things, I should have all our pigs sent to Maryland to be cured, as they send patients to Southern climates.

I am happy to learn from Mrs. Kennedy that your health is restored to its usual state, and anticipate the pleasure of again meeting you in the ensuing summer. Since we parted, I have celebrated my seventieth birthday, and passed that boundary beyond which a man lives by special privilege. Your example shows me, however, that a man may live on beyond that term, and retain his sensibilities alive to everything noble, and good, and pleasurable, and beautiful, and enjoy the society of his friends, and spread happiness around him. On such conditions, old age is lovable. I shall endeavor to follow your example.

Ever affectionately, your friend,

WASHINGTON IRVING.

[To Mrs. Kennedy.]

SUNNYSIDE, April 24, 1853.

MY DEAR MRS. KENNEDY:

I am truly concerned to hear that Kennedy still continues unwell. He has overtasked himself, and has led a life of too much excitement for some months past, and is now in a state of collapse. He must give his mind perfect repose for a time-do as they do with the horses, when they take off their shoes and turn them out to grass. His study is no place for him just now. I think the idea a good one to make an excursiontry change of scene and a course of agreeable society. I think Mrs. Sa capital prescription for his present case; and the sooner you pay her your proposed visit, the better.

I should indeed like to be of your party, for I am bewitched with the South, and Virginia has always been a poetical region with me. But I begin to doubt whether those high-seasoned regales of society that I have had of late, at Saratoga and Washington, do not unsettle me a little, and make it hard for me to content myself with the sober, every-day fare of Sunnyside. I have now to work hard to make up for past dissipation, and to earn any future holiday.

I have just been writing to your father, to thank him for the hams, which have arrived in prime order, and to give him an account of the brilliant manner in which one of them acquitted itself at dinner to-day. I strike my flag to him completely, and confess that, for hams, we cannot pretend to cope with old Maryland (always saving and excepting certain green hams peculiar to Sunnyside). It gives me sincere pleasure to learn that your father continues in his usual health. I trust that he has his musical evenings, and his pet minstrels to play and sing for him. There will never be any wrinkles in his mind as long as he can enjoy sweet music, and have youth and beauty to administer it to him.

I am writing late at night, and it is high time to go to bed. So give my kindest remembrances to your sister and your husband, and believe me ever, your affectionate friend,

WASHINGTON IRVING.

The following letter, among other matters, contains a cordial and complimentary allusion to Sparks, the more interesting that it is entirely spontaneous, and that it expresses a mature and unbiased judgment of the manner in which the task of editing "Washington's Writings" had been executed by him :

[To Hon. Robert C. Winthrop.]

MY DEAR MR. WINTHROP :

SUNNYSIDE, May 23, 1853.

I thank you and Mr. Prescott for your kind remembrances of me. It is very gratifying to be so remembered by such men. I have heretofore consulted Frothingham's "History of the Siege of Boston," about which you speak. It merits the character you give it, as being "the best thing written about the Bunker Hill period." I am also much obliged to you for the clippings which you send me from newspapers, giving familiar

anecdotes of Washington. It is surprising how few anecdotes there are of him in his familiar life; but he was essentially a public character, and so regulated in conduct by square and rule as to furnish very little of the amusing and picturesque anecdote that we find in the lives of more irregular men.

I doubt whether the world will ever get a more full and correct idea of Washington than is furnished by Sparks's collection of his letters, with the accompanying notes and illustrations, and the preliminary biography. I cannot join in the severe censures that have been passed upon Sparks for the verbal corrections and alterations he has permitted himself to make in some of Washington's letters. They have been spoken of too harshly. From the examination I have given to the correspondence of Washington, in the archives of the State Department, it appears to me that Sparks has executed his task of selection, arrangement, and copious illustration with great judgment and discrimination, and with consummate fidelity to the essential purposes of history. His intelligent and indefatigable labors in this and other fields of American history are of national and incalculable importance. Posterity will do justice to them and him.

I am glad to learn that you are supervising a lithographic portrait of our friend Kennedy, ironing out "the wrinkles and crow's feet," and fitting it to figure to advantage in the shop windows. It will rejoice the heart of his good little wife, who thinks he has never had justice done him in that line, and was half piqued at a lithographic effigy of myself, where the painter and engraver had presented me as flourishing in "immortal youth." *

Such likenesses, "corrected and amended," will do well to go with the "Homes of American Authors," recently published, to give Europeans a favorable idea of literary men and literary life in this country. In commenting on that publication, a London critic observes that "the American authors seem to court the muse to some purpose." He did not know that most of them, so well housed, had courted a rich wife into the bargain.

Ever, my dear Mr. Winthrop, yours, with great regard,

WASHINGTON IRVING.

On the 27th of May, Mr. Irving writes to Miss Mary E. Kennedy, a niece of Mr. John P. Kennedy, and one of his household at Washington :

Too much occupation has produced symptoms, of late, which oblige me to suspend literary occupation, and may exile me for a time from my study.

In sober sadness, I believe it is high time I should throw by the pen altogether; but writing has become a kind of habitude with me, and, unless I have some task on hand to occupy a great part of my time, I am at a loss what to do. After being accustomed to literary research, mere desultory reading ceases to be an occupation. There is as much difference between them, in point of interest, as between taking an airing on horseback and galloping after the hounds. It is pretty hard for an old huntsman to give up the chase.

In the following June, being "ordered to throw by his pen, and abstain from head work of all kinds for a time," he left his manuscript with me to look over, and give him my impressions of the work, and set out for Kennedy's, connecting with his journey some object of advantage in inspecting the manuscripts of Mr. Washington Lewis, which had been mentioned to him as containing letters and diaries of Washington, and a visit to some places noted in Washington's history.

From Philadelphia, where his compagnon de voyage from New York left him, to continue on to Washington in the

night train, at ten o'clock, while he retired to his room, he writes me, June 13th, as follows :

Inform my beloved family of my well-being, as well as of my extraordinary prudence and self-restraint in not continuing on in the night train with Mr. P, to which I confess I felt sorely tempted. But I gain prudence with years, and, I trust, will in time be all that my friends could wish.

[To Mrs. Pierre M. Irving.]

MY DEAR HELEN :

ELLICOTT'S MILLS, June 15, 1853.

I arrived at Baltimore yesterday, between one and two o'clock, after a pretty warm and dusty ride from Philadelphia. However, as I sat by a window on the shady side of the cars, I did not suffer much from the heat.

I found Kennedy on the lookout for me. He had expected me the evening .before. The family were all out of town, at old Mr. Gray's country establishment, where I am now writing. We dined at Kennedy's brother Anthony's, in Baltimore, and had a very gay family dinner, after which we came out in the evening train, and had a beautiful drive along the lovely valley of the Patapsco, on the banks of which stream the country residence is situated. You may have an idea of the house from an engraving in Putnam's "Homes of American Authors."

We found the family all assembled round the tea table; and a bright, happy gathering it was, there being a matter of five young ladies, guests in the house. Among the number, I was delighted to meet with one of the three young belles with whom I was domesticated at Washingtonthe one who plays so admirably on the piano. There was great greeting on all sides, and most especially by my warm-hearted old friend, Mr. Gray. The evening passed delightfully. We had music from Miss A-. We sat out in the moonlight on the piazza, and strolled along the banks