Wolfert Acker, "one of the privy councillors of the renowned Peter Stuyvesant," who retreated to this "quiet and sheltered nook" after the subjugation of New Amsterdam by the English. The opening piece of the volume, consisting of three chronicles, gives a humorous description of "the little old-fashioned stone mansion, all made up of gable ends, and as full of angles and corners as an old cocked hat;" and recounts the remarkable inhabitants it has had at various periods of history; and how it came to be the keep or stronghold of Jacob Van Tassel, a valiant Dutchman, during the dark and troublous times of the Revolutionary war; and how, finally, the eventful little pile was selected for the haunt or sojourning of Diedrich Knickerbocker.

The reader, familiar with the letter to the editor of the "Knickerbocker," with which the series of articles contributed by Mr. Irving to that magazine began, will detect in these opening chronicles a striking similarity to parts of that communication, upon which these quaint and amusing legends have evidently been remodeled. The rest of the volume is but a collection of tales and sketches long before published in that periodical, with the exception of "The Creole Village," "The Widow's Ordeal," and "A Contented Man," which were given originally in annuals. The work appeared early in February, and proved, no doubt, to the majority of its readers, a new publication; to the young particularly, who could hardly have been familiar with the contents of any of the

papers of which it is composed. The volume was greeted in the highest terms by the press and the public on both sides of the Atlantic. "It would not be easy to overpraise this American miscellany," is the commencement of some favorable comments of the London "Athenæum." "There is as much elegance of diction, as graceful a description of natural scenery, as grotesque an earnestness in diablerie, and as quiet but as telling a satiric humor, as when Geoffrey Crayon first came before the English world, nearly forty years ago," says the London "Spectator." "This volume," writes a critic in the columns of the "New York Courier and Enquirer," "will be almost equally welcome to those who have and those who have not read the papers of which it is composed. It was well to collect these scattered waifs of his genius. while he himself was by to superintend the labor. He has given to the world few productions more charming than 'Wolfert's Roost' and the 'Sketches in Paris in 1825.'"

The "Evening Post" cites the second paper on the "Birds of Spring" as as "a special favorite." "It is the one which relates the history of the bobolink or bobo'lincoln, from his first appearance as a gay warbler in the fields of the Northern States, through his various changes; becoming a reed bird in the marshes bordering the rivers of the Middle States, and finally a rice bird at the South, where he degenerates into a fat epicure, and is shot for the table. The rest of the sketches and narratives," it

adds, "have all the characteristics of Irving's graceful genius, and are worthy to be placed by the side of his 'Sketch Book,' composed long years since."

A notice in the Boston "Telegraph" says: "We think it superior to any of his previous works in one respectthat of wide range and variety. There is some one or more papers in the new volume, which bring to mind each of the author's former works. It seems as if, when he published his previous imaginative works, he had laid aside one or more papers from each of them, and that here they were. Thus there are Spanish and Moorish legends, which remind us of the Alhambra' and the 'Conquest of Granada;' Dutch stories, reminding one of portions of the 'Sketch Book,' 'Tales of a Traveller,' and of the History of New York.' It is, in fact, a volume which contains 'representative' papers of all his former works."

Of the varied effusions of this compilation, a great favorite with many was the unfinished narrative of "Mountjoy; or, Some Passages out of the Life of a Castle Builder." This first appeared in the "Knickerbocker" in 1839, but is was written in England prior to the publication of the first number of the "Sketch Book," in 1819. He read it to Leslie when the artist was in a tired mood, and, receiving from him little encouragement to proceed, threw it aside, and never touched it again. It was in vain that Leslie tried afterward to put him in heart about it. He was effectually discouraged.. I have

little doubt that Ogilvie was shadowed forth in this piece under the character of Glencoe, as he afterward sat to Leslie for the portrait of Don Quixote.

The publication of the first volume of the "Life of Washington" soon succeeded the appearance of "Wolfert's Roost." In regard to the size and form of this long-expected biography, it had been his intention to publish it only in the octavo form; but it was so decidedly the judgment of his publisher that the duodecimo form would be the most in demand, from being uniform with his other works, that a sort of compromise was effected, by which it was to appear in both forms together. To enforce the propriety of his views in favor of the duodecimo edition, his publisher writes him, January 11th, at Sunnyside, where he had now returned: "You are aware we printed an edition of Columbus' in octavo, to range with Prescott's Works; but of these we have never sold but two hundred and fifty copies; while about eleven thousand have been sold of the duodecimo."

The author, at the age of seventy-two, had just got through correcting the proofs of the first volume, when he met with his second accident from his horse Dick, to which allusion was made in a previous chapter. He had not mounted him since his former accident; but on this day, April 18th, 1855, a favorite young lady friend calling at the house on horseback, he could not resist the temptation to try him once again, and accompany her on a short ride. His "womankind," as he styled his nieces, sought

to dissuade him, but he was not to be overruled. He had gone but about two hundred yards on the main road, when the animal became so restless that he was induced to turn about, and, leaving his companion at the head of the lane, retrace his steps alone toward home, resolving within himself, as he told me, never to get astride of Master Dick again. This purpose was hardly formed, before the unquiet beast suddenly became ungovernable, and, starting off at full speed, rushed madly down the hill. His rider tried the curb in vain. He did not heed it; and continuing his frantic pace through the cottage gate, fore his way into an evergreen that overhung the road, and stumbling, fell himself, and threw his rider with violence to the ground, about a hundred feet from his own door. Luckily, no limbs were broken, but his head received a severe bruise, and his chest was sorely wrenched by the violence of the overthrow, so that for two days he could not be moved in bed without great pain, and could not rise up or turn without assistance. This was about the eighth or ninth escape he had had from somewhat similar accidents on horseback or in carriage since he built the cottage.

His physician, Dr. John C. Peters, of New York, who was immediately sent for, on coming in, asked him how he felt. The reply was ludicrously expressive: "I feel as if an attempt had been made to force my head down into my chest, as you shut up a spy-glass." To an inquiry of one of his nieces how he felt now, after his position