with a good feeling as soon as it rises, and so I have dropt
Coleman a line on the subject.

"I hope you will not attribute all this sensibility to the kind
reception I have met to an author's vanity. I am sure it proceeds
from very different sources. Vanity could not bring the tears into
my eyes as they have been brought by the kindness of my countrymen.
I have felt cast down, blighted, and broken-spirited, and these
sudden rays of sunshine agitate me more than they revive me. I
hope--I hope I may yet do something more worthy of the appreciation
lavished on me."

Irving had not contemplated publishing in England, but the papers began
to be reprinted, and he was obliged to protect himself. He offered the
sketches to Murray, the princely publisher, who afterwards dealt so
liberally with him, but the venture was declined in a civil note,
written in that charming phraseology with which authors are familiar,
but which they would in vain seek to imitate. Irving afterwards greatly
prized this letter. He undertook the risks of the publication himself,
and the book sold well, although "written by an author the public knew
nothing of, and published by a bookseller who was going to ruin." In a
few months Murray, who was thereafter proud to be Irving's publisher,
undertook the publication of the two volumes of the "Sketch-Book," and
also of the "Knickerbocker" history, which Mr. Lockhart had just been
warmly praising in "Blackwood's." Indeed, he bought the copyright of
the "Sketch-Book" for two hundred pounds. The time for the publisher's
complaisance had arrived sooner even than Scott predicted in one of his
kindly letters to Irving, "when

"'Your name is up and may go
From Toledo to Madrid.'"

Irving passed five years in England. Once recognized by the literary
world, whatever was best in the society of letters and of fashion was
open to him. He was a welcome guest in the best London houses, where he
met the foremost literary personages of the time, and established
most cordial relations with many of them; not to speak of statesmen,
soldiers, and men and women of fashion, there were the elder D'Israeli,
Southey, Campbell, Hallam, Gifford, Milman, Foscolo, Rogers, Scott, and
Belzoni fresh from his Egyptian explorations. In Irving's letters
this old society passes in review: Murray's drawing-rooms; the amusing
blue-stocking coteries of fashion of which Lady Caroline La