He had by this time pretty much given up any notion he may have had of living by the law. His attempts to gain civil appointments were not successful. The brilliant younger brother must be provided for; presently Peter and Ebenezer, who were proprietors of a fairly prosperous hardware business, offered him a partnership, with nominal duties and one fifth of the profits. His connection with the firm was at first a sinecure. Later, and when the business had come to the brink of failure, the burden fell upon him, and absorbed his whole time and energies for nearly two years. His literary idling cannot be said to have been due to this entanglement. In his view writing was apparently little more than an agreeable indulgence which had brought him some half-deserved praise, and a pleasant social recognition in desirable quarters. One of the first results of his new connection was a visit to Washington, ostensibly in the interests of the business. The character of his services may be surmised from the fact that his journey from New York to Washington, _via_ Philadelphia and Baltimore, consumed nineteen days; and that was when the affairs of the firm were in some straits, and supposed to be particularly in need of representation at Washington. In 1812 he accepted the editorship of a periodical called "Select Reviews," to which during the next two years he contributed various critical and biographical articles. He found little to his liking in the editorial and still less in the critical part of his work. "I do not profess," he wrote, "the art and mystery of reviewing, and am not ambitious of being wise or facetious at the expense of others." He was never a good critic, for he was too soft-hearted, and too little in conceit with his own judgment to give an unfavorable opinion. And this was in the period of "slashing" criticism, when it was the proper thing, unless an author could show good reason for being declared the greatest man of the age, to hang, draw, and quarter him on the spot. At about this time, Jeffrey of the "Edinburgh Review," a critic who made the most of his prerogative, visited America. His coming was heralded by Irving's friend Brevoort in a letter whose ludicrous climax is worth quoting: "It is essential that Jeffrey may imbibe a just estimate of the United States and its inhabitants.... Persuade him to visit Washington _and by all means to see the falls of Niagara_." Apparently Irving received the great Jeffrey with courtesy and composure; as an equal, and not in the least as an idol to be propitiated with gewgaws.