, and Franklin's _Autobiography_,
and Trumbull's _McFingal_--if we read them at all--as history, and to
learn about the times or the men. But we read the _Sketch Book_, and
_Knickerbocker's History of New York_, and the _Conquest of Granada_
for themselves, and for the pleasure that they give as pieces of
literary art.

We have arrived, too, at a time when we may apply a more cosmopolitan
standard to the works of American writers, and may disregard many a
minor author whose productions would have cut some figure had they come
to light amid the poverty of our colonial age. Hundreds of these
forgotten names, with specimens of their unread writings, are consigned
to a limbo of immortality in the pages of Duyckinck's _Cyclopedia_, and
of Griswold's _Poets of America_ and _Prose Writers of America_. We
may select here for special mention, and as most representative of the
thought of their time, the names of Irving, Cooper, Webster, and
Channing.

A generation was now coming upon the stage who could recall no other
government in this country than the government of the United States,
and to whom the Revolutionary War was but a tradition. Born in the
very year of the peace, it was a part of Irving's mission, by the
sympathetic charm of his writings and by the cordial recognition which
he won in both countries, to allay the soreness which the second war,
of 1812-15, had left between England and America. He was {408} well
fitted for the task of mediator. Conservative by nature, early drawn
to the venerable worship of the Episcopal Church, retrospective in his
tastes, with a preference for the past and its historic associations
which, even in young America, led him to invest the Hudson and the
region about New York with a legendary interest, he wrote of American
themes in an English fashion, and interpreted to an American public the
mellow attractiveness that he found in the life and scenery of Old
England. He lived in both countries, and loved them both; and it is
hard to say whether Irving is more of an English or of an American
writer. His first visit to Europe, in 1804-6, occupied nearly two
years. From 1815 to 1832 he was abroad continuously, and his
"domicile," as the lawyers say, during these seventeen years was really
in England, though a portion of his time was spent upon the continent,
and several successive years in Spain, where he engaged upon the _Life
of Columbus_, the _Conquest of Granada_, the _Companion