with extreme diffidence: "all that I can safely claim," he observes,
"is, an earnest desire to state the truth, an absence from prejudices
respecting the nations mentioned in my history, a strong interest in
my subject, and a zeal to make up by assiduity for many deficiencies
of which I am conscious." This work has been abridged by Mr. Irving
to one of the volumes of the Family Library. As we have intimated to
the reader, it is of higher pretensions than either of the author's
previous writings: a clever critic refers to it as "a spirited and
interesting work, in which every thing is as judiciously reasoned as
it is beautifully and forcibly expressed," and as "much more grave in
its character and laborious in its execution than any of his preceding
ones."[4]

[Footnote 4: New Monthly Magazine.]

Mr. Irving's next production was "A Chronicle of the Conquest of
Granada," in which the author's knowledge of Spanish history is made
to shine in detailing the chivalrous glories of the New World.

In the spring of the present year it appears that Mr. Irving touched
"the golden shores of old romance," and published Tales of the
Alhambra; the origin of which work is thus told by the author. A few
years since, Mr. Wilkie, the distinguished R.A. and Mr. Irving were
fellow travellers on the continent. In their rambles about some of
the old cities of Spain, they were struck with scenes and incidents
which reminded them of passages in the Arabian Nights. Mr. Wilkie
urged his companion to write something that should illustrate those
peculiarities, "something in the Haroun Alraschid style" that should
have a dash of that Arabian spice which pervades everything in Spain.
Mr. Irving set about his task with enthusiasm: his study was the