without taking Washington Irving under my arm; and, when I don't
take him, I take his own brother, Oliver Goldsmith. Washington
Irving! Why, of whom but him was I thinking the other day when I
came up by the Hog's Back, the Frying Pan, Hell Gate, and all these
places? Why, when, not long ago, I visited Shakespeare's
birthplace, and went beneath the roof where he first saw light,
whose name but HIS was pointed out to me upon the wall? Washington
Irving--Diedrich Knickerbocker--Geoffrey Crayon--why, where can you
go that they have not been there before? Is there an English farm-
-is there an English stream, an English city, or an English
country-seat, where they have not been? Is there no Bracebridge
Hall in existence? Has it no ancient shades or quiet streets?

In bygone times, when Irving left that Hall, he left sitting in an
old oak chair, in a small parlour of the Boar's Head, a little man
with a red nose, and an oilskin hat. When I came away he was
sitting there still!--not a man LIKE him, but the same man--with
the nose of immortal redness and the hat of an undying glaze!
Crayon, while there, was on terms of intimacy with a certain
radical fellow, who used to go about, with a hatful of newspapers,
wofully out at elbows, and with a coat of great antiquity. Why,
gentlemen, I know that man--Tibbles the elder, and he has not
changed a hair; and, when I came away, he charged me to give his
best respects to Washington Irving!

Leaving the town and the rustic life of England--forgetting this
man, if we can--putting out of mind the country church-yard and the
broken heart--let us cross the water again, and ask who has
associated himself most closely with the Italian peasantry and the
bandits of the Pyrenees? When the traveller enters his little