MR. TIFFANY'S REMINISCENCES.

A DAY AT SUNNYSIDE.*

BY OSMOND TIFFANY.

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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 on his return to England.

I MET Mr. Irving only once, but then it was by his own fireside, with no other visitor to share my enjoyment. It was in the summer of Dinner being now announced, we were joined 1853, when I had left Baltimore for the hot sea- by a brother of Mr. Irving, who with his three son, and was passing my time at White Plains, daughters reside at Sunnyside. In introducing eight miles from Sunnyside. The Hon. John P. me to his nieces, he playfully spoke of them as Kennedy, an intimate friend of Irving's, had his adopted daughters, for want of any of his given me a letter to him, and on a lovely August own. He had now entirely recovered from his day I drove over to his house. * * headache, and was in the most lively and agreeMr. Irving was suffering a little that day withable mood. I had heard that in general society headache, and feeling unwilling to detain him, he was often silent, and I knew that on public after a pleasant call of half an hour, I rose to occasions he could not possibly speak, but now depart. He, however, would not permit me to nothing could be more delightful than the flow do so, saying that I had come from a distance, of his conversation. I found that the best way and must stay to dinner. He then added that to draw him out, was to let him talk on at will, he wished a little rest, but that if I could amuse now and then making some slight suggestion myself with a book, or strolling about the which would open a new subject. In this mangrounds, he would leave me to myself for an ner he touched upon his travels in Spain, and hour or so. Nothing more delightful than to recalled the palmy days of the Alhambra, and it tread the lawn at Sunnyside. It overhung the was like reading one of his fine romances, to river, the railroad passing directly under the hear him speak of bygone scenes in Granada, bank from which I looked across the Tappan Madrid, and Seville. He had many anecdotes sea. It was the day of the inauguration of the of the celebrated actors and singers of his time, Crystal Palace, and all the world in heat and for he was fond of music, and thoroughly appredust had gone to look at President Pierce, while ciated high dramatic art. I mentioned the I was alone with Washington Irving. Miles "Little Red Horse Inn," which he has made away, across the water, lay Tappan, where André immortal by his sketch of Stratford-on-Avon, bravely met his melancholy doom. Above and and told him, that as soon as I visited it, the below stretched an enchanting prospect, ever landlord on finding I was an American brought enlivened by the white-winged craft scudding in a copy of his works, and said he was proud before or beating in the wind. Nature and art always to meet the author's countrymen. Mr. were charmingly blended in the grounds, fine Irving added, that on his first return to Stratford, deciduous trees and evergreens contrasted foli- after the publication of the Sketch Book, he was age, while winding paths led into shady dells in company with Mr. Van Buren, and that they and arbors, or to rustic bridges which spanned a were greatly amused by the landlady rushing in, brooklet running riverward. The whole sweet holding up the poker with which he stirred the scene was in unison with the genial spirit of its fire, and saying, "Sir, you see I've got your possessor. sceptre safe."

On returning to the house near four o'clock, Nothing could be more modest than the way Mr. Irving met me again in the parlor. This in which Mr. Irving spoke of himself or of his was a large and handsomely furnished room, works, never naming them, unless they were decorated with paintings and engravings, several | alluded to. Indeed his whole manner was in of them scenes from the author's own writings, striking contrast to the flippancy of some shalwhich had been given to him, while the book-low literary men, and to the "smile superior," table displayed choice presentation copies of the self-complacency, and consummate impuworks from literary friends. I was attracted by dence of some of the "curled darlings" of the a collection of Wilkie's engraved works, and lecture-room, who annually visit the rural disparticularly struck by one of its subjects; a young monk on his knees confessing to an old one. Mr. Irving said that he himself was with Wilkie, when he made the sketch 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 Springfield Republican.

tricts to instruct us about "society," and tell how New York snobocracy ties its cravats and flirts its fans in Madison Square. Here was a man who for half a century had moved in the very highest circles of wealth, style, and intellect, caressed on every hand, yet whom panegyric and flattery could not spoil, and who had preserved unspotted his true nobility of nature. A modest hero of letters, a perfect gentleman in