Irving and his literary friends.
There is a familiar engraving which represents an imaginary gathering of Washington Irving and his literary friends at Sunnyside, the home of Irving's later years. In the center of the foreground Irving is seated, a somewhat portly, smooth-faced, and kindly-looking man of fifty or more. At his near left stands James K. Paulding, an early literary comrade and life-long friend. Near by sit Bryant, the poet and editor, Cooper, the novelist, and Bancroft, the historian. Somewhat in the background stands a younger man-Emerson, the poet and philosopher. On the right the place of honor is held by Prescott, Irving's friendly rival in the field of Spanish history. Here also are Halleck, remembered as the author of Marco Bozzaris, and, again in the background, several younger menNathaniel Parker Willis, William Gilmore Simms, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Holmes. But the center of the picture is Irving; all the other figures of the group combine to bring him out with special prominence.
This fancy of the artist pictures to us very well the place of Washington Irving in American letters during the later years of his life. Other names were becoming known— those of Longfellow, Hawthorne, Emerson-names that were destined to equal, some of them perhaps to surpass, his in renown; but they were the names of young men, candidates for fame and as yet hardly well breathed in the race. Irving was nearing the term of a long and prosperous career, a career