" is
only floated, as an original work, by two papers, the "Rip Van Winkle"
and the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow;" that is to say by the use of the Dutch
material, and the elaboration of the "Knickerbocker Legend," which was
the great achievement of Irving's life. This was broadened and deepened
and illustrated by the several stories of the "Money Diggers," of
"Wolfert Webber" and "Kidd the Pirate," in the "Tales of a Traveller,"
and by "Dolph Heyliger" in "Bracebridge Hall." Irving was never more
successful than in painting the Dutch manners and habits of the early
time, and he returned again and again to the task until he not only made
the shores of the Hudson and the islands of New York harbor and the East
River classic ground, but until his conception of Dutch life in the New
World had assumed historical solidity and become a tradition of the
highest poetic value. If in the multiplicity of books and the change of
taste the bulk of Irving's works shall go out of print, a volume made up
of his Knickerbocker history and the legends relating to the region of
New York and the Hudson would survive as long as anything that has been
produced in this country.

The philosophical student of the origin of New World society may find
food for reflection in the "materiality" of the basis of the civilization
of New York. The picture of abundance and of enjoyment of animal life is
perhaps not overdrawn in Irving's sketch of the home of the Van Tassels,
in the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow." It is all the extract we can make room
for from that careful study.

"Among the musical disciples who assembled, one evening in each
week, to receive his instructions in psalmody, was Katrina Van
Tassel, the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer.
She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge;
ripe and melting and rosy-checked as one of her father's peaches,
and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast
expectations. She was, withal, a little of a coquette, as might be
perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and
modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the
ornaments of pure yellow gold which her great-great-grandmother had
brought over from Saardam; the tempting stomacher of the olden time;
and withal a provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest
foot and ankle in the country round.