In Bracebridge Hall' Irving again introduces us to the scenes and characters already made familiar in the Christmas papers, and in addition he brings before us some new charactersketches. The most important of these are Lady Lillycraft and General Harbottle, but although described with many touches of native humour, they are far inferior creations to the Squire or Master Simon. Much more original is Ready-Money Jack Tibbets, who plays a prominent part throughout the Bracebridge Hall papers, and who may be set down as a fairly representative specimen of the English yeoman. The sketches of the village worthies are admirable; the apothecary who was the village wise man full of sententious remarks, who "observed, with great solemnity and emphasis that man is a compound of wisdom and folly;' upon which Master Simon, who had hold of my arm, pressed very hard upon it and whispered in my ear, 'That's a devilish shrewd remark !' The village politician, who had a confounded trick of talking, and was apt to bother one about the national debt, and such nonsense,' the tailor and the worthies who kept the village inn, all these and many more testify to that extraordinary perception, amounting almost to intuition which Irving possessed of the oddities and excellencies of English character. Not only in his essays and sketches, but also in the tales with which they are so plentifully interspersed, Irving's English characters are in inception, conventional, but he presents them with a naturalness, and invests them with a freshness, that make them actual living creatures, and not mere puppets. In this respect he reminds us of a worker in a different field of art, David Wilkie,* whose subjects are conventional, but in treatment exquisitely natural. Such pictures as The Rent Day,' or 'The Blind Fiddler,' are conceived It may be interesting to note that Wilkie and Irving were intimate personal friends. and worked out in exactly the same spirit, as that which inspires Washington Irving's charming delineations of rustic life. That the painter and the writer should both have treated Spanish subjects, as well as English, may be looked upon as a mere coincidence, but as here too they display the same delicate fancy combined with truth and accuracy, the very coinciddence serves to draw the parallel between them closer. The style of writing which Lamb and Washington Irving adopted has found few disciples in our day. We have a number of brilliant essayists, whose achievements have made the nineteenth century perhaps the greatest prose era in our literature;-but they are philosophical, critical and didactic; their self-imposed mission is to teach, not to amuse, whereas the primary object of Lamb and Irving was to afford their readers matter for innocent enjoyment. There is, however, one writer, himself a countryman of Irving, upon whom the mantle of Charles Lamb seems to have fallen. Oliver Wendell Holmes, without in any instance sacrificing his originality, follows closely the method of the elder essayists, and although he is the most remarkable, he is by no means the only proof we possess, that it is among American writers we now chiefly find that quaint and delicate humour, which the discussion of the sterner realities and larger issues of life seems for the time to have banished from England. Irving's fame does not, however, rest solely on his charms as an essayist; as a story-teller he is unrivalled. The practice of telling a story simply for the sake of the story, and not as a vehicle for the discussion of human character, has of late been well nigh abandoned. The role of raconteur seems for the present to be played out, in spite of the vehement assertions of a living novelist that it has been the one aim of his life to assume it. The truth is, that the novel can never be used simply to tell a story; the essence 'Men of such stories as Irving's lies in their brevity, and the slightness of the material composing them. The plot is rarely if ever absorbing in interest; the characters are, as I have said before, types of classes rather than strongly-marked individuals, and the fascination the tales possess is derived from exquisite charm of manner, and direct simplicity of narration. That which, if otherwise told, would be melo-dramatic, becomes natural; that which, if otherwise told, would be commonplace, becomes poetical; and characters, in themselves conventional, and drawn sometimes merely in outline, become instinct with life and motion. are but children of a larger growth,' and Irving's tales are simply the highest expression of the kind of storytelling with which we amuse children. It may be conceded that the novel, in the hands of genius, is a much higher form of art than mere story-telling; but it may still be matter for regret that the latter should become in any sense obsolete. Irving's stories are of two distinct kinds, the humorous and the romantic of the first, 'Rip van Winkle,' and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow,' are the best examples; of the second, 'The Student of Salamanca,' and 'The Story of the Young Italian,' in 'Tales of a Traveller,' are favourite illustrations. His Spanish tales have never been so popular or so widely read as 'The Sketch Book' or 'Bracebridge Hall,' although they are exceedingly graceful and attractive. The Tales of a Traveller' alternate the humorous with the romantic, but although many of them display Irving's peculiar qualities, by no means at their worst, they are not, as a whole, nearly up to the level of his two best known works. Of Irving's efforts in the more ambitious field of history, in which, indeed, he has been eclipsed by his countryman Prescott, I do not intend to speak, but there is a somewhat similar class of literature in which he stands without a rival, and which should be noticed even in this brief paper. His 'Life of Goldsmith' is the best biography of its kind in the English language. Biographies may be roughly said to be of two kinds: one which, by faithful and minute records of actions, allows the life to tell its own story and unfold the character of its subject; and the other which presents the life in the form of a story, from the point of view of the narrator. It is obvious that the latter form of biography must largely assume the character of a criticism, and must depend for its success greatly upon the degree of sympathy between the biographer and the man whose life he sets before us. The complete sympathy between Irving and Goldsmith, the similarity of their natures, are in themselves reasons for the supreme excellence of this work. It has all the charm of fiction, combined with absolute truth and fidelity to fact, and at the same time presents us with an accurate portrait of the man, and a generous and faithful criticism of the author. There is no other man whose life Irving could have written so well, and it is no less true that no one could have written Goldsmith's life in such a manner. This work will, I am convinced, form one of the least perishable monuments of his fame. I have made a wide digression from the Old Christmas papers, but one may be excused for growing a little garrulous over Washington Irving. There is no author who is dearer to us, and whose character is more clearly and indelibly imprinted in every line of his works. We can apply to him, without the excision of a single word, his own language concerning Goldsmith: The artless benevolence that beams throughout his works, the whimsical yet amiable views of human life and human nature, the unforced humour, blending so happily with good feeling and good sense, and singularly dashed, at times, with a pleasing melancholy; even the very nature of his mellow, and flowing, and softlytinted style, all seem to bespeak his moral as well as his intellectual qualities, and make us love the man, at the same time that we admire the author. At this season of the year, when all men are, for one brief day, in harmony, we can sympathize most truly with an author whose writings spring from a fount of benevolence and kindly charity. Not only his Old Christmas,' but all Washington Irving's writings, breathe the spirit of Christian love, with which all hearts should be filled at Christmas. KASPAR. BY R. RUTLAND MANNERS. "TIS Christmas Eve, and a cold clear night, And the earth is filled with the white moonlight, And glittering rests on the drifted snow, With numberless trembling diamond sprays, Round the mountain's base the river glides, And creeps through the vale by the evergreen shade; By the hazel-copse; by the ice-bound wheel And into the quiet burg hard by Whose quaint tile roofs sharply rise on high, The village church caps a neighbouring hill, O'er which points the spire with its cross on high, From the gothic windows a dim light creeps On the whitened sills where it restless sleeps Old Kaspar, the sexton, had wrought within Weave the web of sleep, have him captive ta'en And in pall-like folds, which they weave from night, 'Tis the potent watch of the Elfin reign, To the golden scenes of the vision-land. Swift as thought its enchanted bounds they pass Filled with throngs of the airy populace. And they move through grottos with jewels bright, To a noble King who freed their land They gather fast from glade and grot, Now all is hushed; for the Fairy Queen To save our realm, love alone should claim Gives foremost thought, as true love e'er will, And goodness her highest charge fulfil. 'For the choice first-fruits which our people bring, As their custom 'tis from year to year, An oblation to our most honoured king, We yield due thanks. We ourselves shall bear |