In the "Sketch-Book," Irving set a kind of fashion in narrative essays, in brief stories of mingled humor and pathos, which was followed for half a century. He himself worked the same vein in "Bracebridge Hall," and "Tales of a Traveller." And there is no doubt that some of the most fascinating of the minor sketches of Charles Dickens, such as the story of the Bagman's Uncle, are lineal descendants of, if they were not suggested by, Irving's "Adventure of My Uncle," and the "Bold Dragoon." The taste for the leisurely description and reminiscent essay of the "Sketch-Book" does not characterize the readers of this generation, and we have discovered that the pathos of its elaborated scenes is somewhat "literary." The sketches of "Little Britain," and "Westminster Abbey," and, indeed, that of "Stratford-on-Avon," will for a long time retain their place in selections of "good reading;" but the "Sketch-Book" is only floated, as an original work, by two papers, the "Rip Van Winkle" and the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow;" that is to say by the use of the Dutch material, and the elaboration of the "Knickerbocker Legend," which was the great achievement of Irving's life. This was broadened and deepened and illustrated by the several stories of the "Money Diggers," of "Wolfert Webber" and "Kidd the Pirate," in "The Tales of a Traveller," and by "Dolph Heyliger" in "Bracebridge Hall." Irving was never more successful than in painting the Dutch manners and habits of the early time, and he returned again and again to the task until he not only made the shores of the Hudson and the islands of New York harbor and the East River classic ground, but until his conception of Dutch life in the New World had assumed historical solidity and become a tradition of the highest poetic value. If in the multiplicity of books and the change of taste the bulk of Irving's works shall go out of print, a volume made up of his Knickerbocker history and the legends relating to the region of New York and the Hudson would survive as long as anything that has been produced in this country. The philosophical student of the origin of New World society may find food for reflection in the "materiality" of the basis of the civilization of New York. The picture of abundance and of enjoyment of animal life is perhaps not overdrawn in Irving's sketch of the home of the Van Tassels, in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." It is all the extract we can make room for from that careful study:--