Excerpt from Washington Irving The advent of Cooper, Bryant, and Hal leck, was some twenty years after the rec ognition of Irving, but thereafter the stars thicken in our literary sky, and when in 1832 Irving returned from his long sojourn in Europe, he found an immense advance in fiction, poetry, and historical composi tion. American literature was not only born, - it was able to go alone. We are not likely to overestimate the stimulus to this movement given by Irving's example, and by his success abroad. His leader ship is recognized in the respectful attitude towards him of all his contemporaries in America. And the cordiality with which he gave help whenever it was asked, and his eagerness to acknowledge merit in oth ers, secured him the affection of all the lit erary class, which is popularly supposed to have a rare appreciation of the defects of fellow craftsmen. The period from 1830 to 1860 was that of our greatest purely literary achievement. 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.