o many hearts,
had their source in his mind and character. It is a very truthful record
that we have before us. The delineation is that of a man certainly not
without touches of human infirmity, but as certainly largely endowed
with virtues as well as with gifts and graces. It is very evident that
it is a truthful biography, and that the hand of faithful affection has
found nothing to suppress or conceal. When we have laid down the book,
we feel that we know the man. And we can understand why it was that he
was so loved. Enemies, it seems, he had, or at least ill-wishers; since
we learn--and it is one of the indications of his soft and sensitive
nature--that he was seriously annoyed by a persecutor who persistently
inclosed and forwarded to him every scrap of unfavorable criticism he
could find in the newspapers: but the feeling that inspired this piece
of ill-nature must have been envy, and not hatred,--the bitterness which
is awakened in some unhappy tempers by the success which they cannot
themselves attain. No man less deserved to be hated than Irving, for no
man was less willing himself to give heart-room to hatred.

We need hardly add that these volumes--of which the larger part is
by Irving himself--are very entertaining, and that we read them from
beginning to end with unflagging interest. Sketches of society and
manners, personal anecdotes, descriptions of scenery, buildings, and
works of art, give animation and variety to the narrative. The whole is
suffused with a golden glow of cheerfulness, the effluence of a nature
very happy, yet never needing the sting of riot or craving the flush of
excess, and finding its happiness in those pure fountains that refresh,
but not intoxicate.

The close of the second volume brings us down to the year 1832, and his
cordial reception by his friends and countrymen after an absence of
seventeen years; so that more good things are in store for us.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61,
November, 1862, by Various

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, NO. 61 ***

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