"While the editor does not question Mr. Irving's great enjoyment of
his intercourse with the Fosters, or his deep regret at parting from
them, he is too familiar with his occasional fits of depression to
have drawn from their recurrence on his return to Paris any such
inference as that to which the lady alludes. Indeed, his memorandum
book and letters show him to have had, at this time, sources of
anxiety of quite a different nature. The allusion to his having to
put once more to sea evidently refers to his anxiety on returning to
his literary pursuits, after a season of entire idleness."

It is not for us to question the judgment of the biographer, with his
full knowledge of the circumstances and his long intimacy with his uncle;
yet it is evident that Irving was seriously impressed at Dresden, and
that he was very much unsettled until he drove away the impression by
hard work with his pen; and it would be nothing new in human nature and
experience if he had for a time yielded to the attractions of loveliness
and a most congenial companionship, and had returned again to an
exclusive devotion to the image of the early loved and lost.

That Irving intended never to marry is an inference I cannot draw either
from his fondness for the society of women, from his interest in the
matrimonial projects of his friends and the gossip which has feminine
attractions for its food, or from his letters to those who had his
confidence. In a letter written from Birmingham, England, March 15,
1816, to his dear friend Henry Brevoort, who was permitted more than
perhaps any other person to see his secret heart, he alludes, with
gratification, to the report of the engagement of James Paulding, and
then says: