om he could feel nothing but compassion. That
compassion, however, he received only from the ladies of the city, and
the traits of female goodness manifested then sunk deep into Irving's
heart. Without pretending, he says, to decide on Burr's innocence
or guilt, "his situation is such as should appeal eloquently to the
feelings of every generous bosom. Sorry am I to say the reverse has been
the fact: fallen, proscribed, prejudged, the cup of bitterness has
been administered to him with an unsparing hand. It has almost been
considered as culpable to evince toward him the least sympathy or
support; and many a hollow-hearted caitiff have I seen, who basked in
the sunshine of his bounty while in power, who now skulked from his
side, and even mingled among the most clamorous of his enemies.... I bid
him farewell with a heavy heart, and he expressed with peculiar warmth
and feeling his sense of the interest I had taken in his fate. I never
felt in a more melancholy mood than when I rode from his solitary
prison." This is a good illustration of Irving's tender-heartedness; but
considering Burr's whole character, it is altogether a womanish case of
misplaced sympathy with the cool slayer of Alexander Hamilton.

V. THE KNICKERBOCKER PERIOD

Not long after the discontinuance of "Salmagundi," Irving, in connection
with his brother Peter, projected the work that was to make him famous.
At first nothing more was intended than a satire upon the "Picture of
New York," by Dr. Samuel Mitchell, just then published. It was begun
as a mere burlesque upon pedantry and erudition, and was well advanced,
when Peter was called by his business to Europe, and its completion was
fortunately left to Washington. In his mind the idea expanded into a
different conception. He condensed the mass of affected learning, which
was their joint work, into five introductory chapters,--subsequently he
said it would have been improved if it had been reduced to one, and
it seems to me it would have been better if that one had been thrown
away,--and finished "A History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker,"
substantially as we now have it. This was in 1809, when Irving was
twenty-six years old.

But before this humorous creation was completed, the author endured the
terrible bereavement which was to color all his life. He had formed
a deep and tender passion for Matilda Hoffman, the second daughter of
Josiah Ogden Hoffman, in whose family he had long bee