The appearance of “Thanatopsis” and “Lines to a Waterfowl” in the early numbers of the “North American Review,” while leaving no doubt that a new national literature was close at hand, proved also that it was not to be the product of a single source; for Bryant, though greatly tempted to join the Emersons, Channing, Dana, Allston, and Tudor in Boston, turned finally to New York, where influences of a different kind surrounded him. The Unitarian school could not but take a sober cast, and even its humor was sure to be tinged with sadness, sarcasm, or irony, or some serious purpose or passion; but New York contained no atmosphere in which such a society could thrive. Busy with the charge of practical work,--the development of industries continually exceeding their power of control,--the people of New York wanted amusement, and shunned what in Boston was considered as intellectual. Their tastes were gratified by the appearance of a writer whose first book created a school of literature as distinctly marked as the Unitarian school of Boston, and more decidedly original. “The History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker,” appeared in 1809, and stood alone. Other books of the time seemed to recognize some literary parentage. Channing and Buckminster were links in a chain of theologians and preachers. “Thanatopsis” evidently drew inspiration from Wordsworth. Diedrich Knickerbocker owed nothing to any living original. The “History of New York” was worth more than passing notice. In the development of a national character, as well as of the literature that reflected it, humor was a trait of the utmost interest; and Washington Irving was immediately recognized as a humorist whose name, if he fulfilled the promise of his first attempt, would have a chance of passing into the society of Rabelais, Cervantes, Butler, and Sterne. Few literary tasks were more difficult than to burlesque without vulgarizing, and to satirize without malignity; yet Irving in his first effort succeeded in doing both. The old families, and serious students of colonial history, never quite forgave Irving for throwing an atmosphere of ridicule over the subject of their interest; but Diedrich Knickerbocker’s History was so much more entertaining than ordinary histories, that even historians could be excused for regretting that it should not be true.