He lived for forty years thereafter, a number of which were spent in Spain, first as secretary of legation, and afterwards as United States minister to that country. It was during these years that he gathered the materials for his "Life of Columbus," his "Conquest of Granada," and his "Alhambra," which has been called with some justice, "The Spanish Sketch Book." A tour of the western portion of the United States resulted also in three books, "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville," "Astoria," and "A Tour on the Prairies." His last years were spent at "Sunnyside," his home at Tarrytown, on the Hudson, where he amused himself by writing biographies of Mahomet, of Goldsmith, and of George Washington. All of this was, for the most part, what is called "hack work," and his turning to it proves that he himself was aware that his fount of inspiration had run dry. This very fact marks his genius as of the second order, for your real genius--your Shakespeare or Browning or Thackeray or Tolstoi--never runs dry, but finds welling up within him a perpetual and self-renewing stream of inspiration, fed by thought and observation and every-day contact with the world. Irving's closing years were rich in honor and affection, and found him unspoiled and uncorrupted. He was always a shy man, to whom publicity of any kind was most embarrassing; and yet he managed to be on the most intimate of terms with his time, and to possess a wide circle of friends who were devoted to him. Such was the career of America's first successful man of letters. For, strangely enough, he had succeeded in making a good living with his pen. More than that, his natural and lambent humor, his charm and grace of style, and a literary power at once broad and genuine, had won him a place, if not among the crowned heads, at least mong the princes of literature, side by side with Goldsmith and Addison. Thackeray called him "the first ambassador whom the New World of letters sent to the Old," and from the very first he identified American literature with purity of life and elevation of character, with kindly humor and grace of manner--qualities which it has never lost. Two years after the appearance of the "Sketch Book," another star suddenly flamed out upon the literary horizon, and for a time quite eclipsed Irving in brilliancy. It waned somewhat in later years, but, though we have come to see that it lacks the purity and gentle beauty of its rival, it has still found a place among the brightest in our literary heaven--where, indeed, only one or two of the first magnitude shine. J. Fenimore Cooper was, like Irving, a product of New York state, his father laying out the site of Cooperstown, on Lake Otsego, and moving there from New Jersey in 1790, when his son was only a year old. James, as the boy was known, was the eleventh of twelve children--another instance of a single swan amid a flock of ducklings.