ersonal acquaintance with the individuals in this
historical romance gives me uncommon interest in it; but I consider
it stamped with danger and instability, and as liable to extravagant
vicissitudes as one of Dumas' novels." A wonderful prophecy completely
fulfilled in the short space of seventeen years.

* * *

How many such men as Washington Irving are there
in America. God don't send many such spirits into this
world.

_Lord Byron._

* * *

The aggregate sale of Irving's works when he received his portfolio
to Spain was already more than half a million copies, with an equal
popularity achieved in Britain. No writer was ever more truly loved
on both sides of the Atlantic, and his name is cherished to-day in
England as fondly as it is in our own country. It has been the good
fortune of the writer to spend many a delightful day in the very
centre of Merrie England, in the quiet town of Stratford-on-Avon,
and feel the gentle companionship of Irving. Of all writers who have
brought to Stratford their heart homage Irving stands the acknowledged
chief. The sitting-room in the "Red Horse Hotel," where he was
disturbed in his midnight reverie, is still called Irving's room, and
the walls are hung with portraits taken at different periods of his
life. Mine host said that visitors from every land were as much
interested in this room as in Shakespeare's birth-place. The remark
may have been intensified to flatter an American visitor, but there
are few names dearer to the Anglo-Saxon race than that on the plain
headstone in the burial-yard of Sleepy Hollow. Sunnyside is scarcely
visible to the Day Line tourist. A little gleam of color here
and there amid the trees, close to the river bank, near a small
boat-house, merely indicates its location; and the traveler by train
has only a hurried glimpse, as it is within one hundred feet of the
New York Central Railroad. Tappan Zee, at this point, is a little more
than two miles wide and over the beautiful expanse Irving has thrown
a wondrous charm. There is, in fact, "magic in the web" of all his
works. A few modern critics, lacking appreciation alike for humor and
genius, may regard his essays as a thing of the past, but as long as
the Mahicanituk, the ever-flowing Hudson, pours its waters to the
sea, as long as Rip Van Winkle sleeps in the blue Catskills, or the
"Headless Horseman" rides at midnight along the Old Post Road _en
route_ for Teller's