from him vanity and lies. He had none of the frequent atiectations of litera- ture. He valued reputation, but he was never seen stumbling in tlie awkward pursuit of praise. It came to him through life, and in abundant measure in age, when it was most welcome, to cheer drooping spirits, and clothe with a warm mantle of charity and affection, the chill, declin- ing years. " Nothing amazed, him," writes Mr. Brevoort to us, " so much as to be lionized, or made the centre of a group of listeners. To bear him talk, and to draw him out, it was necessary to have but few present. He preferred the society of such as liad some refinement of taste; not humorous or witty, but with a disposition to take the pleasant side of any question ; neither boisterous nor satirical. He never said any thing for effect, nor with a view to its being repeated or recorded. His remarks would drop from him as naturally as possible, and he never monopo- lized the conversation, but followed, instead of leading it," His chief guides were his tastes and affections, with which his principles of duty and religion, his love of independence, and his patriotism, were inwrought. Let his pastor, and the villa- gers and children of his neighborhood, as on the day of his funeral, that memorable first of Ds- cember, when nature seemed to sympathize with his departure from earth, bear witness to his un- affected piety. THE FUNERAL OF WASHINGTON IRVING. BY W. FRANCIS WILLIAMS. Yesterday* the funeral of Washington Irving took place at Tarrytown, where for twenty-one years the great author had resided, and to almost every inhabitant of which he was a personal friend. Indeed, the unanimity with which the peojde of that vicinity fiocked to do hoftor to the memorj' of their late fellow-townsman, was the spontaneous exhihition of their personal re- gard rather than an ovation to the genius and talent of a world-renowned author. According to previous arrangement the stores at Tarrytown were closed yesterday, and many of them draped with black and white muslin. This gave a peculiar air of melancholy to the aspect of this quiet village, to which the slow tolling of the church-bells gave an additional inournfulness. The numerous visitors from New York, most of whom came by the eleven-o'clock train -from the city, reaching Tarrytown at about * Tbisskotcli iippearod in tlie N. Y. Evening Post, Dec. 2, 1850. Funeral Services. noon, were thus at once reminded of the solem- nity of the occasion and of the mournful charac- ter of their visit. It would be difficult to estimate the number of persons that visited the village, to attend the funeral of Mr. Irving. "We were, however, as- sured by an old inhabitant that on only one previous occasion had there been so large a concourse of people in Tarrytown. That occa- sion was the dedication of the monument erected to the memory of Paulding, Williams, and Van Wert, on the spot where those patriots captured Major Andre. Certainly on no previous occasion has the village contained such an array of men eminent in the various walks of literature and commerce. The principal road at Tarrytown, after leaving the depot, and passing by a number of the prin- cipal stores and the hotels, Avinds up a short steep hill, and continues running eastwardly for about a quarter of a mile, until it meets the main road running from New York northward, i)aral- lel with the Hudson river. The upi)er part of the village has a more rustic appearance than the portion beneath the hill, as the houses are detached, and stand in large gardens surrounded by rich foliage, which even yet has not entirely disappeared. At the crossing, where the road from the depot meets the main road, which, during its course through Tarrytown, is called "Broadway," an arch or canopy of black and white drapery dec- orated the street. To the sotith, about two miles from the junction, is Sunnyside, the cele- brated residence of Mr. Irving, the Wolfert's Koost of the old Dutch times. At this period of the year, Sunnyside generally presents a melancholy appearance, the trees be- ing almost entirely denuded of foliage, the dry leaves lying upon the walks and lawns, and the wind playing around the yet verdant evergreens and among the bare branches with the soft, sad music peculiar to the autumn breeze. The house itself, with its quaint gables, its old-fashioned ornaments and rambling wings, readily assumes a tinge of melancholy. But yesterday it appeared unusually lonely; the windows were closed, and dehcacy prevented others than those connected with the family or with the necessary funeral offices from intruding upon the house of woe, or trespassing upon the tastefully laid-out grounds. At about one o'clock the funeral procession left Sunnyside, wliere a private religious service had been held by Rev. Dr. Creighton, the rector of Christ Church, Tarrytown, and an intimate personal friend of the deceased. The coffin was placed in a handsome, hearse, the sides of which were glazed, so tliat the coffin was plainly visi- #. ble. The carriages containing the friends of the deceased followed. The turn])ike road com- mands noble views of the Hudson river, with which the memory of Irving will be forever associated, while the " broad expanse of the Tappaan Zee," dotted with sails, is spread out like a panorama before the traveller. The fol- lowing is the PROGRAMME OF THE PROCESSION. The CommiUee of Arrangements, consisting of Mr. Benson Ferris, Mr. William Chaltners, Mr. Seth Bird, Hon. Holmes Odell, General Henry Storms. THE olekoy: Eev. Wm. D. Creighton. D.D., Rev. J. S. Spencer, iu carriages, wearing their gowns. physicians: John C. Peters, M.D., H. Caruthers, M.D., in carriages. PALL BEAKKRS : Professor James Kenwick, Goiiverneur Kemble, Mr. James A. Hamilton, Mr. Henry Sheldon, Dr. James Q. Cogswell, Mr. N. B. Holmes. Gen. James Watson Webb, Mr. George D. Morgan, in carriages. THE HEARSE, drawn by t^^•o horses. MOURN K.r.s, relatives of the deceased, as follows: Ebenezer Irving, aged S6. brother of deceased ; Rev. Pierre P. Irving, Rev. Theudore Irving, Mr. Pierre M. Irving, Mr. Saunders Irving. Mr. Oscar Irving, Mr. Edgar Irving, nephews of deceased; Mr. Moses H. Grinned, nephew by marriage; Mr. Irving Grinned, Mr. Irving Van Wart, and otlier relatives in carriages. Private carriages of deceased. Trustees of the Astor Library. Representatives of the Common Council of New T«rk, who joined the procession, on foot. Teachers and Pupils of the Private Schools, two and two. Citizens and strangers, numbering some five hundred, on foot, four abreast. Over one hundred and fifty carriages and other vehicles, with friends, which covered over a mile of space. As the procession approached the public school, the children were seen arrayed in a line upon the roadside. As the hearse passed, the boys and teachers uncovered their heads, in re- spect to the memory of one who for years had taken an active interest in their studies. The church, where the funeral ceremonies took place, is only a few rods from the school- house, and stands on the west side of the road. It is an unpretending structure of red brick, in the perpendicular Gothic or Tudor style of architecture, furnished with a scpiare central tower, embowered in trees, draped with vines, and, like most country and village churches, provided with spacious sheds for the acconnno- d;i; inn of the horses and vehicles of attendants frcun a distance. The basement of the church is occupied for the Sunday-school, and the interior of tlie church itself is finished with the utmost simplicity. Three Gothic windows on either side affijrd ingress for air and light. Over the entrance is a gallery for the organ and choir, while the chancel, lighted by a handsome stained window, is in a recess at the opposite or east end xxiii At CHUKcn. of tlie building. On tlie north wall are a couple of diamond-shaped tablets t(^ the memory of eminent members of the congregation long since deceased. For a number of years, Rev. William I). Creighton has officiated as rector of Christ Church. Dr. Creighton is a man of wealth, residing in one of the most beautiful country seats on the Hudson, and perforins his parochial duties without receiving any salary. He was at one time, on the death of Dr. Wainwright, elected Provisional Bishop of tins diocese, but declined the itosition, before his consecration, and thus made room for the election of the liresent Provisional Bishop. Rev. James Selden Spencer is the assistant-minister of Christ Church, Tarrytown. At twelve o'clock the little church was crowd- ed to repletion, and quite a panic was occasioned by a report that the gallery was threatening to fall. This report originated in the fact that one of the wooden i)illars supporting the organ-loft Avas observed to move, Avhile a crackling sound was heard. A number of people crowded out of the cliurch in terror. It appears that the Hoor of the cliurch had sligiitly sunk under the un- usual weight, thus loosening the pillar. The gal- lery was, however, firmly supported by cross- beams, and there was no real danger. The panic was soon allaj'ed. At about half-past one, the clergy present en- tered the chancel, led by Bishop Potter, and in- cluding Rev. Dr.Vinton, of St. Paul's, New York ; Rev. Dr. Taylor, of Grace Chureh; Rev. Mr. Meade; Rev. Mr, Farmington, of Trinity; Rev. Dr. Morgan, of St. Thomas ; Rev. Dr. McVickar, Rev. Mr. Babbitt, and Rev. Mr. Moore. Among the clergymen in the body of the house was Rev. J. B. Wakeley, the distinguished Methodist cler- gyman of this city. Rev. Dr. Creighton and Rev. Mr. Spencer, the officiating clergymen, met the body at the door of tiie church, and proceeded up the south aisle, reading the oi)ening sentences of the Episcopal burial service : " I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord ; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet sliall lie live ; and whosoever livetli and beliovetli in me, shall never die. '• I know that my Ecdecmor liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after luy skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God ; whom I shall see for myself^ and mine eyes shall behold, and not another. " We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be the name of the Lord." Arrived at -the chancel, tlie coffin was depos- ited before the chancel-rail, while the choir sang to a Gregorian chant, tlie ajipointed anthem, "Lord, let me know my end." Dr. Creighton then read the lesson from the 15th cliapter of 1 (yorinthians, and the choir sting the following xxiv verses of the 20lh hymn, to the chond known as "St. Ann's:" "Behold the innumerable host Of angels clothed in light; Behold the sjdrits of the.jnst, Whose faith is changed to sight. Behold the blest assembly there, Wliose names are writ in heaven ; Hear, too, the .Iiidse of all declare Their sins through Christ forgiven. Angels, and living saints, and dead, But one eommunioM make — All jiiin in Christ, their vital Head, And of llis love partake." This hymn is often sung at funerals, and was selected for the funeral of llie late Bishop Waiu- wright. Dr. Creighton then stated that those desiring to take a last look at the features of tlie deceased could do so by passing up tiie south aisle, crossing in front of the ciiancel, and leaving by the nortli aisle. This was a ])oor arrangement, as the head of the coffin fronting to the north, tlie face of the deceased was not visible to the beholders until •they were directly before it; and as the time allowed to each was necesstirily very short, few could take more than a i)assing glimpse. By approaching at tlie north tiisle from the foot of the coffin, a much more .satisfactory view could have been obtained. Nearly a tltousand persons wiio had been un- able to gain entrance to the church iivailed them- selves of tliis mournfid privilege, and jiassed in quick, though solemn procession, by tiie remains of Washington Irving. Among tlie distinguislicd men who took part in this token of respect, or were present at the services, were Couimodore Paulding, Hamilton Fish, John A. Dix, William B. Astor, Gnlian 0. Verplanck, George Bancroft, N. P.Willis, Donald G. Aritchell, Tiiomas Hicks, John Jay, Henry T. Tuckerman, G. P. Putnam, Evert A. Duyckinck, George L. Dnyckiiick, George Folsom, Frederick Saunders, President King of Columbia College, Judge Kent, Fred- erick S. Cozzens. Almost every inhabitant of Tarrytown was jiresent to offer tlieir last> tribute of respect to their late friend and fellow-towns- man. The features of Mr. Irving appeared verj' thin to those who hiid not seen him for some time. During the last year, however, Mr. Irving's fail- ing health had visibly told upon his attenuated frame, and he looked very ditferent from what ho did five years ago. Then he migiit htivo been seen every Sunday in his pew at tlie little village church, always ready at the close of the services to greet the numerous friends thtit always met him by the chureh-door. He appeared well and hearty — as unlike the conventional idea of a lit- erary iiuui as could be, tind more like a well-to-do The Gkave. merchant or a respectable alderman. Mr. Irving dressed, of course, respectably, but never ele- gantly; and he often had a peculiar shambling gait, that would attract the attention even of those who did not know him. In entering the church he usually was waylaid by a few friends, spoke a few words with them, and then passed into his pew near the chancel, recognizing by a kindly smile, as he walked up the aisle, his vari- ous acquaintances. At other times he would visit the Sunday-school, for many years under the superintendence of his intimate personal friend and his pall-bearer, Mr. Nathaniel B. Holmes, of Spring Hill Cottage, Tarrytown. He •always was very fond of and exceedingly popular among children, and therefore took a lively in- terest in the Sunday-school. He was for many years a warden of Christ Church, and on several occasions served as lay delegate to the Diocesan Convention. A firm, though not bigoted Epis- copalian, Mr. Irving loved the services of his Church, and often expressed his devoted admira- tion of her liturgj'. At the meeting held by the citizens of Tarrytown the night after Mr. Irving's de^th. Rev. Mr. Spencer spoke of Mr. Irving's love of the Church, his goodness of heart, and his susceptibility to emotional influences. He said that he had seen Mr. Irving's eyes well over with tears at the least circumstance that would touch his heart. He was passionately fond of music. On the occasion of his first interview with Mr. Irving, he was expressing his interest in that glorious hynm of the Ciiurch, the Gloria in KvceUis ; and repeating tlie words, "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, and good-will to men," he exclaimed, with his eyes moistened, " That is religion, Mr. Spencer; that is true re- ligion for you." Mr. Irving usually attended church accompa- nied by his nieces and other relatives. * * * Mr. Irving's body was inclosed in a rosewood coflin, which was embossed with heavy silver screws, and furnished on the sides with chased silver handles. On the toj) was a silver plate bearing tlie inscription : WASHINGTON IRVING. Born April 3, 1783 ; Died November 2S, 1S59. Wreaths of native and exotic flowers lay on the coffin-lid. The corpse was clothed in ordinary civilian costume. The route to tlie grave lay along a road offer- ing most beautiful glimjjses of land and water scenery, but now rendered peculiarly interesting by the fact that it passes througli scenes that the pen of Mr. Irving- has rendered classic. The hearse and carriages, accompanied and preceded by a large number of ])edostrians, started from 4 the church at about two o'chick, and passed up tiie main road, through and beyond tlie village. The piazzas of the houses were crowded with si)ectators, wlnle the rocks on the wayside also served as standing-points for strangers and citizens. "Wiiile the procession was on its way the bells of the various churches tolled respon- sively. Tiie procession passed through the village by the monument erected last year on the spot where Major Andre was captured, until a sudden turn and rapid descent in the road brouglit the spectator in full view of one of tlie most delicious bits of pastoral scenery in the vicinity of New York — the brook and cove of Sleepy llohow, with its pond reflecting the trees upon its hilly borders, while on its opposite shore stood the celebrated Van Tassel mansion, the same to which Ichabod Crane was invited on the night of his celebrated adventure with the headless horseman. The old mill still stands, forming a prominent feature in the picture, and doing to this day good and active service, A few rods further and the bridge which Iciiabod crossed in his furious flight, and which Irving in his tale has immortalized in tlie same way that Burns immortalized another bridge in his Tam O'Shan- ter, canie in sight. It was elegantly decorated with evergreens, and black and white drapery and rosettes. Beyond this, on the ojiposite bank, stands the old Dutch Church, which, ac- cording to an inscription on its front, was built in 1699, by Frederick Phillips and Catharine Van Cortlandt his wife. Tlie Tarrytown Ceme- tery, which bears also the title of the Mount Pleasant Cemetery, lies to tiie north of this Church, upon the slope of the hill. It is already thickly poi)ulated with tombstones, some of them dating as tar back as the year 1667. Near the summit of the slo])e, where a grove of oak and yew trees commences to crown tiie hill, is the burial-jilaee of the Irving family. It is a large square lot, bounded by a low fence and a thickly grown evergreen hedge. Near the centre is a row of five graves, while a few feet distant is another row of five more graves, all marking the resting-places of the deceased members of the Irving famil}-. Between tliese two rows, and connecting them into one continuous row, is the grave of Washington Irving, whicli, I'ke the others, will be marked by a ])lain whi'e marble slab. This latest grave is very near the centre of tlie Irving lot. Only a few carriages, containing the relatives of the deceased, approached the grave, the others being left in the road by tiie ohl church, while tlie occupants walked to the plac^of interment. Dr. Creighton officiated, and, according to the solemn form of the Episcoi)al service, consigned XXV Pkoceedings of the Board of Aldermen. the " earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes." The scene at this iiiomeiit, apart from the insep- arable solemnity of such an occasion, was one of more than ordinary interest. The day was mild and balmy as at spring- time, while the sun, yet high above the horizon, was veiled rather than dimmed by a film of cloud, which softened the rays that would other- wise have fallen with painful brilliancy upon the eyes of the reverently uncovered crowd that was present. The relatives and personal friends of the deceiised were within the inclosure of the burial lot, while outside, and upon the various hillocks commanding a view of the scene, were many of the townspeople and strangers. Dr. Creighton, Bishop Potter, and the Rev. Pierre P. Irving stood at the head of the grave, and by them was the venerable brother of Washington Irving, Mr. Ebenezer Irving, now eighty-six years old, sujjported by his two daughters, the nieces whose care and atfection so grea.tly enli- vened the later years of Washington Irving's life. Other relations and friends made up the group. The scene spread out before this sad as- sembly, though all unheeded by them, was one of singular beauty. Down the green hill-slope, thickly dotted with grave-stones, groups of late comers were coming slowly towards the place of interment. At the foot of the slope was the old revolutionary church, its front draped in black, while the road before it was crowded with car- riages. Beyond tliis the smooth sheet of water that su]>plie!^ the ancient Van Tassel mill-dam was ])luinly discernible, while still farther were the village of Tarrytown and the Hudson river, with the Palisades forming a distant background. The delicate blue haze that pervaded the atmos- phere mingled with the rich tints of an afternoon sun, which, as it descended, resolved itself, an hour or two later, into one of those gorgeous autumn sunsets that add such a peculiar glory to American scenery. And it was in such a place as this, on such a day, and under such circum- stances that Washington Irviivg, the genial author, and the loved and clierished friend and citizen, was laid quietly down to take his last sleej), among the scenes he has himself so faith- fully described, by the side of his mother, and in the very spot he had but a week ago designated as the ])lace of his final reixise. Washington Irving, as the last of the great literary men of the earlier part of this century, and probably from his personal acquaintance with tlie great Scottish novelist, recalls to mind the genius and career of Walter Scott. In their last days, too, there was a singular similarity. Like Scott, Irving had his home among the scenes that he particularly loved, and which he had invested with the magic of liis genius, and XX vi like Scott, he was buried amid those scenes. It is difficult to tell whether the burial-place of Scott or of Irving is the more attractive. Be- neath a high majestic arch of Dryburgh Abl)ey, one of the few remains of that noble Gothic edi- fice that has escaped the ravages of time — so near the banks of an historic Scottish stream, that the ripple of her waters can be heard from his grave — within sight of the almost enchanted land, " Where fair Tweed flows round holy Melrose, And Eildon slopes down to the plain," surrounded by decaying monuments of the medisBval grandeur, of which he has so nobly sung, they built the sarcophagus of Walter Scott. On the shores of his loved Hudson, in* sight of the noble Palisades, before whose grand magnificence the mediajval monuments are but as toys, and under only the arch of oak and yew branches, twenty-seven years later his friend Washington Irving was laid to rest. They are now both but mere historic names. Yet Abbots- ford and Sunnyside will remain to attract the ti:aveller's attention, and Dryburgh Abbey will not be oftener visited than the quiet churchyard that looks upon Sleepy Hollow and the Tappaan Zee. PEOCEEDINGS OF THE NEW YORK BOARD OF ALDERMEN AND COUNCILMEN. BOARD OF ALDERMEN. The Board of Aldermen held a special meet- ing at 3 p. M., Nov. 30. The President, Alderman McSpedon, stated that the meeting had been called, in accordance with the suggestion of the Mayor, for the pur- pose of making a suitable expression of the sen- timents of sorrow to which the death of Wash- ington Irving gave rise. The following message from the Mayor was read : THE mayor's message. "Mayor's Office, New York, Kov. 80,1859. '•'•To the Honorable the Common Council: " Gentlemen : — It becomes my painful duty to announce to you the death of an eminent man and illustrious author. Washington Irving is no more. He died at his late residence, at Sunnyside, Westchester county, on the evening of the 29th inst., and already the wires of the electric telegraph have sped the news of this sad event to nearly every part of our country, by which it will, no doubt, be considered as a national calamity. " While we bow with resignation to the dis- pensation of our Heavenly Father, who has taken from our countrv and the world of literature one Resolutions of its greatest benefactors and gifted sons, we are cheered by the thouglit that his works will be a rich and unfailing treasure of instruction and delight for generations to come. The genial products of his pure and graceful pen will for- ever continue to afford a solace to the side and weary, and supply a fund of innocent gratifica- tion to all classes, as long as literary taste and culture find a place on earth; while his biogra- phies of Columbus and Washington will fire the youthful mind to emulate those examples of he- roic duty and heroic patriotism. "For over fiftj' years this pioneer of American literature has ably sustained in the field of letters the-national creditand honor; and I am confident that his native City will not be indift'erent in adding their tribute to his fame. I would ac- cordingly recommend that the Common Council pass such resolutions as may be appropriate to this sad occasion, expressing the sorrow of our citizens at his loss, as well as their admiration of him as a man, a writer, and an historian, and their sympathy with his bereaved family and friends. I would also recommend that you direct the alarm-bells, and recpiest the church-bells to be tolled to-morrow, during the time fixed for his funeral, and that flags on the public buildings be displayed at half-mast throughout the entire day. " Daniel F. Tiemann, Mayor." Aid. Adams moved that the message be trans- mitted to the Board of Councilmen. Carried. Alderman Peck said the death of "Washington Irving had cast a gloom over the whole commu- nit}'. He was a Knickerbocker — a man of rare talents, whose place could not easily be supplied. No one could pass an adequate eulogy upon him. Ilis name was known and honored throughout the world. When he had heard that Washing- ton Irving was no more, he had been deeply impressed with the littleness of worldly affairs. When a great man died, the world mourned his loss. Who could have departed whose loss would liave been more sincerely felt? He pre- sented the following resolutions: '•'• WJiereas^ His Honor the Mayor lias officially communicated to the Board the melancholy in- telligence of the decease of one of New York's most illustrious sons, the Hon. Wasliington Ir- ving, the sad event occurring at his late residence at Sunnyside, on the banks of the Hudson, in the adjoining county, on Monday evening last, at the advanced age of 76 years ; and " Whe7'eas^ In the decease of our illustrious and honored citizen, it is meet that the authorities of this, tlie City of liis birth, should in a becoming manner evince their sense of the loss sustained by the whole coutttry in being deprived of the com- panionship of one who has by his exemplary life and his teachings, through the medium of his nu- merous hterary publications, tended in a marked degree to elevate the mind, enligliten the under- standing, and influence the will of all those of our citizens wiio entertain feelings of love and veneration for tlie clierished laws and institutions of our beloved country, more especially in the great and inestimable legacy bequeathed to us in liis Life of Washington; and "• Whereas^ In the many and important national trusts conimitted to his charge as Secretary of Legation at the Court of St. James, and as Min- ister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Madrid, the energy and fidelity with which he devoted his rare talents and ability to the best interests of his country, entitle liim to the lasting gratitude of those for whom he labored; and the Common Council, as the representatives of the greatest commercial and most important City in the Union, feel called upon to pay their feeble tribute of respect to his memory as a public man ; and ^"■Whereas, Possessing as he did in an eminent degree all those attributes which constitute the scholar, the patriot, and the statesman, his loss will be the more sorely felt, as liis death creates a void in the number of our public men which cannot be filled in our day and generation — the shining galaxy of noble names, of whom he was a bright particular star, having of late years been gradually lading from our national horizon, nev- er, we fear, to be replaced or renewed by stars of eqnal brilliancy; therefore, be it '•^Resolved, Tliat this Common Council deeply sympathize with the ftimily and relatives of our deceased friend in their aflfliction; and in consid- eration of our respect for liis memory, do recom- mend that his Honor the Mayor direct the bells in the several fire-alarm bell-towers to be tolled between the hours of one and two o'clock, on Thursday, Dec. 1, 1859, at which time the funeral will take place from his late residence; that the sextons of the several churches or places of Divine worship be requested to toll the bells of their sevei'al churches at the above-mentioned time; that tlie masters of vessels in the harbor, the proprietors of hotels and other public build- ings, be requested to display their flags at half- mast during the day, and that the flags on the City Hall and other public buildings and institu- tions of the City, be also displayed at half-mast during the day. And be it further '"'■Resolved^ That the Clerk of the Common Council be directed to cause a copy of the fore- going preamble and resolutions to be stiitably engrossed and transmitted to the family of the deceased." The resolutions were adopted unanimously, and transmitted to the Board of Councilmen. The Board then adjourned. xxvii AiHEN^rM Resolutions. The Board of Councilineii also held a special meeting, at which similar resolutions were passed, and remarks made by Messrs. Ottarsun, Lent, and others. Mr. Ottarsou recalled Mr. Irving's speech complimentary to the city at the dinner given to him in 1832. RESOLUTIONS OF THE ATHEN^DM.— 'J'HE REV, DR. OSGOOD'S REMARKS. At the annual meeting of the Athenaeum Club of this city, held November 30, at their rooms, No. 108 Fifth Avenue, the following resolutions were unanimously adopted : Resolved., That the members of the Athenteum of New York, share in the profound sorrow which is everywhere felt at the death of Washington Irving. Eesohed, That while contemplating this event, which dei)rives the world of letters of its most illustrious ornament, we dwell with especial l)ride and affection on the memory of one who, by a long life of constant devotion to American literature, has justly earned the name of its most honored patriarch and representative. liesohed. That the immortal legacy \vhicli he has left in his works entitles him to the endur- ing gratitude of the American people, and the Athenteum hereby offers its co-operation in em- bodying the sentiment of i)nl)lic appreciation in the form of some approjjriate memorial. Resolved^ That a copy of these resolutions, signed by the president and secretary of the as- sociation, be forwarded to the family of the deceased, and that they be published in the morning and evening papers of the city. Geougk Folsom, President. Fkank Moore, Secretary. The Rev. Dr. Osgood, in responding to these resolutions, remarked that he liad come late to the club, wholly unaware that any such resolu- tions were to be offered, and he was not i)re- pared to speak as tlie dignity of the occasion demanded. He thought, however, that any man might venture upon a few words of tribute to Washington Irving, and that simple and lionest gratitude ought to be motive and inspiration enough. He would therefore not slirink from acceding to the request of liis friends. It is best to, speak of the dead unaffectedly, just as we feel, or else not to speak of them at all ; and the reason why epitaphs are said to tell such lies, is not because the authors of them xxviii mean deliberately to lie, but because they allow themselves to take an unnatural position, and fall into an exaggerated, if not false, temj^er and style. Surely, now we may trust ourselves to speak sincerely of Irving, and say at the outset that, mournful as it is, we think that we shall never see his face nor touch his hand again. Yet, on the whole, thei-e is far more to cheer and exalt than to sadden and depress us, in his death. His life has been a continued triumph, and any man who knows what this world is, and how full of trials and disapi)ointments, must look upon this veteran of letters as favored alike in the honors of his life of seventy-six ye-iirs and in the tranquillity of his death. Death takes him from our sight only to give new jjower to his works, and sets its solemn seal upon his genius, not to shut up its gold in sepulchral vaults or musty parchments, but to stamp it with the immortal crown, and give it universal currency among men, with the coinage that bears the superscription of God. Washington Irving's death releases him from a round of labor most faithfully pursued, and his last work on Washington at once completes his literary life, and makes his baptismal name alike a name and a title, — his birth name and his honorary title. In fact, in his case, the day of his death answers fitly to his birth, and the honors that he won by his service till his de- cease, harmonized with the genius which was in- born. It is not always tliat a man's genius and character are alike honorable. If a man's birth should be celebrated as the date of his genius, and his death as the date of his completed char- acter, we may here, to-night, put both dates to- gether, and call Washington Irving blessed, alike in tlie gift of native genius and the graces of gentle humanity and unswerving fidelity. Dr. Osgood said that he would not presume to survey Irving's various books, or try to analyze his intellectual gifts. He would merely speak of his genial temper, — the charming good-na- ture that led him to the practical optimism that makes the best of every thing, and enabled him to betpieath, not only to his heirs at law, but to the wiiole world of readers, a " Sunnyside," in which they may bask in the light of God, among tlie fruits and tlowers of free and fair humanity, on tlie banks of a river whose How and whose music all time is swelling. With a word upon Irving's services to Ameri- can nationality, and the power of literature in giving unity to a people, far more enduring than comes from the schemes of political wire-pullers and panic-makers. Dr. Osgood commended the resolutions, and took his seat. Address of President King. PKOCEEDINGS OF THE NEW YORK HISTOR- ICAL SOCIETY. At tlie monthly meeting of the Society, held Dec. 6, 1859, after the usual transactions, the President, the Hon. Luther Bradish, made the following remarks : "Since our last meeting, death has again in- vaded the circle of our Society, and reinoved from among us one of our earliest, most distin- guished, and most cherished members. After a long, brilliant, and well-closed life, Washixgtox luYiNG has gone to his final rest ! Few among the current events of time have touched moi'e profoundly the lieart of the public, or moved more deeply Its finer sensibilities. It was natural that this should be so. For Washington Irving was not only admired for the brilliancy of his genius and its productions, but he was beloved for his genial spirit, the amenity of his cliarac- ter, and the beauty of his life. In his departure from among us he has left behind him, to remind us of the magnitude of our loss, not only the rich heritage of his literary works, but the benign iiitiuence and encouraging example of his own well-spent and successful life. In the universal grief at such a loss, the members of this Society deeply sympathize; but in the Intimate relations of the deceased with this Society as a loved and honored associate, we have an additional and peculiar motive for grief. "It is therefore fitting and proper that the So- ciety should, in a nuanner becoming tlie occasion and worthy of Itself, signalize its high apprecia- tion of the deceased, and its own peculiar and profound grief at his loss. To this end, I trust that suitable measures may be proposed and adopted on this occasion, and which I now invite." President King, of Columbia College, rose and said, that the duty had been assigned to him of laying before the Society some resolutions ex- pressive of the Society's appreciation of the loss it had sustained in the death of Washington Irving. They would require no preface, and he Avould therefore read them. Resolved^ That the New York Historical So- ciety has received with deep and solemn interest the intelligence of the death of our distinguished associate, Washington Irving, whose glowing pen has illustrated the annals, as the beauty of his life has advanced the character, of our country and our race. Hesolvecl^ That, Avhlle mourning, as all nuist mourn, the loss of such a nuxn, we acknowledge the Goodness tliat rouchsafed to him length of p()sed generally to be an ottspring of Burns, but after- wards known as an early production of the cl-I- ebrated Alexander Wilson, the great author of American Ornithology ; many of DibdiiTs fa- mous songs, and Mrs. Kowson's America, Com- merce, and Freedom, were also in the hands of many scholars. It may have been that the patriotism of the times in Adams' administration against the French, led to the distribution or toleration of this sort of literature among the boys, the better to dift'nse the patriotic sentiment of the day. Young Irving, 1 think, was more of a general reader than an exact student, so far as prescribed duties enjoined. I take it that even at that juvenile ])eriod he had already adopted his own peculiar method of obtaining knowledge. He ruminated within himself, while his often seeming listlessness was seizing upon ludicrous perplexities which fell under liis own notice. That quic'k foresightedness, that ii\it seizure of a novelty, a principle, or a fact, tluit- pronipt comprehension when too much labor was not demanded, rendered it comparatively an easy matter for him to master his Kule of Three; and as to grammar, we may infrr, from tlie ever-domiiKint beauty and gracefulness of The Old Sciiool-Books. his diction in all his writings, that he was ety- mological from tiie beginning. The leading teacher of the institution Avas ever insisting on the importance of rhetoric, and struggled hard to make every boy a Cicero. He assigned pieces for memory, to be rehearsed at the public exhi- bitions of his scholars, and snch was his ethno- logical science and his acquaintance with the doctrine of temperaments, that he committed to Irving the heroic lines — "My voice is still for war,'''' &c. — while I, nearly seven years younger, was given for rhetorical display — " Pity the sorrows of a poor old man," &e There was a curious conflict existing in the school between tlie principal and his assistant- instructor: the former a legitimate burgher of the city, the latter a New England pedagogue. So far as I can remember, something depended on the choice of the boy's parents in the selec- tion of his studies ; but if not expressed other- wise, the principal stuck earnestly to Dilworth, while the assistant, for his section of instruction, held to Noah Webster. The same system or rule Avas adopted with the school in unfolding the intricacies of arithmetic: Dilworth was all in all with the principal, while Nicholas Pike, with his amended federal currency, was imparted by the assistant. To render this sketch of the insti- tution where young Irving received the earlier principles of his sciiool-education less imperfect, it may be stated that the slender duodecimo volume of Morse's geograpliy was in use. This book was a novelty in sciiool-apparatus, being the first of its kind which professed an account of the ditierent States of the Union, and it en- listed the attention of the schoolmasters. The glowing description of New England by the reve.end autlior, its fertile soil and products, often invoked a smile from the old Knickerbocker instructors. The picture whicii the patriotic autlior had drawn of Wethersfield, its fair dam- sels and its exuberant onions, invoked merriment among the juvenile learners, and secured for a wiiile for the book the sobriquet, the onion edi- tion. There was, besides, a special teacher of elocution, in partial association with the acade- my, by the name of Milne. He was the com- piler of a book entitled the Well-bred Scliolar ; a nuxn of taste, a dramatic writer, if not a per- former. He possessed a magisterial air, a robust and athletic fulness; lived plethoric, and died, I believe, apoplectic. He was an Englishman by birth, and perhaps the first among us, in the progress of instruction, who attempted expound- ing the art of -speaking. "Where or how young Irving acquired a knowledge of the classics I am unable to say. We had but three or foiar schools of any pretensions among us in that department of education at that time, and Irving, so far as I can learn, was not a scholar of Edward Riggs, a renowned teacher of the Latin, and the autlK)r of a popular grammar of that tongue — the first, indeed, of American manufacture in New York, as that of the famous old Cheever was of that of Boston. Irving, however, was preparing to enter Columbia College, but health prevented his further progress. Some few years after we find Irving a student at law with that eminent advocate, the late Josiah Ogden Hoftnian. W^hat proficiency lie made in that abstract study must be left to con- jecture ; but in due season he opened a law-office in Pearl-street, near Coenties Slip. His health was still precarious, and he was threatened with pulmonary mischiefs. He \vas slender and deli- cate in appearance, but never weary in measures to improve his condition. For wholesome ex- ercise he carried into practical operation a sug- gestion to be engaged in some mechanical opera- tion daily, and for a specified time to saw wood, in an ai)artment below his ofiice ; and it is more than probable that this service proved of greater benefit to his physical powers than might have been derived at that time from nostrums and a sea- voyage. We need scarcely apprehend falling into error when we atfirin that his law-office proved neither burdensome to his mental nor physical faculties. The legal ])rofession, tlien, as now, abounded in numbers and in great talent. More- over, the contemplative qualities of Irving were directed in otiier channels. He needed diver- sion ; he demanded variety ; and his views of life were coinpreiiensive. It is a remark well founded, that realities are but dimly to be traced in the twilight of the imagination, and tlie first im- pulses of geuius are often to be illustrated by tlie subsequent career of the individual. Young Irving at school was a quiet boy. I can narrate no wild freaks or sports, originating from his conduct. It is true, that excejit from the gen- eral good order of his section of the room, and his devotion to reading, I had little chance to do more than occasionally look at him as at other scholars, witness his movements in the streets, and observe his rather taciturn and se- questered way. He seemed to have a habit of loneliness or abstraction ; but he was early a reader, and I might say an observer from the beginning to the end of his life. These quali- ties, it is not to be supposed, were so prominent as to induce special notice among his school- associates at that period of his life; yet as his teacher seemed to bestow particular attention on his pupil, and often spoke of it in after time, his maturer wisdom may have found in his scholar sxxiii Fondness fok the Dbama. a temperament of peculiar indications, and thus tolerated the impulse of a youth who gave promise of character. Among the incidents of young Irving's life, we know him to have been remarkable for his pedestrian excursions ; at times alone, sometimes accompanied with his in- timate friends, Paulding, Brevoort, Veri)lanck, and Blauvelt, an unfledged poet of New Jersey. His rambles at Weehawken and Powles' Hook ; his tours to the Passaic ; his grouse excursions at Hempstead; his walks throngh the Stuyve- sant lane of cherry-trees (which, it may be re- marked, passed directly thrt)Ugh the very grounds on which this edifice wliere we are now con- vened stands), all betrayed that love of nature -which he has so luxuriantly unfolded in his cap- tivating writings. Tliese rambles ^vere profitable to health and wholesome to intellect; they furnished materials for contemplation and enlarged intellectual capa- city : but Irving at tliis juncture in early man- hood sought out other resources of mental grati- fication. He was bookish, and he read; he indi- vidualized the author whom he studied, and he extended the circle of his personal associations. He must have formed an acquaintance with a ])ortion of that mass of men who flourished at that dawn of literary effort in this city. His pro- fession, that of law, had secured to him some knowledge of Hamilton and Burr, of Harrison and Golden, of Williams and Jay, of Jones and Livingston ; but with a generous freedom he could seek out Brown, tlie novelist, Linn, the poet, Allsop, Clifton, and Low. This you will say is a brief list; but genuine writers at that day were not a common article. In my searches after nov- elties I have walked a day to cast a glance at an author ; and a reward of a thousand dollars could not bring forth for inspection a penny-a-liner. For my own part I distinctly recollect the first time I caught a glimpse of Noah Webster, when I felt a triumph as if I had made a discovery in philosophy. But there were other sources of in- struction abundantly accessible to all, and Irving would draw wisdom from them : the acting drama of those times yielded gratification to the most re- fined in taste: the remnant of the old American company of performers was stii-ring in their vo- cation and the great renown which waited u])on their achievements was recognized as substantial- ly earned. That Irving's imagination was at an early iieriod enamored of scenic exhibitions, and that he took great delight in theatrical displays, as holding the " mirror up to nature," is the con- current testimony of all acquainted with him during his minority. That his mind was fructi- fied by a close study of the older dramatists I '.liiuk a safe inference. He studied the Spanish language the better to comprehend the Spanish xxxiv drama. That fountain of knowledge yields a liv- ing spring to all who desire to delineate human character ; and who has excelled Irving in that branch of intricate illustration? The animating movements, the pictures(]ue displays made fiction almost a reality, and illumined a mind so suscep- tible of impression. The drama, with sensibilities like his, roused to newness of reflection, dissipa- ted ennui, and invoked the inner powers of a lonely student to increased literary effort. He nmst have availed himself of these advantages, now still further multiplying by the efforts of Dunlap and Smith to add novelty to the stage, if not by gorgeous scenery, yet by the bringing for- ward the popular productions of Kotzebue and Schiller, the acknowledged masters of the drama at that time in Germany. A personal knowledge of some facts, and the humorous and critical dis- quisitions on the stage, which Irving published shortly after, over the name of Jonathan Oldstyle, demonstrate his intimacy with this species of lit- erature. His Salmagundi adds to our proofs of this fact. 'I forbear to enter into a consideration of the literary labors of Mr. Irving, voluminous as they are, and precious as the world acknowledges them. His Knicl~eriocl~er''s History excited an interest in the metropolis never before roused up by any literary occurrence ; scarcely, perhaps, by any public event. The reading community, upon its first appearance, were seized with amaze- ment at the wondrous antiquai-ian research of the author, his lifelike pictures of the olden times, and his boundless humor and refined wit ; and many melted in sympathy at the fate of old Diedrick himself, the deserted inhabitant of the Mulberry -street tenement. I confess myself to have been one of the thousands who sought out his obscure lodgings in vain. The brilliant career of Mr. Irving may be dated from the pub- lication of this assumed history, and the "wheel of fortune now turned in his behalf. The book was received by Campbell, the poet : through the hands of Heni-y Brevoort, Walter Scott possessed a copy, and almost raved with delight in its pe- rusal. The omnipotent wit and satirist, George Canning, had nigh fractured his ribs by laughter over its pages. Tlie reading public s«ught after it, and what the select averred, the masses con- firmed. Mr. Irving now became the lion of Lon- don, and of the literary world. It is, however, not of his writings that I would wish to speak, at present, but rather confine myself to a few remi- niscences of his individuality. The ample page of criticism has already recorded his vast literary merits,, and inscribed his name on the tablet of immortality. He is national, he is universal. Did not the lateness of the evening forbid, I would dwell upon that remarkable faculty which Chaeactekistics. Irving possessed of rejoicing.in the luxuries and beauties of nature ; his love of animals, and his kindly feelings for their comfort ; his delight in surveying the garden and the farm-yard ; his zeal to behold the anoraaliea of the vegetable world; his gratification in comprehending the labors of the naturalist; and I would attempt to point out how the defects of the schools of his boyhood were overcome by reading, and a close observation of men and things. He had the power of drawing knowledge from minute as well as great occurrences, from the ludicrous as well as the severe. He lias more than once dwelt with me upon the odd characters he had encountered in the streets of our city, in those early days, and none seems to have made a stronger impression on him than the once famous Wilhelm Hoftraeister, popularly known as Billy the Fiddler. I do not know whether this musi- cal genius and singularly-constructed man tiuds a place in any of Irving's writings. You all, gentlen^en, have dwelt upon the genial humor of Irving ; his kindly nature was ever apparent. An instance in illustration I will give. Upon his return from his tirst Euro- pean tour, after an absence of two years, lie had scarcely entered into his parent's domicile in AVilliam-sti'eet, when his first inquiry was con- cerning the condition and prospects of an unfor- tunate maimed boy, of the neighborhood, who possessed singular qualities of mental organiza- tion. Mr. Irving had a marvellous tendency to the curious. Had he walked through a lunatic asylum he would seem to have been qualified to write a treatise on insanity ; had he been bred to physic, — could his sensibilities have endured such servitude, — he might have become famous for his descriptive powers in diagnostic pathol- ogy. Language like this may sound extrava- gant ; but the devoted reader of his pages will be strengthened in sucii an opinion, by comparing the propriety and clearness of his diction in all he utters touching the subject in hand, whether belonging to the scliools of ai'ts or of letters, whether in technical science or in the philosophy of nature. Mr. Irving was the best judge of his own faculties and attainments, and what he as- sumed he accomplished. His competitor is yet to be discovered. His courteous and benignant intercourse with others, whether in the humbler or the higher walks of life, Avas of so captivating a cliaracter as never to create a rebellious feeling, but ever awaken emotions of friendship. Unobtrusive, with his vast merits, nay almost timid, he won esteem from all beholders. He possessed a quick discernment in the analysis of character. I will give an example. Jarvis, the painter, had just finished the liead of a venerable member of the bar, and courteousl}- requested, Lavater-like, Mr. Irving's opinion of the character. " You have faithfully delineated the Genius of Dulness," replied Irving. Tlie answer was a biography of the individual. There was a trait of singular and peculiar excellence in Mr. Irving, — of all mortals he was the freest of envy ; and merit of every order he was ready to recognize. A lit- erary man, ^mr excellence^ he could admire the arts, and look upon mechanical skill and the ar- tisan with the feelings, if not the acquisition, of the most accomplished in scientific pursuits ; he knew that intellect presided in mechanics as well as in tlie Homeric song. He endured without annoyance the renown which waited upon the career of Fenimore Cooper ; nay, he has writ- ten of the genius of his great rival in terms of strongest laudation, in admiration of his noble conceptions and his graphic powers. In like manner has he treated our Bryant. He rarely volunteered his opinion, but he never turn- ed his back on what he had once expressed. Were I to concentrate my views on the more immediate sources of that knowledge, in his several writings, which he disi)layed with such copious profusion both in active life and in let- ters, I would afiirm that a cautious reading of good authors, an almost unquenchable thirst for dramatic literature in early manhood, and a wide observation, secured by much travel, of the scenery of tiie bustling world, and of nature her- self, had fertilized that peculiar and susceptible mind, and given to his happy mental organiza- tion its most potent charms. The deduction is safe, if formed even from the study of his writings alone, that he was fond of incidents and adventures ; they enriched his gal- lery for illustration. Like Hawthorne, he ad- mired a snow-storm ; he loved music ; he loved little children, that faithful index of the human soul, and often participated in their innocent sports. He abjured excess, and was, at all times, moderate in indulgence at the table. He detested tobacco in every form, with all the abhorrence of Doctor Franklin or Daniel Webster. His toilet was neat ; his dress free from pecu- liarities : the extremes of fashion never reached him. His portrait, with the am]>le furred coat, executed by Jarvis, and i)ainted after the appear- ance of the Knickerbocker history, is the most characteristic of him at tliat period of his life, and gives the most striking idea of his mental aspect, as he was daily seen in public, accompa- nied with his friend Renwick, or with the superb Decatur, or old Ironsides. About two months before his death, Mr. Irving made his final visit to this city from his residence at Sunnj'side. He had an official trust to fulfil as President of the Board of Trustees XXXV Mk. Longfellow's Address. of the Astor Librurj- : he manifested no si)ecial indications of alarming i)hysical sntterinjj;. Yet it was observed lie had less of muscular strenirth, and that his frame was much attenuated. With hi's intimate friend, the learned librarian, Dr. Cogswell, having surveyed with gratification the improvements of the enlarged editice and the accessions of books recently made to that great institution, he remarked with some earnestness, "What, Doctor, might have been my destiny could I have commanded these treasures in my youth !" Foreign criticism has exerted her relined pow- ers in unfolding the merits and tlie beauties in- herent in tiie writings of our illustrious friend and associate; the scliools of Addison and of Johnson have each awarded to him the laurel. At home a dissentient voice has not been ex- pressed, and tlie republic at large has testified to the parity of his princi[)les and the worth of his labors b^' a sale almost unparalleled in tlie ainials of bibliopoly. Allibone, with the impartiality of a literary historian, has given us a charming view of this gratifying truth. But I .shall make but one brief citation on the subject of our national author's (pialities ; it is from a classical pen, that has repeatedly dwelt upon the delectable harmony of the life and literature of Irving. I have taken it from Tuckerman ; could I have written half so well I would have preferred my own language: "■Tlie outline of his works," says Mr. T., "should be filled by the reader's imagination with the accessories and coloring incident to so varied, honorable, and congenial a life. In all his wan- derings, his eye was busied with the scenes of nature, and cognizant of their every feature ; his memory brooded over the tradition of the jiast, and his heart caught and reflected every jihase of hunianity. Witii the feelings of a poet and the habitudes of an artist, he then wan- dered over the rural districts of merry England, tlie melanclioly hills of romantic Spain, and the exuberant wilderness of his native land, gather- ing U]) tliL'ir most ])icturesque aspects and their most affecting legends, and transffrring them, Avitli the pure and varied colors of his genial ex- jiression, into permanent memorials." Posterity, to wiiom he may most safely be confided, will neither forget the man nor his Avritings: these unfold the treasures of a com- manding genius, with the excellencies of an un- ])aralleled diction, while of the author himself we may enii)hatically atfirm that his literary jiroducts are a faithful transcript of his peculiar mind. He enjojs a glorituis triumpli : we need not plead in extenuation of a line that he has jienned. Let us console ourselves at liis loss that he was a native and "to the manor born," that his life was immaculate and without re- proach, and that in death he triumphed over its xxxvi terrors. Let it be our jiride that the patriarch of American literature is indissolublj' connected, in his mighty fame, with the Father of his Country. PROCEEDINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HIS- TORICAL SOCIETY. A SPECIAL meeting of this Society was held at the residence of its Vice-President, the Hon. Da- vid Sears, Boston, Dec. 15, 1859. After a formal announcement of the deatli of Mr. Irving, by tlie President, the follovying resolutions were ottered by Mr. Henry W. Longfellow: UK. Longfellow's address. Every reader has his first book. I mean to say, one book among all others, which in eai'ly youth first fascinates his imagination, and at once excites and satisfies the desires of his mind. To me this first book was the Sketch Book of Washington IrVing. I was a school-boy when it was published, and read each succeeding num- ber with ever-increasing wonder and delight; spell-bound by its pleasant humor, its melancholy tenderness, its atmo.s[)here of reverie, nay, even by its gray-brown covers, the shaded letters of the titles, and the fair, clear type, which seemed an outward symbol of the style. How many delightful books the same author has given us, written before and since — volumes of history and fiction, most of which illustrate his native land, and some of which illumine it, and make the Hudson, I will not say as classic, but as ronnintic as the Rhine! Yet still the cliarm of the Sketch Book remains unbroken ; the old fascination still lingers about it ; and whenever I open its pages, I open also that mys- terious door which leads back into the haunted chambers of youth. Many years afterwards, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Irving in Spain, and found the au- thor, whom I had loved, repeated in the man. The same playful humor; the same touches of sentiment; the same poetic atmosphere; aud, wiiat I admired still more, the entire abs'ence of all literary jealousy, of all that mean avarice of fame, which counts what is given to another as so much taken from one's self — " Anil rustliiii; hoars in every breeze, The laurels of Miltiades." At this time Mr. Irving was at Madrid, en- gaged upon his Life of Columhus ; and if the work itself did not bear ample testimony to his zealous and conscientious labor, I could do so from personal observation. He seemed to be always at work. "Sit down," lie would sa\ ; "I will talk with you in a moment, but I mu>t first finish this sentence." One summer morning, passing his house at Mk. Everett's Address. the early hour of six, I saw his studj' window already wide open. On my mentioning it to him afterwards, he said: "Yes, I am always at my work as early as six." Since then I have often remembered that sunny morning and that open window, so suggestive of his sunny tem- perament and his open heart, and equally so of his patient and persistent toil ; and have recalled tliose striking words of Dante: "Seggeniio in piuma, In fania non si vien, ne sotto coltre : Senza la qual chi sua vita coiisuiiia, Cotal vestigio in terra di se lasci:i, Qual fumo in aere, od in aequa la scliiuina." "Seated upon down, Or in his bed, man coineth not to fame, Wiihouten whicii, whoso bis life consumes, Such vestige of himself on earth shall leave, As smoke in air, and in the water foam." Remembering tiiese things, I esteem it a gi'eat though a melancholy privilege, to lay upon his hearse the passing tribute of these resolutions: ResoUed^ That while we deeply dei)lore the death of our friend and associate, Washington Irving, we rejoice in the completeness of his life and labors, which, closing together, have left be- hind them so sweet a fame, and a memory so precious. Resolved^ That we feel a just pride in his re- nown as an author, not forgetting that, to his otiier claims upon our gratitude, he adds also tliat of having been tlie tirst to win for our country an honorable name and position in the History of Letters. Resolved^ That we hold in affectionate remem- brance the noble example of his long litei-ary career, extending through half a century of un- remitted labors, graced with all the amenities of anthoi'ship, and marred by none of its discords anted tije ensuins; lines, which we haVo from the pen of afrieml of ihe departed author, himself eminent in tlie World of letters." Xl With incense crown the Palisades, With purple wreathe the Tappaan Zee. And ne'er did more serene re^iose Of cloud and siuishine, brook and brae, Kound Sleepy Hollow fondly close, Than on its lover's burial day. WASHINGTON IRVING.* Tnus it -vvill be seen that the life of Washing- ton Irving liad been mostly pas.^ed in literary la- bors. Tliese acquired him a fame no less solid and extensive on the other side of the Atlantic than here, and his works, wliich are nuinci'ous and take in a cousideruhle diversity of subjects, form a j)art of the acknowledged classics of the English language. He wrote with such a charm and grace of expression, that the mere fascination of his style would often prove powerful enough to keep the reader intent upon his pages when the subject itself might not liaj)pen to interest him. His humor was of a jiecujiar (luality, always deli- cate in character, and yet enriched with a certain quaint poetic coloring, which added greatly to its etiect. His graver Avritings have no less beauty, and several of thera prove that, as is often the case with men who possess a large share of hu- mor, he was no less a master in tiie pathetic, and knew how to touch the heart. His Life of Oli- ver Goldsniith always seemed to us one of the most delightful works of biography ever written — we doubt whether Goldsmitli himself, even if he had been so fortunate in his subject, could have executed his task so well. It was the happiness of Mr. Irving that he retained his fine powers in all their vigor to the last. The closing years of his life were occupied in writing the Life of Washington, a sulyect worthy to be committed to the hands of one who could relate events so charmingly, and portray character with such admirable skill. Having ex- ecuted that task in a manner to satisfy tliose whose expectations were tiie iiighest, lie regarded his litei'ary labors as finished, and looked forward calmly to the end of life. He survived the issue of his last volume but a few months. His rising on the world of letters was in what might almost be called the morning of our literature, and after completing his course, his setting takes place in the midst of a crowd of luminaries, among whom his orb shines with no less brightness tlian at its meridian. Mr. Irving was one of the most amiable and gentle of men ; a man of exceeding modesty, never willing to set forth his own pretensions, * From an obituary editorial notice In the Evening Post Nov. 'J'.i, l^.:.l». The Knightly Family of Drum. and leaving to tlie public tlie care of liis literary reputation. He iiad no taste foi- controversy of any sort. His manners were mild, and his con- versation in tlie society of tliose with whom he Avas intimate, was most genial and playful. THE LATE WASHINGTON IRVING."" TiiE daily newspapers of New York have fur- nished such full and interesting accounts of the death and burial of this greatly beloved man, as to leave little scope 'for remark by us. Never- theless, as the name is in some degree identified with tiie interests of Staten Island, from the residence among us of two of the family, in pul)lic positions, we have endeavored to comply with the solicitations of some friends, and have gathered a few additional facts in relation to the departed. Washington Irving was the descendant of a good family in the north of Scotland. The parent stock is known as "the knightly fjiraily of Drum," and is still settled at the old castle, or " Tower of Drum," as it is there called, occupy- ing the same estate granted by Kobert Bruce, in 1306, to Sir William de Irw^'n, the direct ances- tor of the present proprietor. It is situated on the banks of the L>ee, about ten miles from Aberdeen, and being a curiosity as "the oldest in!ial)ited house in Scotland," has been visited by not a few American travellers. A second son of this family, after the manner of Scottish houses, left the paternal roof, and, under the patronage of tlie crown, settled in the Orkneys. Tliere lie acquired large possessions and influence; his descendants, fur a long while, were seated at Gairstay and Quhome, the names of their estates and dwellings. There they en- countered the various vicissitudes of the world, enjoying prosperity for a time, and afterwards adverse fortunes ; and there, as their celebrated American descendant once remarked, " we will not say they Jiouriahed, but dwindled and dwin- dled and dwindled, until the last of them, nearly a hundred years since, sought a new home in this new world of ours." The local laws of the island — i. e., the ancient " Udal" laws, which required in title deeds the statement of relationship of parties mentioned therein — tlie possession of old parchment deeds, and tlie ofticial records of the county, have pre- served with singular clearness and accuracy the line of our American author's descent. William Irving, the father of Washington, came to this country in 1763, having previously married an English lady by the name of Sanders, * From tlie Richmond Ctmuttj Ga-.etle, Dec. 14, 1S59. in Cornwall, England. He was a member of the established Church of Scotland, and he became afterwards an officer of tlie Presbyterian " Brick Meeting," on the Park, New York. lie was a constant and devout student of the Scriptures, regular in the habit of family worship, and greatly respected for uprightness. His wife was a " Churcli of England" wonnin, the grand- daughter of a clergyman of that Church ; and to this influence may be ascribed the fact that all of lier children, with one exception, became attached to the Protestant Episco[)al Church in the United States. She was a wt)inan of vigor- ous intellect, oi)en and generous disjiosition, and of truly devout habit and atYections. AVashington Irving was born on the third, not on the thirteenth of A[)ril, as some of tlie pa[)ers have stated, in the year 1783. When a child, he was not remarkable for brightness, and his sur- viving brother has often told an anecdote of his returning from school one day, when about eight years of age, with this remark to his mother, '' The madame says I am a dunce ; isn't it a pity ! " A ve-ry delicate constitution, and prolonged ill- health, such as sent him abroad soon after he came of age, prevented his availing himself of the ad- vantages of education which were placed before him, and he abandoned the intention of lollowing his brother, the late judge, to the old halls of Co- lumbia College. He was, however, by no means an idler, oi- iudiflerent to the cultivation of his mind. His elder brothers, William and Peter, were men of much literary taste and ciiltivatioH, and under their guidance his reading was direct- ed and his own taste formed. For a short period he read law with the lite Judge Josiah Ogden Hotfinan. but ill healLh, as we have intimated, broke up this study. Arid here we ma}' now mention, that through this con- nection grew up that intimacy between our be- loved author and a daughter of the bite Judge Hoffman, which was early terminated by the death of the lady ; an incident which, from our knowledge of Mr. Irving's disposition, we doubt not had its influence upon him all through his life. We cannot but think that we And a leaf from liis own experience in a passage of his charm- ing paper on '" Newstead Altliey," where he says : "An early, innocent, and unfortunate i)assion, however fruitfiil of pain it may be to the man, is a lasting advantage to the poet. It is a well of sweet and bitter fancies; of refined and gentle sentiments; of elevated and ennobling thoughts, shut up in the deep recesses of the heart, keejiing it green amidst the withering blights of the world, and by its casual gushings and overflowings, re- caHing at times all the freshness, and innocence, and enthusiasm of youthful days." It happened, not long ago, that during a visit to Suunyside, V xli Dr. Creighton's Discourse. while Mr. Irving was absent, our informant was quartered in Mr. I.'s own apartment, and very deeply it touched him to notice, that upon the table wliich stood by the bedside, always within reach, there was lying an old and well-worn copy of the Bible, witii the name in a lady's delicate hand on tlie title page, " M II ." More than half a century had jiassed away, and still the old bachelor of seventy-tive drew his daily comfort from this cherished memento of the love of his youth. MR. IRVING' S RELIGIOUS CHARACTER.-- Passages from a Sermon at Tarrytawn, Dec. 4, 1859. BY THE KEV. DR. OKEIGHTOX. In referring to the heavy loss which we have sustained, and which will be deplored by every one wlierever the English language is spoken, I do not propose to dwell on his literary reputa- tion. World wide as it is, his fame does not need any eulogy from me. Every one must know how greatly he has advanced the litera- ture of the country, and how deep is the debt which we owe him in that behalf. I would rather dwell on liis religious and moral charac- ter ; and, in regard to the first, I thank God that I am permitted to indulge tliis one feeling — that he was sound in the faith of Christ crucified. I have often been asked, if our deceased friend was a believer, in the cardinal doctrines of our holy Cliristian faith, and I have declared then, as I now declare, that he was. This opinion was founded, not alone on his ordinary language in conversation; not only in his uninterrupted observance of the days and ceremonies connected with the Christian institution — and I have never heard a syllable otherwise from him — but upon a voluntary declaration, for wliich there was no occasion, except " that out of the fulness of the heart the mouth S[)eaketh." One Sabbath morning he approached me, and asked, why we could not have the " Gloria in Excelsis" sung every Sunday. I replied that I had no objection, and that there was nothing Avhatever to prevent it, and at the same time in- quired of him — "Do you like it?" "Like it! — like it!" said he; " above all things. Why, it contains the sum and substance of our faith, and I never hear it without feeling better, and with- out my heart being lifted up." Now, whoever will take tlie trouble to look at this sublime con- fession of faith will see that it is nothing but an adoration of Christ Jesus our Saviour, as God — as " the Lamb of God, which taketh away the * Keported in the New York Herald. sins of the world," as the Lord Christ, and of the Holy Ghost as equal to him in glory and in power. Therefore, when we consider the unob- trusiveness of the character of the deceased, we can only say that when he thus spake, the view which he expressed was one of the forms of sound words once delivered to the saints. Nor was he only sound in the faith. He was also exemplary in practice. He was not only a hearer, but a doer of the Word. You all know, how regular and punctual was his attendance in this church — so regular, in- deed, that when not seen, it was at once under- stood that he was either absent from home, or detained by indisposition. Nor was he satisfied in giving his bodily presence merely. This was not all that he desired. But the part which he bore in the responses showed that he came not only in compliance with custom, but to fidfil a sacred duty in offering up his humble prayers at the footstool of mercy. And were we permitted to look at the inward disposition, of the heart, as we are at the outward manifes- tation of piety, we would have seen the hinges of the heart bent down whenever the lips ut- tered the voice of prayer. The deceased was for many years a communicant of the Church, receiving on every stated occasion, Avith contrite spirit, the emblems of the Saviour's body and blood. In his intercourse with his fellow-men he was always the same kind and generous heart, and he always put the most charitable construction on their words and conduct. Char- ity with him was not a duty, but an instinct. Every discourse from the pulpit, or from any other i)lace, which set forth these things as the bond of peace, was certain to meet the approval of the deceased. Every measure for the ameli- oration of the condition of the poor and atHicted was sure to meet his approbation. The relief of the poor and needy — t!ie improvement of schools, of chapels and churches — were always of the deepest interest and especially interesting to him. Ilis advice and liis experience were al- ways readily given whenever required, and .his contributions from his purse were always of the most liberal kind. Of the extent of his private charities no man shall know until the day when the Saviour shall declare, "Inasmuch as ye did it to one of these little ones, ye did it unto me." lie who now addresses you has been more than twice the recipient of double the sum asked for, when the occasion was one tliat recommended itself. In fact, he was one of the few on whom positive dependence C(udd be placed for a favor- able answer, whenever the application was of a meritorious character. * . * * * * * « He alluded, in appropriate- terms, to the deep The Rev. Mk. Todd's Discourse. and affectionate interest of tlie deceased in the young, and continued: H: :): 4: H: * * :{: In mourning, then, for Washington Irving — a name revered and loved wherever and whenever heard — we sorrow not as those witiiout liope ; for we helieve that as Jesus died and rose again, so also those wiio sleep in Jesns shall God hring with Him. We sorrow not with the sorrow of the world, immoderately and in a re[)ining spirit, because we can say witii the disci [)les, Avhen tliey could not prevail on Paul to remain, "The Lord's will be done." But we sorrow because we shall see his face no more. No more at his own tire- side, at whicii were clustered cheerfulness, wit, humor, charity, kindness, rigiiteousness, and all holy aftections! No more in the social circle gathered at other homes, where every hand was extended to greet him, and every heart sprang up to give him the warmest welcome ! No more in this holy place, where his attendance was as uni- form as his demeanor was earnestly devout! No more in the ministration of the rite of baptism, wiiich he always attended with feelings of lively interest and delight! No more at our annual confirmations, his eyes ever gleaming witii the force of Christian sympathy! No more at the celebration of the Lord's Supper, his manner ex- pressive of Christian humility and heartfelt grat- itude to God for the privilege accorded him tiuis to commemorate the Saviour's love ! And if the Lord had vouchsafed him another week of health and strength, he would have been with us to-da}' to sliare in the solenm eating and drinking S3'm- bolically of the bod^' and blood of Christ. But he has passed, we humbly, though firudy trust, from the communion of the Churcli militant on earth to the sapper of the Lamb^to the Church triumphant in heaven. We shall see his face here no more, but his image is indelibly impress- ed upon our liearts, and his lovely character shall be cherished so long as life shall last, and honored so long as men have grace to cherish moral worth and the virtuous and honorable character of a holy example. PASSAGE FROM A DISCOURSE Delivered in the Second Reformed Dutch Church, at Tarrytown, Dec. 11,1859, BY THE EEV. JOHJi A. TODD.* I KNOW not what may be done or spoken else- where in regard to the departure out of this life of that illustrious, and honored, and beloved citi- * Reported in the liew York Daily Times. zen, whom we, in tlii^ community, were so proud to call our friend and neighbor; but whatever it may be, I cannot bring myself to believe that you, my hearers, are willing that he should pass away from among us, never more to return, and that his dust should be laid down to mingle with that of parents and dearest kindred, by the shadow of tiiat old Dutch church, which is the mother of us all, without some recognition of his indi- viduality — some words of tender feeling, of heart- felt sorrow — some expressions of love and rev- erence for his memory — some offering of praise and thanksgiving to God for the excellent gifts, both of head and heart, Avith which He was pleased to endow him — and some attempt to gather up, and to bring home, for our nobler and more spiritual uses, the solemn lessons of the dispensation whicli took him from us. His is a name to be revered and clierished. Its glory shines upon our country's annals. And now that he has gone from us, and from the land he loved so well, he has bequeathed to us, in his unblem- ished life, in his recorded words, and in his illus- trious name, an inheritance worthy to be highly prized, to be sacredly guarded. A country's glory is the collected glory of the great men whom God has given her — their high achieve- ments, their noble spirits, their memorable names. Aiul it is right tliat they should have their monu- ments not merely in the mute and icy marble that marks the spot where their ashes rest, but in the warm, the living, throbbing hearts of all her sons. " Think ndt such names Are common sounds ; they have a music in them, An odorous recollection ; they are a part Of the old glorious past. Their country knows And loves the lofty echo, which gives back The memory of the huried great. And calls to valor and to victory, To goodness and to freedom." Washington Irving, the patriarch of American literature, — the accomplisiied sciiolar, — the ad- mirable historian, — the elegant writer, — the won- derful magician, who evoked from the realms of thouglit the spirit of romance and beauty, and breathed it upon every hill and valley, upon every shady retreat, and every wandering brook that hastens on to join this noble river that pours its majestic volume into the sea; ay, and upon the very air that fans the summer verdure, or whistles through the branches of the wintry wood around us; — the pure patriot, — the diplo- matist, watchful for his country's honor, and yet skilful in the arts of preserving peace, — the kind and beloved neighbor, — the faithful friend, and, what is better than all, because it constituted him the "highest style of man," the modest and benevolent Christian, the sincere believer and disciple of tlie Lord Jesus Christ. AVashington Irving is dead ! Dead, did I say ? No ! He has xliii Dk. Chapin's Remaeks. just begun to live. His spirit lias gone up to tlie enjoyiiK'iit ot" a liiglier sphere, and its ]»()\vor upon tlic kindled spirit of his race has been eofisecra- ted by the solemn mystery of its departure. Ciod has given to him the precious boon of a twofold life — the life eternal of tlie glorified in lieaven, and tiie life of an luidying memory in liie hearts of men. And can we say of sucli a one, that lie is dead? True, lie has gone from us, and on eartii we siiall see liis face no more. " r.ut strew liis nslies to the wii.il, Whose .swonl or voiee lias serveil iii:inkiiut — And is he (lead whose srlorious iiiitid Lifus thine on hijih? To live in heiirls we le:ivo behind Is not to die." We liave lost his welcome presence, and it is for tiiat we mourn. IJut his grave is with us, and Jiere it will remain for genei'ations ti) come, the slirine of miumnbered i)i]griin feet. From tlie lofty eminence upon whieii lie stood, conspicuoiis to tlie eyes of tiie world, from his position of intellectual greatness and spotless dignity, he has passed away. The sepulchre has chiinied all of liim that was mortal for its own. His eye is ipienched ; his arm is palsied; the tongue that was ever eloquent with the words of kindness is hnslied to the ears of living men forever; the j)en that distilled upon the written page the sub- tle creations of liis brain, the ideal forms all fresh and fair from the realms of intellectual beauty, in which his spirit loved to linger, lies where he l.'ft. it, dead and silent, like the clay from which the living soul has deii.irted. And on this iSabbath morning while we are gathered in the house of (tod, his honored remains are sleei)ing by tiie side of her whom he called by the holy name of "Motiier,"' who loved liim while living, and whose memory lie lovetl when dying, in tiie grave wliicli he had appointed for his last repose. There — there may they slee[) in peace until these, heavens be no more, ami in the last day be laised again to the glorious resurrection of the just. PASSAGE FROM A DISCOURSE* New York, Dec. 4, 1859, BY TUB REV. DR. E. 11. CHAIMX. I LOOKED out the other day, and saw the flags floating lialf-mast in lionor of one who has just departed from tus. He has had comparatively little to do with commerce, or with national af- fairs. Tiiere was nothing in his career to awa- ken piditical sympathies, or stir the pulse of po|)ular agitation. And yet there were these tokens of general respect floating in an atmos- ♦ Froiy the author's manuscript, xliv phere as calm and beautiful as his own spirit. And now do we ask, what is the reason wliy an entire jieople has tlius paid its tribute to the memory of one wlio lived so quietly, so serenely ? I reply, that here, too, popular sympathy is vin- dicated in its instincts. In tiie first place, it is ;i great thing to live such a calm life as he did, the beautiful and the good blos.soming in his man- hood, and ripening in his age. And in the next ])lace, it is a great thing to elevate the intellec- tual life of a people, to lift it above imlitical tlis- cords, and mercenary, callings, and give it a higher and purer air. lie who does tlii.s, Inuiors his country, and deserves to be honored by it. But this has been not merely an expression of general sentiment, but of individual gr;ilitude and regard. For how many of us, now in middle life, find tliatsome of our richest and ten- derest intellectual memories have been Avrougiit by liim who has just ceased fn>in his labors? Who of us can forget the fortitude of '' the wife," the jiathos of " the widow's son," and the associations of genial humanity and do- mestic beauty which he has linked with our common world of trial and of change? Yes, he deserves our sympathy, he deserves our honor, who thus elevates the literature of a people; who has never written a line that he might have wished to blot, and has left a " sunny side" for many a heart and many a life. POSTHUMOUS INFLUENCE.* From a Sermon preached in St. Thomas' Church, Dec. 11, 1S59. BY THE REV. UR. WILLIAM F. MORGAN. TiiEiiK is still another and most impressive thought suggested by this Scriptural assertion, that the Dead spojik. I refer to the after-life and efl:'»ct of gifts and endowments — to that surviving power, by which men not only outwit deatli, but hold the living world as a whispering gallery for tiie conceiitions of their brain and the sentiments of their heart. As I have said, every man who dies will retain an audience upon earth. The carved obelisk and monumental shaft may s|)eak in louder tones to Larger circles; but the unmarked ivsting-place of the beggar shall pour fbrtii an oratory for soine^ ear, and wield an iiiliuence over some heart, as efi'ectual as kingly dust enshrined. No one is so wretchetlly forlorn — no one so miserably debased, but that some soul is linked on to his iiy fellowship in life, by nieiiKu-ies in death. Nevertheless, beyond all the narrower limits of immediate or local impression — beyond social xir domestic influence — there are jiosthu- iiKjus voices which spread and reverberate, till they ♦ Fiom the autlior's manuscript. Dr. Moegan's Discouese. fill the "compass of the round world." Tliere is no s|)Ot, liowever disttuit froni his grave, where the morbid and inisdirectod energies of genins may not carry on a work of moral devastation, the extent of which shall mock every estimate or record except that of" the Book of God's remem- brance. There is no clime or tribe which may not be visiteil by the pestilential forms of licen- tiousness, of atheism, of monstrous, though guile- ful imnnirality, even while tlie men who gave sculptured sha|»e and fascination to those forms are dead and incorporate with tiie sluggish clod. Tlie art of jjrinting lends omnipotence to tlie great dejjarted. It invests their thouglits, their creeds, their principles, tiieir imaginations, with a vitality wliicli emlures and pulsates upon every sliore. Jt enables the good to achieve a desira- ble and most beiiigiumt immortality upon earth; it enables tlie bad to danui themselves to everlast- ing infamy — to speak, from generation to genera- tion, in the dialect of devils. It may bear a Jeremy Taylor down to posterity, or, it may bear a Thomas Paine; the one in all the fra- grance and beauty of his saintly spirit, and the other in all tiie hideousness of liis blasphemous and God-defying character. Living or dying, a great man, if also good, hal- loAvs his country, and elevates all Avho live in his time : yea, and all who sliall live in the times to come. It was the consciousness of this which stirred us all so deeply when we lately heard that he was dead, wliose name and influence are im- l)erishable. "While he lived, we felt a natural jiride and jiossession in all that belonged to him ; ids person, his healtli, his habits, his home. We knew that his sun was descending in the west, and we watched its decline. We knew that it must sink, and be no more seen, and we looked for the hour. And, when all was over — wlien life was gone, and the seal was set, and the day of burial had come, the cloud of sorrow had a silver lining. Xever was there a more honest funeral. I stood near and saw the almost inter- minable procession pass by the open coflin-lid. The expression on every face was chastened pride, not grief. Eacli sidelong glance at the ])lacid visage whispered "Well done; all now is safe; what he was, he shall be, amongst the posterities forever." Washington Irving reached the last goal, in faith and in deportment, a model of sim- ])licity and sweet Cliristian benignity. Greatly gifted, a master in his realm, he had pre-emi- nently the grace of goodness; and the aroma of this grace fresldy ascends from all his works. He jtursued a steady course for scores of years witii- out one concession to tlie spirit of a doubting age — without one uttered or written word in su]iport of any wrong; and what was said of an- other eminent man, might with greater force be said of Idm : " He thought the ncddest occupation of a man was to make otlier men happy; and to this end he lived, Avithout one side-look, one yielding thougiit, one motive in his heart, whicli he miglit not have laid open to tiie view of God or man."* We knew before Ids death, and we know it now, tliat his writings contain not a sol- itary line that could leave the faintest stain upon the purity of youth, or the innocence of woman. And I make especial note of this, because, to some extent, he occupied a Held of intellectual effort, which is liable, and in our day sulijeet, to the most awful perversion and abuse — the Held of the imagination. It is undeniably true, that most who sul)sidize their gifts or acquisitions to corrujjt mankind, ad- dress themselves at once to this faculty, and aji- proacli their easy and innumerable victims, ■' to the beat of Dorian measures," or with "The soft, lascivious pleasings of the lute." They tread and creep upon velvet cari)ets. They begin witii a licentious or misleading hint, and end witli a loud and reverberating, x\^nien. They steal towards the soul and climb over its in- cle)sures, and beguile it, as the serpent beguiled Eve, witli flattering words. They come when it is most tender and impressible. They put on the imperial robe of the poetry that charms, or the legendary romance that fascinates even to the morning watch : they soar, that tJiey may sink, and drag down in their descent millions who might have reached the gate of heaven. I need not tell you that these painters of unreal life — these rovers tiirough a false, and deceitful world, have no higiier purpose than to Aveave into all they delineate or describe, the debasement of their own hearts — the skepticism of their own intellects, — the utter desolation of their own hopes and pros- pects. Gifted, but guilty minds, " — Whose poisonM sons "U'ould blend the bounds of right and wrong And hold with sweet, but cursed art Their incantations o'er the heart Till every pulse of pure desire Throbs with the glow of passion's fire." The modern press is forevermore in birth Avith such productions ; they SAvarin the earth and sweep around us and our famihes like the plague j of serpents or of locusts. If pernicious vieAvs of i life are formed, if tlie passions are inflamed, if the j thoughts and proclivities of liie better nature, are [ alienated from all that is pure and lovely and of I good report — it is because the appeal of our I literature is so continually made, not to reason, I not to conscience, but to the imagination ; ! made Avith a charmed pen dipped in a licentious heart or a stimulated brain. And yet, the men * The Rev. Sydney Smith on the death of Mr. Grattan.— Edinburgh Review. xlv GOLDSMITU AND IkVING. ^vlio iiifike tliese appeals, ask to be indulfced— ask that tlie fertility of their genius or their wit, sliould (■oiiii>eiisate for tlie barrenness of tlieir ii'^>i;'y=^— usk that the light which leads astray, 6>hould be counted light from Heaven. . But no such indulgence did he crave, who, being dead now speaketh from his peacetul, woodland .ri-ive As I have said, his aim was to make miuikind happier and better, and only to write what was fitting and ennobling to be read. It lav within his power to invest the land of dreams Avitii shai)e and substance, to create scenes ot uncarthlv beauty, to collect and blend the charms of nature, to group the varying characters ot a people or an enx, to tell the pathetic story ot Iminan sorrow or remorse, or to sketch the tading iineainents of old times or traditions; but his i)en was always the obedient servant ot sound principles and pure religion, always made tiie soul pant for something higher, and never lett a mark which an angel might wish to blot. And when, at length, in his ripe old age, he sought to lav tiie cap-stone upon the pyramid ot his lal)or nnd his fame, he took the highest and purest character our earth atibrds— not merely to mag- nify or embellish it, but to hold it forth betore the whole world in its grand proportions and almost faultless beauty, anxious— anxious, that the latest impression of his pen should be the most exalted, and the most enduring. S\ich was the lesson of his life— such xcill be its lesson " to the last syllable of recorded time. pictures have that freshness about them which iH.thing but life-studies can give. He I'a^.wnt- ten no^ioem, no Trarellf.r, "no Deserted Village, no exquisite ballad like The Hermit, no touching little stanzas of unai)proachable pathos, like M om- an But how much real poetry and how mucli real pathos has he not written 1 We do not be- lieve that there was ever such a description ot the song of a bird, as his description ot the soar- ino-of a lark in BucMhorn ; and the poor old wrdow in the Sketch Book, who, the first Sunday after her son's burial, comes to church witli a few bits of black silk and ribbon about her, the only external emblem of mourning which her poverty allowed her to make, is a picture that we can never look at through his simple and BY GEORGK WASHINGTON' GREENE. We have always fancied that there was a strong resemblance between Goldsmith and Irving. They both look at human nature from the same generous point of view, with tlie same kindly svmpathies and the same tolerant philos- ophy. They have the same quick perception of the ludicrous, and the same tender simplicity in tlie pathetic. There is the same quiet vein ot liumor in both, and the same cheertul spirit ot hopefulness. You are at a loss to conceive how either of tiiem can ever have had an enemy ; and as for jealousy and malice, and all that brood ot evil passions which" beset the path of fame so thicklv, vou feel that there can be no^resting- idace for them in bosoms like theirs. Yet each i.reserves his individuality as distinctly as it there were no points of resemblance between tliem. Irvinsc's style is as much his o\yn as though Goldsmith' had never written, and his xlvi From a volume entitled Biographical Studies. Tu se' lo mio maestro, e '1 mio autore ; Tu se' solo colui dii cui i<> tolsi Lo bello stile che m' ha fatto onore. Thou art my master, and my teacher thou ; It was from thee, and thee alone, I toolv That noble style for which men honor me. IRVING DESCRIBED IN VERSE. [From the Fable for the Critics.] BY JAMES KtlSSELL LOWELL. What ! Irving ? thrice welcome, warm heart and fine brain; . . ^ o • You briuo- back the happiest spirit from Spain, And the gravest sweet humor, that ever were tliere Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair. Nav don't be embarrass'd, nor look so beseectung,— 1 shan't run directly a-ainst my "^n preachuig, And, having just laugh'd at their Raphaels and Dautes, Go to settincr you up beside matchless Cervantes , But allow me to speak what I honestly }^f^— To a true poet-heart add the t\\n of Dick [Steele, Throw in all of Addison, mm«.s the chill, With the whole of that partnership's stock and good- will, , ,1 Mix well, and, while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell, The tine oil Ensflish Gentleman : simmer it well, Sweeten just to\onr own private likin-, then strain, That only the finest and clearest remain ; Mu. Willis' Visits. Let it stand out of doors till a sonl it receives From the warm, lazy sun loitering down through oreen leaves, ° And you'll tiud a choice nature, not wholly deserving A name either English or Yankee— just IiiviNO. VISITS TO SUNNYSIDE. BY N. P. WILLIS.* Sunny side in the Summer of 1857. Our conversation, for the half Iiour that we sat in that little library, turned iirst upon the habits of literary labor. Mr. Irvincr, in reply to my in- quiry (whether, like Rip Van Winlde, he had " arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity"), said, " no"— that he had sometimes worked even fourteen hours a day, but that he usually sits in his study, occupied, from breakfast till dinner (both of "us agreeing, that, in literary vegetation tlie "do" is on in the morning) ; and that he should be sorry to have much more leisure. He thougiit, indeed, that he should " die in harness." lie never had a head- ache — that is, his workshop never gave him any trouble— but among the changes which time has Avrought, one, he says, is very decided ; the de- sire for travel is dead within him. The days are l)ast when he could sleep or eat anywhere with equal pleasure ; and he goes to town as seldom as possible. Motley's Dutch EepitUic lay open on the table, and Irving said he had been employing a little vacation from his own labors in the reading of it. It had interested him exceedingly. '' How surprising" (he exclaimed, quite energetically), " that so young a man should jump at once, full- grown, to fame, with a big book, so well-studied and complete!" This turned the conversation upon the experiences of authorship, apd he said that he was always afraid to open the tirst copy that reached him, of a new book of his own. He sat and trembled , and remembered all the weak points where he liad been embarrassed and per- plexed, and where he felt he might have done better— hating to think of the book, indeed, until the reviewers had praised it. Indifference to praise or censure, he thought, was not reasonable or natural. At least, it was impossible to Am. He remembered how he had suffered from the opinion of a Philadelphia critic, who, in review- ing the Sketch Bool\ at its tirst appearance, said that "Rip Van Winkle" was a silly attempt at ;. humor, quite uuwortiiy of the author's genius. ' My mention of Rogers, tlie poet, and some other |riends of Mr. Irving's who had asked me about * Published iu The Home Journal. bun m England, opened a vein of his London recollections. He was never more astonished, he said, than at the success of the Slcetcli Book. Ills wilting of those stories was so unlike an in- spirati(m— so entirely without any feeling of con- tidence whicii could be prophetic of their popu- larity. Walking with his brother, one dull foygy Sunday, over Westminster Rridge, he got to tell- ing the old Dutch stories which he had heard at Tarrytown, in his youth— when the thought sud- denly struck him:— "I have it! I'll go home and make memoranda of these for a book!" And, leaving his brother to go to churcii, he went back to his lodgings and jotted down all the data; and, the next day— the dullest and darkest of London fogs— he sat in his little room and wrote out " Sleepy Hollow" by the light of a candle. I alluded to the story I had heard told at Lady Blessington's— of Irving going to sleep at a din- ner-party, and their taking him up softly and carrying him into another house, where he waked up amid a large evening-party— but he shook his head incredulously. It was Disraeli's story, ho said, and was told of a party at Lady Jersey's, to which he certainly went, after a dinner-party — but not with the dramatic nap at the table, nor the waking up in her Ladyship's drawing-room, as described. In tact, he remembered the party as such a "jam," that he did not get, that even- ing, beyond the tirst landing of the staircase. A Drive through Sleepy Holloio. We wound out from the smooth-gravelled and circling avenues of " Wolfert's-dell," and took to the rougher turnpike leading to Tarrytown — fol- lowing it, however, only for a mile" or so, and then turning abruptly o"ff to the right, at what seemed a neglected by-road to the hills. Of the irregular semicircle of Sleepy Hollow, this is the Sunnyside end — the other oi)ening towards Tarry- town, which lies three miles fartiier up the river. Our road, presently, grew very much like what in England is called "a green lane," the undis- turbed gra-ss growing to the very edge of the single wheel-track; and this lovely carpeting, which I observed all tiirougii Sleepy Hollow, is, you know, an unusual feature for our country — the " Spring- Avork" on the highways, ordinaVily (under the direction of tlie " pathraaster"), con- sisting mainly in ploughing up the roadsides and matthig up the ruts witli thea«s-Ass-inated green- sward. For the example of this charming ditfer- ence I am ready to ble^^s the bewitchment of tiio " high German doctor," or even to thank the ghost of the "old Indian chief who held his pow- wows there before the countiy was discovered." With what attention I could take off from Mr. xlvii A Ditn'E rjiitouGii ^lekpy IIoi.low, Irving's conversation and his busy poiutings-out of the localities and beauties or' ilie valley, I was, of course, on the look-out for the " Slee|>y-ll(jl- low Boys," along the road ; but oddly enough I did not see a living soul in the entire distance! For the "Headless Horseman," it was, doubt- less, too early in the afternoon. We had, neither of us, an}' expectation of being hont)red with an introduction to him. But 1 did hope for a look at a "Hans Van Ripper" or a "Katrina Van Tassel" — certainly, at the very least, for a speci- men or two of the young Mynheers, " in their square-skirted coats with stupendous brass but- tons," and tiieir "hair queued up in an eel-skin." Mr. Irving pointed out an old tumble-down farm- liouse, still occupied, lie said, by the Dutch family who traditionally "keep the keys to Sleepy Hol- low," but there was not a soul to be seen hang- ing over the gate, or stirring around porch or cow-yard. There were several other and newer houses, tliough still of the same model — (or, to quote e.xactly Mr. Irving's words, in reply to my remark upon it, "always built crouching low, and always overlooking a little fat meadow") — but they were equally without sign of living in- habitant. Yet read again what Mr. Irving says of the vegetating eteriuty of the inhabitants, in iiis own account of Sleepy Hollow, and see how reasonable were my disappointed expectations in this particular. One thing impressed me very strongly — the evidence there was, in Mr. Irving's manner, from our first entrance into Sleepy Hollow, that the ciiarm of the locality was to him no fiction. There was even a boyish eagerness in his delight at Uxiking ai'ound him, and naming, as we drove along, tiie localities and their associations. He did not seem to remember that he had written about it, but enjoyed it all asa scene of childhood then for the first time revisited. I shall never forget the sudden earnestness with which he leaned forward, as we passed close mider a side- hill heavily wooded, and exclaimed, " There are the trees where I sliot my first squirrels when a boy !" And, till the turn of the road put that hillside out of sight, he kept his eyes fixed, with absorbed earnestness upon it, evidently forgetful of all around him but tiie past rambles and boy- dreams which the scene had vividly recalled. You will understand, dear Morris, how this little point was wonderfully charming to me — being such a literal verification, as it were, of one of the passages of his description of the spot, and one of those, too, of which the music lingers long- est in the ear! " I recollect" (lie says) " that Avhen a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel-shoot- ing was in a grove of tall walnut-trees that shades one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noon- time, wlien all Nature is peculiarly (piiet, xhiii and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the Sabl»ath stillness around, and was prolonged and reveriierated by the angry eclioes. \i ever I should Avish for ;i retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distr.-ictions, ami dream {[uietly away the remnant of a troubled lite, I know of none more promising than this little valley." And, to drive ihrougli "this little valley" with the man who had so written t)f it, ami have him point out " the tall walnut-trees" with such an outburst of boyish recollection — why, it was like entering with Tlu)msou, under the very portcullis of the " Cas- tle of Indolence !" I should mention, by the way, that we pulled up, for a moment, oi)posite tlie monument of Major Andre, a marble shaft standing at the side of the road and designating the spot (mentioned in "Sleepy Hollow") where that unfortunate man was captured. I could not read the whole in- scription in the single minute that cuir impatient horses stood before it, but the coucludiiig sen- tence, in larger letters, stood out boldly — "•His- tory telU the resV — and it was thrilling to read that reference to a more enduring record than marble, and turn one's eyes upon the hand by wliich the inq)erishable words had been just written! A Later Visit in 1859. During the ten minutes before Mr. Irving came in (for he was out iq)on his morning drive when we arrived), his nieces very kindly gratified our interest in the " workshop of genius" by taking us into the library — the little curtain-winon the habit, by saying that he could scarce afford the luxury himself, involving, as it would do, the loss of the most effectual quietus of his nerves. To get u]) and shave, when tired of lying awake, sure of going to sleep immediately after, had long been a habit of his. There was an amusing ex- change of sorrows, also, between him and Mr. Kennedy, as to persecution by autograph hunters; though the Ex-Secretary gave rather the stri)ngest instance — mentioning an unknown man who had written to him, when at the head of the Xavy Department, requesting, as one of his constituents, to be furnisiied with autogruiihs of all the Presi- 7 dents, of himself and the rest of the Cabinet, and of any other distinguished men with whom he might be in correspondence ! 13ut there was a table calling for us, which was less agreeable than the one w^e were at — the '' time-table" of the railroad below — and our host's carriage was at the door. Mr. Kennedy was bound to the city, Avhere Mr. Irving, as he gave us his farewell upon the porch, said he thought he might find him, in a day or two, and Wise and I, by the up-train, were bound back to Idlewild. We were at home by seven, and over our venison supper (the "Allegliany haunch" still bountiful), we exchanged our remembrances of the day, and our felicitations at having been priv- ileged, thus delightfully, to see, in his home and in health, the still sovereign Story-King of the Hudson. May God bless him, and may the clouds about his loved and honored head grow still brighter with the nearer setting of his gnn. A Memoranda or tiro made after attending Mr. Irving^ Funeral. There were a few drops of rain in the Highlands as we left home to attend the funeral of Mr. Ir- ving. The air was breathlessly still, and the tem- perature soft and warm ; but the clouds in the west looked heavy, as if, by noon, it might gath- er to a thunder-storm. The neighbors to whom I spoke upon the way, antici[)ated it. But, as the train made its way down the river, the air brightened, and it was all clear, save a thin veil of mist which draped the valley of the Hudson with the silver}' veil common to a day of Indian summer. As I walked along the uplands of Tar- rytown, an hour befoi'e tiie funeral, listening to the tolling of the bells and icxdcing off upon the sunny landscape below, it seemed to me as if Na- ture was conscious of the day's event — present with hushed tread and countenance of sympathy and tenderness, but, not to mourn ! There was a glorious i)utting away of the morning clouds, and an opening upward of the far-reaching path of stmshine into mid-heaven, in harmony with what all felt, save perha|)S the hearts from whose daily life, thought, and fond care the beloved in- valid had been just torn— a noon, it seemed to me, that was tempered as if by the hands of min- istering angels — a lifting of the gloom of death for one whose departure should be cheerftil be- yond man's ordinary lot. To a pure life, nobly and beautifully completed, it was Death's inevi- table coming; but, ordered at the most timely hour, and announced with the gentleness of a welcome. The ferryman, as I crossed the river (forty miles above Sunnyside, and out of reach, of course, of the neighborhood's rumor of the day), had giv- xlix Mr. Tilton at Sunnyside. en me a toucliing proof of tlie singular universali- ty of tiie departed one's hold upon the popular heart. It was, of course, a man of tiie laboring class, hard-working, and, in his ordinary inter- course with those around hiin, little likely to hear a book mentioned — but he had read and loted Irving. "You are going down to the funeral, I suppose, sir?" he inquired, as I stepped on board. " Yes," I replied, " and we have a great loss in the death of such a man." "A loss, indeed ! and, as soon as I heard of it, I put tlie flag at half- mast, and we shall keep it there to-day," he said, as he turned thouglitfully away. IIow beautiful for Irving (I could not but think) to have died, not only with all the world's highest honors about his head, but to be mourned, also, at the deeper and more sacred level of the world's common lieart. It is probable, that, among the many descrip- tions of the funeral ceremony, tliere will be a mention — (possibly a portrait in one of the illus- ti-ated papers) — of a tall and ragged old man, with very marked physiognomy, who fell into tiie procession of the wealthy and gifted, ap- proaching tiie chancel to take a last look at the cold features in the coffin. My attention was called to him as lie unconsciou.sly crowded his ragged shoulder against our country's wealthiest man (Mr. Astor), with whose heart his own humbler heart had, for that moitient, a tear in coiiiiiion, I am sure. In unconscious forgetfulness of all around, he tottered down the north aisle — his rougli features full of emotion at what he had just gazed upon, and appearing, in his whole tig- ure and aspect, so like what has been portrayed to us in Irving's sketches of other days! He might easily have been a relic of the early settlers of the hills near by — a type, by fair inlieritance, of tlie ch.iracters who were the studies of " Died- rick Knickerbocker" — but it seemed a striking api)aritioa of the Past, so strangely conjured into tlie midst of that crowd of To-Day's gifted and distinguished ! Tiiere is little to add to the many touching de- scrijitions of the funeral, or to the interesting par- ticidars of the last days of Mr. Irving. They have been well and lovingly written upon, by many and able pens. As I stood in tiie church, before the .service, I heard, incidentally, from one of the neiglibors wlio was often at ISunnyside, tliat Mr. Irving liad been for some time aware of the un- certain tenure of his life — witli the disease at his lieart which lias now ended it so suddenly. He fully anticii)ated an instantaneous stoi)ping of the fluttering j)nlse, and was, therefore, careful never to be left alone — but he talked cheerfully of dy- ing. My companion home, alter the funeral (Mr. Griiinel), was one of our [)arty wlien liie be- loved author accompanied us on a visit to " Sleepy Hollow," two 3'ears ago — a privileged day which I described in the Home Journal, at the time — and he recalled to my mind the peculiar unliesi- tatingness with which Mr. Irving pointed out to us, as we drove past it in the carriage, the old church which was his family burying-ground. '■'■It is soon to he my resting -jjlace^"' he said, ex- pressing it in the tone of an habitual thought, and returning immediately to the lively conversation suggested by the historic scenery we were pass- ing through. And, to this place, he was borne and laid to rest, yesterday — " blessed of the Lord," we may well believe, in having been " found ready." HALF AN HOUR AT SUNNYSIDE.o A VISIT TO WASHINGTON IRVING. BY THEODORE TILTON. I HAD half an hour one day last week at Sun- nyside — the residence of Wasliington Irving, Such a half hour ought to have been one of the pleasantest in one's life ; and so it was ! The pleasure began before reaching the door-step, or taking the old man's hand — in the thousand as- sociations of the place — for a visit to Sunnyside is e(iual to a pilgrimage to Abbotsford. The quaint, grotesque old dwelling, with its old-fashioned gables, stood as solemn and sleepy among the trees as if it had been built to per- sonate old Rip Van Winkle at his nap. The grounds were covered with brown and yellow leaves, with here and there a red-squirrel run- ning and rustling among them, as if pretending to be the true red-breast that laid the leaves over the babes in tlie wood. The morning had been rainy, and the after- noon showed only a few momentary openings of clear sky; so that I saw Sunnyside without the sun. But under the heavy clouds there was something awe-inspiring in the sombre View of those grand hills with their many-colored forests, and of Ilendrik Hudson's ancient river still flow- ing at the feet of the ancient Palisades. The mansion of Sunnyside has been standing for twenty-three years ; but when first its sharp- angled roof wedged its way up among the brandies of the old woods, the region was far more a solitude than now ; for at tliat time our bu.sy author had secluded himself froin almost everybody but one near neighbor; while he has since unwittingly gathered around him a litde community of New York merchants, whose ele- * From the Independent, Nov. 24, 1S59. Habits of Composition. gaiit country-seats, opening into each other by mutual intertwining roads, form what looks like one vast and free estate, called on the time-tables of the railroad by the honorary name of Irving- ton. But even ■within the growing circle of his many neighbors, tiie genial old Knickerbocker still lives in true retirement, entertaining his guests within eciio distance of Sleepy Hollow — without thought, and almost without knowledge, " how the great world Is praising him far off." lie withdrew a year ago from all literary labor, and is now spending the close of his life in well- earned and long-needed repose. Mr. Irving is not so old-looking as one would expect who knew his age. I fancied him as in the winter of life ; I found him only in its Indian summer. He came down stairs, and walked through the hall into tlie back-parlor, with a firm and lively step that might well have made one doubt whether he had truly attained liis seventy-seventh year. lie was suttering from asthma, and was muffled against the damp air with a Scotch shawl, wrapped like a great loose scarf around his neck; but as he took his seat in the old arm-chair, and, despite his hoarseness and troubled chest, began an unexpectedly viva- cious conversation, he made me almost forget that I was the guest of an old man long past his " tlireescore years and ten." But what should one talk about who had only half an hour with Washington Irving? I ven- tured the question, " Now that you have laid aside your pen, which of your books do you look back upon with most i)leasure?" He immediately replied, " T scarcely look with full satistaction upon any ; for they do not seem what they might have been. I often wish that I could have twenty years more, to take them down from the shelf, one by one, and write them over." He spoke of his daily habits of writing, before he had made the resolution to write no more. His usual hours for literary work were from morning till noon. But, altliough he had gen- erally found his mind most vigorous in the early part of the day, he had always been subject to moods and caprices, and could never tell, when he took up the pen, liow many hours would pass before he would lay it diiwn. "But," said he, " these capricious periods, of the heat and glow of composition, have been the hap[)iest hours of my life. I have never found, in any thing outside of the four walls of my study, any enjoyment equal to sitting at my Avriting-desk with a clean page, a new theme, and a mind awake. His literary employments, he remarked, had always been more like entertainments than tasks. " Some writers," said he, " ap])ear to have been independent of moods. Sir "Walter Scott, for instance, had great power of writing, and could work almost at any time ; so could Crabbe — but with this difference: Scott always, and Crabbe seldom, wrote well. " I remember," said he, " taking breakfast one morning with Rogers, Mot)re, and Crabbe. The conversation turned on Lord 13yron's poetic moods: Crabbe said that, however it might be with Lord Byron, as for himself he could Avrite as well one time as at another. But," said Irving, with a twinkle of humor at recalling the incident, " Crabbe has written a great deal that nobody can read." He mentioned that while living in Paris he went a long period without being able to write. " I sat down repeatedly," said lie, " with pen and ink, but could invent nothing wortli ])utting on the paper. At length, I told my friend, Tom Moore, who dropped in one morning, that now, after long waiting, I had the mood, and would hold it, and work it out as long as it would last, until I had wrung my brain dry. So I began to write shortly after breakfast, and continued, witiiout noticing how the time was passing, un- til Moore came in again at four in the afternoon — when I had completely covered the table with freshly-written sljeets. I kept the mood almost without interruption for six weeks." I asked whicfi of his books was the result of this frenzy; he replied, " Bracehr'idge Hall.'''' " None of your works," I remarked, " are more charming than the Biography of Gold- smith.'''' " Yet that was written," said he, " even more rapid!}' than tlie other." He then added : " When I have been engaged on a continuous work^ I have often been obliged to rise in the middle of the night, light my lamp, and write an hour or two, to relieve my mind ; and now that I write no more, I am sometimes compelled to get up in the same way to read." Sometimes, also, as the last Idlewild letters mention, he gets up to shave. " When I Avas in Spain," he remarked, "searching the old chronicles, and engaged on the Life of Columbus., I often wrote fourteen or fifteen hours out of the twenty-four." He said that whenever he had forced his mind unwillingly to work, the product was worthless, and he invariably threw it away and began again ; " for," as he observed, " an essay or chapter that has been only hammered out is sel- dom good for any thing. An author's right time to work is when his mind is aglow ; when his imagination is kindled ; these are his i)reciou3 moments: let him wait until they come, but li SUNNYSIDE. wlien they have come let him make the most of them." I referred to his last and greatest Avork, tlie Ufe of Washington^ and asked if he felt, on fin- ishing it, any such sensation as Gibbon is said to liave experienced over the last sheet of the De- cline and Fall. He replied that the wliole work liad engrossed his mind to sucli a degree tliat, before he was aware, lie had written himself into feel)leness of health ; that he feared in the midst of liis labor tliat it would break liim down before he could end it; tiiat when at last the final pages were written, he gave the manuscript to his nephew to be condncted tiirough the press, and threw himself back upon his red cushioned lounge Avith an indescribable feeling of relief. He added, tliat the great fatigue of mind tlirough- out the whole task had resulted from the care and pains required in tlie construction and arrangement of materials, and not in the mere literary composition of the successive chapters. But what magnificent volumes ! What a work for an old man to have achieved ! What a fit- ting close to the labors of a long and busy life! They unite on one page, and will perpetuate in one memory, not only a great name, but its great namesake : the Fatlier of the American Republic, and tlie Father of the American Re- public of Letters. On the parlor wall hung the engraving of Faed's picture of "Scott and his Contemporaries." I alluiled to it as presenting a group of his for- mer friends. "■ Yes," said he, " I knew every man of them hut three: and now they are all gone." "Are the portraits good?" I inquired. " Scott's head," lie replied, " is well drawn, though the expression lacks something of Scott's force ; Campbell's is tolerable; Lockhart's is the worst. Lockhart," said he, " was a man of very delicate organization, but he had a more manly look than in the picture." "You should write one more book," I hinted. "What is that?" "Your reminiscences of those literary friends." "Ah," he exclaimed, "it is too late now! I shall never take the pen again ; I have so en- tirely given up writing, that even my best friends' letters lie unanswered. I must have rest. No more books now !" He referred to the visit, a week before, from Mr. Willis, whose letter he had just been read- ing in the Home Journal. " I am most glad," said he, " that Mr. Willis remembered my nieces ; they are my house- keepers and nurses ; they take such good care of ine that really I am the most fortunate old bachelor in the world! Yes," he repeated with lii a merry emphasis, " the most fortunate old bachelor in all the world !" It was delightful to witness the animation of his manner, and the heartiness of his gratitude, as he continued to relate how they supplied all his wants — gave him his medicines at the right time, without troubling him to look at the clock for liimself — called him down to breakfast — cloaked and shawled him for his morning ride — brought him his hat for his fine-weather walks — and in every possible way humored him in every possible whim. "I call them sometimes my nieces," he said, "but oftener my daughters!" As I rose to go, he brouglit from a corner of the room a photograph of a little girl, exhibit- ing it with great enthusiasm. It was a gitt from a little child who had come to see him every day during his sickness. The picture Avas ac- companied Avith a note, printed in large letters, with a lead pencil, by the little correspondent, who said she was too young to Avrite! He spoke with great vivacity of his childish visitor. '"Children," said the old man, "are great pets : I am very fond of the little creatures." The author's study — into which I looked for a few moments before leaving — is a small room, almost entirely filled by the great Avriting-table and the lounge behind it. The Avails are laden with books and pictures, Avhich evidently are rearranged every day by some delicate hand ; for none of the books Avere tumbled into a cor- ner, and no papers Avere lying loose upon the table. The pen, too, was laid precisely parallel to the edge of the inkstand — a nicety Avhich only a A\'oman]y housekeeper Avould perscA'ere to maintain! Besides, there was not a speck of dust upon carpet or cushion ! I stood reverently in the little room — as if it Avere a sacred place ! Its associations filled my mind with as much deliglit as if I had been breathing fragrance from hidden floAvers. On leaving, I carried the picture of it vividly in my mind, and still carry it; — the quiet, sechided, poetic haunt in Avhich a great author AvTote his greatest Avorks ! As I came away, the old gentleman bundled his shawl about him, and stood a few moments on the steps. A momentary burst of sunshine fell on him through the breaking clouds. In that full light he looked still less like an old man than in the dark parlor by the shaded Avindow. His form Avas slightly bent, but the quiet humor of the early portraits Avas still lin- gering in his face. He Avas the same genial, generous, merry-eyed man at seventy-seven as Jarvis had painted him nearly fifty yeai-s before. I wish always to remember him as I saw him at that last moment ! !Mk. Tiffaxt's ReMDsISCEXCES. A DAY AT SUNNYSIDE.- BY OSMOND TIFFANY. I MET Mr. Irving only once, but llien it was by his own fireside, with no other visitor to sliare my enjoyment. It was in the summer of 1853, when I had left Bahimore for the liot sea- son, and was passing my time at AVIiite PUiins, eight miles from Sunnyside. The Hon. John P. .Kennedy, an intimate friend of Irving's, had given me a letter to him, and on a lovely August day I drove «)ver to his house. ***** Mr. Irving was suffering a little that day with lieadache, and feeling unwilling to detain him, after a pleasant call of half an liour, I rose to depart. He, liowever, would not permit me to do -SO, saying that I had come from a distance, and must stay to dinner. He then added that he wished a little i"est, but that if I could amuse myself with a book, or strolling about the grounds, he would leave me to myself for an hour or so. Xothing more delightful than to tread the lawn at Sunnyside. It overhung the river, the railroad passing directly under the bank from which I looked across the Tajipau sea. It was the day of the inauguration of the Crystal Palace, and all the world in heat and dust had gone to look at President Pierce, while I was alone with Washington Irving. Miles away, across the water, lay Tappan, where Andre bravely met his melanciioly doom. Above and below stretched an enchanting prospect, ever enlivened by the white-winged craft scudding before or beating in the wind. Nature and art were charmingly blended in the grounds, fine deciduous trees and evergreens contrasted foli- age, while winding paths led into shady dells and arbors, or to rustic bridges which spanned a brooklet running riverward. The whole sweet scene was in unison with the genial spirit of its possessor. On returning to the house near four o'clock, Mr. Irving met me again in the parlor. This Avas a large and handsomeh' furnished room, decorated with paintings and engravings, several of them scenes from the author's own writings, which had been given to him, while the book- table displayed choice presentation copies of works from literary friends. I was attracted by a collection of WiJkie's engraved works, and particularly struck by one of its subjects ; a young monk on his knees confessing to an old one. Mr. Irving said tliat he himself was with Wilkie, when he made the sketcli of this picture. They were travelling together in Spain, and one day, in passing through the aisles of one of its old cathedrals, they peeped into a confessional * From the Sprhiqfield Repiiblican. and beheld a venerable bearded ecclesiastic, listening to the fervent confession of sin from a young devotee. Wilkie instantly stopped and sketched this striking scene, elaborating it ou his return to England. Dinner being now announced, we were joined by a brother of Mr. Irving, who with his three daughters reside at Sunnyside. In introducing me to his nieces, he playfully spoke of them as liis adopted daughters, for want of any of his own. He had now entirely recovered from liis headache, and was in the most lively and agree- able mood. I had heard that in general society he was often silent, and I knew that on public occasions he could not jjossibly speak, but now notliing could be more delightful than the How 'of his conversation. I found that tlie best way to draw him out, Avas to let him talk on at Aviil, now and then making some slight suggestion wliich Avould open a new subject. In tliis man- ner he touched upon his travels in Spain, and recalled the palmy days of the Alhanibra, and it was like reading one of his fine romances, to hear him speak of bygone scenes in Granada, Madrid, and Seville. He had many anecdotes of the celebrated actors and singers of his time, for he was fond of music, and thoroughly appre- ciated liigh dramatic art. I mentioned the "Little Ked Horse Inn," which he has made immortal by his sketch of Stratford-on-Avon, and told him, that as soon as I visited it, the landlord on finding I Avas an American brought in a copy of his works, and said he Avas proud always to meet the author's countrymen. Mr. Irving added, that on his first return to Stratford, after tlie publication of the Sketch Bool; he was in company with Mr. Van Buren. and tliat they Avere greatly amused by the landlady rushing in, holding up the poker with Avliich he stirred the fire, and saying, "Sir, you see I've got your sceptre safe." Nothing could be more modest than the way in Avhicii Mr. Irving spoke of himself or of his Avorks, never naming them, unless they Avere alluded to. Indeed his whole manner was in striking contrast to the flippancy of some shal- low literary men, and to the "smile superior,*' the self-complacency, and consummate impu- dence of some of the "curled darlings"' of the lecture-room, Avho annually visit the rural dis- tricts to instruct us about '■'■society," and tell liow New York snobocracy ties its cravats and. flirts its fans in Madison Square. Here was a, man Avho for half a century had moved in the very highest circles of Avealth, style, and intellect, caressed on every hand, yet whom panegyric and flattery could not spoil, and Avho had pre- served unspotted his true nobihty of nature. A modest hero of letters, a perfect gentleman in liii An Irving Anecdote. one felt in his presence tlie soul as in manner ii)tliit-nce of — "A mind that all the muses deckM With gil'tii of grace, which might express All comprehensive tenderness All subtilizing intellect. " Heart affluence in discursive talk From household fountains never dry, The critic clearness of an eye Which saw through all the muses' walk." ANECDOTE OF WASHINGTON IRVING. « We dined at General Webb'.s, at his charming '' Pokahoe," in honor of Dr. Wainwright, lately cho.sen to be Provisional Bishop of New York. The company consisted of Bishop Doane, Dr. AVainwright, Dr. Creighton, Dr. Vinton, and Mr. Soiitiiard, of the clergy; with Mr. Charles King and Mr. Washington Irving. These guests, en- livened by tiie Iia[)py occasion of their gathering, enjoyed the day prodigiously. Mr. Irving was silent for a long time ; yet he seemed interested in the conversation, till, gradually, liis eye liglited, and his face beamed, and he ventured to drop a word, here and there, sometimes spontaneously in repartee, but chiefly in monosyllabic response. The company evidently respected liis accustom- ed taciturnity with strangers, especially as our host had hinted to us that Mr. Irving reluctantly allowed himself to be drawn from his seclusion to participate in' a " Clerical dinner-party." Dimier- l)artie3 he abhorred ; and clerical dinner-parties he conceived to be the most dull, precise, and formal of social ceremonies. To Mr. Charles King we wei-e indebted for bringing Mr. Irving out and keeping him awake, and cheating him of his accustomed nap. He addressed Mr. Irving as Major, recounting the scenes of his young manhood when he was aid- de-camp to Gov. Tompkins in the "last war." Mr. Irving enjoyed the reminiscence to such a degree that his reserve was entirely dissipated, and he volunteered an anecdote of his military service on Fort Greene, and of the mishap of the Governor in being ujiset from his horse into the ditch of the Fort, which he told with inimitable hmnor, and with a relish characteristic of Died- rick Knickerbocker. Tlie ice was fairly broken. The connection of Mr. Irving and tlie soldier was itself a ludicrous juxtaposition, and he himself made the most fun of it. Our host first playfull}', and then seriously, en- deavored to i)ersuade liim to apply for his " land- warrant," to which his services entitled him, by * From the Coiirier and Enquirer, Dec. 14, 1859. act of Congress. We severally promised to do the writing, if he would sign the application. And we urged tlie worth of the land-warrant as a memento which would be so valuable one of these days, as to be sought for at a price which would feed the poor, or provide a chancel window, or even (said one) to build a new church for Tarry town. Mr. Irving was greatly amused by the persua- sions of the company, parrying the arguments, one after another, with sly skill and evident deliglit. He hit the clergy wi'th a gentle sarcasm at their disinterestedness, and intimated that their zeal for a new church or a chancel window was hav- ing " a single eye for the public good." And he bantered Mr. King and our host upon the affec- tation of military esprit de corps. AVhen the time came for parting, Mr. Irving invited us to call upon him at "Sunnyside," and whispered to our host, " When you have another clerical dinner-party, count me in." The next day we called on Mr. Irving at Sunny- side. It was the day of Mr. Webster's funeral at Marshfield. It was one of the glorious days of October, when the mists of Tappaan Zee flung a veil over the charms of the Rockland Hills, ob- scuring the landscape of the Highlands in that half-light which Doughty knew so well how to paint. The sun was warm and genial and the air l)almy, insonauch that we adjourned from the parlor to the porch. Tiie conversation tui'ned upon Mr. Webster, — his life, his labors, his suc- cesses, his disappointments, his death, and the loss to his mourning country. Thence, it changed to Mr. Webster's compeers and the era of tiie Re- public when they lived, and to a comparison with the preceding epochs, and thence to prognostica- tions and politics in general. Just then, my eye was attracted to an apple- tree loaded with a precious freight of bright red apples, to which I quietly walked, nnperceived, as I supposed. 1 picked an ap])le from the ground : it was very good. I tried anotlier : it was somewhat decayed. I then threw some of them at the sound bright red apples on the tree. While thus busied, I heard a tenor voice cry- ing out: "An old man once saw a rude boy stealing apples, and he ordered him to come down." Looking round, I saw Mr. Irving coming to- wards me, to whom I rei>lied : "But the young saucebox told him decidedly that he would not." Mr. Irving rejoined : " Then the old man pelt- ed him with grass." I replied, "At which the saucebox laughed r whereupon the old man began to pelt him, say- ing, 'I will see what virtue there is in stones.' " " Ah ! you've read it, you've read it," exclaim- Mk. Curtis' Tkibute. ed Mr. Irving, clapping his liands in great glee, and fairly running, in a dog-trot, to my side. " I IiDpe my guests will excuse me," he said ; '' but I could not retrain from coming to you." '' Yet they were conversing on very grave and interesting topics," said I ; "and I wonder you could break away so easily to detect a young saucebox stealing your apples." " Well I nmst tell you how it happened," he replied. " To be sni-e the topics are grave and patriotic, and all that, yet when I saw you eating my apiiles from tliis grand old tree, and trying to knock some down with tlie rotten apples spread about here, it brought to my mind a circumstance which happened to me, on this very spot, some fifteen years ago. I had lately come from Spain, and was building yonder nondescript cottage, half Moorish and half English — an olla podrida sort of thing — about which I was excessively in- terested, considering my work as patriotic and as grave a matter as the conversation down there. " I was watching the workmen, directing this one and that one, lest the idea of my fancy might not be realized, when, in turning, my eye caught this api)le-tree, loaded witli its fruit (just as your eye did). It was a day like this, one of our October days — our Highland October days — such as one lights upon nowiiere else in the world. And this apple-tree bore that year as it does not bear every year, yet just like tliis. Well, I left my workmen and my talk (just as you did), and ate one of these windfalls (just as you did), and liked it (just as you did), and then I tried to knock some down (just as you did). Now, while I was enjoying these tine a[)ples (it was for the first time). "Just as I am now," I interposed. " Yes, yes," he continued. "A little nrcliin — sucii as infest houses in building — a ragged little urchin, out at the knees and out at the elbows — came up to me and said, sotto voce, 'Mister, do you love apples?' 'Ay, that I do,' said I. 'Well, come witii me, and I'll sliow you where are some better than them are.' 'Ah,' said I, ' wiiere are they?" 'Just over the hill, there,' said he. ' Well, show me,' said I. 'Come along,' said the little thief, '■but dan' t let the old man see ms.' &'o I tcent icith him and stole my own ajyples. " Thus, you see how it happened that I could not stay with the politicians." And, as he said this, his whole frame sliook with fun; and his face threw otf the wrinkles of seventy years. Geoifrey Crayon stood before me. WASHINGTON IRVING.« BY GKOKGK WILLIAM 0CRTI3. The news of Irving's death did not surprise those who knew how gradually but surely he had been failing tbr several months ; and yet the death of any one we love, however long exi>ect- ed, is sudden at last — and he was the one man whom the whole country loved. Men of greater genius, of more persuasive and brilliant power, more peculiarly identified than he with charac- teristic American development, there are and have been, but no character since Waslnngton so symmetrical, and no career more rounded and complete. With Irving, the man and the autlior were one. The same twinkling humor, untouched by personal venom; the same sweetness, geniality, and grace; the same transparency and cliildlike simplicity, which endeared the writer to his read- ers, endeared the man to his friends. Gifted with a happy temperament, with that cheerful balance of thought and feeling which begets the sympathy which prevents bitter animosity, he lived through the sharpest struggles of our poli- tics, not witliout interest, but without bitterness, and with the tenderest resi)ect of every party. His tastes, and talents, and liabits were all those of the literary man. In earlier life, Secre- tary to the Legation in London, and afterwards Minister to S[)ain, he used the opportunities of liis position not for personal advancement, nor for any political object whatever, bat for pure literary advantage. And it was given to liini, first of our authors, to invest the American land- scape witii the charm of imagination and tra- dition. Curiously enough, he did not evoke this spell from the grave chronicles of religious zeal in New England, whose gloomy romance Hawthorne has wielded with power so weird, nor from tiie gay cavalier society of Virginia, but from tl)e element of our national settlement which seemed the least promising of all — the Dutch. So great is the power and so exquisite the skill with which this was done, that his genius has colored history. We all see the Dutch as Irving painted tiiem. When we speak of our dougiity Governor Stuyvesant, whom we all know, we mean not the Governor of the histo- ries, l>ut of Diedrick Knickerbocker. And so tiie entire Hudson river, from CommunipaAv, upon the Jersey shore of the Bay, along the Highlands and beyond the Catskill, owes its characteristic romance to the touch of the same imagination. * A copyrigtit article, reprinted, by the courtesy of the pub- Ifchers, from ffarper^s Weekly, Dec. 17, 1859. Iv Ikvixg Traits. That this power should have been no less in the treatment of Spanish legend, shows its genu- ine quality as high, poetic imagination. That the same man should have written the Knicker- bocker History, Rip Van Winkle, and Ichabod Orane, and then the Chronicles of tlie Alhambra, and the Legends of Granada, sliows only that if his power were versatile, it was versatile not because it was talent, but genius. And to this various excellence in seizing the essential romance of the Dutch and Spanish ge- nius, we must add that lie was not less fortunate in the English. The Sketch Booh and Brace- hrkige Hall are the most exquisite prctures of characteristic English life in literature. What they delineate is constantly hinted in English works, but nowhere else is it so atfectionately and fully elaborated. It is the poetic side of that burly dogmatist, John Bull, which is the secret charm of these books. They are full of a breezy heartiness, an unsophisticated honesty, a cordial reverence for traditions in themselves interesting, the flower and beauty of conservatism. There are hints and implications of it all through the Spectator and Tattler^ and the early essayists ; in Goldsmith, too; but nowhere among English authors until long after Irving's works, and then in the Christmas chapters oi' Picktcick, and gen- erally in tlie Holiday tales of Dickens. Is it too fanciful to And this susceptibility of genius to national individuality in Irving's histo- ries? to suppose that it is evident in the method and atmosphere of the Columbus, as contrasted with that of the Washington ? It is fair to lay the more stress upon tins, be- cause Irving's genius suffers in public estimation as Washington's does, from its very symmetry. Disproportion gives an impression of strength, but an Egyptian temple was no more enduring than a Grecian, although the Egyptian arcliitec- ture looks as if rooted in the earth, and the Grecian as if ready to float off into the blue sky. So in any direction, the ardent, i)assionate tem- perament seems to be more pronounced than the balanced and serene. How Irving had grown into the public heart and life! It was like the love of England for Walter Scott. The word Knickerbocker, or his own name, had scarcely less vogue than the word Waverley. It greets us everywhere, and is not the fashion of a day, but the liabit of love and reverence. And so, foretasting that immor- tality of affection in wliich his memory is and will be cherished, his many and various tasks fulfilled, his last great work done, ripe with years and honor, and entirely unspoiled by the world which he loved, and which loved him, the good old man died as quietly as he had lived, ceased without i)ain or struggle from the world Ivi in wliieh he had never caused the one nor suf- fered from the other. And when his death was known, there was no class of men wlio more sincerely deplored him than those of his own vocation. The older au- thors felt that a friend, not a rival — the younger that a father, had gone. There is not a young literar}' aspirant in the country who, if he ever personallj' met Irving, did not hear from hiin the kindest words of sympathy, regard, and encour- agement. There is none of the older rank who, knowing him, did not love him. He belonged to no clique, no party- in his own profession more than in any other of the great interests of life; and that not by any wilful independence, or neu- trality armed against all comers, but by the natu- ral catholicit}^ of his nature. On the day of his burial, unable to reach Tar- rytown in time for the funeral, I came down the shore of the river he loved. As we darted and wound along, the Catskills were draped in sober gray mist, not hiding them, but wreathing, and folding, and lingering, as if the hills were liung with sympathetic, but not unrelieved gloom. Yet far away towards the south, the bank on which his home la}*, was Sunnyside still, for the sky was cloudless and soft with serene sunshine. I could not but remember his last words to me more than a year ago, when his book was fin- ished and his health was failing, " I am getting ready to go ; I am shutting up my doors and windows." And I could not but feel that they were all open now, and bright with the .light of eternal morning. WASHINGTON IRVING.* BY FKEDEEICK S. COZZENS. " Wasuington Irving is dead !" The word passed in whis})ers through the train, as it rolled noisily along the banks of his beloved river — beside the very trees that fringed Sunnyside. And within that hallowed ground, Earth's Greatest Favorite lay silent. Who can mourn for him? Not one! We may mourn for ourselves, — for what we have lost ia him ; it was fitting that his life should have such a close; that his gentle spirit was not taxed with pain, nor did dissolution advance with lin- gering pace. But when the labor of his life was accomplished, and he rested. Death, gently as a child, drew aside his curtains of repose, saluted * Reprintpil, by the courteous permission of Mr. Bonner, from The New York Ledijer, Dec. 17, 1859. Mr. Cozzens' Sketch. liim with a kiss, and said, Awake, for it is morn- ing! 1 count it one of the greatest privileges to have known Mr. Irving personally. Not from that idle vanity which too often leads the hum- bler writer to claim ac"<>iiu told of Iiim, gave me the idea of a vagabond char- acter, Dirck Schuyler, in my Knickerbocker^ His- tory of New York^ which 1 was then writing. Yon tell me the old school-house is torn down, and a new one built in its place. I am sorry for it. I should have liked to see the old scliool- house once more, where, after my morning's lit- erary task was over,' I used to come and wait for you occasionally until school was dismissed, and you used to promise to keep back tlie punishment of some little tough, broad-bottomed Dutch boy until I should come, for my amusement — but never kept your promise. I don't think 1 should look with a friendly eye on the new school-house, however nice it might be. Since I saw j'ou in New York, I liave had se- vere attacks of bilious intermittent fever, which shook me terribly ; but they cleared out my system, and I have ever since been in my usual excellent lioalth, able to mount my horse and gal- lop about the country almost as briskly as when I was- a youngster. Wishing you the enjoyment of the same inestimable blessing, and begging you to remember me to your daughter who penned your letter, and to your sou whom out of old kindness and companionship you have named after me, I remain ever, my old friend, yours truly and cordially, Washington Ieving. Jesse Merwin, Esq. "COCKLOFT HALL." A KEMINISOENOE.* An old resident of Newark, who signs himself K. W., gives to the Newark Advertiser some particulars about the "Cockloft Hall," mentioned in Irving's Sulmagvndi. The original building referred to under that title, it api)ears, is situ- ated on the Passaic river, between Belleville and Newark. It was known half a century ago as the "'Gouverneur Place," from which family it descended to Mr. Gouverneur Kemble (wlio was present at Mr. Irving's funeral), but for many years it was rented out to a respectable couple who acted as host and hostess to Irving, Paul- ding, and three or four others constituting their coterie. The house has been recently improved, but without materially altering its form and in- ternal arrangements. The Cockloft summer- house and the fish-pond mentioned by Irving * From the Evening Post, Dec. 12, 1S59. Irving Poetkaits. still exist, tlioiigli almost in ruins. K. W. thus describes the appearance of tlie sninnier-liouse as lie visited it in Anjjust last: "It was a small buildino;, standing not far from the river's brink, and near an artificial basin or pond, into which, as the tide was full, the Passaic was pouring some of its surplus waters through a narrow sluice. It was octago- nal in shape, about eighteen feet in diameter, containing only one apartment, with a door facing the river on the east, and having windows opening towards each of the other three cardinal points. It was built of stone, and had been originally weather-boarded, althougli most of the boards had fallen off. It had evidently been constructed with great care, being fully jdastered within and papered, having an ornamental cor- nice and chair-board, an arched doorway, and cut stone steps, — all indicating a fastidiousness of finish not ordinarily found elsewhere than in dwellings ; but it was far gone towards utter ruin, the window-sashes being all out, the door gone, and the mutilated wood-work showing it to 1>e a resort only of the idle and tlie vicious." The "Gouverneur Place," or Cockloft Hall, is at present occupied I)y Mr. Winslow L. Whiting. Mr. Irving, in a letter to the New Jersey His- torical Society, some time since, referring to the time he spent at this place, remarked: — "With Newark are associated in my mind many pleas- ant recollections of early days and of social meetings at an old mansion on the banks of the Passaic." IRVING PORTRAITS.* Mr. Irvin(/''s Letter to the JVew YorTc Mercantile Library Association. Of the thousands who have read with delight the i)roductionsof Wasiiington Irving's pen, com- paratively few have any correct idea of his per- sonal ai)i)earance. Of none of our public men have so few portraits be^in taken, at least of late years. The correspondence which follows gives the reason for this deficiency : Lrving requested to Sit for his Bust. Clinton Hall, November 2, 1854. My Dear Sir: I have been appointed, by my colleagues in the Board of Direction of the Mer- cantile Library Association, to express to you I heir earnest desire to possess some api)ropriate and enduring -memorial of the author of The * From the Evening Post, Nov. 30, 1S69. Sketch Book and the Father of American Litera- ture. The presence in this country of Mr. Randolph Rogers, formerly a merchants' clerk in New York, but of late years a student of art in Italy and now a sculi)tor of some note, has suggested to a few friends of the institution the idea of embra- cing the opi)ortunity to secure, if possible, for the merchants' clerks of this city, the marble bust of Washington Irving, — the diplomatist, thescliolar, and the author. The Mercantile Librarv Associ- ation, now firmly established as a permanent cen- tre of moral and intellectual influence over tlie young men of this metropolis (having a member- ship of nearly six thousand), would seem to be the fitting depository of such a work of art; and the clerks of New York, who have always paid their willing homage to the genius of our first great writer, may with reason present their re- quest to be allowed thus to honor him, who, in the dark day of our national literature, became our Washington, and answered triumphantly for himself and for his country the taunt — "' Who reads an American book ?" Commending the subject to your favorable con- sideration, and hoping that you may not feel com- pelled to withhold your consent, I am, my dear sir, very respectfully your obedient servant, Teank W, Ballard. Mr. Irving''s Rejyly. SuNNYSiDE, November 14, 1854. To Feank W. Ballard, Esq. — My Dear Sir : I cannot but feel deeply and gratefully sensible of the honor done me by the Mercantile Library Association in soliciting a marble bust of me to be placed in their new establishment. I am well aware of the talents of Mr. Randolph Rogers as a sculjjtor, and slu)uld most willingly stand to him for a bust, but I have some time since come to a fixed determination to stand or sit for no more likenesses, either in painting or sculpture, and have declined repeated and urgent solicitations on the subject. The last one I declined was from Mr. AVilliam B. Astor, who Avished it for the Astor Library. I offered him, however, the use of a model of a bust executed some years since by Mr. Ball Hughes, and which at tlie time was con- sidered by my friends an excellent likeness. Of tiiis Mr. Astor had a copy made (by, I think, Mr. Brown, of Brooklyn), which is now in the Astor Library. Should tlie Mercantile Library Association be disposed to have a similar copy made, the model by Mr. Ball Hughes, which is in the possession of one of my relatives, is at their disposition. In concluding, I would observe that, viewing the nature and circumstances of your institution Ixi Public Dinneks. and its identification with the deaj'est interest and sympathies of my native city, I do not know any one from which an api)lication of the kind you make would be more intensely gratifying. Accept, my dear sir, my thanks for the kind expressions of your letter, and believe me, very respectfully, your obliged and humble servant, Washington Irving. MR. IRVING' S OBJECTION TO PUBLIC DINNERS.- The last time we had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Irving was at the Publishers' Festival in New York, in the autunm of 1855. All who were present on that occasion will remember how fresh was liis api)earance, and how genial his manner, and with what a hearty welcome he greeted the friends, old and young, who thronged around him. Among the former was our towns- man, Mr. Moses Thomas, and in reference to the interview between these gentlemen, the American Publishers' Circular afterwards said : "One of the interesting incidents at the recent festival was the meeting of Washington Irving with his old friend, Moses Thomas, the veteran and much respected ex-publisher of Philadelphia. Mr. Irving, in liis younger days, had been inti- mate with Mr. Thomas, and cherished for him the highest regard ; but it so happened that they had not met for inore than a quarter of a century." A month or two later Mr. Irving addressed the following letter to Mr. Thomas, which Ave are tempted to reprint, as at once showing his disin- clination to public display, and his cordial recog- nition of the claims of private friendship. "80NNT8IDE, December 14, 1S55. " My Dear Thomas : I thank you heartily for your kind and hospitable invitation to your house, which I should be glad to accept did I proi)ose attending the Godey complimentary dinner ; but the annoyance I suffer at dinners of this kind, in having to attempt speeclies, or bear ccjmpliments in silence, has made me abjure them altogether. The publishers' festival, at which I had the great pleasure of meeting you, was an exception to my rule, but only made on condition that I would not be molested by extra civilities. "■ I regi-et tliat on that occasion we were sepa- rated from each,other, and could not sit together and talk of old times ; however, I trust we shall have a future opportunity of so doing. I wish, when you visit New York, you wouUftake a run * From the Philadelphia North Ameiican, Nov. 30, 1859. Ixii up to Sunnyside ; the cars set you down within ten minutes' walk of my liouse, where ray 'women-kind' will receive you {figuratively speahing) with open arms; and my dogs will not dare to bark at you. Yours, ever very truly, " Washington Iuving. " Moses Thomas, Esq." ANECDOTE OF WASHINGTON IRVING. "- A friend of ours, who occupies a hn-dly man- sion in Tvventy-ni nth-street, near Fifth Avenue, was whilom a contractor lor building that sec- tion of the Crotou Aqueduct which passed through Tarrytown. Soon after he had erected a rude building for the reception of the tools and of the workmen, and to afford himself a tempo- rary shelter while engaged in his responsible, duties, an old gentleman, plainly dressed and of exceeding unpretending manners, presented him- self one day and commenced a conversation with o'ur friend. A great many questions were asked, naturally suggested by the then new enterprise of supplying New York city with water, and after a visit of an hour or so, the old gentleman quietly departed. A few days afterwards, accom- panied by two ladies, he again visited the head- quarters of our friend, and entered into a more detailed conversation, seemingly intent upon finding out all that was to be learned about the proposed aqueduct. These visits finally became a regular affair, and were continued twice a week, for a period of some six months. The conversations were always confined to local sub- jects, and not a remark escaped from the lips of the visitor which was calculated to inspire curi- osity, or suggest that he was other than some plain good-natured person, with plenty of time on his hands, who desired to while away an hour or two in commonplace chit-chat. In course of time our friend finished his labors at Tarrj-town, but occasionally met his old friend on the little steamers that serve to connect our suburbs with the heart of the city. One day, while travelling along the Hudson, and busily engaged in conver- sation with the old gentleman, the steamer sud- denly commenced pealing its bell, and made such a racket that our friend left his place, and hunt- ing up the captain, asked him "what all that noise was about ?" "Why," replied that functionary, "we are opposite Sunnyside, and having Washington Irving on board, by this alarm his servant will be able to meet liim at his landing with a car- riage." * From the Spirit of tliyi Times, Dec. 3, 1859. Literary Commissions. Onr friend, in great entliusiasm, exclaimed, "Washington Irving! Ae on board ; why, point him out to me; there is no man living whom I would more like to see." At tliis demonstration, tlie captain looked quite surprised, and remarked, " Why, sir, yon just left Washingt(m Irving's company, and from the number of times I have seen you in familiar conversation with him on this boat, I supposed you were one of his most intimate friends." The astonishment of our friend may be faintly imagined when he discovered that for more than a half year, twice a week he had had a long con- versation with Washington Irving, a person witli whom, more than any man living, he desired a personal introduction. TWO POEMS BY WASHINGTON IRVING.- The following is the little poem alluded to in the "Memoranda," descriptive of a painting by Gilbert Stuart Newton : An old philosopher is reading, hi this picture, from a folio, to a younof beauty who is asleep on 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. Irving wrote the lines at his friend New- ton's request. THE DULL LECTURE. Erostie 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. THE FALLS OF THE PASSAIC. In a wild, tranquil vale, fringed with forests of green, Where nature had fashioned a soft, sylvan scene, The retreat of the ringdove, the haunt of the deer, Passaic in silence roU'd gentle and clear. No grandeur of prospect astonish'd the sight; No abruptness sublime mingled awe with delight ; Here the wild flow'ret bldssom'd, the elm proudly waved, And pure was the current the green bank that laved. But the spirit that ruled o'er the thick tangled wood, And deep in its gloom flx'd its murky abode — Who loved the wild scene that the whirlwinds deform. And gloried in thunder, and lightning, and storm — All flush'd from the tumult of battle he came, Where the red-men encounter'd the children of flame, While the noise of the war-whoop still rang in his ears, And the fresh-bleeding scalp as a trophy he bears : * From The Neio York Book of Poetry, edited by Charles Fenno Hoffman. With a glance of disgust he the landscape snrvey'd. With its fragrant wild flowers, its wide-waviug shade ; Where Passaic meanders through margins of green, So transparent its waters, its surface serene. He rived the green hills, the wild woods he laid low ; He taught the pure stream in rough channels to flow; He rent the rude rock, the steep precipice gave. And hurl'd down the chasm the thundering wave. Countless moons have since roll'd in the long lapse of time — Cultivation has soften'd those features sublime — The a.\e of the white man has lighten'd the shade, And dispell' d the deep gloom of the thicketed glade. But the stranger still gazes, with wondering eye, On the rocks rudely torn, and groves mounted on high ; Still loves on the clitfs dizzy borders to roam. Where the torrent leaps headlong embosom'd in foam. AMERICAN LITERARY COMMISSIONS IN LONDON IN 1822. A Letter from Mr. Irving to Mr. John E. Hall, Editor of the " Port- Folio, ''^ now first printed. London, June 30, 1S22. My dear Sir: — I have received your letter of April 29th. The precious letter to which you alhide came to hand when I was in France, and I replied to it at some length, but it appears my reply never reached yon. The situation in which I was at the time, so for from London, put it out of my power to render you the services you re- quired. The proof-slieets of the Life of Anacreon whicli you say you forwarded, never were re- ceived. I have talked with Carpenter about your pro- posed work. He says the translation by Moore could not be published in the work without an infringement of his copyright, which of course lie could not permit. He says, however, that if the Life were well executed-, so as to be enter- taining and attractive, he should liave no objec- tion to treat with you about it; but that at the present day^ it is necessary that a work of this kind should be executed in a very masterly man- ner, as the age is extremely erudite and critical in such matters. I tliink if you have the MSB. or printed sheets, you had better transmit them to Mr. Miller and let him act as your agent with Carpenter, or any other bookseller that may be disposed to under- take the thing. Of course, if Carpenter is not the man, you will have to substitute other trans- lations instead of Moore's, which would be a disadvantage to the work. As to well-written articles concerning Amer- ica, there are various magazines that would be glad to receive contributions of the kind ; as a lively interest exists on the subject of America Ixiii Life aj^d Letters. and American literature. Your best way is to send your MSS. to Miller, and get him to dispose of tlieni to the best advantage, allowing him a percentage, both to repay him for his trouble, and to make it worth his while to take pains, lie is fully to be depended upon. The terms with the most popular magazines is from ten to fifteen or twenty guineas a sheet, according to the merit of the article and the reputation of the author's writings before they make any offer. I have handed the Conversations on the Bible to a young clergyman, a literary character, to read them and report on them ; I will then see if I can do any thing with the printers about them. There is such an inundation of work for the press, however, that you have no idea of the difficulty of getting any thing looked at by a publisher unless the author has an established name. The Spy is extremely well spoken of by the best circles, and has a very fair circulation ; not a bit better than it deserves, for it does the author great credit. The selections of the American poets is, I believe, by one of the Ros- coe family; the poets selected from are Paulding, the author of Yamayden, the author of i^a/wj^/i Pierpont, Bryant, and over ten others whose names do not at present occur to me. I shall leave London in the course of next week, for Aix la Ohapelle, where I propose re- maining sonre time to take the water, having been out of health for nearly a year past. Any thing you wish done at London, however, you will be sure of having well done by Mr. Miller. In sending proof-sheets, &c., do not send through the Post-office or Letter-bags, for the postage would then amount to pounds sterling^ and the letters, &c., remain unclaimed. Send large pack- ets by private hand. I wish, when you see Mr. Ewing,* you would remember me to him, as an old friend who would not willingly be forgotten by him. Tell him Anacreon Moore holds liim in honored remembrance. I am, my dear sir, Very sincerely, your friend, Washington Irving. John E. Hall, Esq., Editor of the Port-Folio, Philadelphia. Ixiv * Samuel Ewing, Esq., of Philadelphia. LIFE AND LETTERS OF IRVING. A MEMOIR of Mr. Irving may in due time be expected. His entire manuscripts and correspond- ence were left in the hands of Pierre M. Irving, who is admiral)ly adapted to the task. Such a memoir will aftord early sketches of New York society, and the first attempts of American liter- ature; it will bring out the details of Mr. Irving's life when abroad, and his social intercourse with the master-minds of Europe. And it may explain the magic of that power which subdued the fero- cious criticism of London and Edinburgh. At the time of Mr. Irving's first publication in Eng- land, the reviewer's den was as surrounded with the bones of American authors, as Doubting Gas- tie was with tliose of tlie pilgrims ; but old Ebony became tamed by the Western Orpheus, and re; laxing his teeth, explained himself by a figure from Comus: ''The genius of Mr. Irving has smoothed the raven down of censure till it smiled." Such a volume the public will look for with eagerness and read with delight. We have alluded to the high character of Mr. Irving's brothers, and need only add that it was shared by three sisters, all deceased. One of these married Henry Van Wart, an American merchant residing in Birmingham, England; another was married to the late Daniel Paris, attorney at law, and the third accepted the hand of Gen. Dodge, late of Johnstown, and now rests by his side in the old cemetery of that village. A year ago Mr. Irving made Ids will. It was written during some leisure weeks passed in the city of New York. As he proceeded to tliis final duty, it would seem that his youth and boyhood came before him. The place where he sat, |)en in hand, was then a desolate common, two miles distant from his fatlier's rural man.sion in Wil- liam-street. He remembered early acts of kind- ness and generosity, and his gushing heart pours out its utterances of atfiiction. None b'lt lie could have written such an instrument, and none can read it without emotion. It was penned in some sacred hour of retrospect and farewell, and its details should be sacred from the public gaze. Its main provisions refer to the establishment of Sunnyside as a permanent abode for the name and house of Irving. * Albany Evening Journal, Dec. 9, 1859. The End. ^ 7TTTTTTT liiiiiiii 015 971 322 ^ •.««.'■ Sfllt^*'