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THE GARONNE, THE WYE, AND THE HUDSON.

FROM LETTERS ON FRANCE AND ENGLAND.

No impressions can be more lively, no sensations more rapid and cheerful, than those of a young American, who, leaving his country for the first time, arrives in the river Garonne on a fine day of the month of June, after a sea-voyage of two months accompanied by one unbroken train of vapours and clouds and storms." Such was exactly my case, and my imagination was never so powerfully affected as by the scenery which I then witnessed, and of which nothing of the same description ever meets the eye of a traveller in this country. Vineyards spread over lofty hills,-chateaux of white stone, built in a style of magnificence, and surrounded by a display of cultivation altogether unknown to us at home,-a multitude of country mansions and of villages delightfully situated either near the edge of the water or along the declivities of the hills; a numerous population of peasantry of an appearance equally novel, and in an attire singularly grotesque; all these present themselves to the view in continuous succession for twenty-one leagues,-the distance from the entrance of the river to the city of Bordeaux. This perspective, so strikingly contrasted with "the sullen and monotonous ocean," appeared at the time sufficient to indemnify me for all the cabin fatigues which I had encountered, and gave me a most delicious foretaste of the satisfactions which I was to derive from the bounties so profusely scattered over this fine region by the hand of nature. I understood then for the first time the force of the exclamation, la belle France, which I had so often heard in the mouth of her sons, and began to form some idea of the nature of that charm which operates upon them like the fascination of magic, after any length of absence, and at any distance of space from their native soil.

We frequently sailed within a hundred feet of the shore, so as to be enabled to converse with the proprietors of the country-seats whom we occasionally observed sitting under the shade of their trees, some of which overhung the banks of the river. The clusters of small islands which we encountered, particularly near the confluence of the Dordogne with the Garonne, and which were covered with the most luxuriant vegetation, heightened the enchantment of the scene.-Nothing is wanting to the Garonne but a translucent wave to supply it with an assemblage of features more smiling, variegated, and picturesque than those which belong, perhaps, to any other river in the world. The waters were turbid at the time we passed up, and I was informed that this was the case during the greater part of the year. I have contemplated since, but with emotions of pleasure not by any means so vivid, the banks of the Hudson in this country, and those of the Wye in England, both so justly celebrated for the magnificence and beauty of the views which they afford. The character of the scenery is indeed totally distinct in these rivers, and, perhaps, the preference which I give to the

first arises from the influence of a particular association of ideas and circumstances. Who is it that has ever experienced the sufferings of a long illness without being, on his convalescence, disposed to repeat with Akenside,

"Fair is nature's aspect

But

When rural songs and odours wake the morn To every eye; but how much more to his Round whom the bed of sickness long diffused Its melancholy gloom! how doubly fair When first with fresh-born vigour he inhales The balmy breeze, and feels the blessed sun Warm at his bosom, from the springs of life Chasing oppressive damps and languid pain." If I could well claim permission to digress so soon from my immediate subject, it would be to talk of the navigation of another stream-the Wye, which I have mentioned above. The English have within their own island much of the finest imagery of nature, embellished by the most perfect labours of art, and by all the luxury of taste. if I were to be called upon to select any one portion of their scenery upon which I could now dwell, and upon which I have dwelt with most delight, it would be that of the Wye from Ross to Chepstow. For a picturesque tourist" it is a sort of bonne bouche, an exquisite morceau, with which, moreover, the appetite could scarcely ever be cloyed. The Wye is our Hudson in miniature, but with features of a much softer character, and with Gothic appendages which give to it all the additional and powerful influence over the fancy that belong to "wizard time and antique story." The proportions of nature on the Hudson, for a course of two hundred miles, are of the most gigantic magnificence, and the historical recollections connected with this river are to an American of the most endearing and ennobling kind. The progress of civilization, moreover, as you trace it on its banks so far in the interior of this continent, in the flourishing cities of Hudson, of Athens, and of Albany, swells the mind, and refreshes the spirit of patriotism by the prospect of actual and future improvements almost as stupendous to the imagination as the rocks and mountains in their vicinity are to the eye.

The beauties of the English river are comprised within a space of fifty miles; it winds itself like the Hudson almost into labyrinths, and in a very narrow channel, presents rocks and hills of equal ruggedness, although of dimensions much less colossal. There is, however, about the Wye an indescribable and unrivalled charm; a peculiar "witchery" arising from an admixture of the soft with the savage features of the landscape; and from the Gothic ruins which decorate its banks at intervals; among the rest those of Tintern Abbey, by far the most majestic and imposing of all the decayed edifices of England. In the navigation of this river you can descend from your boat to the banks whenever you please, and you then rarely fail to find the whole poetical assemblage

"Of lofty trees with sacred shades

And perspectives of pleasant glades;
The ruins too of some majestic piece
Boasting the power of ancient Rome or Greece,
Whose statues, friezes, columns, broken lie,
And though defaced, the wonder of the eye."

ENGLAND IN 1808.

FROM A LETTER ON THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.

WHATEVER may be the representations of those who, with little knowledge of facts, and still less soundness or impartiality of judgment, affect to deplore the condition of England, it is nevertheless true, that there does not exist, and never has existed elsewhere, so beautiful and perfect a model of public and private prosperity.—so magnificent, and at the same time so solid a fabric of social happiness and national grandeur. I pay this just tribute of admiration with the more pleasure, as it is to me in the light of an atonement for the errors and prejudices under which I laboured on this subject, before I enjoyed the advantage of a personal experience. A residence of nearly two years in that country, during which period I visited and studied almost every part of it, with no other view or pursuit than that of obtaining correct information, and, I may add, with previous studies well-fitted to promote my object, convinced me that I had been egregiously deceived.

I saw no instances of individual oppression, and scarcely any individual misery but that which belongs, under any circumstances of our being, to the infirmity of all human institutions. I witnessed no symptom of declining trade or of general discontent. On the contrary, I found there every indication of a state engaged in a rapid career of advancement. I found the art and spirit of commercial industry at their acmé-a metropolis opulent and liberal beyond example ::-a cheerful peasantry, well fed and commodiously lodged,—an ardent attachment to the constitution in all classes, and a full reliance on the national resources. found the utmost activity in agricultural and manufacturing labours;-in the construction of works of embellishment and utility;-in enlarging and beautifying the provincial cities. I heard but few well-founded complaints of the amount, and none concerning the collection of the taxes. The demands of the state create no impediment to consumption or discouragement to industry. I could discover no instance in which they have operated to the serious distress or ruin of individuals....

I

The agriculture of England is confessedly superior to that of any other part of the world, and the condition of those who are engaged in the cultivation of the soil incontestably preferable to that of the same class in any other section of Europe. An inexhaustible source of admiration and delight is found in the unrivalled beauty, as well as richness and fruitfulness of their husbandry; the effects of which are heightened by the magnificent parks and noble mansions of the opulent proprietors: by picturesque gardens upon the largest scale, and disposed with the most exquisite taste: and by Gothic remains no less admirable in their structure than venerable for their antiquity. The neat cottage, the substantial farm-house, the splendid villa, are constantly rising to the sight, surrounded by the most choice and poetical attributes of the landscape. The painter is there but a mere copyist. A picture of as much neatness, softness, and ele

gance is exposed to the eye, as can be given to the imagination, by the finest etching, or the most mellowed drawing. The vision is not more delightfully recreated by the rural scenery, than the moral sense is gratified, and the understanding elevated by the institutions of this great country. The first and continued exclamation of an American who contemplates them with an unbiassed judgment is

Salve magna Parens, frugum saturnia tellus
Magna virum.

It appears something not less than impious to desire the ruin of this people, when you view the height to which they have carried the comforts, the knowledge, and virtue of our species: the extent and number of their foundations of charity; their skill in the mechanic arts, by the improvement of which alone they have conferred inestimable benefits on mankind; the masculine morality, the lofty sense of independence, the sober and rational piety which are found in all classes; their impartial, decorous, and able administration of a code of laws, than which none more just and perfect has ever been in operation:-their seminaries of education yielding more solid and profitable instruction than any other whatever: their eminence in literature and science-the urbanity and learning of their privileged orders,-their deliberative assemblies, illustrated by so many profound statesmen and brilliant orators. It is worse than ingratitude in us not to sympathize with them in their present struggle, when we recollect that it is from them we derive the principal merit of our own character-the best of our own institutions-the sources of our highest enjoyments-and the light of freedom itself, which, if they should be destroyed, will not long shed i's radiance over this country.

SLANDER.

FROM DIDACTICS.

IT has been often said that true honour is not touchy, but generally indifferent about slander; neither the common sense nor common experience of mankind warrants this theory, supposing touchy to mean sensitive. The most pure and delicate, those who have laboured most earnestly to deserve the best reputation are apt to be tremulously alive to every kind of obloquy and injurious suspicion. Honour may be thoroughly sound and incorruptible, but not robust so as to be unaffected by opinion; falsehood alone can annoy it, and does severely in the plurality of cases. There are, indeed, public pursuits and situations, so particularly and constantly liable to obloquy, that the natural susceptibility of true honour is gradually lessened; yet, eminent men of the noblest virtue, public and private, have even perished, in advanced stages, from tenderness, or irritability with regard to their fame. Few are content or able to live down merely "the judgments of ignorance and the inventions of malice." Querulousness, indeed, is never manly, and rarely serviceable; but sensitiveness is common where firm, conscious honour and high moral courage are united.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

[Born 1783.]

THIS charming author, who has delighted the readers of the English language for almost half a century, was born in a house which is still standing,* near the old Dutch church, in William street, in the city of New York, on the third of April, 1783. His father, a respectable merchant, originally from Scotland, died while he was quite young, and his education was superintended by his elder brothers, some of whom had gained considerable reputation for acquirements and literary taste. In his youth he is said to have been of a meditative and almost melancholy disposition, though at times to have evinced something of that rich and peculiar humour for which he has since been famous; and as his health did not admit of a very close application to business or study, he rambled about the picturesque island of Manhattan, which had then a more distinctive population than now, gathering up those traditions and receiving those impressions which Mr. Seth Handaside's erudite and conscientious lodger has made immortal.

Mr. Irving's first essays in literature were a series of letters under the signature of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent., published in the Morning Chronicle, of which one of his brothers was editor, in 1802. In consequence of symptoms of pulmonary disease, it was decided in the fol*It was pointed out to me not long ago by Dr. John W. Francis, to whom I am happy to acknowledge my indebtedness for much information contained in this volume; nor can I forbear to improve the occasion to express the regret I feel, in common with all his friends, that the absorbing duties of professional life debar so enthusiastic and intelligent a lover of literature and science from any but an occasional demonstration of his talents in a field they are so fitted to adorn. Dr. Francis is one of the few whose ardent sympathy with men devoted to these pursuits, and truly national spirit, enable him to recognise what has been and what is likely yet to be accomplished by the genius of our country.

†The elder, William, a merchant of high standing, and distinguished for his love of literature, wrote several of the papers in Salmagundi, and was many years a representative of the city of New York, in Congress. The second, Dr. Peter Irving.-the author of the first five chapters of Knickerbocker's History,-after a resi dence of twenty-five years abroad, returned to his native city in 1837; and the third, the late Judge Irving, a man of large abilities and honorable character, died ! in New York about the year 1841.

lowing year that he should visit the south of Europe, and embarking in a ship bound for the Mediterranean, he was landed on the southern coast of Sicily, whence he proceeded by way of Palermo and Naples to Rome, and through France to England. His unpublished journal of this tour I have heard described as one of the most interesting of his works.

He returned in 1806, and soon after joined Mr. Paulding, who was a few years his senior, in writing Salmagundi. The sensation produced by this whimsical miscellany is described by the "old inhabitants" as exceeding any thing of the kind ever known in New York. Its amusing ridicule of the ignorance and vulgarity of British tourists, and of all sorts of foreign adventurers and home pretenders, with its occasional dashes of graceful sentiment, captivated the town and decided the fortunes of its authors. Mr. Irving had commenced the study of the law, with the late Judge Josiah Ogden Hoffman, but, with prospects which forbade the expectation of having to rely upon a profession for support, he gave little heed to the masters of the great science. He wrote a few magazine papers, and an elegant sketch of Campbell, which was prefixed to an American edition of Gertrude of Wyoming; and the establishment of the New York Historical Society, with the announcement that one of its members contemplated the preparation from its collections of a history of the early days of the colony, suggesting to him the idea of The History of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker, he yielded to its inspiration, and produced this finest monument of his genius, the most original and humorous work of the age. By paragraphs in the gazettes the public curiosity respecting it was excited; when it appeared it was bought as a veracious chronicle; and in his character of a descendant of one of the original settlers of Niew Nederlandts the author wore so gravely and naturally the prejudices which such persons might be supposed to inherit, that many read whole chapters before they were undeceived by its inimitable wit

The first fruit of Mr. Irving's devotion to

and drollery. Some of the real Dutchmen are said to have been little pleased with the bur-letters, after he went to England, was The lesque history, and one of them, the learned and excellent Verplanck, in his Discourse before the Historical Society, could not forbear, "though more in sorrow than in anger," to allude to it among instances of national injustice. "It is painful to see a mind," he says, "as admirable for its exquisite perception of the beautiful, as for its quick sense of the ridiculous, wasting the riches of its fancy on an ungrateful theme.”

Mr. Irving seems to have thought very little of his success, and for several years after the publication of Knickerbocker's History never to have dreamed of literature as a profession. His only writings for the press in this period, I believe, were the biographies, chiefly of officers in the navy, which he contributed to the Analectic Magazine. His brothers, who were largely and successfully engaged in foreign commerce, admitted him to a partnership, and his attention was principally devoted to trade, until the beginning of the war with Great Britain, when he tendered his services to Governor Tompkins, and was received into his staff as an aid-de-camp. He was frequently employed by the commander in chief on special duties, and was regarded as a very discreet and efficient officer. The peace however put an end to the military life of "Colonel Irving," and in 1815 he went to England, to assist in conducting the business of his firm, in Liverpool. Buoyant with hope, with "enough of the world's geer" for all his wants, he had a prospect of returning home, in a couple of years, with a mind stored with pleasant recollections; but he had hardly landed in England, he tells us in the preface to one of his later works, before a reverse of fortune* cast him down in spirit, and altered the whole tenor of his life. Literature, which had hitherto been his amusement, was now resorted to for "solace and support." It is sad to think our pleasures are a consequence of any man's misfortunes. But whatever were the "baffled plans and deferred hopes" which beguiled him, from year to year, in a path that was too often beset with thorns, we may be sure that he now regrets no more than the world of his admirers those circumstances which made him once more an author

*The house of Irving & Brothers was swept away with many others in the disastrous revulsion after the peace.

Sketch Book, which was published in New York and London in 1819 and 1820. It "partakes of the fluctuations of his thoughts and feelings, sometimes treating of scenes before him, sometimes of others purely imaginary, and sometimes wandering back with his recollections to his native country." No book of unconnected tales and essays had ever been so well received, but there was an evident superiority in the fresh and striking passages that related to American scenery, manners, and superstitions, that gave assurance of an inspiring love of home. Nothing in their way can be more beautiful than The Wife, The Broken Heart, and The Pride of the Village; but the vitality of the work was in Rip Van Winkle, and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The Sketch Book was followed, in 1822, by Bracebridge Hall, a medley, chiefly descriptive of rural life in England, which he painted with an exactness of detail, a variety of light and shade, and a delicacy of finish, that surprised and delighted his English critics; while its nice apprehension, genial humour, occasional tenderness, and exquisite refinement and melody, made it no less popular in America. About one fourth of the volumes is occupied with legends of the Hudson, by the amiable and unfatiguing historian of the Dutch dynasty, and these were readily recognised as most characteristic of the author's imagination and humour. In 1824 appeared his Tales of a Traveller; and the beautiful novel of Buckthorne, which is among them, and is the last of his writings that have reference to English life, is quite equal to any thing of the same sort that he had published, and has touches of pathos that he has never surpassed. The Money Diggers, a story of New York, sustained his reputation in the field he had first chosen.

While Mr. Irving was at Bordeaux, in the winter after the publication of the Tales of a Traveller, he received a letter from Mr. Alexander H. Everett, then Minister of the United States to Spain, informing him of the researches respecting Columbus by Navarrete, and inviting him to Madrid, to consider the propriety of translating his collection of documents into English. He accepted the invitation, and his residence in the Spanish capital gave a new direction to his literary labours. He soon perceived that the publication of

Navarrete presented not so much a history as the materials for such a work, and with little hesitation soon undertook from this and various other printed and manuscript collections respecting the great navigator, to prepare a work which should be an acceptable gift to his countrymen, and that the world "would not willingly let die." His own reputation, and the friendship of the Americans resident in Spain, secured to him every possible facility, and in 1828 he supplied a desideratum which had existed in the literature of every nation, a History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, that was worthy of its subject. It is not indeed of the first order of historical compositions; it offers no pretensions to philosophical inquiry and generalization; but it is hardly excelled in picturesque description, lively narrative, or scrupulous fidelity. It was greeted with a warm and general approval in America and Europe, and in 1831 was followed by its pendant, the Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus, which gave the same unmingled satisfaction.

In his researches connected with the life of the Great Admiral, Mr. Irving had caught glimpses of the romantic grandeur of the Moorish dominion, and of strange adventure in those wars, that ended with the expulsion of the Mohammedans from Spain, in which his hero was sometime an actor; and before the appearance of the work last mentioned, he published his Chronicle of the Conquest of Grenada, in which, under the guise of an imaginary contemporary author, Fray Antonio Agapida, he has presented a view of the knightly emprise and splendid pageantry of the infidel ascendency in Andalusia, which combines the poetical enthusiasm of the old Castilian with the charming simplicity and vivacity of Froissart. In the spring of 1829, after visiting the ruins of the towns and castles, and the wild passes and defiles, which had been the scenes of the most remarkable events in the crusade against the Moors, by a very courteous offer of the king of Spain, he remained several months in the Alhambra, where the Moslem heroes passed the intervals of war in dalliance with their Zaidas and Zalindas, and here wrote the series of tales and sketches which was subsequently published under the name of that enchanted palace. At length, in 1832, after an absence of seventeen years, Mr. Irving returned to the United States.

As he saw the "blue line of his na

tive land" rising like a cloud in that horizon where, so many years before, he had seen it fade away, a doubt whether he would be received as a favourite child or as a stranger, passed like a shadow over his spirit; but it was banished by the enthusiastic greeting which awaited him in the city of his birth,one of the fairest triumphs that has been accorded to literary merit in this age.

After passing a few weeks in the city of New York, Mr. Irving, for the satisfaction of his curiosity, set out upon a tour through the country, and early in September arrived at St. Louis, where he joined a party consisting of an Indian commissioner of the government, Mr. Latrobe, (the author of Rambles in North America,) and several others, to visit the regions beyond the outposts of civilization in the Far West. He returned in the course of the winter to the Atlantic states, and for some two years seems to have withdrawn his attention from literature, and to have given himself up to the society of the troops of friends who loved him for his amiable and honourable character, and were proud of him for the credit his genius reflected upon his native city and the republic. He purchased the old mansion of the Van Tassels, on the Hudson,-close by the margin of the Tappaan Zee, and in the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow," as quiet and sheltered a nook as the heart of man could desire, in which to take refuge from the cares and troubles of the world,"-which he called Wolfert's Roost, and "repaired and renovated with religious care, in the genuine Dutch style, and adorned and illustrated with sundry relics of the glorious days of the New Netherlands." Here he passed his summers; and his winters he spent in New York, in the streets of which Knickerbocker omnibuses rattled by Knickerbocker Halls where Knickerbocker clubs held festivals, and at whose wharves magnificent ships and steamers, coming and going every day, also bore that immortal name,-in pleasing testimony of the universality of his fame, and of the popular apprehension of intellectual merit, and respect for its possessor.

In 1835 Mr. Irving reappeared as an author, in A Tour of the Prairies, in which he gives an account of his wanderings in the Indian country in the autumn of 1832. In description it has the freshness and truth of one of Catlin's sketches, and it charms still more by its agreeable personal narrative. It was fol

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