ceeding even the
_beau ideal_ of the painter, for she even surpassed in beauty the
picture of Murillo. I felt as if I could have knelt down and
worshiped her. Heavens! what power women would have over us, if
they knew how to sustain the attractions which nature has bestowed
upon them, and which we are so ready to assist by our imaginations!
For my part, I am superstitious in my admiration of them, and like
to walk in a perpetual delusion, decking them out as divinities. I
thank no one to undeceive me, and to prove that they are mere
mortals."

And he continues in another strain:--

How full of interest everything is connected with the old times in
Spain! I am more and more delighted with the old literature of the
country, its chronicles, plays, and romances. It has the wild vigor
and luxuriance of the forests of my native country, which, however
savage and entangled, are more captivating to my imagination than
the finest parks and cultivated woodlands.

"As I live in the neighborhood of the library of the Jesuits'
College of St. Isidoro, I pass most of my mornings there. You
cannot think what a delight I feel in passing through its
galleries, filled with old parchment-bound books. It is a perfect
wilderness of curiosity to me. What a deep-felt, quiet luxury there
is in delving into the rich ore of these old, neglected volumes!
How these hours of uninterrupted intellectual enjoyment, so
tranquil and independent, repay one for the _ennui_ and
disappointment too often experienced in the intercourse of society!
How they serve to bring back the feelings into a harmonious tone,
after being jarred and put out of tune by the collisions with the
world!"

With the romantic period of Spanish history Irving was in ardent
sympathy. The story of the Saracens entranced his mind; his imagination
disclosed its Oriental quality while he pored over the romance and the
ruin of that land of fierce contrasts, of arid wastes beaten by the
burning sun, valleys blooming with intoxicating beauty, cities of
architectural splendor and picturesque squalor. It is matter of regret
that he, who seemed to need the southern sun to ripen his genius, never
made a pilgrimage into the East, and gave to the world pictures of the
lands that he would have touched with the charm of their own color and
the witchery of their