THE OLD SCHOOL-BOOKS.

his diction in all his writings, that he was ety-of any pretensions among us in that department mological from the beginning. The leading of education at that time, and Irving, so far as teacher of the institution was ever insisting on I can learn, was not a scholar of Edward Riggs, the importance of rhetoric, and struggled hard to make every boy a Cicero. He assigned pieces for memory, to be rehearsed at the public exhibitions of his scholars, and such was his ethnological science and his acquaintance with the doctrine of temperaments, that he committed to Irving the heroic lines

"My voice is still for war," &c

a renowned teacher of the Latin, and the author 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

while I, nearly seven years younger, was given Josiah Ogden Hoffman. What proficiency he for rhetorical display

"Pity the sorrows of a poor old man," &c

tion daily, and for a specified time to saw wood, in an apartment below his office; 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.

made in that abstract study must be left to conjecture; but in due season he opened a law-office There was a curious conflict existing in the in Pearl-street, near Coenties Slip. His health school between the principal and his assistant- was still precarious, and he was threatened with instructor: the former a legitimate burgher of pulmonary mischiefs. He was slender and delithe city, the latter a New England pedagogue. cate in appearance, but never weary in measures So far as I can remember, something depended to improve his condition. For wholesome exon the choice of the boy's parents in the selec-ercise he carried into practical operation a sugtion of his studies; but if not expressed other- gestion to be engaged in some mechanical operawise, the principal stuck earnestly to Dilworth, while the assistant, for his section of instruction, held to Noah Webster. The same system or rule was 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 We need scarcely apprehend falling into error the assistant. To render this sketch of the insti- when we affirm that his law-office proved tution where young Irving received the earlier neither burdensome to his mental nor physical principles of his school-education less imperfect, faculties. The legal profession, then, as now, it may be stated that the slender duodecimo abounded in numbers and in great talent. Morevolume of Morse's geography was in use. This over, the contemplative qualities of Irving were book was a novelty in school-apparatus, being directed in other channels. He needed diverthe first of its kind which professed an account sion; he demanded variety; and his views of life of the different States of the Union, and it en- were comprehensive. It is a remark well founded, listed the attention of the schoolmasters. The that realities are but dimly to be traced in the glowing description of New England by the twilight of the imagination, and the first imreverend author, its fertile soil and products, pulses of genius are often to be illustrated by the often invoked a smile from the old Knickerbocker subsequent career of the individual. Young instructors. The picture which the patriotic Irving at school was a quiet boy. I can narrate author had drawn of Wethersfield, its fair dam- no wild freaks or sports, originating from his sels and its exuberant onions, invoked merriment conduct. It is true, that except from the genamong the juvenile learners, and secured for a eral good order of his section of the room, and while for the book the sobriquet, the onion edi- his devotion to reading, I had little chance to tion. There was, besides, a special teacher of do more than occasionally look at him as at elocution, in partial association with the acade- other scholars, witness his movements in the iny, by the name of Milne. He was the com- streets, and observe his rather taciturn and sepiler of a book entitled the Well-bred Scholar; a questered way. He seemed to have a habit of inan of taste, a dramatic writer, if not a per- loneliness or abstraction; but he was early a former. He possessed a magisterial air, a robust reader, and I might say an observer from the and athletic fulness; lived plethoric, and died, I beginning to the end of his life. These qualibelieve, apoplectic. He was an Englishman by ties, it is not to be supposed, were so prominent birth, and perhaps the first among us, in the as to induce special notice among his schoolprogress of instruction, who attempted expound-associates at that period of his life; yet as his 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 four schools

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

FONDNESS FOR THE DRAMA.

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 intimate friends, Paulding, Brevoort, Verplanck, 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 through the Stuyvesant lane of cherry-trees (which, it may be remarked, passed directly through the very grounds on which this edifice where we are now convened stands), all betrayed that love of nature which he has so luxuriantly unfolded in his captivating writings.

:

drama. That fountain of knowledge yields a living spring to all who desire to delineate human character; and who has excelled Irving in that branch of intricate illustration? The animating movements, the picturesque displays made fiction almost a reality, and illumined a mind so susceptible of impression. The drama, with sensibilities like his, roused to newness of reflection, dissipated ennui, and invoked the inner powers of a lonely student to increased literary effort. He must 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 forward 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 disquisitions on the stage, which Irving published shortly after, over the name of Jonathan Oldstyle, demonstrate his intimacy with this species of literature. His Salmagundi adds to our proofs of this fact.

These rambles were profitable to health and wholesome to intellect; they furnished materials for contemplation and enlarged intellectual capacity but Irving at this juncture in early manhood sought out other resources of mental gratification. He was bookish, and he read; he individualized the author whom he studied, and he I forbear to enter into a consideration of the extended the circle of his personal associations. literary labors of Mr. Irving, voluminous as they He must have formed an acquaintance with a are, and precious as the world acknowledges portion of that mass of men who flourished at them. His Knickerbocker's History excited an that dawn of literary effort in this city. His pro- interest in the metropolis never before roused up fession, that of law, had secured to him some by any literary occurrence; scarcely, perhaps, by knowledge of Hamilton and Burr, of Harrison any public event. The reading community, upon and Colden, of Williams and Jay, of Jones and its first appearance, were seized with amazeLivingston; but with a generous freedom he could ment at the wondrous antiquarian research of seek out Brown, the novelist, Linn, the poet, the author, his lifelike pictures of the olden Allsop, Clifton, and Low. This you will say is a times, and his boundless humor and refined wit; brief list; but genuine writers at that day were and many melted in sympathy at the fate of old not a common article. In my searches after nov- Diedrick himself, the deserted inhabitant of the elties I have walked a day to cast a glance at an Mulberry-street tenement. I confess myself to author; and a reward of a thousand dollars could have been one of the thousands who sought out not bring forth for inspection a penny-a-liner. his obscure lodgings in vain. The brilliant For my own part I distinctly recollect the first career of Mr. Irving may be dated from the pubtime I caught a glimpse of Noah Webster, when I lication of this assumed history, and the wheel of felt a triumph as if I had made a discovery in fortune now turned in his behalf. The book was philosophy. But there were other sources of in- received by Campbell, the poet: through the struction abundantly accessible to all, and Irving hands of Henry Brevoort, Walter Scott possessed would draw wisdom from them: the acting drama a copy, and almost raved with delight in its peof those times yielded gratification to the most re-rusal. The omnipotent wit and satirist, George fined in taste: the remnant of the old American Canning, had nigh fractured his ribs by laughter company of performers was stirring in their vo- over its pages. The reading public sought after cation and the great renown which waited upon it, and what the select averred, the masses contheir achievements was recognized as substantial-firmed. Mr. Irving now became the lion of Lonly earned. That Irving's imagination was at an early period enamored of scenic exhibitions, and that he took great delight in theatrical displays, as holding the "mirror up to nature," is the concurrent testimony of all acquainted with him during his minority. That his mind was fructified by a close study of the older dramatists I think a safe inference. He studied the Spanish language the better to comprehend the Spanish

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 reminiscences 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

CHARACTERISTICS.

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 anomalies 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 has 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 Hoffmeister, popularly known as Billy the Fiddler. I do not know whether this musical genius and singularly-constructed man finds a place in any of Irving's writings.

bar, and courteously requested, Lavater-like, Mr. Irving's opinion of the character. "You have faithfully delineated the Genius of Dulness," replied Irving. The 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 literary man, par excellence, he could admire the arts, and look upon mechanical skill and the artisan 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 the Homeric song. He endured without annoyance the renown which waited upon the career of Fenimore Cooper; nay, he has written 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 turned 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 displayed with such copious profusion both in active life and in letters, I would affirm 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 the bustling world, and of nature herself, had fertilized that peculiar and susceptible mind, and given to his happy mental organization its most potent charms.

You all, gentlemen, 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 first European tour, after an absence of two years, he had scarcely entered into his parent's domicile in William-street, when his first inquiry was concerning the condition and prospects of an unfortunate maimed boy, of the neighborhood, who possessed singular qualities of mental organization. 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 The deduction is safe, if formed even from the to physic,-could his sensibilities have endured study of his writings alone, that he was fond of such servitude,—he might have become famous incidents and adventures; they enriched his galfor his descriptive powers in diagnostic pathol-lery for illustration. Like Hawthorne, he adogy. Language like this may sound extrava-mired a snow-storm; he loved music; he loved gant; but the devoted reader of his pages will little children, that faithful index of the human be strengthened in such an opinion, by comparing the propriety and clearness of his diction in all he utters touching the subject in hand, whether belonging to the schools of arts 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 assumed 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, was of so captivating a character 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 head of a venerable member of the

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 peculiarities: the extremes of fashion never reached him. His portrait, with the ample furred coat, executed by Jarvis, and painted after the appearance of the Knickerbocker history, is the most characteristic of him at that period of his life, and gives the most striking idea of his mental aspect, as he was daily seen in public, accompanied 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 Sunnyside. He had an official trust to fulfil as President of the Board of Trustees

MR. LONGFELLOW'S ADDRESS.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HIS

TORICAL SOCIETY.

A SPECIAL meeting of this Society was held at the residence of its Vice-President, the Hon. David Sears, Boston, Dec. 15, 1859. After a formal announcement of the death of Mr. Irving, by the President, the following resolutions were offered by Mr. Henry W. Longfellow:

MR. LONGFELLOW'S ADDRESS.

Every reader has his first book. I mean to say, one book among all others, which in early 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 number with ever-increasing wonder and delight; spell-bound by its pleasant humor, its melancholy tenderness, its atmosphere 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.

of the Astor Library: he manifested no special terrors. Let it be our pride that the patriarch of indications of alarming physical suffering. Yet American literature is indissolubly connected, in it was observed he had less of muscular strength, his mighty fame, with the Father of his Country. and that his frame was much attenuated. With his intimate friend, the learned librarian, Dr. Cogswell, having surveyed with gratification the improvements of the enlarged edifice 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 refined powers in unfolding the merits and the beauties inherent in the writings of our illustrious friend and associate; the schools of Addison and of Johnson have each awarded to him the laurel. At home a dissentient voice has not been expressed, and the republic at large has testified to the purity of his principles and the worth of his labors by a sale almost unparalleled in the annals 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 qualities; 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: "The 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 wanderings, his eye was busied with the scenes of nature, and cognizant of their every feature; his memory brooded over the tradition of the past, and his heart caught and reflected every phase of humanity. With the feelings of a poet and the habitudes of an artist, he then wan-chambers of youth. dered over the rural districts of merry England, Many years afterwards, I had the pleasure of the melancholy hills of romantic Spain, and the meeting Mr. Irving in Spain, and found the auexuberant wilderness of his native land, gather-thor, whom I had loved, repeated in the man. ing up their most picturesque aspects and their most affecting legends, and transferring them, with the pure and varied colors of his genial expression, into permanent memorials."

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 romantic as the Rhine! Yet still the charm of the Sketch Book remains unbroken; the old fascination still lingers about it; and whenever I open its pages, I open also that mysterious door which leads back into the haunted

The same playful humor; the same touches of
sentiment; the same poetic atmosphere; and,
what I admired still more, the entire absence 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-

"And rustling hears in every breeze,
The laurels of Miltiades."

Posterity, to whom he may most safely be confided, will neither forget the man nor his writings these unfold the treasures of a commanding genius, with the excellencies of an unparalleled diction, while of the author himself At this time Mr. Irving was at Madrid, enwe may emphatically affirm that his literary gaged upon his Life of Columbus; and if the products are a faithful transcript of his peculiar work itself did not bear ample testimony to his mind. He enjoys a glorious triumph: we need zealous and conscientious labor, I could do so not plead in extenuation of a line that he has from personal observation. He seemed to be penned. Let us console ourselves at his loss always at work. "Sit down," he would say; that he was a native and "to the manor born,' "I will talk with you in a moment, but I must that his life was immaculate and without re-first finish this sentence."

proach, and that in death he triumphed over its One summer morning, passing his house at

MR. EVERETT'S ADDRESS.