irngorms are the fashion; but they are mere Scotch
pebbles, after all. Now, Tom Campbell's are real diamonds, and
diamonds of the first water.'"

Returning to Birmingham, Irving made excursions to Kenilworth, Warwick,
and Stratford-on-Avon, and a tour through Wales with James Renwick, a
young American of great promise, who at the age of nineteen had for a
time filled the chair of natural philosophy in Columbia College. He was
a son of Mrs. Jane Renwick, a charming woman and a life-long friend of
Irving, the daughter of the Rev. Andrew Jeffrey, of Lochmaben, Scotland,
and famous in literature as "The Blue-Eyed Lassie" of Burns. From
another song, "When first I saw my Jeanie's Face," which does not
appear in the poet's collected works, the biographer quotes:--

"But, sair, I doubt some happier swain
Has gained my Jeanie's favor;
If sae, may every bliss be hers,
Tho' I can never have her.

"But gang she east, or gang she west,
'Twixt Nith and Tweed all over,
While men have eyes, or ears, or taste,
She'll always find a lover."

During Irving's protracted stay in England he did not by any means lose
his interest in his beloved New York and the little society that was
always dear to him. He relied upon his friend Brevoort to give him the
news of the town, and in return he wrote long letters,--longer and more
elaborate and formal than this generation has leisure to write or to
read; letters in which the writer laid himself out to be entertaining,
and detailed his emotions and state of mind as faithfully as his travels
and outward experiences.

No sooner was our war with England over than our navy began to make a
reputation for itself in the Mediterranean. In his letter of August,
1815, Irving dwells with pride on Decatur's triumph over the Algerine
pirates. He had just received a letter from that "worthy little tar,
Jack Nicholson," dated on board the Flambeau, off Algiers. In it
Nicholson says that "they fell in with and captured the admiral's ship,
and _killed him_." Upon which Irving remarks: "As this is all that
Jack's brevity will allow him to say on the subject, I should be at a
loss to know whether they killed the admiral _before_ or _after_ his
capture. The well-known humanity of our tars, however, induces me to the
former conclusion." Nicholson, who has the honor