New England authors taught the public to demand more thought and
passion than were in Irving's nature. Possibly the nervous,
journalistic style of the twentieth century allows too scanty
leisure of mind for the full enjoyment of the Knickerbocker
flavor. Yet such changes as these in literary fashion scarcely
affect the permanent service of Irving to our literature. He
immortalized a local type--the New York Dutchman--and local
legends, like that of Rip van Winkle; he used the framework of
the narrative essay to create something almost like the perfected
short story of Poe and Hawthorne; he wrote prose with unfailing
charm in an age when charm was lacking; and, if he had no
message, it should be remembered that some of the most useful
ambassadors have had none save to reveal, with delicacy and tact
and humorous kindness, the truth that foreign persons have
feelings precisely like our own.

Readers of Sir Walter Scott's "Journal" may remember his account
of an evening party in Paris in 1826 where he met Fenimore
Cooper, then in the height of his European reputation. "So the
Scotch and American lions took the field together," wrote Sir
Walter, who loved to be generous. "The Last of the Mohicans,"
then just published, threatened to eclipse the fame of "Ivanhoe."
Cooper, born in 1789, was eighteen years younger than the Wizard
of the North, and was more deeply indebted to him than he knew.
For it was Scott who had created the immense nineteenth century
audience for prose fiction, and who had evolved a kind of formula
for the novel, ready for Cooper's use. Both men were natural
story-tellers. Scott had the richer mind and the more fully
developed historical imagination. Both were out-of-doors men,
lovers of manly adventure and of natural beauty. But the American