Nor many years have passed away since Sidney Smith, in the 'Edinburgh Review," pertly inquired, "Who reads an American book?" At the present moment, the more appropriate question would be, "Who does not?" Till lately, it is true, our country was obnoxious to the charge of imitation, and we really possessed no national literature. The time has arrived, however, when our authors may be no longer taunted with the sin of reproducing English ideas and English forms in American volumes; for have we not amongst us original men whom the world delights to honour-men whose names are cosmopolitan? Prescott, Hildreth, and Bancroft, the historians; Bryant and Longfellow, the poets; Cooper and Hawthorne, the novelists; Webster and Clay, the politicians; Emerson and Jared Sparks, the philosophers; Edgar Poe and Washington Irving, the essayists. Here are a few from among our glorious roll of native authors. And other names might be added, of writers whose works have taken the European public by storm, and have been translated into nearly all the languages of civilised-or, rather, book-reading -man, but that our present business is with one of our most original thinkers and popular authors-Washington Irving.

The magician of Sleepy Hollow, and the father of that famous and unique historian, Diedrich Knickerbocker, needs but brief introduction to an American public, or, indeed, to any public whatsoever.

In the city of New York, on the third of April, 1783, Washington Irving, the Goldsmith of America, first saw the light. Beneath the walls of his father's house, the mighty Hudson flowed, silently but swiftly, and the shadow of the Great Kaatskill Mountains, blue and misty in the far distance, protectingly looked down upon his childhood's bed. It matters little to tell of Irving's ancestors; but, not to contradict the world-belief that eminent men have ever been blessed with good mothers, it may be mentioned that our author's mother was a woman of superior mind and exemplary piety, and that she was the first to discover in him the "divine poet-spark" and fan it into a flame. Like many of our authors, Irving was educated for the legal profession; but he early abandoned Blackstone and Coke for Shakspeare and Spenser.

His brothers, who were carrying on a thriving business, as merchants, in New York, invited him to share in their prosperity, and he was, naturally, not unwilling to avail himself of their proposal; especially, as they stipulated that he should have full opportunity for indulging his literary predilections. Pleased with the prospect of wealth and intellectual pleasures, he abandoned the honourable, but more arduous and less attractive, profession for which he was originally destined. But a short time elapsed before his bright anticipations were beclouded by misfortune. In consequence of the mercantile crisis, which immediately succeeded the peace of 1815, he was compelled once more to change his avocation. Literature, which he fondly hoped was to be merely the delight of his leisure hours, was now to be the serious business of his life. This can hardly, however, be considered a misfortune, either for himself or the world. On the contrary, the natural bias of his mind had always been in this direction. In his early youth he visited Europe, where he was able to indulge in that tendency to a free, imaginative, and adventurous life, which had exhibited itself almost from his childhood. For several years he had engaged in literary efforts.

In 1809 our author published his first real work-his previous lucubrations being, as he confesses, mere playthings of the imagination. This was the celebrated "Knickerbocker's History of New York." It is needless now to say, that it took the public taste immediately and had an immense sale; nor need we record, that after being printed in a variety of languages in a variety of places, the charm of its author's style remains un impaired, and that the book is as popular as ever. Irving's next literary labours were in connexion with the "Analectic Magazine," which he conducted with a degree of VOL. II.-No. VIII.

skill and taste not then understood in the country. We next (1814) find him engaged as aide-de-camp and secretary to the governor of New York; but, as we care very little about his military exploits, and as no person now-a-days would think of addressing him as Colonel Irving, we pass to his next feat in authorship, the well-known and popular series of papers published under the title of "The Sketch-book." These sketches were most of them written in England, and were first published in the columns of a New York newspaper. They are full of acute and sensible, though kindly, observations upon European society, and were immediately received with applause by the American public. In 1820 they were collected, with the consent of their author, and published by Mr. Bentley.

For five years Washington Irving resided in Europe, and was received into the best society of London and Paris. In 1820 he brought out his celebrated "Bracebridge-hall." The next winter he passed in Dresden, and in the following spring his "Tales of a Traveller" made their appearance. On both sides of the Atlantic they were received with a favour which the publication of the "Life of Columbus," in 1828, did not tend to lessen. This last work was written in Madrid, and is, perhaps, the best biographical account of the discoverer of the New World which has yet appeared. Indeed, the best proof of the public estimation of Irving's Columbus will be found in the fact of quarter-dollar editions all over the Union, and the sale of shilling volumes at every railway station in Great Britain.

The fruits of our author's visit to old romantic Spain were ripe and various; and from 1829 to 1853 there have appeared no more captivating works of their class than the "Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada," the "Tales of the Alhambra," and the "Legends of the Conquest of Spain."

In 1829 our author was appointed Secretary of Legation to the American Embassy in London-a post which he held till the return of Mr. McLane, in 1831. While in England he was honoured by the degree of Doctor of Laws being conferred on him by the University of Oxford, and received from King George the Fourth one of the fifty-guinea gold medals which that sovereign presented to authors of eminence in history and science.

We have no space to follow the events of Washington Irving's life with minuteness. In 1832 he returned to New York, and a public festival greeted his arrival; the next summer he accompanied the Commissioners for removing the Indian tribes beyond the Mississippi; and the result of his journey to the Far West was his justly celebrated and popular "Tour to the Prairies." "Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey," in which the "homes and haunts" of the great poets Byron and Scott are admirably described, next appeared. These were followed, in 1836, by Astoria," and in 1837, by the "Adventures of Captain Bonneville." Except some contributions to the "Knickerbocker Magazine," no important work proceeded from his pen till the publication of his charming "Life of Goldsmith' in 1849, and "Mahomet and his Successors " in 1850. He is now engaged, we believe, in the production of a "Life of Washington."

In Lowell's "Fables for Critics," our author is thus addressed

"Irving! thrice welcome, warm heart and fine brain, You bring back the happiest spirits from Spain; And the gravest sweet humours that ever were there Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair." We have not attempted anything more than the slightest sketch of Washington Irving-the father of American literature. Were we to follow our inclinations, we could say much of the simple, dignified, kindly manners of the man, and the pure, unaffected, philosophic style of the author: as it is, we refrain. The place which Irving holds in the hearts of his countrymen can never be superseded. May his memoir be long unwritten.

H

We think it may be safely laid down as a sure evidence that civilisation is advancing in any age of the world, in which we see that microcosm, the domestic mansion, like the great world which it mimics, reduced from a state of chaotic communism, and divided into separate and independent kingdoms. It is a good symptom when the man of art first thinks of separating for himself an apartment where he can establish his workshop, the man of science his laboratory, the man of letters his studio; wherein each may fence himself in securely, and ply his craft or his brains without the risk of interruption or intrusion from those around him. Aye, it is even a great thing in its way, when the buttery and the cellar arise and are erected into acknowledged domains, with their own special rights and privileges attached to them; when the cook hath his kitchen wherein he may unmolestedly exercise his culinary alchemy, watching the moment of projection, delighting himself with his roast and his boiled, his fat things of the earth, and his cunning combinations of comestibles, and ruling imperiously over scullions; when the butler can tap his butt of wine in peace, smelling its odour and tasting its flavour, and there be none to see how he flirts with the flask, or what "love passages" may take place between him and the pottle-pot.

But we hold it that the highest point of economical polity (a science which we would have you to remember is totally diverse from that hallucination called political economy) is never attained until the rights of the gynæceum are conceded, and the lady's boudoir is an acknowledged empire amongst the domestic dynasties. When once the ruder inmates of the common dwelling begin to feel the sanctity that belongs to the fairer sex, and by common consent yield to them a portion of territory which they may hold as their own against all males-then, indeed, civilisation has reached the summit of its elevation. For ourselves, we confess that there is no portion of the human dwelling which we hold in higher estimation or love more to penetrate than the boudoir of the lady, especially if it be the bower of the intellectual and the beautiful. We love an excursion of the sort with all our heartswhether it be in visiting the castle or the palace of the days gone by, where we still see, as it were, the traces of the footprints and smell the odour of the flowers that still floats and lingers in the atmosphere which the young and the fair oncehallowed-or, furnished with the talismanic passport that admits us into the interior of the modern mansion, we find the monarch in her realms, the divinity in her shrine.

And in good truth, if man would really wish to know woman-and what man is there that would not aspire to that knowledge, difficult though it be?-we counsel him by all means to make acquaintance with her in her boudoir. There every thing is cognate and congenial to her mind, speaks her prevailing tastes, testifies to her nature and disposition. Talk to her if you will, and as you may, when in the ball-room, or in the park--yet, while you listen to her words or mark her looks, trust them not implicitly; remember that they may be in part the echo of fashion or the result of art. But when you enter her boudoir, her own private and congenial retreat, address yourself less to her than to the insentient things around you. See what they are that minister to her delights, or form, as it were, her necessities. Mark the book that she has last been reading-the song that she has last been singing -find what scenes her fingers love to sketch-whether she

makes to herself friends of sweet-voiced birds, and brighteyed flowers-scrutinise narrowly all around her, and discover if she loves the beautiful, the orderly, the pure; or if her heart be caught by the gaudy, the brilliant, the sensuous;-do all this, and trust us, you will know more of the fair mistress in her boudoir in one hour, than you would be able to find out in a year's superficial association when she is fenced around and disguised by the conventionalities and the formalities of life.

Well, now that we have given you our thoughts upon a lady's boudoir, step in with us after old Giudetta, out of the twilight air ; for you remember that she and her young mistress, Bianca Morosini, have just left the balcony and passed into the chamber within,-pass in, we pray you, and you shall survey the boudoir of a Venetian lady of the fourteenth century.

The shadows of the evening were beginning to steal through the apartment as they entered; the young girl stept up to a table which stood in the centre of the floor, and taking up a small silver hand-bell, she rang it twice. After a moment's interval, a little Moorish boy, dressed in a long white tunic, trimmed with gold, and gathered in with a belt round the waist, entered from the farther end of the room, bearing in his hand a small lamp, and, at a sign from his mistress, he lighted a large massive chandelier that hung from the centre of the ceiling. As the illumination increased, one might observe the apartment, not indeed as accurately as in the daylight, yet, perhaps, to more advantage in some respects, for the rays from the chandelier threw out a soft light that fell upon the deep cornices, and projected long shadows of the columns and carving upon the wall and the floor. Let us, then, with such light as we now have, describe the chamber even as it existed at that period, and, for aught we know, may still exist for he who visits the city of Venice, will see even yet in many of her palaces, now hired out to wealthy foreigners or converted into public hotels, much of the ancient splendour of their once princely possessors, intact or but little changed. A saddening sight, and fraught with that sort of painful interest with which one contemplates the form of some beautiful dead, arrayed in the ornaments of earthly grandeur, while the glory of life is departed from it for ever! In shape, the room was nearly square, measuring about three and twenty English feet in each direction-dimensions which showed it was not to be classed amongst the principal apartments of the palazzo, but was one of those delightful retreats, the position of which Italian architects so well understood in the arrangements of their domestic buildings.

We have already noticed, that from the centre of the ceiling a large chandelier depended. It was of massive bronze work, consisting of six pannelled facets, from which projected three tiers of arms branching out into numerous candelabra: in each of these last was a large waxen candle, a luxury with which the Venetians were at that time familiar. The lamp itself was suspended by a thick rope of crimson silk, and to the foliated boss in which it terminated was attached a shorter rope of the same colour and material, finished with a rich gland and tassel, Nothing could be more tasteful than the window through which Bianca had just entered from the balcony. It stood in a recess in the southern extremity of the room, which one entered from the latter by an ascent of three easy, marble steps. The casement was divided into two valves separated