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WASHINGTON IRVING.

BY CYRUS REDDING.

AMONG the ravages of death in the ranks of literary men which have occurred recently, not one stands out more prominently than that of Washington Irving, especially if considered in reference to his status in his native land. His had been for fifty-three years a leading name in American literature, which he merited not more by the originality of his writings, than by the diversity of his talents. His literary career began early in life, or as long ago as 1807, when his "Salmagundi" first appeared, and he had entered his twenty-third year. He continued his labours nearly to the last, his latest work being a "Life of General Washington," according to the statement of a mutual friend, to whom we entrusted our last communication for him. He expired in a favourite villa he had long possessed on the banks of the Hudson River, and the American people exhibited that regret for his loss which, in a similar case, would be looked for in vain in the Old World.

Irving was well known in England, not to the public by his works alone, but by a circle of private friends at once numerous and respectable. He was strongly attached to the land of his forefathers. In his trips to this country he had imbibed, from the storied scenes he visited, that indefinable feeling best expressed in the productions which solace and delight minds capable of receiving exalted and refined impressions. There were few of the remarkable sites noted in English history which he did not visit, and he described many. He knew well the manners and modes of feeling, the prejudices and foibles of all classes of persons in this country, and perceived almost intuitively the salient points in the character of those he encountered, whether among his own countrymen or foreigners. He had visited at intervals, and spent a considerable time in Europe, not only in Great Britain, but in Spain and France, and being a close observer of manners, he did not neglect to profit by the opportunities thus afforded him.

We have forgotten by whom we were first introduced to Irving, and whether it was in England or France. The time was, to the best of our recollection, about 1819. It was during the embassy of Mr. M'Lane, at a later period, that we became best known to each other. Mr. M'Lane himself we also used to meet, a staid and gentlemanly citizen of the United States, in society rather retiring. Before that time the name of Irving had been well known on both sides of the Atlantic, and we can add our humble testimony to the evidence which his writings furnish, both as to his candour and amiable manners. His attachment to England, in addition to the feeling already alluded to, arose from a thorough knowledge of the country, and an honourable zeal to afford in behalf of England as of his native land that fair play which party writers at the time, on both sides, did not seem to estimate as of the slightest moment. He bore his honours bravely to the last, though the sere and yellow leaf had long given warning of the approach of the event which reminds the proudest

in literary success that it has no preference under the law which declares all things vanity.

In person, Irving was about the middle height, well made, neither spare nor stout of limb; at least, he was so at the time we saw him last, for age makes a great change in the personal appearance of us all. Of our latest interview we are reminded by an interesting sketch he gave of his residence in Spain, during a period we were in ignorance of his "whereabouts." He had certain public duties to fulfil in that country, and to his residence there he contrived to add a six months' sojourn in the Alhambra. There he was waited upon by an old woman, who acted as a domestic in the famed Moorish palace, during which time he laboured hard in that renowned solitude at the portion of his works which bears a relation to Granada and the Alhambra itself. To return from this digression. There were few individuals who bore in appearance less of the character by which they were publicly known. Gentlemanly, unassuming, mild, taciturn rather than talkative, and exhibiting in company no traces of that genuine humour seen in his earlier productions, and without any of those peculiarities of address and verbal (some will have it "nasal") enunciation by which so many of his countrymen are distinguished when in English society, he was not to be recognised by any Transatlantic nationality in manners. He would have passed here for a sedate, gentlemanly native, who delivered his opinions with deference, and impressed everybody in social intercourse with a great amenity of character. Neither was there anything very striking or marked in his physiognomy, or, at least, so much that way as to attract the attention of the stranger who saw him in company for the first time. Placid and unobtrusive, he conversed deliberately upon the subject of the moment with great propriety of language and perfect self-possession, saying only as much and no more than was necessary, but sometimes with a species of diffidence, as if he were uncertain as to the correctness of a judgment always sufficiently acute and discriminating.

During his residence in England, while Mr. M'Lane was ambassador, he seemed to wear a more sedate character than he had before maintained, and to be less than ever inclined to lead in conversation. There was none of the character of humorists in general in his conversational tone. He was not facetious upon subjects started by himself, or in commenting upon those of others. Pensiveness would, from his bearing, be supposed by a stranger to be a prominent trait in his character; perhaps this was from his being a good listener. He made no display at off-hand wit, when he had excellent opportunities for "showing off," for his was of that superior cast designated by Sydney Smith as humour not comprised in a word, but in a sentence. He consequently had no pretensions to be considered an after-dinner punster: he had not the laughter-loving eye that evinced covertly a display of the ruling passion, or indicated that racy spirit which appeared in his earlier publications. It seemed as if he preferred the solid and sterling to that amusing levity which he exhibited in his " History of New York," and that the latter was the offspring of youthful gaiety rather than of a serious consideration on objects of settled manhood, on which, in consequence, he set little store. In conversation with a mixed party of English and Americans, we soon found that his attachment was in a political and party sense to the Federalists, as that

party of the great Washington was denominated in his own country. We subsequently heard him state his belief in the endurance of the exist ing system of government in the United States, although he admitted it was an experiment-an experiment of infinite importance to the world at large. He trusted that its enemies would one day be induced to retract their aspersions upon it, and to confess that a perfect equality in civil and religious rights, and popular control, formed the most rational, safe, and economical system of government.

Before he published the "Sketch Book," in 1819, he had visited England with an ardent desire to tread the soil of his forefathers. From them, after all, that spirit of freedom had been inherited, which in the end secured American independence, despite the efforts of George III. to place the colonies in a state next akin to serfship-" that glorious spirit," said Lord Chatham, "which animated millions in America to prefer poverty and freedom to sordid chains and gilded affluence." The ancestral honours worth claiming were common to both lands; in other words, all that belong to science, literature, and art. It was a natural desire-it was more-it was a desire sanctioned by the most honourable motives to learn the truth and to see for himself before he committed his lucubrations to the public. There was much silly ill-humour displayed on both sides the Atlantic at that time, and it found a vent through the press. English travellers of no very refined nor intellectual character had visited the United States from this country with the accustomed jaundiced feelings towards all that did not square with their notions of things at home. This failing, common to the family of John Bull in all times and countries, was displayed with more acerbity towards a territory which had once owned British rule, and that presumed to differ from its established usages, and speaking, too, in a dialect not half as strange to the cockney of London as that of Lancashire. Nor were the tourists of the common run of intellect the only censors of American manners. Some insulated examples of men of genuine talent, who had, it is true, been nurtured in ease at home, and made their first travelling essays in America, were equally as prejudiced, and among them was Thomas Moore, the poet, whose early years had been spent in the drawing-rooms of Ireland and England, and whose worship had been in the temples of Fashion, where he had passed a few more than twenty-one summers. Having an appointment in the Bermudas, whose ocean grandeurs and sunny skies were not congenial to one accustomed only to artificial life, he had got his post filled by a deputy, and was returning home by the United States. There he found as little of his beau idéal of social excellence after the school of the West-end of town as he found at Bermuda. Nothing was after the manner of Bondstreet, and Moore was seized with the Americophobia, and joined the silver-fork school of travellers of that day. Irving championed on behalf of his countrymen, and at first replied, more in the way of complaint than of retort, in the "Sketch Book," but had previously, in "Salmagundi," before he had visited England, repaid the slanders upon his country with much humour and no small degree of eutting satire. It was different with the multitude, and with the American press, which was answered by the English. Both ought to have known that ignorant, inexperienced. persons, who pretended to treat of the moral and physical development of great nations, at a time their system of rule was scarcely developed, and

must needs present a difficult study even to the statesman or philosopher, was not to be justly treated in the way of characterising it, by the knowledge to be picked up by a stranger in a visit of a month or two. Those days, it might have been hoped, had even then gone by, except in rare cases. Steam has since introduced a more extended and rapid intercourse than existed at that period between parent and child, and with it have departed much of the spleen, the distorted description, jealousy, and soreness shown on both sides of the Atlantic.

We were indebted to Irving for counteracting much of the disingenuous spirit then displayed in both countries. He wrote with temper and candour, and as far as he could, without the slightest disparagement to his own country, he threw oil upon the troubled waters. It was impossible anything he said or wrote could be ill-received in England. In speaking he was not a disputant, but in writing he well understood the value of a word in all its bearings, and knew early how to make replies. One of the first public characters he met in England soon after he landed at Liverpool was Roscoe. "He impressed me at once," said Irving, "with high character. The tall, fine, Roman contour of that remarkable man struck me forcibly." In the stranger's sight, Roscoe conferred a celebrity upon Liverpool which its traffic could not command from the young American. He stood above the busy, sordid throng of rich and poor, like a proud column. There, except with a few persons, perhaps, he was only regarded as a banker, who afterwards, disfavoured by fortune, disappeared from the sight of every-day men. Irving's admiration was not that of every-day men, for he has recorded how he felt, how he had communed in spirit with the historian and philanthropist, when dwelling in American cities; and though he knew him previously by his works alone, the impression made upon his mind was deepened rather than lessened by Roscoe's presence in his own proper person. "He is one of your men most worthy of honour," observed Irving; "his carriage exhibits it." We, too, when introduced to that far-celebrated man, forty years ago, had precisely the same reverential feeling towards him.

In giving his impressions upon visiting a land out of which his own had, as it were, grown and expanded itself—a land where all was in his eyes stamped with antiquity-he described his feeling as if he had been intuitively conscious that what he saw had belonged by association to himself, that the time was in that remoteness of history when the Old World existed alone in strength, the parent before the offspring appeared, and that in its lineaments he traced something of the senility which endears rather than repels the attention and love of the descendant.

The series of papers entitled "Salmagundi," designed after the old school of humorous essayists, appeared in New York at the date already stated, and was comprised in twenty numbers. It at once became very popular; so popular, indeed, that the numbers were again and again printed before the work was brought to a conclusion. There is, and must of necessity ever be, a resemblance between the manners of the people of the United States and our own, and this is sufficient to indicate that there could be no want of subjects for satire there any more than in England. The "springs" there, or, as we should call them, the "watering-places," visited in the season, furnish abundant matter for the

pen

of

the essayist and for humorous satire, which in "Salmagundi" is broad, and sometimes not highly refined. Much of the manners of the people of the large cities of America, at the time it was written, may be learned from it. The characters may therefore be judged to partake of the artificial manners of the hour, as in the characters of La Bruyère, belonging to the present and peculiar, and not like those to the natural man, such as were sketched by Theophrastus from nature, found in all nations and at all times. In "Salmagundi," too, much is caricature. This work bespeaks a keen observation of society in youth, and augured well for the future. The absurdities lashed, it is true, were not all American, for English travellers-Brummagem bagmen in America-were among the portraits. Bad citizenship was scourged, while the foibles of the fair sex were not spared. Aunt Charity, who died of a Frenchman; Mrs. Tooke, of Broadway, and Mrs. Cockloft, who unveiled future mysteries through the oracular communications of corns and stitches in her side, were considered so many inflictions upon American gallantry, and their author did not escape censure upon that account. The American is a sensitive being, and it was considered at first patriotic to abuse the author, as one who could never be a Yankee by nature, however "cute" he might think himself. Thus "guessed" some of the New Yorkers when a work so novel made its appearance among them.

"Salmagundi" was succeeded by a publication of much higher merit in "Knickerbocker's History of New York." There is in this work, with infinite humour, a great deal of political satire and cutting irony. The inconsistencies of an advanced age in morals are lashed in the censure of the bad doctrines and unsound principles of the past, while the Dutch character is delineated to the life. In the fourth book, the Dutch governor is said to have been designed to represent the president, Thomas Jefferson, who carried his democratic doctrines to an extravagant pitch. The "notions," as thus given in relation to his system, are full of delightful humour, and strike close home. Jefferson, it is well known, opposed Washington while framing the constitution of the United States, in which the latter wished the different states to be brought as much as possible into subjection to the general laws enacted by the Congress, in order that the executive might not fail in strength, or become enfeebled when labouring for the general benefit. Jefferson wished each separate state to possess a degree of power well-nigh unlimited. Though he did not succeed, subsequent experience has shown the wisdom of Washington on this point. It is even now the great defect in the American system of government, that the executive power is next to nothing in any state that chooses to be contumacious to the general administration. Irving had a great admiration of Washington, and that perhaps sharpened his attack upon the principles of Jefferson, which, however, was wholly free from malignity. With so much of playful humour, though the object in many cases was obscure to Englishmen, the descriptions and painting were so excellent, and exhibited so clearly the hand of a master, that it at once obtained a high consideration here. The Dutch character, it is true, was well comprehended: Dutch courage, Dutch sluggishness, Dutch smoking, Dutch figures, and Dutch breeches, had long been proverbs in England, with the slow Dutch intellect, plodding habits, and covetousness. In one shape or another these were all present in "Knicker

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