Hudson, where he died in 1859, he wrote graceful lives of
Goldsmith and of Washington.

Such a glance at the shelf containing Irving's books suggests but
little of that personal quality to which he owes his significance
as an interpreter of America to the Old World. This son of a
narrow, hard, Scotch dealer in cutlery, this drifter about town
when New York was only a big slovenly village, this light-hearted
scribbler of satire and sentiment, was a gentleman born. His
boyhood and youth were passed in that period of
Post-Revolutionary reaction which exhibits the United States in
some of its most unlovely aspects. Historians like Henry Adams
and McMaster have painted in detail the low estate of education,
religion, and art as the new century began. The bitter feeling of
the nascent nation toward Great Britain was intensified by the
War of 1812. The Napoleonic Wars had threatened to break the last
threads of our friendship for France, and suspicion of the Holy
Alliance led to an era of national self-assertion of which the
Monroe Doctrine was only one expression. The raw Jacksonism of
the West seemed to be gaining upon the older civilizations
represented by Virginia and Massachusetts. The self-made type of
man began to pose as the genuine American. And at this moment
came forward a man of natural lucidity and serenity of mind, of
perfect poise and good temper, who knew both Europe and America
and felt that they ought to know one another better and to like
one another more. That was Irving's service as an international
mediator. He diffused sweetness and light in an era marked by
bitterness and obscuration. It was a triumph of character as well
as of literary skill.