This is not my review. I have only just started it but from the introduction alone and the first segment I am getting that tingly feeling that this is someone that I could fall in love with. This is somebody I might end up really liking. May I share two short parts that impressed me although there are already more to choose from? Those that are interested may sample with me.

Martin Nan Buren (the eighth President of the United States)offered Washingtion Irving a postion in his cabinet as the Secretary of the Navy. This is part of the letter which was written in reply to that request.

Mature reflection and self-examination have served to confirm my first impulse, which was to decline your most kind and flattering offer. It is not so much the duties of the post that I fear, as I take a delight in full occupation, and the concerns of the Navy Department would be peculiarly interesting to me; but I shrink from the harsh cares and turmoils of public and political life at "Washington, and feel that I am too sensitive to endure the bitter personal hostility, and the slanders and misrepresentations of the press, which beset high station in this country. This argues, I confess, a weakness of spirit and a want of true philosophy; but I speak of myself as I am, not as I ought to be. Perhaps, had my ambition been directed toward official distinction, I might have become enured to the struggle; but it has lain in a different and more secluded path, and has nurtured in me habits of quiet and a love of peace of mind that daily unfit me more and more for the collisions of the world. I really believe it would take but a short career of public life at "Washington to render me mentally and physically a perfect wreck, and to hurry me prematurely into old age.


Right away sparks were flying. I like him already. What a graceful way to be honest but still tactful. Upon reading it, Van Buren probably muttered the word "bastard" and then carefully kept the letter in a safe place where he could pull it out and read it just for the pleasure of it. Instant heirloom.

The second is an excerpt from The Sketch Book (I am a freak of nature. Having to put down the book and look up a new word has similar effect on me as catnip to a persian cat. Twice on one page? This is a man after my own heart!)

But what really got me was the last paragraph where he is talking about the things he sketched. At least read that. I have more kindred souls here than I do anywhere else it seems so some of you may appreciate it.


THE SKETCH BOOK

THE AUTHOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF

by Washington Irving

"I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snaile that crept out
of her shel was turned eftsoons into a toad, and thereby was forced to make a stoole to sit on; so the traveller that stragleth from his owne country is in a short time transformed into so monstrous a shape, that he is faine to alter his mansion with his manners, and to live where he can, not where he would."

LYLY'S EUPHUES.

I WAS always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange
characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the town-crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the range of my observations. My holiday afternoons were spent in rambles about the surrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places famous in history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery had
been committed, or a ghost seen. I visited the neighboring villages, and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits and customs, and conversing with their sages and great men. I even journeyed one long summer's day to the summit of the most distant hill, whence I stretched my eye over many a mile of terra incognita, and was astonished to find how vast a globe I inhabited.

This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of
voyages and travels became my passion, and in devouring their
contents, I neglected the regular exercises of the school. How
wistfully would I wander about the pier-heads in fine weather, and
watch the parting ships, bound to distant climes- with what longing eyes would I gaze after their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth!

Further reading and thinking, though they brought this vague
inclination into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. I visited various parts of my own country; and had I been merely a lover of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere its gratification, for on no country have the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. ... No, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery.

But Europe held forth the charms of storied and poetical
association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the
refinements of highly-cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities
of ancient and local custom. My native country was full of youthful promise: Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of times gone by, and every mouldering stone was a chronicle. I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievement- to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity- to loiter about the ruined castle- to meditate on the falling tower- to escape, in short, from the commonplace realities of the present, and lose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.

I had, beside all this, an earnest desire to see the great men of the earth. We have, it is true, our great men in America: not a city but has an ample share of them. I have mingled among them in my time, and been almost withered by the shade into which they cast me; for there is nothing so baleful to a small man as the shade of a great one, particularly the great man of a city. But I was anxious to see the great men of Europe; for I had read in the works of various philosophers, that all animals degenerated in America, and man among the number. A great man of Europe, thought I, must therefore be as superior to a great man of America, as a peak of the Alps to a highland of the Hudson; and in this idea I was confirmed, by observing the comparative importance and swelling magnitude of many English travellers among us, who, I was assured, were very little people in their own country. I will visit this land of wonders, thought I, and see the gigantic race from which I am degenerated.

It has been either my good or evil lot to have my roving passion
gratified. I have wandered through different countries, and
witnessed many of the shifting scenes of life. I cannot say that I
have studied them with the eye of a philosopher; but rather with the sauntering gaze with which humble lovers of the picturesque stroll from the window of one print-shop to another; caught sometimes by the delineations of beauty, sometimes by the distortions of caricature, and sometimes by the loveliness of landscape. As it is the fashion for modern tourists to travel pencil in hand, and bring home their portfolios filled with sketches, I am disposed to get up a few for the entertainment of my friends. When, however, I look over the hints and memorandums I have taken down for the purpose, my heart almost fails me at finding how my idle humor has led me aside from the great objects studied by every regular traveller who would make a
book. I fear I shall give equal disappointment with an unlucky
landscape painter, who had travelled on the continent, but,
following the bent of his vagrant inclination, had sketched in
nooks, and corners, and by-places. His sketchbook was accordingly
crowded with cottages, and landscapes, and obscure ruins; but he had neglected to paint St. Peter's, or the Coliseum; the cascade of Terni, or the bay of Naples; and had not a single glacier or volcano in his whole collection.

THE END

Here is the link for this part. http://infomotions.com/etexts/literature/american/1800-1899/irving-authors-580.htm


If I wait until I actually write the review I won't put this in but I want to share it with people that might actually understand why I feel the way I do so soon.

(The HTML is screwed up and I wasn't able to fix it but you could just go to the links to read them if you can't get past the html. I have already stayed up too long. Time to go back to bed and die. But I had to share this first. I will fix it tomorrow. Or not.)