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.