and the vivid glimpses of his later years, recorded by those who enjoyed the hospitalities of Mount Vernon, it was not difficult to conjure up a delightful sketch, like that which embalms a visit to Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey, and has made us so well acquainted with Roscoe and Bracebridge Hall. Local associations and amenities of private life are so native to Irving's genius, that we thus instinctively prefigured his Life of Washington as less didactic and political than Marshall's, less historical and official than that of Sparks, and more familiar and minute than either. These anticipations have been, in a measure, realized by the vividly narrated details of Washington's youthful days, the picture of colonial life in Virginia, the personal anecdotes occasionally introduced in the subsequent narrative, and, now and then, by a phrase of quiet humor or an expressive outbreak of sentiment; but, as a whole, the aim of Irving proves higher, more complete, and of a profounder intent, than our truant fancy prophesied. He dwells, indeed, with characteristic zest, upon a juvenile episode of the tender passion, and fondly exhibits the claims of ancestral distinction, and the nurture of those instincts which come only from gentle blood; he shows that, if his youthful hero is no classical scholar, his copy-books are models of neatness; he does not permit a single element of refinement and natural beauty which influenced the first development of the future leader to escape him; but it soon becomes apparent that literary display and mere entertainment are far beneath the scope of his self-imposed task. He curbs his imagination and simplifies his language, like a man conscious of working in the service of truth. Before the simple majesty of the life he describes, rhetoric shrinks. No metaphor is required to illustrate what is in itself luminous throughout. Words have no value here but to represent things as they are. The facts require no embellishment. The man needs only to be unveiled; to deck him out with eulogy would be impertinent; the biographer's office is to report faithfully, and truth itself becomes eloquence. His aim has been, therefore, in the quaint language of old Herbert, to "copy fair what Time hath blurred," and thus "redeem truth from his jaws."

Accordingly, it is in a thoroughly conscientious spirit that this work is written; a striking evidence of which is in the candid statement of the Tory intrigues in the author's native and beloved State at the commencement of the war. The art manifested is constructive, not rhetorical; and no one but a practised writer can estimate the difficulty of weaving into a consecutive and harmonious whole events so broken up by time and space, and interfused with such a variety of local and social agencies. With a calm and patient research and arrangement, a fluent and pure diction, a judicious inweaving of correspondence and contemporary testimony, the story of Washington's life is narrated without exaggeration or artifice. So unambitious is the style, so quiet the strain, that, to some readers, it may appear to want spirit, to lack sympathy with the heroic side of Washington's character, and to flow on in too tranquil and undramatic a vein. And yet this very calmness, this avoidance of rhetorical display and philosophic comment, this reliance on the facts of character for the interest and value of the work, is, in our view, the highest conceivable tribute to the unequalled grandeur of the subject, and the noblest compliment to the national heart. It shows perfect confidence in the power of the sublime lineaments which are reflected from the lucid page, and of the vital import of the events recorded, to win profound attention. Its value is characteristic, not adventitious; and to place such occurrences and a personage like this in the open light of truth has obviously been the single and heartfelt desire of the author. Herein he proves himself adequate to the grateful duty, which he has fulfilled in a manner that makes every true American his debtor. We do not mean to assert that the work is faultless. Errors have already been discovered, and, in some instances, corrected; we could point out an infelicitous expression, perhaps, here and there, and suggest cases of the superfluous working out of certain points to the neglect of others. But this ungracious task is needless; to render such a work perfectly correct and satisfactory, requires more than one edition, and there is no defect in its execution not easily susceptible of remedy. Meantime, it is to its design and general scope, to its merits as a whole, and in conception, that we

desire to bear our earnest testimony. So widely have the intense school of fiction, the epigrammatic and fanciful style of essays and lectures, and the melodramatic and speculative phase of historical writing, infected the public taste, that we do not expect the unpretending and latent merits of this biography to be at once and generally appreciated; but, eventually, its manly and consistent tone, and its singular accordance with its subject, in directness, fidelity, and adherence to clear, unadorned truth and fact, will be felt and acknowledged. Avoiding alike disputed points of minor importance, irrelevant comment, and incidental gossip, our author deals almost exclusively with action. It is this that he constantly endeavors to depict, thus constructing a biography essentially popular, fitted to interest the young and old, the erudite and the ignorant, through the inevitable attraction and permanent value which belong to events as distinguished from speculation, and to life as the exponent of character. With this aim, the stateliness of formal history is sedulously repudiated, the story is encumbered by no irrelevant matter, and every page is crowded with incidents. Even with so concise a plan, the work has expanded under the author's pen; the three volumes are inadequate to embrace the Revolutionary epoch; and the administration and closing years of Washington may extend to two volumes more, especially as the last will naturally deal with those private details, which the rapid march of events. excluded from the earlier portions of the work, which have gradually accumulated as successive contemporary memoirs have appeared, and to which every year has added since death has canonized his memory.

The memory of Washington is the highest and most precious of national blessings, and, as such, cannot be approached by artist or author without reverence. To pervert the traits or to mar the unity of such a character is to wrong, not only his sacred memory, but the dearest rights of his countrymen. We have no patience with those who, in the bravado of mediocrity, or the recklessness of mercenary authorship, have caricatured and vulgarized so lofty a theme; and we repeat, that, if any. thing could have enhanced our estimate of Washington Irving as an American writer, it is the true-hearted veneration,

the simple faith, the gracious candor, with which he has recorded the life of our matchless chief. There is a singular appropriateness in a literary task of so national a character being undertaken by our earliest author who achieved a European reputation, whose memory embraces the period when the living hero glorified our nascent republic, and whose name identifies him with the grateful renown that crowned the life and labors his pen commemorates.

When we say that he has written the biography of Washington in the spirit of its subject, we mean to express the highest praise of which such a task is susceptible. A poet of our country once conceived a drama based on the fate of André; and, after striving to embody Washington in the piece in a manner coincident with his own profound sense of his character, he found that the only way of effecting this without detriment to his ideal, was to keep that august presence off the stage, and to hint its vicinity by the reverent manner in which the name and views of Washington were treated by all the dramatis persona. This instinct of dramatic propriety is a most striking proof of the native sacredness of the subject. The more fertile it may be to the poet and philosopher, the less right has the biographer to interfere with, overlay, or exaggerate its primitive truth, and the more grateful should we be when the authority of a favorite name in literature is thus nobly given to the lucid and conscientious statement of facts, in themselves and for themselves immeasurably precious.

"You have George, the Surveyor," said Carlyle, in his quaint way, to an American, when talking of heroes. Never had that vocation greater significance. It drew the young Virginian unconsciously into the best education possible in a new country for a military life. He was thereby practised in topographical observation; inured to habits of keen local study; made familiar with the fatigue, exposure, and expedients incident to journeys on foot and horseback, through streams and thickets, over mountains and marshes; taught to accommodate himself to limited fare, strained muscles, the bivouac, the woods, the seasons, self-dependence, and effort. This discipline inevitably trained his perceptive faculties, and made

him the accurate judge he subsequently became of the capabilities of land, from its position, limits, and quality, for agricultural and warlike purposes. A love of field-sports, the chief amusement of the gentry in the Old Dominion, and the oversight of a plantation, were favorable to the same result. Life in the open air, skilful horsemanship, and the use of the rifle, promoted habits of manly activity. To a youth thus bred in the freedom and salubrity of a rural home, we are disposed to attribute, in no small degree, the noble development of Washington. How naturally frank courage is fostered by such influences, all history attests. The strongest ranks in the old Roman armies were levies drawn from the agricultural laborers; the names of Tell and Hofer breathe of the mountains; and the English yeomen decided the victory on the fields where their kings encountered the French in the early wars. Political economists ascribe the deterioration of modern nations in those qualities which insure fortitude and martial enterprise to the encroachments of town life; and the greatest cities of antiquity fell through the insidious luxury of commercial success. Nor are these general truths inapplicable to personal character. In crowded towns artifice prevails. In the struggle for the prizes of traffic, nobility of soul is apt to be lost in thrift. The best hours of the day, passed under roofs and in streets, bring not the requisite ministry to health, born of the fresh air. It enlarges the mind to gaze habitually upon the horizon unimpeded by marts and edifices. It keeps fresh the generous impulses to consort with hunters and gentlemen, instead of daily meeting "the hard-eyed lender and the pale lendee." a word, the interest in crops and herds, in woodland and upland, the excitement of duck-shooting, the care of a rural domain, and the tastes, occupations, duties, and pleasures of an intelligent agriculturist, tend to conserve and expand what is best in human nature, which the spirit of trade and the competition of social pride are apt to dwarf and overlay. Auspicious, therefore, were the influences around the childhood and youth of Washington, inasmuch as they left his nature free, identified him with the least artificial of human pursuits, and nursed his physical while they left unperverted his moral energies. He became attached to the kind of life of which

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