"Compare him," says the reviewer, "with any of the distinguished writers of his class of this generation, excepting Sir Walter Scott, and with almost any of what are called the English classics of any age. Compare him with Goldsmith, one of the canonized names of the British pantheon of letters, who touched every kind of writing, and adorned every kind that he touched. In one or two departments, it is true, that of poetry and the drama--departments which Mr. Irving has not attempted, and in which much of Goldsmith's merit lies--the comparison partly fails; but place their pretensions, in every other respect, side by side. Who would think of giving the miscellaneous writings of Goldsmith a preference over those of Irving, and who would name his historical compositions with the Life of Columbus? If in the drama and in poetry Goldsmith should seemed to have extended his province greatly beyond that of Irving, the Life of Columbus is a _chef d'oeuvre_ in a department which Goldsmith can scarcely be said to have touched; for the trifles on Grecian and Roman history, which his poverty extorted from him, deserve to enter into comparison with Mr. Irving's great work, about as much as Eutropius deserves to be compared with Livy. Then how much wider Irving's range in that department, common to both the painting of manners and character! From Mr. Irving we have the humors of cotemporary politics and every-day life in America--the traditionary peculiarities of the Dutch founders of New York--the nicest shades of the school of English manners of the last century--the chivalry of the middle ages in Spain--the glittering visions of Moorish romance--a large cycle of sentimental creations, founded on the invariable experience--the pathetic sameness of the human heart--and lastly, the whole unhackneyed freshness of the West--life beyond the border--a camp outside the frontier--a hunt on buffalo ground, beyond which neither white nor Pawnee, man nor muse, can go. This is Mr. Irving's range, and in every part of it he is equally at home. When he writes the history of Columbus, you see him weighing doubtful facts in the scales of a golden criticism. You behold him, laden with the manuscript treasures of well-searched archives, and disposing the heterogeneous materials into a well-digested and instructive narration. Take down another of his volumes, and you find him in the parlor of an English country inn, of a rainy day, and you look out of the window with him upon the dripping, dreary desolation of the back yard. Anon he takes you into the ancestral hall of a baronet of the old school, and instructs you in the family traditions, of which the memorials adorn the walls, and depend from the rafters. Before you are wearied with the curious lore, you are in pursuit of Kidd, the pirate, in the recesses of Long Island; and by the next touch of the enchanter's wand, you are rapt into an enthusiastic reverie of the mystic East, within the crumbling walls of the Alhambra.