d
caught the general excitement. He writes in March, expecting that the
fate of the cabinet will be determined in a week, looking daily for
decisive news from Paris, and fearing dismal tidings from Poland.
"However," he goes on to say in a vague way, "the great cause of all the
world will go on. What a stirring moment it is to live in! I never took
such intense interest in newspapers. It seems to me as if life were
breaking out anew with me, or that I were entering upon quite a new and
almost unknown career of existence, and I rejoice to find my
sensibilities, which were waning as to many objects of past interest,
reviving with all their freshness and vivacity at the scenes and
prospects opening around me." He expects the breaking of the thralldom
of falsehood woven over the human mind; and, more definitely, hopes that
the Reform Bill will prevail. Yet he is oppressed by the gloom hanging
over the booksellers' trade, which he thinks will continue until reform
and cholera have passed away.

During the last months of his residence in England, the author renewed
his impressions of Stratford (the grateful landlady of the Red Horse Inn
showed him a poker which was locked up among the treasures of her house,
on which she had caused to be engraved "Geoffrey Crayon's Sceptre");
spent some time at Newstead Abbey; and had the sorrowful pleasure in
London of seeing Scott once more, and for the last time. The great
novelist, in the sad eclipse of his powers, was staying in the city, on
his way to Italy, and Mr. Lockhart asked Irving to dine with him. It was
but a melancholy repast. "Ah," said Scott, as Irving gave him his arm,
after dinner, "the times are changed, my good fellow, since we went over
the Eildon Hills together. It is all nonsense to tell a man that his
mind is not affected when his body is in this state."

Irving retired from the legation in September, 1831, to return home, the
longing to see his native land having become intense; but his arrival in
New York was delayed till May, 1832.

If he had any doubts of the sentiments of his countrymen toward him, his
reception in New York dissipated them. America greeted her most famous
literary man with a spontaneous outburst of love and admiration. The
public banquet in New York, that was long remembered for its brilliancy,
was followed by the tender of the same tribute in other cities,--an
honor which his unconquerable shrinking from this kind of publicity
compelled him