no effort to secure the place. Perhaps he was deterred by the
knowledge that the author of "The Columbiad" suspected him, though
unjustly, of some strictures on his great epic. He had in mind a book of
travel in his own country, in which he should sketch manners and
characters; but nothing came of it. The peril to trade involved in the
War of 1812 gave him some forebodings, and aroused him to exertion. He
accepted the editorship of a periodical called "Select Reviews,"
afterwards changed to the "Analectic Magazine," for which he wrote
sketches, some of which were afterwards put into the "Sketch-Book," and
several reviews and naval biographies. A brief biography of Thomas
Campbell was also written about this time, as introductory to an edition
of "Gertrude of Wyoming." But the slight editorial care required by the
magazine was irksome to a man who had an unconquerable repugnance to
all periodical labor.

In 1813 Francis Jeffrey made a visit to the United States. Henry
Brevoort, who was then in London, wrote an anxious letter to Irving to
impress him with the necessity of making much of Mr. Jeffrey. "It is
essential," he says, "that Jeffrey may imbibe a just estimate of the
United States and its inhabitants; he goes out strongly biased in our
favor, and the influence of his good opinion upon his return to this
country will go far to efface the calumnies and the absurdities that
have been laid to our charge by ignorant travelers. Persuade him to
visit Washington, and by all means to see the Falls of Niagara." The
impression seems to have prevailed that if Englishmen could be made to
take a just view of the Falls of Niagara the misunderstandings between
the two countries would be reduced. Peter Irving, who was then in
Edinburgh, was impressed with the brilliant talent of the editor of the
"Review," disguised as it was by affectation, but he said he "would not
give the Minstrel for a wilderness of Jeffreys."

The years from 1811 to 1815, when he went abroad for the second time,
were passed by Irving in a sort of humble waiting on Providence. His
letters to Brevoort during this period are full of the _ennui_ of
irresolute youth. He idled away weeks and months in indolent enjoyment
in the country; he indulged his passion for the theatre when opportunity
offered; and he began to be weary of a society which offered little
stimulus to his mind. His was the temperament of the artist, and America
at that time had little to evoke o