The fact deserves notice that of late professed historians have indulged somewhat freely in romancing, and so in a sense turned their histories into quasi-historical novels, especially when they attempt to give elaborate and eloquent portraitures of the leading personages, in which the most lavish use is made of effective epithets and pointed antitheses. Macaulay, among recent historians, has set the fashion very decidedly in this direction. In his efforts to make history minute, vivid, and effective, he has often described like an impassioned advocate, and painted, like a retained attorney, with the most unsparing expenditure of contrasts and epithets. Carlyle gives sketches, alternately in chalk and charcoal, that exhibit his saints and demons, now in ghastliest white, and then in the most appalling blackness. But though he draws caricatures he draws them with the hand of an artist. Froude, by research, eloquence and audacity combined, attempts to reverse the settled historic judgments of all mankind in respect to characters that had been “damned to everlasting fame.” Bancroft and Motley abound in examples of this tendency to paint historical characters so much to the life that the impression is made that the result is only a painting to which there never was reality. WASHINGTON IRVING. To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele— Throw in all of Addison, _minus_ the chill, With the whole of that partnership’s stock and good will, Mix well, and while stirring him o’er as a spell, The fine old English gentleman, simmer it well, Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain, That only the finest and clearest remain; Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives, From the warm, lazy sun loitering down through green leaves. And you’ll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving A name either English or Yankee—just Irving.—_Lowell._ … Washington Irving, one of the best and pleasantest acquaintances I have made this many a day.—_Sir Walter Scott._ The Style of Mr. Irving is always pleasing.—_Macaulay._ Throughout his polished pages no thought shocks by its extravagance, no word offends by vulgarity or affectation.—_Edinburgh Review._ A Rainy Sunday in an Inn.