Washington Irving spoke and wrote the English language correctly, an uncommon accomplishment in his time, and for which the American people paid him nearly a quarter of a million dollars in royalties. He was the dilettante par excellence of his epoch, who, without having anything in particular to say, said it very gracefully. They did not pay according to real genius in the Transitional period, for otherwise, Poe should have made a fortune with two of his poems alone--namely, “The Raven” and “The Bells,” which we know, as a matter of fact, he did not. However, Washington Irving had his own mission to perform, though it must have been with extreme reluctance that he quitted his snug bachelor quarters at Wolfert’s Roost for the then palatial surroundings of the Colonnade even to serve Mr. Astor. For if you accept the hospitality of very rich people--and if you can do anything worth while you do not want for invitations--you are generally expected to return every penny’s worth of it in some way. Niecks in his “Life of Chopin” relates how when the “grand artiste” was asked to play after dinner at the hôtel of an opulent host, he begged off, pleading that he had eaten so very little, which was true enough, for the malady from which he suffered sadly PLATE LIV. [Illustration: GOOD ARCHITECTURE OF THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD IN LOWER FIFTH AVENUE. NO. 1 FIFTH AVENUE.] [Illustration: WATERBURY HOME, FIFTH AVE. AND 11th ST.] PLATE LV. [Illustration: REMAINING HALF OF THE COLONNADE. Its Positively Last Appearance] [Illustration: TYPICAL ARCHITECTURE OF THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD.] impaired his appetite. But we are not all such consummate masters of our art as was Chopin of his, and do not dare say such things, however well merited they may be. Washington Irving saw that he could be of service to his country by telling the “old gentleman,” as he alludes to his patron in the “Life and Letters, etc.,” how to avoid banality and vulgarisms, and the Astor library was the largest and most important public charity that had yet been attempted. In an age when the anatomy of charity is under the microscope of many a millionaire as to-day, it seems discouraging that its secret is yet likely to remain unrevealed. But let us acknowledge to ourselves, are we not hindered to a very great extent by that awkward condition imposed upon us by every religion that one hand is not to know what the other is about? And of course, you know, that really takes all the fun out of charity. CHAPTER VIII REIGN OF TERROR--ITS NEGATIVE VALUE