chamber beyond the Alps--listening to the dim echoes of the long
passages and spacious corridors--damp, and gloomy, and cold--as he
hears the tempest beating with fury against his window, and gazes
at the curtains, dark, and heavy, and covered with mould--and when
all the ghost-stories that ever were told come up before him--amid
all his thick-coming fancies, whom does he think of? Washington
Irving.

Go farther still: go to the Moorish Mountains, sparkling full in
the moonlight--go among the water-carriers and the village gossips,
living still as in days of old--and who has travelled among them
before you, and peopled the Alhambra and made eloquent its shadows?
Who awakes there a voice from every hill and in every cavern, and
bids legends, which for centuries have slept a dreamless sleep, or
watched unwinkingly, start up and pass before you in all their life
and glory?

But leaving this again, who embarked with Columbus upon his gallant
ship, traversed with him the dark and mighty ocean, leaped upon the
land and planted there the flag of Spain, but this same man, now
sitting by my side? And being here at home again, who is a more
fit companion for money-diggers? and what pen but his has made Rip
Van Winkle, playing at nine-pins on that thundering afternoon, as
much part and parcel of the Catskill Mountains as any tree or crag
that they can boast?

But these are topics familiar from my boyhood, and which I am apt
to pursue; and lest I should be tempted now to talk too long about
them, I will, in conclusion, give you a sentiment, most
appropriate, I am sure, in the presence of such writers as Bryant,