In fact it continually brings his mind back to the ledgers of a too prosperous counting-house. Into the “Life of Washington” Irving was never able to put his heart. The book was the task-work of his declining years. It was undertaken at the suggestion of enterprising publishers, to whom he listened the more readily because the number of those dependent upon him had increased as the income from his earlier works declined. Its composition dragged from the outset. When at length the volumes appeared, they achieved a pronounced _succès d’estime_; but the work shows neither the firm grip of its subject nor the sustained vigour of treatment which might rank it among great biographies. It is rather a history of the United States during the latter half of the eighteenth century. There are entertaining anecdotes in it, vivid descriptions of battles, and sturdy American feeling. But of Washington himself there is only a pale shadow. Irving’s position in American historiography is a peculiar one. He was not primarily a historian. In a sense he stands outside the main currents of our historical writing. Nevertheless, he had a strong influence in determining their course. His “Knickerbocker History of New York,” essentially a work of humour, was taken seriously by various of his fellow-townsmen, who were thus incited, much to Irving’s amusement, to undertake extensive studies in local history for the purpose of clearing their Dutch progenitors from his ridicule. He was the earliest among American men of letters to choose historical subjects for the exercise of his craft, and thus became the founder of the “picturesque school” of American historians, in which Prescott, Motley, and Parkman are his followers. And he was the first to feel the fascination which the power of Spain, in the Old World and in the New, has not ceased to exercise upon American writers of history ever since.