for their 'fervour, solemnity, and beauty.' He was somewhat of a mystic, held Christ to be more than man, but was ultimately the leader of the Unitarians, though to the end he shrank from dogmatic definitions and one-sided apprehension of Christian truth. In 1821 he was made D.D. of Harvard for his works on the Christian evidences, his address on war, and his sermons; and next year he visited Europe, and made the acquaintance of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Among his Works (6 vols. 1841-46) are treatises on national literature, on Milton, on Fénelon, on slavery, and on selfculture. It was of him that Coleridge said, 'He has the love of wisdom and the wisdom of love.' His character was as attractive as his eloquence, and almost as influential as the vigour, pure taste, and infectious earnestness of his literary work. He laboured zealously in all good causes, social and philanthropic; and pled for peace, charity, temperance, and the cause of the slaves (though never an extreme abolitionist), and a higher tone in political life. In virtue of his personal influence as well as through his published works, he ranks almost along with Emerson as one of the intellectual leaders of New England in the early nineteenth century. There are Lives of him by his nephew, W. H. Channing (3 vols. 1848; new ed. 1880), by Frothingham (1887), and by the Rev. J. White Chadwick (1903).

Daniel Webster (1782-1852) was the son of a farmer at Salisbury in New Hampshire; studied at Dartmouth, Salisbury, and Boston; and after eight years at the Bar, was sent to Congress in 1813. From 1816 he was eminent as an advocate in Boston, and as orator became famous by his oration at the Pilgrim Fathers' bicentenary. Massachusetts representative in Congress from 1823, he found few rivals there; in 1827 he was transferred to the Senate. He had favoured free trade, but in 1828 he vigorously defended the new protective tariff. He was called into Harrison's Cabinet as Secretary of State, and under Tyler negotiated the Ashburton treaty with Great Britain. In the Senate in 1845 he helped to avert a war with England over the north-west boundary; he opposed the war with Mexico; but though he said that he abhorred slavery, he refused on that score to risk breaking up the Union. Careless in money matters, he accepted pecuniary assistance from political friends, but easily repelled a charge of corruption (1866). Under Fillmore he was called to his former post as Secretary of State to settle differences with England, and he was deeply disappointed at not receiving the Whig nomination for the presidency in 1852, the year of his death. At all times he showed too great deference to established institutions, and on the slavery question his conscience but very imperfectly matched his intellect. And though he thus fell short of the first rank amongst American statesmen, he was unquestionably foremost of American orators. His speeches were

of those who are entrusted with the preservation of a constitutional government. We are not to wait till great public mischiefs come, till the government is overthrown, or liberty itself put into extreme jeopardy. We should not be worthy sons of our fathers were we so to regard great questions affecting the general freedom. Those fathers accomplished the Revolution on a strict question of principle. The Parliament of Great Britain asserted a right to tax the Colonies in all cases whatsoever; and it was precisely on this question that they made the Revolution turn. The amount of taxation was trifling, but the claim itself was inconsistent with liberty; and that was, in their eyes, enough. It was against the recital of an act of Parliament, rather than against any suffering under its enactments, that they took up arms. They went to war against a preamble. They fought seven years against a declaration. They poured out their treasures and their blood like water, in a contest against an assertion which those less sagacious and not so well schooled in the principles of civil liberty would have regarded as barren phraseology or mere parade of words. They saw in the claim of the British Parliament a seminal principle of mischief, the germ of unjust

power; they detected it, dragged it forth from underneath its plausible disguises, struck at it; nor did it elude either their steady eye or their well-directed blow till they had extirpated and destroyed it, to the smallest fibre. On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off, they raised their flag against a power to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the height of her glory, is not to be compared; a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England.

(From a Speech in the Senate in May 1834.)

Washington Irving

He

was born in the city of New York on 3rd April 1783, the son of a Presbyterian Scotsman from Shapinshay in Orkney, who claimed descent from William de Irwyn, armour-bearer of Robert Bruce; his mother, from Falmouth in Cornwall, a woman of a sunny, loving temper, was attached to the Episcopal Church. His education was scanty and desultory. His brothers were sent to college, but he showed no inclination to study, being 'a dreamer and a saunterer'—owing doubtless to a hereditary tendency to pulmonary disease. was named after the father of the country, from whom as a child he received a personal blessing. Whilst at four schools he versified a bit and wrote a play; at sixteen he entered a law-office, at nineteen contributed humorous articles to a paper as 'Jonathan Oldstyle.' Threatened with consumption, he sailed for Europe, landed at Bordeaux in 1804, and went by Marseilles to Italy, escaping with difficulty from Bonaparte's police, who persisted in regarding him as an English spy. At Rome he was intoxicated by Italian art, and having met Allston the American painter, was tempted to become an artist. He visited Paris and the Netherlands, and at London saw John Kemble and Mrs Siddons. In 1806 he returned to New York in improved health, and was admitted to the Bar. Those were 'Corinthian days,' and he led a rather idle life, much in society, and greatly admired.

His first writing was in the Salmagundi, a semimonthly sheet in imitation of the Spectator, conducted jointly by himself, his brother William, and J. K. Paulding. It ran for twenty numbers, and then stopped without explanation in the fullness of success. There was considerable merit of a superficial sort in those early attempts, but there was no evidence of serious literary purpose; the papers were apparently written with a view only to social distinction. His first characteristic work, that by which he will be best remembered, was A History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker, published in 1809. Everybody knows the little man in knee-breeches and cocked hat as one of the permanent figures in the gallery of literary portraits. The History has a substratum of truth,

but is openly a good-natured burlesque upon the old Dutch settlers of Manhattan Island. The humour and the gravity which mask it are alike irresistible; it may be doubted if there is in the language a more delightful or more perfectly sustained piece of drollery. Readers of Scott will remember his warm praise of the book, written while 'his sides were sore with laughing.' In the United States it was universally read; and even now it is to the American people as real in its way as the Pilgrim's Progress.

For eight years after this Irving was in partnership with his two elder brothers in a business that had relations on both sides of the Atlantic, but in the end was unsuccessful; and when later he had won his place among authors and was receiving a good income, he supported two of his brothers and five nieces with unselfish devotion. In May 1815 he went to Europe for the second time, and did not return for seventeen years; in August 1817 he visited Scott at Abbotsford. It was in 1818 that the misfortunes of his firm culminated in bankruptcy, and thereafter he turned his whole attention to literature. He declined liberal offers for magazine work, and would undertake nothing that was to interfere with his plans. The Sketch Book, of which the first number appeared in New York in 1819, and the last in 1820, was received in the United States with universal delight; its early success in Great Britain was largely due to the powerful support of Scott. All the pieces in this miscellany have a certain charm-if for nothing more, for their felicitous touch and purity of style. But the chief interest centres in Rip Van Winkle,' 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,' and 'Westminster Abbey.' The last is one of the most finished descriptive essays of the century, though perhaps a little lacking in simplicity. The two legendary tales are in a way related to the History of New York, and have had a currency and an influence difficult to measure. 'Rip Van Winkle' is a distinct creation of genius, and with its fellow has made the lower reach of the Hudson classic ground; for the first time there had been produced in the United States a literary work on the highest level of contemporary excellence. Bracebridge Hall (1822) fairly maintained but did not raise the author's reputation-Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.,' was already at the summit of favour. After a few years passed on the Continent he published (1824) Tales of a Traveller, a work he thought his best in regard to style, but which some critics think over-refined.

In 1826 he went to Spain and began the long and arduous studies which were the foundation of his more important serious works. These were The Life of Columbus (1828), The Conquest of Granada (1829), Voyages of the Companions of Columbus (1831), The Alhambra (1832), Legents of the Conquest of Spain (1835), Mahomet and his Successors (1850); but the two or three works last named were only sketched or partly written

before his return to the United States in 1832. It was Irving who first revealed to English readers the rich stores of Spanish history and romance; and whatever may have been done to correct or expand his narratives, to him must be given the praise of having produced some of the most fascinating books in existence. He had intended to write the history of the conquest of Mexico, for which he had collected materials, but generously, and to his own loss, relinquished his design to Prescott when he learned that the latter proposed to undertake it. The sums obtained by Irving for his copyrights in England form an interesting item in literary history. Mr Murray gave £200 for the Sketch Book, but afterwards doubled the sum; for Bracebridge Hall he gave 1000 guineas; for Columbus, 3000 guineas; and for the Conquest of Granada, £2000. At the end of this sojourn in Spain, Irving was for a short time secretary to the United States Legation in London. On his return to his native city (1832) he was received with great enthusiasm ; but he declined political honours, and continued his literary work. After an excursion in the then Far West, he published (1835) A Tour on the Prairies. In the same year he issued Recollections of Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey; he was also at work upon the last of the books in the Spanish series. In writing Astoria (1836) he was assisted by his nephew, his future biographer. The Adventures of Captain Bonneville (in the Rocky Mountains) appeared in 1837. His biography of Goldsmith was mainly written about this time, though not published until 1849. He remodelled for his home an old Dutch house in Tarrytown, New York, near his 'Sleepy Hollow;' but his intended retirement to 'Sunnyside' was postponed by his appointment in 1842 as United States minister to Spain. He returned in 1846, and once more set himself to work. Goldsmith and Mahomet appeared as already mentioned; then, in 1855, Wolfert's Roost, a miscellany. His last work was the Life of George Washington (5 vols. 18551859); he died at Sunnyside, 28th November 1859, and in Sleepy Hollow at Tarrytown he lies buried.

Irving was never married. In his youth he was betrothed to Miss Hoffman, a beautiful girl of eighteen, daughter of the lawyer with whom he pursued his studies; and separated from her by her untimely death, he remained all his life faithful to her memory. In all his works there is chivalrous deference and tenderness towards women; he was exceedingly fond of children, and was always beloved by them. In his youth he was well made and handsome, and then, as afterwards, was courted by the best society. Tender feeling and abundant humour mark his writings; he had a quite exceptional power to seize the attention of cultivated readers by his keen observation, his graphic touches of description, and his limpid and musical style. The early books which first gave him fame and those which came from his studies in Spain are his best claims to permanent remem

brance; his later works would not have given him the high rank he deservedly holds. His was a fortunate and honourable life; and, on the whole, though inferior in genius to more than one American author, he must be accounted the most successful writer of the New World.

The American in England.

England is as classic ground to an American as Italy is to an Englishman, and old London teems with as much historical association as mighty Rome.

But what more especially attracts his notice are those peculiarities which distinguish an old country and an old state of society from a new one. I have never yet grown familiar enough with the crumbling monuments of past ages to blunt the intense interest with which I at first beheld them. Accustomed always to scenes where history was, in a manner, in anticipation; where everything in art was new and progressive, and pointed to the future rather than the past; where, in short, the works of man gave no ideas but those of young existence and prospective improvement-there was something inexpressibly touching in the sight of enormous piles of architecture, gray with antiquity and sinking to decay. I cannot describe the mute but deep-felt enthusiasm with which I have contemplated a vast monastic ruin like Tintern Abbey, buried in the bosom of a quiet valley, and shut up from the world, as though it had existed merely for itself; or a warrior pile, like Conway Castle, standing in stern loneliness on its rocky height, a mere hollow yet threatening phantom of departed power. They spread a grand and melancholy, and, to me, an unusual, charm over the landscape. I for the first time beheld signs of national old age and empire's decay; and proofs of the transient and perishing glories of art, amidst the ever-springing and reviving fertility of nature.

But, in fact, to me everything was full of matter; the footsteps of history were everywhere to be traced; and poetry had breathed over and sanctified the land. I experienced the delightful feeling of freshness of a child to whom everything is new. I pictured to myself a set of inhabitants and a mode of life for every habitation that I saw, from the aristocratical mansion, amidst the lordly repose of stately groves and solitary parks, to the straw-thatched cottage, with its scanty garden and cherished woodbine. I thought I never could be sated with the sweetness and freshness of a country so completely carpeted with verdure; where every air breathed of the balmy pasture and the honeysuckled hedge. I was continually coming upon some little document of poetry in the blossomed hawthorn, the daisy, the cowslip, the primrose, or some other simple object that has received a supernatural value from the muse. The first time that I heard the song of the nightingale, I was intoxicated more by the delicious crowd of remembered associations than by the melody of its notes; and I shall never forget the thrill of ecstasy with which I first saw the lark rise, almost from beneath my feet, and wing its musical flight up into the morning sky.

(From Bracebridge Hall.)

A Rainy Sunday in an Inn.

It was a rainy Sunday in the gloomy month of November. I had been detained in the course of a journey by a slight indisposition, from which I was recovering; but I was still feverish, and was obliged to

I

keep within doors all day, in an inn of the small town of Derby. A wet Sunday in a country inn! Whoever has had the luck to experience one can alone judge of my situation. The rain pattered against the casements; the bells tolled for church with a melancholy sound. went to the windows in quest of something to amuse the eye, but it seemed as if I had been placed completely out of the reach of all amusement. The windows of my bedroom looked out among tiled roofs and stacks of chimneys, while those of my sitting-room commanded a full view of the stable-yard. I know of nothing more calculated to make

a man sick of this world than a stableyard on a rainy day. The place was littered with wet straw, that had been kicked about by travellers and stable-boys. In

one corner was a

stagnant pool of water surrounding an island of muck; there were several half-drowned fowls crowded together under a cart, among which was a miserable crestfallen cock, drenched out of all life and spirit, his drooping tail matted, as it were, into a single feather, along which the water trickled from his back; near the cart was a halfdozing cow chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be rained on, with wreaths of vapour rising from her reeking hide; a walleyed horse, tired of

away by a vigilant vinegar-faced mother, and I had nothing further from without to amuse me.

The day continued lowering and gloomy; the slovenly, ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along; there was no variety even in the rain; it was one dull, continued, monotonous patter, patter, patter, excepting that now and then I was enlivened by the idea of a brisk shower, from the rattling of the drops upon a passing umbrella. It was quite refreshing-if I may be allowed a hackneyed phrase of the day-when in the course of the morning a horn blew, and a stage-coach

the loneliness of the stable, was poking his spectral head out of a window, with the rain dripping on it from the eaves; an unhappy cur, chained to a dog-house hard by, uttering something every now and then between a bark and a yelp; a drab of a kitchen-wench tramped backwards and forwards through the yard in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather itself: everything, in short, was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of hard-drinking ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle, and making a riotous noise over their liquor.

I sauntered to the window, and stood gazing at the people picking their way to church, with petticoats hoisted mid-leg high, and dripping umbrellas. The bells ceased to toll, and the streets became silent. I then amused myself with watching the daughters of a tradesman opposite, who, being confined to the house for fear of wetting their Sunday finery, played off their charms at the front windows, to fascinate the chance tenants of the inn. They at length were summoned

whirled through the street with outside passengers stuck all over it, cowering under cotton umbrellas, and seethed together, and reeking with the steams of wet box-coats and upper benjamins. The sound brought out from their lurking-places a crew of vagabond boys and vagabond dogs, and the carroty-headed hostler and that nondescript animal yclept Boots, and all the other vagabond race that infest the purlieus of an inn; but the bustle was transient; the coach again whirled on its way; and boy and dog, and hostler and Boots, all slunk back again to their holes; the street again became silent, and the rain continued to

rain on.

The evening gradually wore away. The travellers read Some drew round

the papers two or three times over. the fire, and told long stories about their horses, about their adventures, their overturns, and breakings-down. They discussed the credits of different merchants and different inns, and the two wags told several choice anecdotes of pretty chamber-maids and kind landladies. All this passed as they were quietly taking what they called their nightcaps-that is to say, strong glasses of brandy and water or sugar, or some other mixture of the kind; after which they one after another rang for Boots and the chamber-maid, and walked off to bed in old shoes cut down into marvellously uncomfortable slippers. There was only one man left-a short-legged, longbodied, plethoric fellow, with a very large, sandy head. He sat by himself with a glass of port-wine negus and a spoon, sipping and stirring, and meditating and sipping, until nothing was left but the spoon. He gradually fell asleep bolt upright in his chair, with the empty glass standing before him; and the candle

seemed to fall asleep too, for the wick grew long and black, and cabbaged at the end, and dimmed the little light that remained in the chamber. The gloom that now prevailed was contagious. Around hung the shapeless and almost spectral box-coats of departed travellers, long since buried in deep sleep. I only heard the ticking of the clock, with the deep-drawn breathings of the sleeping toper, and the drippings of the rain-drop, drop, drop-from the eaves of the house.

(From Bracebridge Hall.)

Rip Van Winkle's Return. The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They crowded round him, eyeing him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and drawing him partly aside, inquired ‘on which side he voted.' Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, whether he was a Federal or Democrat?' Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question, when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eye and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded in an austere tone, 'what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder, and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?' 'Alas! gentlemen,' said Rip, somewhat dismayed, 'I am a poor, quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!'

Here a general shout burst from the bystanders—' A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! Hustle him! away with him!' It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and, having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit what he came there for, and whom he was seeking? The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neighbours, who used to keep about the

'Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point-others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Antony's Nose. I don't know-he never came back again.'

'Where's Van Brummel, the schoolmaster?'

'He went off to the wars too, was a great militia general, and is now in Congress.'

Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world.

Every answer puzzled him, too, by treating of such

enormous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand: war-Congress-Stony Point ;-he had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair, ‘Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?'

'Oh, Rip Van Winkle!' exclaimed two or three. 'Oh, to be sure! That's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree.'

Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself as he went up the mountain: apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was and what was his name?

'God knows,' exclaimed he, at his wits' end; 'I'm not myself I'm somebody else that's me yonder-no -that's somebody else got into my shoes-I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they 've changed my gun, and everything's changed, and I'm changed, and I can't tell what's my name or who I am!'

The bystanders now began to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-important man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical moment a fresh, comely woman passed through the throng to get a peep at the gray-headed man.

She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. 'Hush, Rip,' cried she; 'hush, you little fool; the old man won't hurt you.' The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind.

'What is your name, my good woman?' asked he. 'Judith Gardenier.'

'And your father's name?'

'Ah, poor man! Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it's twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since-his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl.'

Rip had but one more question to ask; but he put it with a faltering voice:

'Where's your mother?'

'Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New-England peddler.'

There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms. 'I am your father!' cried he-'young Rip Van Winkle once-old Rip Van Winkle now!-Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle?'

All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, 'Sure enough! it is Rip Van Winkle-it is himself! Welcome home again, old neighbour. Why, where have you been these twenty long years?'

Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him but as one night. The neighbours stared when they heard it: some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks; and