e 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 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 _Companions of Columbus_, and
the _Alhambra_, all published between 1828 and 1832. From 1842 to 1846
he was again in Spain as American minister at Madrid.

Irving was the last and greatest of the Addisonians. His boyish
letters, signed "Jonathan Oldstyle," contributed in 1802 to his
brother's newspaper, the _Morning Chronicle_, were, like Franklin's
_Busybody_, close imitations of the _Spectator_. To the same family
belonged his _Salmagundi_ papers, 1807, a series of town-satires on New
York society, written in conjunction with his brother William and with
James K. Paulding. The little tales, essays, and sketches which
compose the _Sketch Book_ were written in England, and published in
America, in periodical numbers, in 1819-20. In this, which is in some
respects his best book, he still maintained that attitude of
observation and spectatorship taught him by Addison. The volume had a
motto taken from Burton: "I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to
provide for--a mere spectator of other men's fortunes," etc.; and "The
Author's Account of Himself," began in true Addisonian