, for the most part, he filled the pages of the
_Sketch Book_ and _Bracebridge Hall_, 1822. Delightful as are these
English sketches, in which the author conducts his reader to Windsor
Castle, or Stratford-on-Avon, or the Boar's Head Tavern, or sits beside
him on the box of the old English stage-coach, or shares with him the
Yule-tide cheer at the ancient English country-house, their interest
has somewhat faded. The pathos of the _Broken Heart_ and the _Pride of
the Village_, the mild satire of the _Art of Book-Making_, the rather
obvious reflections in _Westminster Abbey_ are not exactly to the taste
of this generation. They are the literature of leisure and
retrospection; and already Irving's gentle elaboration, the refined and
slightly artificial beauty of his style, and his persistently genial
and sympathetic attitude have begun to pall upon readers who demand a
more nervous and accentuated kind of writing. It is felt that a little
roughness, a little harshness, even, would give relief to his pictures
of life. There is, for instance, something a little irritating in the
old-fashioned courtliness of his manner toward women; and one reads
with a certain impatience smoothly punctuated passages like the
following: "As the vine, which has long twined its graceful foliage
about the oak, and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the
hardy plant is rifted by the thunder-bolt, cling round it with its
caressing tendrils, and bind up its shattered boughs, so is it
beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependent
and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace
when smitten with sudden calamity, winding herself into the rugged
recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head and
binding up the broken heart."

Irving's gifts were sentiment and humor, with an imagination
sufficiently fertile and an observation sufficiently acute to support
those two main qualities, but inadequate to the service of strong
passion or subtle thinking, though his pathos, indeed, sometimes
reached intensity. His humor was always delicate and kindly; his
sentiment never degenerated into sentimentality. His diction was
graceful and elegant--too elegant, perhaps; and, in his modesty, he
attributed the success of his books in England to the astonishment of
Englishmen that an American could write good English.

In Spanish history and legend Irving found a still newer and richer
field