of the tower, the wall of which closed with a
thundering jar. Alas! the good padre had broken his fast too soon!

"When recovered from his surprise, the student would have reentered
the tower, but learnt to his dismay that the damsel, in her fright,
had let fall the seal of Solomon; it remained within the vault.

"In a word, the cathedral bell tolled midnight; the spell was
renewed; the soldier was doomed to mount guard for another hundred
years, and there he and the treasure remain to this day--and all
because the kind-hearted padre kissed his handmaid. 'Ah, father!
father!' said the student, shaking his head ruefully, as they
returned down the ravine, 'I fear there was less of the saint than
the sinner in that kiss!'

"Thus ends the legend as far as it has been authenticated. There is
a tradition, however, that the student had brought off treasure
enough in his pocket to set him up in the world; that he prospered
in his affairs, that the worthy padre gave him the pet-lamb in
marriage, by way of amends for the blunder in the vault; that the
immaculate damsel proved a pattern for wives as she had been for
handmaids, and bore her husband a numerous progeny; that the first
was a wonder; it was born seven months after her marriage, and
though a seven months' boy, was the sturdiest of the flock. The
rest were all born in the ordinary course of time.

"The story of the enchanted soldier remains one of the popular
traditions of Granada, though told in a variety of ways; the common
people affirm that he still mounts guard on midsummer eve beside the
gigantic stone pomegranate on the bridge of the Darro; but remains
invisible excepting to such lucky mortal as may possess the seal of
Solomon."

These passages from the most characteristic of Irving's books do not
by any means exhaust his variety, but they afford a fair measure of
his purely literary skill, upon which his reputation must rest. To
my apprehension this "charm" in literature is as necessary to the
amelioration and enjoyment of human life as the more solid achievements
of scholarship. That Irving should find it in the prosaic and
materialistic conditions of the New World as well as in the
tradition-laden atmosphere of the Old, is evidence that he possessed
genius of a refined and subtle quality, if not of the most robust order.