in a thin piping voice, "Nicholas Vedder! why, he is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the churchyard that used to tell all about him, but that's rotten and gone too."

"Where's Brom Dutcher?"

"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 Anthony's Nose. I don't know—he never came back again.”

66

'Where's Van Bummel, 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 more 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!"

At this critical moment a fresh, comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded 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's 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 question more 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 neighbor. Why, where have you been these twenty long years?"

Rip's daughter took him home to live with her; she had a snug, well-furnished house, and a stout, cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on the farm; but evinced an hereditary disposition to attend to anything else but his business.

In 1820, Irving took up his residence in Paris, where, the next year, he penned Bracebridge Hall, which, in 1822, was published both in London and New York. This volume devotes itself to picturing the home, the manners, the employments, both in-doors and out-doors, of a thorough English country gentleman; together with sketches of local characters and pastimes, these all tinged and heightened in interest by the atmosphere of romance, legend, and mys tery that surrounds and unites them./

Tales of a Traveller appeared in 1824. They comprehend

marvelous stories by a Nervous Gentleman, Buckthorne and his Friends-a history of great expectations sadly thwarted, The Italian Banditti, and The Money-Diggers-incredible tales of the searchers after Captain Kidd's supposed hidden treasures./

From France, Irving was called, in 1826, to Madrid, for the purpose of translating an important series of newlyfound documents relating to the voyages of Columbus. This employment gave rise to the conception and afterwards facilitated the completion of Irving's great historical work, namely: The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, published in 1828. /

"This is one of those works which are at the same time the delight of readers and the despair of critics. It is as nearly perfect as any work can be. . . . For the particular kind of historical writing in which Mr. Irving is fitted to labor and excel, the Life of Columbus is undoubtedly one of the very best-perhaps we might say, without the fear of mistake, the very best, subject afforded by the annals of the world. . . . In treating this happy and splendid subject, Mr. Irving has brought out the full force of his genius, as far as a just regard for the principles of historical writing would admit."*

We present the following extract from the concluding part of the work:

COLUMBUS was a man of great and inventive genius. The operations of his mind were energetic, but irregular; bursting forth at times with that irresistible force which characterizes intellects of such an order. His mind had grasped all kinds of knowledge connected with his pursuits; and though his information may appear limited at the present day, and some of his errors palpable, it is because that knowledge, in his peculiar department of science, was but scantily developed in his time. His own discoveries enlightened the ignorance of that age; guided conjecture to certainty; and dispelled numerous errors with which he himself had been obliged to struggle.

* Alexander H: Everett.

His ambition was lofty and noble. He was full of high thoughts, ◄nd anxious to distinguish himself by great achievements. It has been said that a mercenary feeling mingled with his views, and that his stipulations with the Spanish court were selfish and avaricious. The charge is inconsiderate and unjust. He aimed at dignity and wealth in the same lofty spirit in which he sought renown; but they were to arise from the territories he should discover, and be commensurate in importance. No condition could be more just. He asked nothing of the sovereign but a command of the countries he hoped to give them, and a share of the profits to support the dignity of his command. If there should be no country discovered, his stipulated vice-royalty would be of no avail; and if no revenues should be produced, his labor and peril would produce no gain. If his command and revenues ultimately proved magnificent, it was from the magnificence of the regions he had attached to the Castilian crown. What monarch would not rejoice to gain empire on such conditions?

His conduct as a discoverer was characterized by the grandeur of his views, and the magnanimity of his spirit. Instead of scouring the newly-found countries, like a grasping adventurer eager only for immediate gain, as was too generally the case with contemporary discoverers, he sought to ascertain their soil and productions, their rivers and harbors. He was desirous of colonizing and cultivating them, of conciliating and civilizing the natives, of building cities, introducing the useful arts, subjecting everything to the control of law, order and religion, and thus ot founding regular and prosperous empires. In this glorious plan he was constantly defeated by the dissolute rabble, which it was his misfortune to command; with whom all law was tyranny, and all order restraint.

Columbus was a man of quick sensibility, liable to great excitement, to sudden and strong impressions and powerful impulses. He was naturally irritable and impetuous, and keenly sensible to injury or injustice; yet the quickness of his temper was counteracted by the benevolence and generosity of his heart. The magnanimity of his nature shone forth through all the troubles of his stormy career. Though continually outraged in his dignity, and braved in the exercise of his command; though foiled in his plans, and endangered in his person by the seditions of turbulent and worthless men, and that too at times when suffering under anxiety of mind and anguish of body sufficient to exasperate the

most patient; yet he restrained his valiant and indignant spirit, and by the strong power of his mind, brought himself to forbear, and reason, and even to supplicate: nor should we fail to notice how free he was from all feeling of revenge; how ready to forgive and forget, on the least signs of repentance and atonement. He has been extolled for his skill in controlling others, but far greater praise is due to him for the firmness he displayed in governing himself.

His natural benignity made him accessible to all kinds of pleasurable influences from external objects. In his letters and journals, instead of detailing circumstances with the technical precision of a mere navigator, he notices the beauties of Nature with the enthusiasm of a poet or a painter. As he coasts the shores of the New World, the reader participates in the enjoyment with which he describes, in his imperfect but picturesque Spanish, the varied objects around him; the blandness of the temperature, the purity of the atmosphere, the fragrance of the air, "full of dew and sweetness," the verdure of the forests, the magnificence of the trees, the grandeur of the mountains, and the limpidity and freshness of the running streams.

He was devoutly pious: religion mingled with the whole course of his thoughts and actions, and shone forth in all his most private and unstudied writings. Whenever he made any great discovery, he celebrated it by solemn thanks to God. The voice of prayer and the melody of praise rose from his ships when they first beheld the New World, and his first action on landing was to prostrate himself on the earth and render up thanksgivings. Every evening the Salve Regina and other vesper hymns were chanted by his crew, and masses were performed in the beautiful groves that bordered the wild shores of this heathen land. The religion thus deeply seated in his soul diffused a sober dignity and a benign composure over his whole demeanor. His language was pure and guarded, free from all imprecations, oaths, and other irreverent expressions. All his great enterprises were undertaken "in the name of the Holy Trinity," and he partook of the holy sacrament previous to embarkation. He observed the festivals of the Church in the wildest situations. The Sabbath was with him a day of sacred rest, on which he would never set sail from a port, unless in a case of extreme necessity. He was decidedly a visionary; but a visionary of an uncommon and successful kind. The manner in which his ardent,