playing at the theater, needed small-clothes for one of his parts; Irving
lent him a pair,--knee breeches being still worn,--and the actor carried
them off to Baltimore. From that city he wrote that he had found in the
pocket an emblem of love, a mysterious locket of hair in the shape of a
heart. The history of it is curious: when Irving sojourned at Genoa, he
was much taken with the beauty of a young Italian lady, the wife of a
Frenchman. He had never spoken with her, but one evening before his
departure he picked up from the floor her handkerchief which she had
dropped, and with more gallantry than honesty carried it off to Sicily.
His pocket was picked of the precious relic while he was attending a
religious function in Catania, and he wrote to his friend Storm, the
consul at Genoa, deploring his loss. The consul communicated the sad
misfortune to the lovely Bianca, for that was the lady's name, who
thereupon sent him a lock of her hair, with the request that he would
come to see her on his return. He never saw her again, but the lock of
hair was inclosed in a locket and worn about his neck, in memory of a
radiant vision that had crossed his path and vanished.]

Personally, Irving must have awakened a reciprocal admiration. A drawing
by Vanderlyn, made in Paris in 1805, and a portrait by Jarvis in 1809,
present him to us in the fresh bloom of manly beauty. The face has an
air of distinction and gentle breeding; the refined lines, the poetic
chin, the sensitive mouth, the shapely nose, the large dreamy eyes, the
intellectual forehead, and the clustering brown locks are our ideal of
the author of the "Sketch-Book" and the pilgrim in Spain. His
biographer, Mr. Pierre M. Irving, has given no description of his
appearance; but a relative, who saw much of our author in his latter
years, writes to me: "He had dark gray eyes; a handsome straight nose,
which might perhaps be called large; a broad, high, full forehead, and a
small mouth. I should call him of medium height, about five feet eight