It would have been surprising if the offspring of such a union should not have been distinguished, and it is only the peculiar relation which the biographer sustains to it which prevents him from bringing this feature out more prominently.

It was, however, acknowledged, at an early day, that the family of William Irving had no equal in the city, and when we consider its number, its personal beauty, its moral excellence, its varied talents, without a single deficient or unworthy member, we can not wonder at the general admiration which it commanded.  From the eldest son, William, and Ann, the eldest daughter, whom her father fondly termed Nancy, to Washington, the youngest, all were endowed with beauty, grace, amiability, and talent, yet in the latter they seemed to effloresce with culminating fullness.  Nancy Irving was the cynosure of William street, concerning whose future destiny many a youth might have confessed an impassioned interest.  Her brother William had become connected commercially with a young revolutionary soldier, (General Dodge,) who had opened a trading-station on the Mohawk frontier, and the latter bore away the sister as his bride.  The union was one of happiness, and lasted twenty years, when it was terminated by her death.  Of this, Washington thus speaks, in a letter in 1808:  ’On the road, as I was traveling in high spirits, with the idea of home to inspire me, I had the shock of reading an account of my dear sister’s death, and never was a blow struck so near my heart before....  One more heart lies cold and still that ever beat toward me with the warmest affection, for she was the tenderest, best of sisters, and a woman of whom a brother might be proud.’  Little did the author of this letter then dream of that more crushing blow which within one year was to fall upon him, and from whose weight he was never wholly to recover.

William Irving, the brother of the biographer, was a model of manly beauty, and early remarkable for a brilliant and sparkling intellect, which overflowed in conversation, and often bordered on eloquence.  Had he been bred to the law, he would have shone among its brightest stars; but those gifts, which so many envied, were buried in trade, and though he became one of the merchant-princes of the city, even this success could not compensate for so great a burial of gifts.  As one of the contributors to Salmagundi, he exhibits the keenness of a flashing wit, while, in subsequent years, he represented New-York in Congress, when such an office was a distinction.

Peter Irving, like his brother, united personal elegance with talents, and conducted the Morning Chronicle, amid the boisterous storms of early politics.  This journal favored the interests of Burr; but it must be remembered that at that time Burr’s name was free from infamy, and that, as a leader, he enjoyed the highest prestige, being the centre of the Democracy of New-York.  Burr’s powers of fascination were peculiarly great, and he had surrounded