To render the Far West of
that epoch this style is perhaps not "big" and broad enough, but
when used as Irving uses it in describing Stratford and
Westminster Abbey and an Old English Christmas, it becomes again
a perfect medium. Hawthorne adopted it for "Our Old Home," and
Englishmen recognized it at once as a part of their own
inheritance, enriched, like certain wines, by the voyage across
the Atlantic and home again. Irving wrote of England, Mr. Warner
once said, as Englishmen would have liked to write about it. When
he described the Alhambra and Granada and the Moors, it was the
style, rich both in physical sensation and in dreamlike reverie,
which revealed to the world the quick American appreciation of
foreign scenes and characters. Its key is sympathy.
Irving's popularity has endured in England. It suffered during
the middle of the century in his own country, for the strongest
New England authors taught the public to demand more thought and
passion than were in Irving's nature. Possibly the nervous,
journalistic style of the twentieth century allows too scanty
leisure of mind for the full enjoyment of the Knickerbocker
flavor.
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