Excerpt from Little Masterpieces: Rip Van Winkle, Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the Devil and Tom Walker, the Voyage, Westminster Abbey, Stratford-on-Avon, the Stout Gentleman IN The Author's Account of Himself, which prefaces The sketch-book, Geoffrey Crayon compares himself with the unlucky landscape painter who had sketched in nooks and corners and by-places, but had neglected to paint St. Peter's and the Col iseum, and had not a single glacier or vol cano in his whole collection. This restric tion in theme, which Irving whimsically confesses, was in part, no doubt, as he would have us believe, the result of follow ing the bent of a vagrant inclination, but it was also an evidence of the happiest ar tistic instinct. One of Irving's most inti mate friends has noted his wonderful knack at shutting his eyes to the sinister side of anything. To ignore the sinister side of life is to restrict one's art; but Irving was led by a faultless taste to those subjects that lay well within his powers. Better than most authors of equal rank, he knew what to avoid. In his unfailing sense of proportion, purity of feeling, and fine re. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.