ndeur
of the old palace that his descriptions read like a bit of genuine
Arabian chronicle, which had been kept safe until then in the grim
guardianship of the past.

[Illustration: IRVING LISTENING TO THE OLD TALES OF THE MOORS.]

The chapters of the _Alhambra_ are also full of delightful legends, the
fairy tales which time had woven around the beautiful ruin, and which
the custodians of the place related gravely to Irving as genuine
history. It calls up a pleasant picture to think of Irving sitting in
the stately hall or on his balcony, listening to one of these old tales
from the lips of his tattered but devoted domestic while the twilight
was gathering, and the nightingale singing in the groves and gardens
beneath. He himself said that it was the realization of a daydream which
he had cherished since the time when, in earliest boyhood on the banks
of the Hudson, he had pored over the story of the Granada.

In his work, _The Conquest of Granada_, Irving relates the story of the
retaking of Granada by Ferdinand and Isabella. So sympathetically and
graphically does Irving describe the fortunes of this war that he must
ever remain the historian of the Moors of Spain, whose spirit seemed to
inspire the beautiful words in which he celebrated their conquests,
their achievements and their defeats.

In the _Chronicle of Wolfert's Roost_ Irving follows in imagination old
Diedrich Knickerbocker into the famous region of Sleepy Hollow, where
much of the material for the celebrated Knickerbocker History was said
to have been collected. This chronicle, it was claimed, was written upon
the identical old Dutch writing-desk that Diedrich used, the elbow chair
was the same that he sat in, the clock was the very one he consulted so
often during his long hours of composition. In these pages old Diedrich
walks as a real person, and Irving follows him with faithful step
through the region that he loved so fondly all his life.

Everything here is dwelt upon with lingering touch. The brooks and
streams, the meadows and cornfields, the orchards and the gardens, and
the groves of beech and chestnut have their tribute from the pen of one
who found their charms ever fresh, who sought in them rest and
happiness, and who came back to them lovingly to spend the last days of
his life in their familiar companionship.

Irving died in 1859, and was buried at Sunnyside; in sight of the Hudson
whose legends he had immortalized, and whose beauty n