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WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859)'

Irving was of immigrant stock, the son of British parents who at the time of his birth had been in America only twenty years. That they were thorough Americans, however, and loyal to the ideals of the Revolution is shown by the name they gave their son who was born in the closing year of the great struggle. Until he was twenty-one the life of the boy was connected with his birth-place, New York City, a small place then of some twenty-three thousand, yet a city. Cooper was a man whose formative years had been passed on the border and on the ocean, but Irving was urban, metropolitan, a man of manners and of social training. He was a lover of books from his childhood; his father was a reader, an importer of English literature, and it is not strange that the boy early began to write and that before he was nineteen he was publishing Spectator-like essays signed Jonathan Oldstyle.' From the city schools he stepped into a law office, but just as he was ready at twenty-one for the bar, his health, always delicate, failed him. Consumption seemed to have fastened itself upon him, and as a last resort he was sent to Europe by sailing vessel, and kept in the open air for nearly two years in various parts of the Continent. The treatment was effective. In 1806 he was admitted to the bar and entered as a member of the law firm of John Irving in New York City. The fruits of his practice soon began to appear, though by no means in the form of briefs. The first was Salmagundi, the hilarious, New York Spectator of the period, and the next was the History of New York, that rollicking epic, written as a colossal joke and then all at once, to its author's amazement, awaking to life as a classic. But in 1809 literature in America could be only a diversion; it could not be entered upon safely as a profession; and as a result the young barrister drifted uncertainly for several years.

The turning-point came in 1815. The father had died, and the sons in 1810 had organized two mercantile firms, J. & E. Irving, New York, and P. Irving & Company, London, the Company' in the firm name standing for Washington Irving. It seemed best that he should identify himself with his firm and take charge of the Liverpool office. Accordingly for the next three years, 1815-1818, he was in England, a business man with much leisure which he spent in traveling extensively over the Kingdom. Then had come the crash: the firm had been hit hard by the war of 1812 and bankruptcy was the outcome. At thirty-three the restless junior member found himself again unsettled, and, what was worse, without income. Nothing remained but his pen, and now he must use it not with the hilarious spirits of the former days, but seriously for very bread. He had no great hopes. His awe of the British critics would not permit him to publish in England: he would depend upon his countrymen and dare the less critical public of the new world. Accordingly, May 15, 1819, he issued in New York number one of a periodical which he called The Sketch Book, containing five essays: "The Author's Account of Himself,' 'The Voyage,' 'Roscoe,' 'The Wife,' and 'Rip Van Winkle.' Other numbers were issued in July, September, November, December, and in March and September, 1820. The second number fell into the hands of the English novelist Godwin, who saw that it was published in the London Literary Gazette. The issue of the collected numbers by Murray in 1820 brought a chorus of praise from the British public. Irving at once took a place with the best authors of the period : Blackwood's Magazine hailed him as by far the greatest genius that has arisen on the literary horizon of the new world.' Bracebridge Hall, 1822, and Tales of a Traveller, 1824, confirmed the judgment of the critics.

Irving's next period was connected with Spain. The American Ambassador had become in. terested in some newly-found Columbus papers and invited the author of the Sketch Book to ex plore them. The result was three years in Spain from which came not only the Life of Colum bus, but The Conquest of Granada, The Alhambra, and several others. He was finally called back to England as secretary of legation, and in 1831 he returned to America, having been away seventeen years.

He was now fifty, and desiring to spend a peaceful old age, he secured an estate on the Hudson, christened it Sunnyside,' and indulged his literary fancies unhampered by the spur of necessity. A Tour of the Prairies. Astoria, and Captain Bonneville, belong to this period. But his wanderings were not over. Appointed ambassador to Spain, he accepted with reluctance, and again for four years he was in Europe. The last period of his life he devoted to his Life of Washington, a work into which he put all his best powers. On its completion in 1859 he died, perhaps the best beloved American of his generation. The most serviceable biography of Irving is Warner's in the American Men of Letters series.

A HISTORY OF NEW YORK

BOOK III. CHAPTER I

OF THE RENOWNED WOUTER VAN TWILLER,
HIS UNPARALLELED VIRTUES — AS LIKE-
WISE HIS UNUTTERABLE WISDOM IN THE
LAW-CASE OF WANDLE SCHOONHOVEN AND
BARENT BLEECKER AND THE GREAT AD-
MIRATION OF THE PUBLIC THEREAT

fancy, I almost imagine myself surrounded by the shades of the departed, and holding sweet converse with the worthies of antiquity! Ah, hapless Diedrich! born in 5 a degenerate age, abandoned to the buffetings of fortunes, a stranger and a weary pilgrim in thy native land,- blest with no weeping wife, nor family of helpless children, but doomed to wander 10 neglected through those crowded streets, and elbowed by foreign upstarts from those fair abodes where once thine ancestors held sovereign empire!

Let me not, however, lose the historian in the man, nor suffer the doting recollections of age to overcome me, while dwelling with fond garrulity on the virtuous days of the patriarchs,-on those sweet days of simplicity and ease, which nevermore will dawn on the lovely island of Mannahata.

Grievous and very much to be commiserated is the task of the feeling historian, who writes the history of his native land. If it fall to his lot to be the recorder of calamity or crime, the mournful page is 15 watered with his tears; nor can he recall the most prosperous and blissful era, without a melancholy sigh at the reflection that it has passed away forever! I know not whether it be owing to an immoderate 20 love for the simplicity of former times, or to that certain tenderness of heart incident to all sentimental historians; but I candidly confess that I cannot look back on the happier days of 25 our city, which I now describe, without great dejection of spirit. With faltering hand do I withdraw the curtain of oblivion, that veils the modest merit of our venerable ancestors, and as their figures 30 tection shown by mother-countries to

rise to my mental vision, humble myself before their mighty shades.

Such are my feelings when I revisit the family mansion of the Knickerbockers, and spend lonely hour in the chamber 35 where hang the portraits of my forefathers, shrouded in dust, like the forms they represent. With pious reverence do I gaze on the countenances of those renowned burghers, who have preceded me 40 in the steady march of existence, whose sober and temperate blood now meanders through my veins, flowing slower and slower in its feeble conduits, until its current shall soon be stopped forever!

These melancholy reflections have been forced from me by the growing wealth and importance of New Amsterdam, which, I plainly perceive, are to involve it in all kinds of perils and disasters. Already, as I observed at the close of my last book, they had awakened the attentions of the mother-country. The usual mark of pro

wealthy colonies was forthwith manifested; a governor being sent out to rule over the province, and squeeze out of it as much revenue as possible. The arrival of a governor of course put an end to the protectorate of Oloffe the Dreamer. He appears, however, to have dreamt to some purpose during his sway, as we find him. afterwards living as a patroon on a great landed estate on the banks of the Hudson; having virtually forfeited all right to his ancient appellation of Kortlandt or Lackland.

It was in the year of our Lord 1629 that 45 Mynheer Wouter Van Twiller was appointed governor of the province of Nieuw Nederlandts, under the commission and control of their High Mightinesses the Lords States General of the United Netherlands, and the privileged West India Company.

These, I say to myself, are but frail memorials of the mighty men who flourished in the days of the patriarchs; but who, alas, have long since mouldered in that tomb towards which my steps are 50 insensibly and irresistibly hastening! As I pace the darkened chamber and lose myself in melancholy musings, the shadowy images around me almost seem to steal once more into existence, their counte- 55 nances to assume the animation of life,their eyes to pursue me in every movement! Carried away by the delusions of

This renowned old gentleman arrived at New Amsterdam in the merry month of June, the sweetest month in all the year; when dan Apollo seems to dance up the transparent firmament,- when the robin, the thrush, and a thousand other wantor. songsters, make the woods to resound with

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put on a vague, mysterious look, shake his capacious head, smoke some time in profound silence, and at length observe, that 'he had his doubts about the matter'; which gained him the reputation of a man slow of belief and not easily imposed upon. What is more, it gained him a lasting name; for to this habit of mind has been attributed his surname Twiller; which is said to be a corruption of the original Twijfler, or, in plain English. Doubter.

amorous ditties, and the luxurious little boblincon revels among the clover blossoms of the meadows,- all which happy coincidence persuaded the old dames of New Amsterdam, who were skilled in the art of foretelling events, that this was to be a happy and prosperous administration. The renowned Wouter (or Walter) Van Twiller was descended from a long line of Dutch burgomasters, who had successively dozed away their lives, and grown fat upon the bench of magistracy in Rotterdam; and who had comported themselves with such singular wisdom and propriety, that they were never either 15 heard or talked of which, next to being universally applauded, should be the object of ambition of all magistrates and rulers. There are two opposite ways by which some men make a figure in the world: one, 20 by talking faster than they think, and the other, by holding their tongues and not thinking at all. By the first, many a smatterer acquires the reputation of a man of quick parts; by the other, many a dunder- 25 pate, like the owl, the stupidest of birds, comes to be considered the very type of wisdom. This, by the way, is a casual remark, which I would not, for the universe, have it thought I apply to Governor 30 Van Twiller. It is true he was a man shut up within himself, like an oyster, and rarely spoke, except in monosyllables; but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible was his gravity 35 that he was never known to laugh or even to smile through the whole course of a long and prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in his presence, that set lightminded hearers into a roar, it was observed 40 countenance with what is termed expres

to throw him into a state of perplexity. Sometimes he would deign to inquire into the matter, and when, after much explanation, the joke was made as plain as a pikestaff, he would continue to smoke his pipe 45 in silence, and at length, knocking out the ashes, would exclaim, 'Well! I see nothing in all that to laugh about.'

With all his reflective habits, he never

The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and proportioned, as though it had been moulded by the hands of some cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty and lordly grandeur. He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of such stupendous dimensions, that dame Nature, with all her sex's ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone, just between the shoulders. His body was oblong and particularly capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordered by Providence, seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits, and very averse to the idle labor of walking. His legs were short, but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain; so that when erect he had not a little the appearance of a beerbarrel on skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human

sion. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament; and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a spitzenberg apple.

His habits were as regular as his person.

made up his mind on a subject. His ad- 50 He daily took his four stated meals, appro

priating exactly an hour to each; he smoked and doubted eight hours, and he slept the remaining twelve of the fourand-twenty. Such was the renowned

herents accounted for this by the astonishing magnitude of his ideas. He conceived every subject on so grand a scale that he had not room in his head to turn it over and examine both sides of it. Certain it 55 Wouter Van Twiller,- a true philosopher,

is, that if any matter were propounded to him on which ordinary mortals would rashly determine at first glance, he would

for his mind was either elevated above, or tranquilly settled below, the cares and perplexities of this world. He had lived in

it for years, without feeling the least curiosity to know whether the sun revolved round it, or it round the sun; and he had watched, for at least half a century, the smoke curling from his pipe to the ceiling, without once troubling his head with any of those numerous theories by which a philosopher would have perplexed his brain, in accounting for its rising above the surrounding atmosphere.

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of it a single instance of any offender being brought to punishment,- a most indubitable sign of a merciful governor, and a case unparalleled, excepting the reign of the illustrious King Log, from whom, it is hinted, the renowned Van Twiller was a lineal descendant.

The very outset of the career of this excellent magistrate was distinguished by 10 an example of legal acumen, that gave flattering presage of a wise and equitable administration. The morning after he had been installed in office, and the moment that he was making his breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish, filled with milk and Indian pudding, he was interrupted by the appearance of Wandle Schoonhoven,

In his council he presided with great state and solemnity. He sat in a huge chair of solid oak, hewn in the celebrated forest of the Hague, fabricated by an experienced timmerman of Amsterdam, and 15 curiously carved about the arms and feet, into exact imitations of gigantic eagle's claws. Instead of a sceptre, he swayed a long Turkish pipe, wrought with jasmin and amber, which had been presented to a 20 stadtholder of Holland at the conclusion of a treaty with one of the petty Barbary powers. In this stately chair would he sit, and this magnificent pipe would he smoke, shaking his right knee with a constant 25 motion, and fixing his eye for hours together upon a little print of Amsterdam, which hung in a black frame against the opposite wall of the council-chamber. Nay, it has even been said, that when any 30 deliberation of extraordinary length and intricacy was on the carpet, the renowned Wouter would shut his eyes for full two hours at a time, that he might not be disturbed by external objects; and at such 35 times the internal commotion of his mind was evinced by certain regular guttural sounds, which his admirers declared were merely the noise of conflict, made by his contending doubts and opinions.

It is with infinite difficulty I have been enabled to collect these biographical anecdotes of the great man under consideration. The facts respecting him were so scattered and vague, and divers of them so 45 questionable in point of authenticity, that I have had to give up the search after many, and decline the admission of still more, which would have tended to heighten the coloring of his portrait.

a very important old burgher of New Amsterdam, who complained bitterly of one Barent Bleecker, inasmuch as he refused to come to a settlement of accounts, seeing that there was a heavy balance in favor of the said Wandle. Governor Van Twiller, as I have already observed, was a man of few words; he was likewise a mortal enemy to multiplying writings or being disturbed at his breakfast. Having listened attentively to the statement of Wandle Schoonhoven, giving an occasional grunt, as he shovelled a spoonful of Indian pudding into his mouth,- either as a sign that he relished the dish, or comprehended the story, he called unto him his constable, and pulling out of his breeches-pocket a huge jack-knife, dispatched it after the defendant as a summons, accompanied by his tobacco-box as a warrant.

This summary process was as effectual 40 in those simple days as was the seal-ring of the great Haroun Alraschid among the true believers. The two parties being confronted before him, each produced a book of accounts, written in a language and character that would have puzzled any but a High-Dutch commentator, or a learned decipherer of Egyptian obelisks. The sage Wouter took them one after the other, and having poised them in his 50 hands, and attentively counted over the number of leaves, fell straightway into a very great doubt, and smoked for half an hour without saying a word; at length, laying his finger beside his nose, and shutting his eyes for a moment, with the air of a man who has just caught a subtle idea by the tail, he slowly took his pipe from his mouth, puffed forth a column of

I have been the more anxious to delineate fully the person and habits of Wouter Van Twiller, from the consideration that he was not only the first, but also the best governor that ever presided over 55 this ancient and respectable province; and so tranquil and benevolent was his reign, that I do not find throughout the whole

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were spent in rambles about the surrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places famous in history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery had been committed, or a ghost seen. I visited the neighboring villages, and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits and customs, and conversing with their sages and great men. I even journeyed one long summer's day to the summit of the most distant hill, whence I stretched my eye over many a mile of terra incognita, and was astonished to find how vast a globe I inhabited.

This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of voyages and travels became my passion, and in devouring their contents I neglected the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully would I wander about the pier-heads in fine weather, and watch the parting ships, bound to distant climes with what longing eyes would I gaze after their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth!

This decision, being straightway made known, diffused general joy throughout New Amsterdam, for the people immediately perceived that they had a very wise 15 and equitable magistrate to rule over them. But its happiest effect was, that not another lawsuit took place throughout the whole of his administration; and the office of constable fell into such decay, that there 20 was not one of those losel scouts known in the province for many years. I am the more particular in dwelling on this transaction, not only because I deem it one of the most sage and righteous judgments on 25 record, and well worthy the attention of modern magistrates, but because it was a miraculous event in the history of the renowned Wouter,- being the only time he was ever known to come to a decision in 30 make it more decided. I visited various the whole course of his life.

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Further reading and thinking, though they brought this vague inclination into more reasonable bounds, only served to

parts of my own country; and had I been merely a lover of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere its gratification; for on no country have the 35 charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains, with their bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine; no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery.

'I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snaile that crept out of her she was turned eftsoons into a toad, and thereby 40 was forced to make a stoole to sit on; so the traveller that stragleth from his owne country is in a short time transformed into so monstrous a shape, that he is faine to alter his mansion with his manners, and 45 to live where he can, not where he would.' (Lyly's Euphues.)

I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters 50 and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the 55 emolument of the town crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the range of my observations. My holiday afternoons

But Europe held forth the charms of storied and poetical association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the refinements of highly-cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities af ancient and local custom. My native country was full of youthful promise: Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of times gone

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