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him not set a foot in that unnatural thing, a bachelor's apartment in a furnished hotel, to live alone, to eat alone, and to sleep alone! If he does, let him take leave of his wife and children, and settle up his affairs. Nor let him seek company at the Tavern Ordinary; here the guest arrives just at the hour, hangs up his hat, sits down in his usual place, crosses his legs, runs his fingers through his hair, dines, and then disappears, all the year round, without farther acquaintance. But let him look out a "Pension," having an amiable landlady, or, which is the same, amiable lodgers. He will become domiciliated here after some time, and find some relief from one of the trying situations of life. You know nothing yet, happily, of the solitude, the desolation of a populous city to a stranger. How often did I wish, during the first three months, for a cot by the side of some hoar hill of the Mahonoy. Go to a Pension," especially if you are a suckling child, like me, in the ways of the world; and the lady of the house, usually a pretty woman, will feel it enjoined upon her humanity to counsel and protect you, and comfort you, or she will manage an acquaintance between you and some countess or baroness, who lodges with her, or at some neighbor's. I live now with a most spiritual little creature; she tells me so many obliging lies, and no offensive truths, which I take to be the perfection of politeness in a landlady; and she admits me to her private parties-little family "re-unions"-where I play at loto with Madame Thomas, and her three amiable daughters, just for a little cider, or cakes, or chestnuts, to keep up the spirit of the play; and then we have a song, a solo on the violin, or harp, and then a dance; and finally, we play at little games, which inflict kisses, embraces, and other such penalties. French people are always so merry, whatever be the amusement; they never let conversation flag, and I don't see any reason it should. One, for example, begins to talk of Paris, then the Passage Panorama, then of Mrs. Alexander's fine cakes, and then the pretty girl that sits behind the counter, and then of pretty girls that sit anywhere; and so one just lets oneself run with the association of ideas, or one makes a digression from the main story, and returns or not, just as one pleases. A Frenchman is always a mimic, an actor, and all that nonsense which we suffer to go to waste in our country, he economises for the enjoyment of society.

I am settled down in the family; I am adopted; the lady gives me to be sure now and then "a chance," as she calls it, of a ticket in a lottery ("the only one left"), of some distinguished lady now reduced, or some lady who has had three children, and is likely for the fourth, where one never draws anything; or "a chance" of conducting her and a pretty cousin of hers, who has taken a fancy to me, who adores the innocency of American manners, and hates the dissipation of the French, to the play. Have you never felt the pleasure of letting yourself be duped? Have you never felt the pleasure of letting your little bark float down the stream when you knew the port lay the other way. I look upon all this as a cheap return for the kindnesses I have so much need of; I am anxious to be cheated, and the truth is, if you do not let a French landlady cheat you now and then, she will drop your acquaintance. Never dispute any small items overcharged in her monthly bill; or she that was smooth as the ermine will be suddenly bristled as the porcupine; and why, for the sake of limiting some petty encroachment upon your purse, should you turn the bright heaven of her pretty face into a hurricane? Your actions should always leave a suspicion you are rich, and then you are sure she will anticipate every want and

wish you may have with the liveliest affection; she will be all ravishment at your successes; she will be in an abyss of chagrin at your disappointments. Helas! oh, mon Dieu! and if you cry, she will cry with you! We love money well enough in America, but we do not feel such touches of human kindness, and cannot work ourselves up into such fits of amiability, for those who have it. I do not say it is hypocrisy; a Frenchwoman really does love you if you have a long purse; and if you have not (I do not say it is hypocrisy neither), she really does hate

you.

A great advantage to a French landlady is the sweetness and variety of her smile; a quality in which Frenchwomen excel universally. Our Madame Gibou keeps her little artillery at play during the whole of the dinner-time, and has brought her smile under such a discipline as to suit it exactly to the passion to be represented, or the dignity of the person with whom she exchanges looks. You can tell any one who is in arrears as if you were her private secretary, or the wealth and liberality of a guest better than his banker, by her smile. If it be a surly knave who counts the pennies with her, the little thing is strangled in its birth; and if one who owes his meals, it miscarries altogether; and for a mere visiter she lets off one worth only three francs and a half; but if a favorite, who never looks into the particulars of her bill and takes her lottery tickets, then you will see the whole heaven of her face in a blaze, and it does not expire suddenly, but like the fine twilight of a summer evening, dies away gently on her lips. Sometimes I have seen one flash out like a squib, and leave you at once in the dark; it had lit on the wrong person; and at other times I have seen one struggling long for its life; I have watched it while it was gasping its last; she has a way too of knocking a smile on the head; I observed one at dinner to-day, from the very height and bloom of health fall down and die without a kick.

SELLECK OSBORN.

SELLECK OSBORN was born at Trumbull, Fairfield County, Conn., in the year 1783. He received the rudiments of an ordinary English education, and at the age of twelve was placed in a newspaper printing-office at Danbury. During his apprenticeship he wrote several short poems, and shortly after its expiration, on his attaining the age of twenty-one, became the editor of a Jeffersonian paper called the Witness. The federalists were largely in the majority in the county, and the journal, which was conducted in a violent tone, had many enemies. One of these sued for an alleged libel which appeared in its columns. The editor was found guilty, and sentenced to pay a heavy fine. In default of payment he was confined in the Litchfield jail, greatly to the indignation of his political friends, who marched in procession to the place of his confinement. After his

release he returned to his paper, which he edited for several years. About 1809 he married a lady of New Bedford, who died a few years after. During the war of 1812-14 he served as a captain in the United States ariny, and was stationed on the Canada frontier. After the peace he resumed the editorial profession at Bennington, Vermont, where he remained a number of years, and then removed to Wilmington, Delaware. He was for a short time during the year 1825 the editor of a paper devoted to the support of John C. Calhoun for the Presidency. He next removed to Philadelphia, where he died in October, 1826.

His small volume of Poems, Moral, Sentimental, and Satirical, published at Boston in 1823, is a selection of his fugitive pieces written at various periods, mostly in a feeble vein of morality, with some crude attempts at humor. A sketch of Thanksgiving Day, in a descriptive account of New England, has a homely air of reality.

NEW ENGLAND.

Nurse of my earliest hope, my ripest joy! What theme more grateful could my verse employ? Thy copious breast is bounteous, if not fairMy heart unweaned, still clings and nestles there. Though doomed to exile by stern Fate's decree, Still memory and mind can visit thee.

Borne on Imagination's buoyant wings, Again I view thy groves, thy hills, thy springs; Thy coy, reluctant, but relenting soil, Woo'd and subdued by persevering toilThy various coast; where frowns the rocky shore, Where the rude breakers beat with ceaseless roar; Or where the lazy billows slowly reach And gambol on the far extended beachWhere islands in fantastic groups are seen, And pigny promontories, crowned with green; Where rise the hulks that float on distant seas, In tropic climes that scorch, or climes that freeze, Whose prows, directed by each hardy crew, The giant whale or valued cod pursueWhere many a fearless tar was early bred, The light of victory round our flag to spread: To scan all climes and visit every realmAnd o'er earth's surface guide the subject helm.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

WASHINGTON IRVING was born April 3, 1783, in the city of New York,* the youngest son of a merchant, William Irving, a native of Scotland, who had married an English lady and been settled in his new country some twenty years. His early elucation was much influenced by the tastes of his brothers, who had occupied themselves with literature; and he fell in himself with a stock of the best old English authors, the study of which generou-ly unfolded his happy natural disposition. Chancer and Spenser were his early favorites. He had an ordinary school education, and at the age of sixteen commenced the study of the law. In 1802 he wrote for the Morning Chronicle, a New York paper, edited by his brother Dr. Peter Irving, a series of essays on the theatres, manners of the town, and kindred topics, with the signatare of Jonathan Oldstyle. A pamphlet edition of these was published in 1824 without the sanction of the author. In 1804, led by some symptoms of ill health, apparently of a pulmonary affection, he visited the South of Europe, sailing from New York for Bordeaux in May, and travelling on his arrival by Nice to Genoa, where he passed two months, thence to Messina in Sicily, making a tour of that island, and crossing from Palermo to Naples. Thence through Italy and Switzerland to France, where he resided several months in Paris, and reached England through Flanders and Holland, gathering a stock of materials for his future writings. While at Rome on this journey he became acquainted with Washington Allston, and so far participated in his studies as to meditate for a time the profession of a

* The honse in which he was born was next to the corner of Fulton street in William, now, by the widening of the former street, on the corner, and one of the Washington Stores.

painter, for which he has naturally a taste. In the reminiscences of Allston from Irving's pen, in previous pages of this work, will be found an interesting account of this episode of artistical life and di-tinguished friendship.*

After an absence of two years he returned to New York in March, 1806. He took up again the study of the law, and was admitted at the close of the year attorney-at-law. He, however, never practised the profession.

Silmagundi; or, the Whim- Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Esq., and others, was at that time projected, and the publication commenced in a series of small eighteenmo numbers, appearing about once a fortnight from the Shakespeare Gallery of Longworth. The first is dated January 24, 1807. It was continued for a year, through twenty numbers. Paulding wrote a good portion of this work, William Irving the poetry, and Washington Irving the remainder. The humors of the day are hit off in this squib in so agreeable a style that it is still read with interest, what was piquant gossip then being amusing history now. It was the intention of Irving to have extended these papers by carrying out the invention and marrying Will Wizard to the eldest Miss Cockloft-with, of course, a grand wedding at Cockloft Hall, the original of which mansion was a veritable edifice owned by Gouverneur Kemble on the Passaic, a favorite resort of Geoffrey Crayon in his youthful days. Among other originals of these sketches we have heard it mentioned that some of the peculiarities of Dennie, the author, were hit off in the character of Launcelot Langstaff. The well-defined picture of "My Uncle John" is understood to have been from the pen of Paulding; his, too, was the original sketch of the paper entitled "Autumnal Reflections,” though extended and wrought up by Irving.

Knickerbocker's History of New Yorkt was published in December, 1809. It was commenced by Washington Irving in company with his brother Peter Irving, with the idea of parodying a handbook, which had just appeared, entitled A Picture of New York. In emulation of an historical account in that production, it was to burlesque the local records, and describe in an amusing way the habits and statistics of the town. Dr. Irving departing for Europe, and leaving the work solely with his brother, the latter contined it to the historical part, which had grown in his hands into a long comic history. The humorous capabilities of the subject were turned to account in the happiest way, the fun being broad enough not to be confounded with the realities, though a venerable clergyman, who was on the lookout for a history upon that subject from a clerical brother, is said to have begun the work in good faith, and to have been only gradually warmed to a consciousness of the joke. The highest honor ever paid to the authentic history of Knickerbocker was the quotation from it-in good Latin

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phrase-by Goeller, German annotator of Thucydides, in illustration of a passage of the Greek author: Addo locum Washingtonis Irvingii Hist. Novi Eboraci, lib. vii. cap. 5.* To humor the pleasantry preliminary advertisements were inserted before the publication in the Evening Post, calling for information of "a small elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by the name of Knickerbocker," etc., who had left his lodgings at the Columbian Hotel in Mulberry street; then a statement that the old gentleman had left "a very curious kind of a written book in his room," followed by the announcement of the actual book "in two volumes duodecimo, price three dollars," from the publishers Inskeep and Bradford-to pay the bill of his landlord.

To the last revised edition of this work in 1850, which contains some very pleasant additions, the author has prefixed an “ Apology," which, however, offers little satisfaction to the irate families who have considered their honor aggrieved by the publication of this extravagant burlesque for the incorrigible author insists upon it that he has brought the old Dutch manners and times into notice, as proved by the innumerable Knickerbocker hotels, steamboats, ice-carts, and other appropriations of the name; and has added not only to the general hilarity but to the harmony of the city, the popular traditions which he has set in vogue “forming a convivial currency; linking our whole community together in good humor and good fellowship; the rallying points of home feeling; the seasoning of civic festivities; the staple of local tales and local pleasantries." We should attach little importance to the subject had it not been made a matter of comment in the New York Historical Society, in an address before which body it was gravely held up to reprehension. The truth of the matter is that the historians should have occupied the ground earlier, if possible, and not have given the first advantage to the humorist. We do not find, however, that the burlesque has at all damaged the subject in the hands of Mr. Brodhead, who has at length brought to bear a system of original investigation and historical inquiry upon the worthy Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam; or deteriorated a whit the learned labors of O'Callaghan, who has illustrated the early Dutch annals with faithful diligence. The style of Knickerbocker is of great felicity. There is just enough flavor of English classical reading to give the riant, original material, the highest gusto. The descriptions of nature and manners are occasionally very happy in a serious way, and the satire is, much of it, of that universal character which will bear transplantation to wider scenes and interests. The laughter-compelling humor is irresistible, and we may readily believe the story of that arch wag himself, Judge Brackenridge, exploding over a copy of the work, which he had smuggled with him to the bench.

In 1810 Irving wrote a biographical sketch of the poet Campbell, which was prefixed to an edition of the poet's works published in Philadelphia. The circumstance which led to this was Irving's acquaintance with Archibald Campbell, a brother

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of the author, who was then residing in New York, and who was desirous of finding a purchaser for an American edition of "O'Connor's Child," which he had just received from London. To facilitate this object Irving wrote the preliminary sketch from facts furnished by his brother. It afterwards led to a personal acquaintance between the two authors when Irving visited England. In 1850, after Campbell's death, when his "Life and Letters," edited by Dr. Beattie, were being republished by the Harpers in New York, Irving was applied to for a few preliminary words of introduction. He wrote a letter, prefixed 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.

After the perpetration of the Knickerbocker, Irving engaged with two of his brothers in mercantile business, as a silent partner. The second war with Great Britain then broke out, when he took part in the spirit of the day; edited the Analectic Magazine, published at Philadelphia, by Moses Thomas, writing an eloquent series of biographies, accompanying portraits of the American Naval Captains; and, in 1814, joined the military staff of Governor Tompkins as aidede-camp and military secretary, with the title of Colonel. When the war was ended the next year, he sailed for Liverpool in the month of May, made excursions into Wales, some of the finest counties. of England, and to the Highlands of Scotland, intending to visit the continent. The commercial revulsions which followed the war overwhelmed the house with which he was connected, and he was thrown upon his resources as an author. Repairing to London his excursions and his observations on rural life and manners furnished materials for some of the most attractive portions of his Sketch Book. The publication of this was commenced in New York, in large octavo pamphlets, a style afterwards adopted by Dana in his "Idle Man," and Longfellow in his "Outre Mer." When the first volume had appeared in this form it attracted the notice of Jerdan, who received a copy brought over from America by a passenger, republished some of the papers in his Literary Gazette,* and a reprint of the whole was in prospect by some bookseller, when the author applied to Murray to undertake the work. The answer was civil, but the publisher declined it. Irving then addressed Sir Walter Scott, by whom he had previously been cordially received at Abbotsford, on his visit in 1819, of which he has given so agreeable an account in the paper in the Crayon Miscellany, to secure his assistance with Constable. Scott, in the most friendly manner, promised his aid, and offered Irving the editorial chair of a weekly periodical to be established at Edinburgh, with a salary of five hundred pounds, but he had too vivid a sense of the toils and responsibilities of such an office to ac

Autobiography of William Jerdan, ii. 288.

+ Scott had been an admirer of Irving's early writings, having received a copy of Knickerbocker, not long after its publication, through Mr. Henry Brevoort. Irving carried him a letter of introduction from Campbell, to whom Scott sent a message, thanking him for "one of the best and pleasantest acquaintances I have made this many a day."-Lockhart's Scott, ch. xxxix.

cept it. He put the first volume of the Sketch Book to press at his own expense, with John Miller, February, 1820; it was getting along tolerably, when the bookseller failed in the first month. Scott came to London at this time, reopened the matter with Murray, who issued the entire work, and thenceforward Irving had a publisher for his successive works, "conducting 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."* Murray bought the copyright for two hundred pounds, which he subsequently increased to four hundred, with the success of the work.

Wathengha Frving

In 1820 Irving took up his residence for a year in Paris, where he became acquainted with the poet Moore, and enjoyed his intimacy with the best English society in the metropolis. In the spring of 1821, Moore speaks in his Diary of Irving's being hard at work writing his Bracebridge Hall, having in the course of ten days written about one hundred and thirty pages of the size of those in the Sketch Book, adding, "this is amazing rapidity." Bracebridge Hall, or the Humourists, is a series of sketches of English rural life, holiday customs, and refined village character of Sir Roger de Coverley portraiture, centring about a fine old establishment in Yorkshire. The characters of Master Simon, Jack Tibbetts, and General Harbottle do credit to the school of Goldsmith and Addison. The Stout Gentleman, the Village Choir, the delicate story of Annette Delarbre display the best powers of the author; while the episodes of the Dutch tales of Dolph Heyliger and the Storm Ship relieve the monotony of the English description.

The winter of 1822 was passed by Irving at Dresden. He returned to Paris in 1823, and in the December of the following year published his Tales of a Traveller, with the stories of the

Author's Preface to the Revised Edition of Sketch Book,

1348. VOL. II

Nervous Gentleman, including that fine piece of animal spirits and picturesque description, the Bold Dragoon, the series of pictures of literary life in Buckthorne and his Friends-in which there is some of his happiest writing, blending humor, sentiment, and a kindly indulgence for the failures of life,-the romantic Italian Stories, and, as in the preceding work, a sequel of New World legends of Dutchmen and others, built upon the writer's invention in the expansion of the fertile theme of Captain Kidd, the well known piratical and money-concealing adventurer. For this work Moore tells us that Murray gave Irving fifteen hundred pounds, and "he might have had two thousand."* These books were still published in the old form in numbers in New York, simultaneously with their English appearance.

The following winter of 1825 was passed by Irving in the South of France, and early in the next year he went to Madrid, at the suggestion of Alexander H. Everett, then minister to Spain, for the purpose of translating the important series of new documents relating to the voyages of Columbus, just collected by Navarrete. For a translation was substituted the History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus,t to which the Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus were afterwards added. The Columbus was published in 1828, and the English edition brought its author three thousand guineas. A tour to the South of Spain in this and the following year provided the materials for A Chronicle of the Conquest of Grenada, and The Alhambra, or the New Sketch Book. The latter is dedicated, May, 1832, to Wilkie, the artist, who was a companion with the author in some of his excursions. Irving spent three months in the old Moorish palace. He some time after in America, published his Legends of the Conquest of Spain (in 1835), which with his Mahomet and his Successors (1849-50) complete a series of Spanish and Moorish subjects, marked by the same genial and poetic treatment; the fancy of the writer evidently luxuriating in the personal freedom of movement of his heroes, their humor of individual character, and the warm oriental coloring of the theme.

In July, 1829, Irving left Spain for England, having been appointed Secretary of Legation to the American Embassy at London, when Mr. M'Lane was Minister. He retired on the arrival of Van Buren. The University of Oxford conferred on him in 1831 the degree of LL.D. He arrived in America on his return, May 21, 1832, after an absence of seventeen years, and his friends at New York commemorated his arrival by a public dinner, at which Chancellor Kent presided. A few months later, in the summer, Irving accompanied Mr. Ellsworth, one of the commissioners for removing the Indian tribes west of the Mississippi, in his journey, which he has described in his Tour on the Prairies, published in the Crayon Miscellany in 1835. His Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey formed another volume of the series. In 1836 he published his

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*Diary, 17 June, 1824.

+ The Columbus gained him a high honor in the receipt of one of the fifty-guinea gold medals, provided by George IV. for eminence in historical writing, its companion being assign. 1 ed to Hallam.

Astoria, attracted to the subject by an early fondness for the character of the trappers and voyageurs whom he had seen in his youth in Canada. He was assisted in the preparation of this work by his nephew, Mr. Pierre M. Irving.*

Another undertaking of a similar character was his Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U.S.A., in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West, prepared from the MSS. of that traveller, but made an original work by the observation and style of the writer. From 1839, for two years, Irving contributed a series of papers monthly to the Knickerbocker Magazine. Among these tales and sketches are two narratives, The Early Experiences of Ralph Ringwood, and Mountjoy, or some Passages out of the Life of a Castle Builder. A number of these papers, with some others from the English Annuals and other sources, have been collected in 1855 in a volume, with the title of Wolfert's Roost.

In February, 1842, he was appointed Minister to Spain, an office which he occupied for the next four years. He then returned home, and has since

Sunnyside.

continued to reside at his cottage residence, "Sunnyside," near Tarrytown, on the banks of the Hudson, the very spot which he had described years before in the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," as the castle of the Heer van Tassel, illuminated with the throng of country beauties, and that prodigality of "a genuine Dutch country tea-table," in the presence of which the mouth of the schoolmaster Ichabod watered, and his skin dilated as it embraced the ample cheer. Of this neighborhood, Irving also wrote in that tale of his youth" If ever I should wish for a retreat, whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remainder of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley." At this retreat since his last return from Europe he has lived, in the midst of a family circle composed of his brother and his nieces,

An interesting communication from Irving on this subject, contradicting a story of Mr. Astor having paid him fivo thousand dollars to "take up the MSS." will be found in tho Literary World for November 22, 1851. The only compensation Irving received was his share of the profits from his publisher.

hospitably entertaining his friends, occasionally visiting different portions of the country, and employing his pen in the composition of his Life of Washington, the first volume of which, as we write, is in progress through the press. The preparation of this, the publication of Oliver Goldsmith, a Biography, an enlargement of a life which he had prefixed to an edition in Paris of that author's works, adapting the researches of Prior and Forster, and a revised edition of his own writings published by Putnam, of which several of the volumes have been published in a more costly form, enriched by the vigorous and refined designs of Darley, have been his latest literary productions.

In estimating the genius of Irving, we can hardly attach too high a value to the refined qualities and genial humor which have made his writings favorites wherever the English language is read. The charm is in the proportion, the keeping, the happy vein which inspires happiness in return. It is the felicity of but few authors, out of the vast stock of English literature, to delight equally young and old. The tales of Irving are the favorite authors of childhood, and their good humor and amenity can please where most literature is weariness, in the sick room of the convalescent. Every influence which breathes from these writings is good and generous. Their sentiment is always just and manly, without cant or affectation; their humor is always within the bounds of propriety. They have a fresh inspiration of American nature, which is not the less nature for the art with which it is adorned. The color of personality attaches us throughout to the author, whose humor of character is always to be felt. This happy art of presenting rude and confused objects in an orderly pleasurable 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 occasions only, we believe, in some stanzas to the Passaic River, 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 exquisite passages of vivid description from Westminster Abbey and English rural scenery to the waste beauties of the great region beyond the Mississippi. Parallel with the ruder but more

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*An old philosopher is reading, in this picture, from a folio, to a young beauty who is asleep in 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. These are the lines which Irving wrote at his friend Newton's request, as a description of the picture :

THE DULL LECTURE,
Frostie age, frostie age,
Vain a'l thy learning;
Drowsie page, drowsie pago,
Evermore turning.

Young head no lore will heed,

Young heart's a reckless rover, Young beauty, while you read, Sleeping dreams of absent lover.

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