And yet everybody would probably have admitted that there was but one man then living who could have created and peopled the vast and humorous world of the Knickerbockers; that all the learning of Oxford and Cambridge together would not enable a man to draw the whimsical portrait of Ichabod Crane, or to outline the fascinating legend of Rip Van Winkle; while Europe was full of scholars of more learning than Irving, and writers of equal skill in narrative, who might have told the story of Columbus as well as he told it and perhaps better. The under-graduates of Oxford who hooted their admiration of the shy author when he appeared in the theatre to receive his complimentary degree perhaps understood this, and expressed it in their shouts of "Diedrich Knickerbocker," "Ichabod Crane," "Rip Van Winkle." Irving's "gift" was humor; and allied to this was sentiment. These qualities modified and restrained each other; and it was by these that he touched the heart. He acquired other powers which he himself may have valued more highly, and which brought him more substantial honors; but the historical compositions, which he and his contemporaries regarded as a solid basis of fame, could be spared without serious loss, while the works of humor, the first fruits of his genius, are possessions in English literature the loss of which would be irreparable. The world may never openly allow to humor a position "above the salt," but it clings to its fresh and original productions, generation after generation, finding room for them in its accumulating literary baggage, while more "important" tomes of scholarship and industry strew the line of its march. I feel that this study of Irving as a man of letters would be incomplete, especially for the young readers of this generation, if it did not contain some more extended citations from those works upon which we have formed our estimate of his quality. We will take first a few passages from the "History of New York." * * * * *