The months roll on; something must be done; the secretaryship at home is abandoned; he must try again; he does try; he sends off "Sketch-Book No. I." to America. We know what came of it: success, delight. Number upon number followed. There was an early republication, under the author's auspices, in London. He was feted: it was so odd that an American should write with such control of language, with such a play of fancy, with such pathetic grace. There was a kind of social _furor_ to meet and to see the man who, notwithstanding his Transatlantic birth, had conquered all the witchery of British speech, who knew its possible delicacies of expression, and who graced it with a humor that reminded of Goldsmith. No American author had ever dreamed of such ovation before: an ovation not due to any incisive thought, not due to any novelty of his subject-matter,--but due to the fact that a man born overseas had suddenly appeared among British writers, who could lay hold upon their own resources of sentiment, and inwrap it in language which charmed them by its grace and provoked them by its purity. Mr. Murray entered upon the publication of the "Sketch-Book" in 1820, Mr. Irving being at that time thirty-seven years of age. Of his pleasant intimacy with Sir Walter Scott, of his junketings in Paris, of his meeting with Tom Moore, of his unfortunate enlistment in a steamboat-enterprise upon the Seine, there is full and most lively account in the "Life and Letters" before us. "Bracebridge Hall," despatched from Paris in 1822, is received with the same favor which had attended the publication of the "Sketch-Book"; and the pecuniary returns are so liberal that he can lie upon his oars for a while, and (what pleases him more) can effectually aid his brother Peter, who was a party to the unfortunate steamboat-scheme.