read by millions** of his countrymen, whom he has taught to love England, and why to love her.  It would have been easy to speak otherwise than he did:  to inflame national rancors, which, at the time when he first became known as a public writer, war had just renewed:  to cry down the old civilization at the expense of the new:  to point out our faults, arrogance, short-comings, and give the republic to infer how much she was the parent state’s superior.  There are writers enough in the United States, honest and otherwise, who preach that kind of doctrine.  But the good Irving, the peaceful, the friendly, had no place for bitterness in his heart, and no scheme but kindness.  Received in England with extraordinary tenderness and friendship (Scott, Southey, Byron, a hundred others have borne witness to their liking for him), he was a messenger of good-will and peace between his country and ours.  “See, friends!” he seems to say, “these English are not so wicked, rapacious, callous, proud, as you have been taught to believe them.  I went amongst them a humble man; won my way by my pen; and, when known, found every hand held out to me with kindliness and welcome.  Scott is a great man, you acknowledge.  Did not Scott’s King of England give a gold medal to him, and another to me, your countryman, and a stranger?”

     * Washington Irving died, November 28, 1859; Lord Macaulay
     died, December 28, 1859.

     ** See his Life in the most remarkable Dictionary of
     Authors, published lately at Philadelphia, by Mr. Allibone.

Tradition in the United States still fondly retains the history of the feasts and rejoicings which awaited Irving on his return to his native country from Europe.  He had a national welcome; he stammered in his speeches, hid himself in confusion, and the people loved him all the better.  He had worthily represented America in Europe.  In that young community a man who brings home with him abundant European testimonials is still treated with respect (I have found American writers, of wide-world reputation, strangely solicitous about the opinions of quite obscure British critics, and elated or depressed by their judgments); and Irving went home medalled by the King, diplomatized by the University, crowned and honored and admired.  He had not in any way intrigued for his honors, he had fairly won them; and, in Irving’s instance, as in others, the old country was glad and eager to pay them.

In America the love and regard for Irving was a national sentiment.  Party wars are perpetually raging there, and are carried on by the press with a rancor and fierceness against individuals which exceed British, almost Irish, virulence.  It seemed to me, during a year’s travel in the country, as if no one ever aimed a blow at Irving.  All men held their hand from that harmless, friendly peacemaker.  I had the good fortune to see him at New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington,* and remarked how in every