- house, built close to the water's edge, where
the glen broadens to the river. It had colonial and revolutionary associations, and, above all, it had the charm of a situation of singular beauty. Irving seems early to have fallen under the spell of the shaded waterside and the romantic glen. In 1835, after an absence of seventeen years in Europe and an extensive journey through the South and West, which bore fruit in A Tour on the Prairies, the recollections and affections of his youth drew him to Sunnyside, now about a mile and a half south of the railway station of Tarrytown, and he became the possessor of a home which will always be associated with our early literary history. The house was enlarged, and began to take on that air of ripe and reposeful beauty which made it an ideal home for a man of letters. Under this roof his later books were written, and here he was sought by the most interesting men of his time.
Irving's familiarity with the Hudson River and its historical associations had already borne fruit in the Sketch-Book in two original and characteristic legends. Like his illustrious contemporary, Sir Walter Scott, Irving was a born lover of traditions of all sorts; a man with
