long, for he was no sooner there than he was "disgusted by the servility
and duplicity and rascality witnessed among the swarm of scrub
politicians." There was a promising young artist at that time in Albany,
and Irving wishes he were a man of wealth, to give him a helping hand;
a few acts of munificence of this kind by rich nabobs, he breaks out,
"would be more pleasing in the sight of Heaven, and more to the glory and
advantage of their country, than building a dozen shingle church
steeples, or buying a thousand venal votes at an election." This was in
the "good old times!"

Although a Federalist, and, as he described himself, "an admirer of
General Hamilton, and a partisan with him in politics," he accepted a
retainer from Burr's friends in 1807, and attended his trial in Richmond,
but more in the capacity of an observer of the scene than a lawyer.
He did not share the prevalent opinion of Burr's treason, and regarded
him as a man so fallen as to be shorn of the power to injure the country,
one for whom he could feel nothing but compassion. That compassion,
however, he received only from the ladies of the city, and the traits of
female goodness manifested then sunk deep into Irving's heart. Without
pretending, he says, to decide on Burr's innocence or guilt, "his
situation is such as should appeal eloquently to the feelings of every
generous bosom. Sorry am I to say the reverse has been the fact: fallen,
proscribed, prejudged, the cup of bitterness has been administered to him
with an unsparing hand. It has almost been considered as culpable to
evince toward him the least sympathy or support; and many a
hollow-hearted caitiff have I seen, who basked in the sunshine of his
bounty while in power, who now skulked from his side, and even mingled
among the most clamorous of his enemies . . . . I bid him farewell
with a heavy heart, and he expressed with peculiar warmth and feeling his
sense of the interest I had taken in his fate. I never felt in a more