kind recollections of his sister, whom he met at that time:

MY DEAR MR. BARNEY:

SUNNYSIDE, October 30, 1851.

Your letter of the 25th has acted upon me like a charm, calling up such pleasant scenes in times long past, when we were both gay young fellows, that I cannot go to bed before answering it. What you mention of kind recollections of me that were cherished by your sister, flatters my old bachelor heart even now; for she was one of my early admirations, and her image dwells in my memory as she appeared to me at the time, so amiable, graceful, and lady-like. I well remember seeing her also at Baltimore, after her marriage, with her first child, a fine boy, and, though a mere infant, remarkably sensible to music, being easily moved by it either to tears or transports. I believe I have since met him a man grown.

You talk of children and grandchildren. I have nothing but literary bantlings to boast of. I trust your progeny will outlive mine, and increase and multiply, and continue your name from generation to generation; which is more than can be expected from the progeny of the Muse, however prolific she may be.

Wishing you many pleasant and prosperous days, I will now bid you "good night," and will endeavor to continue in my sleep the agreeable dreams you have awakened.

Yours ever, very truly,

WASHINGTON IRVING.

The letter which follows, from Mr. Henry T. Tuckerman, and Mr. Irving's reply, I introduce with the single remark, that the former had lately contributed to a publication of Mr. Putnam, entitled "Homes of American Authors," a graceful notice of Sunnyside and its proprietor:

[To Washington Irving.]

NEW YORK, December 6, 1852.

MY DEAR SIR:

I expect to sail for England in the Baltic on Saturday next; and, although my stay will probably be quite brief, I am desirous of seeing Mr. Rogers. Will you give me a line to him, and any other friend in England whom it would be pleasant for me to see? and oblige

MY DEAR SIR:

Yours ever, truly and respectfully,

HENRY T. TUCKERMAN.

[To Mr. H. T. Tuckerman.]

SUNNYSIDE, December 8, 1852.

I send you three letters of introduction, which I hope may be of service to you. My poor friend Rogers, I fear, is growing too infirm to render those attentions he was formerly so prompt to show to Americans of worth. Sir Robert Harry Inglis is a man of the most genial character, full of intelligence, and in communion with the most intellectual society of England. He is a man I love and honor.

John Murray has succeeded his father in the literary realm of Albemarle Street, which I used to find a favorite haunt of notorieties.

Permit me to make my acknowledgments for the very kind and flattering notice you have taken of me and my little rural nest, in Putnam's late publication. I wish I could feel myself worthy of half that you have said of me.

Yours ever, very truly,

WASHINGTON IRVING.

The following letter to Mr. Bryant, respecting the different portraits of Columbus, embraces the result of Mr. Irving's researches on that subject, and will be found to contain many particulars of interest. Joseph E. Bloomfield, the gentleman alluded to in the first paragraph, had been for some years a resident of the south of Spain, and, having become familiar with the portraits purporting to be the likenesses of the great discoverer, a correspondence on the subject had taken place between him and Mr. Irving. In the letter to Mr. Bryant, who had applied to Mr. Irving for leave to publish his hasty notes to Mr. Bloomfield, he has recast his replies to that gentleman, with some additions. I transfer the letter from the columns of the "Evening Post," the journal edited by Mr. Bryant, in which it first appeard :

MY DEAR SIR:

[To William C. Bryant, Esq.]

In consequence of the interest expressed by you as to a recent correspondence with Mr. Joseph E. Bloomfield, of Mexico, New York, on some points relative to Columbus, I have thrown the purport of my replies to that gentleman into something of a connected form. Mr. Bloomfield was desirous of my opinion of a portrait of Columbus existing in the Lonja, or Royal Exchange, at Seville, and which he says was the only one acknowledged in Spain as a true likeness. In reply, I have stated that I know of no portrait extant which is positively known to be authentic. The one in question, according to his account of it, is full length, and that of a person from thirty to thirty-five years of age, armed in mail, and wearing a full white ruff. Now Columbus, by the time his discoveries had made him a subject for such a painting, was quite advanced in years. The ruff, too, was not an article of dress in Spain until after his death. It was a Flemish fashion, brought, I believe, from Flanders to Spain in the time of Charles V., who did not arrive in the Peninsula until 1516, ten years after the death of Columbus. The portrait may have

been one of Diego Columbus, the heir and successor of the discoverer, and who, like him, was denominated "the Admiral."

Various portraits of Columbus have appeared from time to time in Italy, not one resembling the others, and all differing essentially from the description given by Fernando of his father. Theodore de Bry, in his "America," published in the sixteenth century, gave an engraving of one in his possession, which he pretended had been stolen from a saloon of the Council of the Indias, and sold in the Netherlands, where it fell into his hands. The same has been copied, in an eulogium of Columbus by the Marquis of Durazzo, printed by Bodoni, and in a life of the discoverer published in Milan by the Chevalier Bossi. This pretended portrait also differs entirely from the graphic description given by Fernando Columbus of his father. According to this, his visage was long, and neither full nor meagre; the cheek-bones rather high, his nose aquiline, his eyes light-gray, his complexion fair and high-colored (acceso di vivo colore). In his youth, his hair was blonde; but by the time he was thirty years of age it was quite white. This minute description I consider the touchstone by which all the pretended portraits of him should be tried. It agrees with accounts given of him by Las Casas and other contemporaries. Peschiera, a sculptor, employed in Genoa to make a bust of him for a monument erected to his memory in that city in 1821, discarded all existing portraits as either spurious or doubtful, and guided himself by the descriptions I have cited.

While I was in Madrid, in 1826, Don Martin Fernandez de Navarrete, President of the Royal Academy of History, published a lithographed copy of an engraved portrait of Columbus, which he found in an old Italian work containing likenesses of distinguished persons. He and the Duke of Veraguas (the descendant of Columbus) placed confidence in it, because other portraits in the same work were known to be correct. I doubted its authenticity. It did not agree sufficiently with the description before mentioned; and the hair especially, in the notice which accompanied it in the Italian work, was said to be black. Still, I published a copy of the engraving, some years since, in an abridged edition of my Life of the discoverer.

While I was in Paris, in 1845, Mons. Jomard, the learned principal of the Royal (now National) Library, had the kindness to send me a lithographic copy of a portrait in oil, recently discovered. The original bore, in one corner of the canvas, the inscription, CHRISTOFORUS COLUMBUS. The countenance was venerable and dignified, and agreed, more than any I had seen, with the description given by Fernando Columbus. Around the neck, however, was the Flemish ruff, which I pointed out as an anachronism. M. Jomard endeavored to account for it by supposing the portrait to have been made up toward the year 1580 by some scholar of Titian, from some design or sketch taken during the lifetime of Columbus, and that the artist may have decked it out in the costume in vogue at the time he painted it. This is very possible. Such a custom of vamping up new portraits from old ones seems to have been adopted in the time of Charles V., when there were painters of merit about the court.

In 1519, Juan de Borgoña, a Spanish artist, executed a whole series of portraits of the primates of Spain for the chapter room of the Cathedral of Toledo; some of them from the life, some from rude originals, and some purely imaginary. Some degree of license of the kind may have been indulged in producing this alleged portrait of Columbus. As it is evidently a work of merit, and bears the stamp of his character, I have published an engraving of it in one of the editions of his biography.

Painting had not attained much eminence in Spain during the lifetime of Columbus, though it was improving under the auspices of Ferdinand and Isabella. There were, as yet, no Italian painters in the Peninsula; and the only Spanish painter of note was Antonio Rincon, who is said to have been the first who "left the stiff Gothic style, and attempted to give to his figure something of the graces and proportions of nature." He executed portraits of Ferdinand and Isabella, who made him their painter-in-ordinary.

The originals have disappeared in the war of the French intrusion; but copies of two of his full-length portraits of the sovereigns exist in one of the lower corridors of the Royal Gallery of Madrid. It is very probable that he painted a portrait of Columbus at the time when he