writing, calm, clear, judicious, and trustworthy, - together with the collection of legends and historical narratives growing out of the Moorish conquest. In the Conquest of Granada' and in the 'Alhambra' tales, Irving's style, affected no doubt by the variety and richness of the color of the scenes which he is depicting, is a little lacking at times in the fine reticence which distinguishes his best work; but the fact remains that his picture of this chapter of Spanish history was of such a character as to discourage any successor from attempting to deal with the same topic.

Two of the three books descriptive of the wild life of the Northwest, Astoria and the Adventures of Captain Bonneville,' were based upon documents placed at Irving's disposal by John Jacob Astor, supplemented by oral narratives, and by the author's recollections of his own experiences during the journey which he made on the prairies after his second return from Europe. In addition to the deep interest attaching to the tragic story of the suffering and dangers encountered by the overland party which Mr. Astor dispatched to establish a fur-trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River, the 'Astoria' is filled with graphic character sketches of the hardy adventurers who gathered in those days at the frontier settlements, - men of varied nationalities and of eccentric and picturesque individualities, all of whom are as actual in Irving's pages as if they had been studied from the life. It may be nothing more than a fancy, but I like to think that this incursion into the trackless regions of the Northwest, in company with the primitive types of the explorer, the hunter, and the trapper, reflects a natural reaction of Irving's mind after so long a sojourn in the highly cultivated society of Europe, and a yearning on his part to find rest and refreshment by getting as close as possible in his work to Mother Nature.

Of the three biographies which were the last product of his pen, the 'Life of Goldsmith' is noteworthy as having more of the charm of his earlier manner than the others have. He was in peculiar sympathy with the subject of this volume, and told the story of his life with an insight which no later biographer has brought to the task. The Mahomet and his Successors' is an honest, straightforward, conscientious piece of work, but did not add anything to the author's reputation. He expended an enormous amount of time and labor on the 'Life of Washington,' but the work was too large and too exacting for a man of his age to undertake. There are passages in it

that for incisiveness of characterization and for finish of form are the equal of anything that he produced in the days when his intellectual vigor was unimpaired; but the reader cannot escape the feeling that the author's grasp of the materials relating to the subject was feeble, and that his heart was not in his work. It dragged terribly, he tells

us, in the writing; and it drags too in the reading. Nor does it seem likely that even if the task had been undertaken twenty years earlier, the theme would have been altogether a congenial one. Washington, in the perspective from which Irving viewed him,-and one must remember that the lad was six years old when Washington took the oath of office as President, and may have witnessed that ceremony almost from his father's doorstep,- was a very real man who had solved a very real problem. There was no atmosphere surrounding him that corresponded to the romantic glamour which transfigured the personality of Columbus, or to the literary associations which were linked with Goldsmith's name; and Irving required some such stimulus to the imagination in order to enable him to do his best work.

Irving, finally, was the first American man of letters whose writings contained the vital spark. No one would venture to say that he possessed a creative imagination of the highest order, such as Hawthorne for example was gifted with. The tragedy of life, the more strenuous problems that arise to torment mankind, had no attraction for him. But he had nevertheless imagination of a rare sort, and the creative faculty was his also. Were this not so, his books would have been forgotten long ago. Neither his play of fancy, nor his delicious sense of humor, nor the singular felicity of his style, could have saved his writings from oblivion if he had not possessed, in addition to these qualities, a profound knowledge of the romance and comedy of life, and the power, which is vouchsafed to few, to surround his characters and his scenes with some of the mellow glow of his own sweet and gentle spirit.

Edvin W. Mosse,

THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF KNICKERBOCKER LIFE

From A History of New York: By Diedrich Knickerbocker ›

HE houses of the higher class were generally constructed of

Twood, excepting the gable end, which was of small black

and yellow Dutch bricks, and always faced on the street,— as our ancestors, like their descendants, were very much given to outward show, and were noted for putting the best leg foremost. The house was always furnished with abundance of large doors and small windows on every floor; the date of its erection was curiously designated by iron figures on the front; and on the top

of the roof was perched a fierce little weathercock, to let the family into the important secret which way the wind blew. These, like the weathercocks on the tops of our steeples, pointed so many different ways that every man could have a wind to his mind; the most stanch and loyal citizens, however, always went according to the weathercock on the top of the governor's house, which was certainly the most correct, as he had a trusty servant employed every morning to climb up and set it to the right quarter.

In those good days of simplicity and sunshine, a passion for cleanliness was the leading principle in domestic economy, and the universal test of an able housewife,- a character which formed the utmost ambition of our unenlightened grandmothers. The front door was never opened except on marriages, funerals, New Year's days, the festival of St. Nicholas, or some such great occasion. It was ornamented with a gorgeous brass knocker curiously wrought, sometimes in the device of a dog and sometimes of a lion's head, and was daily burnished with such religious zeal that it was ofttimes worn out by the very precautions taken for its preservation. The whole house was constantly in a state of inundation, under the discipline of mops and brooms and scrubbing-brushes; and the good housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water: insomuch that a historian of the day gravely tells us that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed fingers like unto a duck; and some of them, he had little doubt, could the matter be examined into, would be found to have the tails of mermaids- but this I look upon to be a mere sport of fancy, or what is worse, a willful misrepresentation.

The grand parlor was the sanctum sanctorum, where the passion for cleaning was indulged without control. In this sacred apartment no one was permitted to enter excepting the mistress. and her confidential maid, who visited it once a week for the purpose of giving it a thorough cleaning and putting things to rights,—always taking the precaution of leaving their shoes at the door, and entering devoutly in their stocking feet. After scrubbing the floor, sprinkling it with fine white sand, which was curiously stroked into angles and curves and rhomboids with a broom,-after washing the windows, rubbing and polishing the furniture, and putting a new bunch of evergreens in the fireplace, the window shutters were again closed to keep out the

flies, and the room carefully locked up until the revolution of time brought round the weekly cleaning-day.

As to the family, they always entered in at the gate, and most generally lived in the kitchen. To have seen a numerous household assembled around the fire, one would have imagined that he was transported back to those happy days of primeval simplicity which float before our imaginations like golden visions. The fireplaces were of a truly patriarchal magnitude, where the whole family, old and young, master and servant, black and white,-nay, even the very cat and dog,-enjoyed a community of privilege, and had each a right to a corner. Here the old burgher would sit in perfect silence, puffing his pipe, looking in the fire with half-shut eyes, and thinking of nothing, for hours together; the goede vrouw on the opposite side would employ herself diligently in spinning yarn or knitting stockings. The young folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chimney, would croak forth for a long winter afternoon a string of incredible stories about New England witches, grisly ghosts, horses without heads, and hairbreadth escapes and bloody encounters among the Indians.

In those happy days a well-regulated family always rose with the dawn, dined at eleven, and went to bed at sundown. Dinner was invariably a private meal, and the fat old burghers showed incontestable symptoms of disapprobation and uneasiness at being surprised by a visit from a neighbor on such occasions. But though our worthy ancestors were thus singularly averse to giving dinners, yet they kept up the social bands of intimacy by occasional banquetings, called tea parties.

These fashionable parties were generally confined to the higher classes or noblesse; that is to say, such as kept their own cows and drove their own wagons. The company commonly assembled at three o'clock and went away about six, unless it was in winter-time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might get home before dark. The teatable was crowned with a huge earthen dish, well stored with slices of fat pork fried brown, cut up into morsels and swimming in gravy. The company, being seated around the genial board. and each furnished with a fork, evinced their dexterity in launching at the fattest pieces in this mighty dish; in much the same

manner as sailors harpoon porpoises at sea, or our Indians spear salmon in the lakes. Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called doughnuts or olykoeks, a delicious kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city excepting in genuine Dutch families.

The tea was served out of a majestic delft teapot, ornamented with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds and shepherdesses tending pigs, with boats sailing in the air, and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other ingenious Dutch fantasies. The beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this pot from a huge copper tea-kettle, which would have made the pigmy macaronies of these degenerate days sweat merely to look at it. To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup: and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum, until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economic old lady, which was to suspend a large lump directly over the tea-table by a string from the ceiling, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth; an ingenious expedient which is still kept up by some families in Albany, but which prevails without exception in Communipaw, Bergen, Flatbush, and all our uncontaminated Dutch villages.

At these primitive tea parties the utmost propriety and dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting nor coquetting, no gambling of old ladies nor hoyden chattering and romping of young ones, no self-satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen with their brains in their pockets, nor amusing conceits and monkey divertisements of smart young gentlemen with no brains at all. On the contrary, the young ladies seated themselves demurely in their rush-bottomed chairs, and knit their own woolen stockings; nor ever opened their lips excepting to say Yah Mynheer, or Yah yah Vrouw, to any question that was asked them: behaving in all things like decent, well-educated damsels. As to the gentlemen, each of them tranquilly smoked his pipe, and seemed lost in contemplation of the blue and white tiles with which the fireplaces were decorated, wherein sundry passages of Scripture were piously portrayed. Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; and Jonah appeared most manfully bouncing out of the whale, like Harlequin through a barrel of fire.