CHAPTEE X
NEW YORK'S MEN OF LETTERS

Washington Irving

Elsewhere in these pages I have referred to the
indifference of New York to its position in the his¬
tory of our country, and with equal justice I may
add its similar attitude toward literature. Yet
Washington Irving, a New Yorker, was acclaimed
the first American man of letters of his day, and
the first to receive for American literature the rec¬
ognition and plaudits of the Old World. When he
went to England in the midst of the War of 1812,
he was at once cordially welcomed by Sir Walter
Scott and his friends, not merely as a fellow-
craftsman of distinction, but as an American
genius, a.bove the petty decisions of Cabinets re¬
garding peace or war.

We see him once more in the falling shadows of
a closing day.    It is in the garden of a friend's
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