76

On the singing mountain stream.
Then sing the streams, the silvery streams,
Whose waters are ever fair;

Time leaves no trace on their sunlit face
That his fingers were ever there.

senses; he feared some demon mocked him. He ran over the work again and again; he tried the proportion-the square of Jupiter's period to the square of Mars's period as the cube of Jupiter's distance to a fourth term, which he found to be the cube of the distance

streams,

That ever shall remain,

upon his mind. He had won the goal; the struggle of seventeen long years was ended;

And rejoice the verdant plain!

Men come and go, but they ever flow,

Undimmed by circling years,

While we look back on their flowery track

Oft through the mist of tears.

the wild excitement of his glorious triumph, exclaims,

ANDREW GLASS.

now or by posterity-I care not which. It may well wait a century for a reader, since God has waited six thousand years for an observer."

G

LAW. UIDED by some kind angel or spirit whose sympathy had been touched by the unwearied zeal of the mortal, Kepler returned to his former computations, and with a heaving breast and throbbing heart he detects the numerical error in his work and commences anew. The square of Jupiter's period is to the square of Saturn's period as the cube of Jupiter's distance is to some fourth term, which Kepler hoped and prayed might prove to be the cube of Saturn's distance. With trembling hand he sweeps through the maze of figures; the fourth term is obtained. He compares it with the cube of Saturn's distance. They are the

swift and resistless energy. The secrets of the universe have been yielded up under the inquisitorial investigations of godlike intellect; the domain of the mind has been extended wider and wider; one planet after another has been added to our system; even the profound abyss which separates us from the fixed stars has been passed, and thousands of rolling suns have been descried swiftly flying or majestically sweeping through the thronged regions of space. But the laws of Kepler bind them all. Satellite and primary, planet and sun, sun and system, all with one accord proclaim, in silent majesty, the triumph of the hero-philosopher.

O. M. MITCHEL.

ASHINGTON IRVING was born in the city of New York on the third day of April, 1783-the year which closed the war of American independence. The locality of his birth is still pointed out; it is now covered with stores and is the scene of busy commerce. His father was a Scotchman, his mother an English woman-strong and good reasons for that partiality which he is said to have always manifested toward the old country. He loved England and the English, and they adopted him from the first. He entered early upon the career of an author, without having amassed those riches of classical scholarship which up to that period had been regarded in England and America as essential prerequisites, but which in this practical modern age seem to be no longer of necessary importance.

In 1802, when he was nineteen years old, he was a regular contributor to the Morning Chronicle, a newspaper edited by his elder brother. His assumed name was in keeping, as we shall see, with the character and style of his productions: it was "Jonathan Oldstyle." These seem to have been the first fugitive efforts of an imaginative mind, by way of variety to the exact and solid realities of his special study, which at that time was the law. During this period he was a great walker, and wandered around

New York in every direction, but particularly out upon the banks of that most attractive river the Hudson. Here he could still gather the stories of the Revolution from those who had been the local actors in its scenes. He explored inlet and promontory, and was involuntarily putting away on the fly-leaf of Memory's scrap-book such legends as that of Sleepy Hollow. On the opposite shore were Nyack and Haverstraw, with their undying memories, to be recalled in connection with the Life of Washington. He struck acquaintance with the old people, chimed in with the old customs, and listened with a double purpose to fireside legends and incidents.

In the year 1804 he was threatened with pulmonary disorder; and, abandoning for a time his legal studies, he set out to repair and confirm his health. He travelled in England, France, Spain and Italy, everywhere a man of acute and practical observation, laying up in memory many sketches and tales of travel for future use, and cultivating that taste for art which lends such a charm to his descriptions. He is eminently a picturesque writer.

In 1806 he returned to New York, and, having resumed the study of the law, was at the close of that year admitted to the bar. But, alas for the respectable profession of the law! to him the little taste of literature had given birth to greater desire. He was resolved to drink deep of the Pierian spring.

In 1807 appeared Salmagundi: The Whim

Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff and Others. The writers were Washington Irving, James K. Paulding and William Irving. Modelled upon the Tatler and the Spectator and their numerous progeny, the Idler, the Rambler and others the last of which had been discontinued only fifty years before -this publication appeared in numbers, genially satirizing the whims and follies of the day and giving amusement and literary variety in a period of great literary dearth. The studied style and quiet humor might place some papers of Salmagundi, almost without detection, among the numbers of the Spectator.

In 1809 he again appeared before the world, and this time he took it by storm. In connection with his brother, Dr. Peter Irving, he had sketched the plan of Knickerbocker's History of New York. He elaborated and finished it himself. To test its character and merits, we may refer to two results-antithetical, indeed, but equally significant. If it raised up troops of friends, it awakened the self-righteous indignation of all the Knickerbockers of New York, the family of Vans, from Van Brummel, the inventor of Suppaun, to the Van Kortlands and Van Winkles, who thus indicated its power, and its truth also, for it proved them the lineal descendants of Walter the Doubter, William the Testy and stout old Peter Stuyvesant, who hated the English and Swedes, and who believed nothing good but what was Dutch, and nothing Dutch but what was good. Sir Walter Scott laughed over it until his sides ached; and his laughter was contagious, for the whole party at Abbotsford was made merry by it as it was read aloud. Irving made a good-natured apology in print when

he found that he had hurt the feelings of the living representatives of the Dutch families, as was indicated, among other ways, by Mr. Verplanck's pained and sorrowful allusion to it in one of his historical discourses; the later generations of Knickerbockers, accepting the apology, now claim the work with pride as the first-fruits of New York genius.

From 1810 to 1817, Irving, having relinquished the law, was a merchant, partner with his two brothers in an establishment conducted in both New York and Liverpool. In this copartnership Washington Irving was, however, not a very active member. He was already the favorite of his brothers, on account of his great literary promise, and he was admitted to the mercantile house as a means of eventually securing to him a competency which would give him literary leisure. Success as a merchant, independence secured by invoices and commissions, might have paralyzed his pen; indeed, during the period just mentioned his right hand seemed in some degree to forget its cunning. He wrote a few sketches, principally naval biographies, in just four volumes of the Analectic Magazine, conducted in Philadelphia by Mr. Moses Thomas; of this he was for a few years the editor. The special interest connected with his contributions is due to their being published during the war of 1812, which made our navy and its worthy officers popular and famous. His own reviews and biographical sketches are without any distinguishing mark in that periodical, those of Verplanck and others being subscribed by certain letters. They are principally biographical sketches of Thomas Campbell, of Major Murray, of Robert Fulton, of Wertmüller. of Captain James Lawrence of the Chesa

peake, of Lieutenant Burrows, of Commodore Perry, of Commodore Decatur before his death, and of George Frederick Cooke the actor. These are written in a popular style and are very interesting. For the convenience of Irving, who resided in New York, Mr. Thomas had the magazine printed there, instead of in Philadelphia. Irving, with characteristic modesty, refused to permit these magazine sketches to be collected in a vol

ume.

Prosperity as a merchant might have led to no greater efforts of his genius, but that mysterious Providence which orders all things right withheld this success. In 1817 the mercantile house failed; Irving was thrown upon his own resources: his became his staff pen and support. Thus was lost to the metropolis one merchant-prince out of thousands of aldermanic tastes and proportions; one Irving, with no rival, was gained to American literature.

In 1819 he published the Sketch-Book. The pieces were written in London, but sent to America for publication. The pseudonym was "Geoffrey Crayon, Gentleman." The book was received in both countries with unusual favor—in America because it was the work of an American in a time when there was no American literature; in England because it was in parts illustrative of English life and manners, and because it leaned genially and reverently to English customs and prejudices at a time when we were taught by even Christian example to love all our enemies except the English-a sort of qualification to the Sermon on the Mount yet existing in the creed of many. The SketchBook was essentially English; it was almost the first American book read in England; it

was praised-I had almost said unduly-by English reviews. No! it was worthy of all their praise; for does it not contain that noble notice of Roscoe, his fellow-merchant and author, his fellow-sufferer by the reverses of commerce? In it have we not the wonderful sleep of Rip Van Winkle and the fearful headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow? To an author avowedly seeking bread as well as fame it was particularly successful. For the copyright of his next work, Bracebridge Hall, he was offered one thousand guineas before Murray saw the manuscript. I must pass over the Tales of a Traveller, published in 1824, and severely criticised by the London Quarterly, Blackwood's and the Westminster Review, to come to his greatest work, the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. I have said his greatest work: I make no exception. It was an admirable choice of a subject. Columbus was the discoverer of America; it was scarcely a fond hyperbole which announced:

"A Castilla y Leon,

Nuevo mundo dió Colón."

He was, besides, a man whose history was full of romance, whose life was more stirring than that of fabled heroes in epic poem or prose fiction. Irving was conceded to be the originator and

father of the literature which was to flourish upon the soil discovered by Columbus, and was therefore the fitting chronicler of such a life.

In 1825 there had been published in Madrid-a spasmodic flash of the dying flame of Spanish letters-a compilation of voyages and discoveries called Coleccion de los Viages y Descubrimientos, etc. At the suggestion of the American minister to Spain, Mr. Alexan