e it with a favorable idea of its
society and manners, from knowing nothing accurate of either; and
with a firm belief that every pretty woman I have seen is an angel,
as I am apt to think every pretty woman, until I have found her
out."

In July, 1823, Irving returned to Paris, to the society of the Moores
and the fascinations of the gay town, and to fitful literary work. Our
author wrote with great facility and rapidity when the inspiration was
on him, and produced an astonishing amount of manuscript in a short
period; but he often waited and fretted through barren weeks and months
for the movement of his fitful genius. His mind was teeming constantly
with new projects, and nothing could exceed his industry when once he
had taken a work in hand; but he never acquired the exact methodical
habits which enable some literary men to calculate their power and
quantity of production as accurately as that of a cotton mill.

The political changes in France during the period of Irving's long
sojourn in Paris do not seem to have taken much of his attention. In a
letter dated October 5, 1826, he says: "We have had much bustle in Paris
of late, between the death of one king and the succession of another.
I have become a little callous to public sights, but have,
notwithstanding, been to see the funeral of the late king, and the
entrance into Paris of the present one. Charles X. begins his reign in
a very conciliating manner, and is really popular. The Bourbons have
gained great accession of power within a few years."

The succession of Charles X. was also observed by another foreigner, who
was making agreeable personal notes at that time in Paris, but who is
not referred to by Irving, who, for some unexplained reason, failed to
meet the genial Scotsman at breakfast. Perhaps it is to his failure to
do so that he owes the semi-respectful reference to himself in Carlyle's
"Reminiscences." Lacking the stimulus to his vocabulary of personal
acquaintance, Carlyle simply wrote: "Washington Irving was said to be in
Paris, a kind of lion at that time, whose books I somewhat esteemed.
One day the Emerson-Tennant people bragged that they had engaged him to
breakfast with us at a certain cafe next morning. We all attended duly,
Strackey among the rest, but no Washington came. 'Could n't rightly
come,' said Malcolm to me in a judicious aside, as we cheerfully
breakfasted without him. I never saw Washington at all, but sti