early travel books, as did Longfellow, to the Continent; while James A. Hillhouse, Joseph Rodman Drake, and FitzGreene Halleck, all of whom made trips between 1818 and 1822, left brief or no records at all. A few personal letters and a notebook alone seem to have been preserved from Halleck's journey while in the same source we find two humorous verse epistles from Drake.1 Halleck states that he set out with letters of introduction to Byron, Campbell, Moore, Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, and Washington Irving; and, at the book shop of one Robert Triphook in London, he met some of these and some others. A memorandum book gives an imposing list of places which he visited in England and on the Continent, and some of his feelings about Scotland have been recorded in his two poems, Alnwick Castle and Burns; but, after all, such brief notes are hardly more satisfactory than would be none whatever.

There was one American man of letters, however, who was able to preserve a very real sense of literary detachment in his English travels, and he has left copious notes, both formal and informal, on most of what he saw and experienced. Washington Irving must take high place in the category of literary wanderers. Few have so nearly realized the Stevensonian ideal; yet a comparatively small share of Irving's long stay in England and on the Continent was free from circumstantial concerns. His first trip in 1804-5 was purely for pleasure and health, but in his later journeys we find, behind the sentimental wanderer, a variety of seriously minded gentlemen: the junior partner in a nearly bankrupt firm, the writer in search of suitable materials for his works, the dramatist trying to make for himself a place on the English stage under the cover of anonymity, and the

1 James Grant Wilson, Life and Letters of Fitz-Greene Halleck, 1869, pp. 197-282.

diplomat with a career developing from that of Secretary of the British Legation to that of Envoy Extraordinary to Spain.

It would be a mistake to say that Irving was the only American who traveled in England for the sake of travel alone; but we may say that he, more than any other American, could subordinate all ulterior motives and aims to the sheer pleasure of moving from place to place and seeing unfamiliar sights. His detached point of view is a rarity among his countrymen, and it not only served as the quality which contributed to the distinction of his literary work, but it likewise imparted to his less formal comments and observations a personal tone somewhat lacking in those of his fellow travelers.

To a certain degree, however, this viewpoint was shared by Irving's American friends, both those who traveled in England independently of him and those with whom he was in close association while he himself was there. A striking feature of Irving's stay abroad was his association with his countrymen. Few Americans of the day took a path which led them so fully into the heart of English social life as did Irving, and yet, as we read his letters and journals, we cannot help being constantly impressed with the fact that by far the largest share of his time was spent with Americans. In Liverpool in 1815, it was his brother, Peter, who occupied most of his thought, and he watched the arrival of packets from America in eager anticipation of discovering on them one or another of his American friends; in Birmingham he had what he called his "English home" in the family of his sister, Mrs. Van Wart (or the Baroness Van Tromp, as he dubbed her); in London and on the Continent, he devoted himself first to Allston and later to Leslie, Morse, Charles King, and Stuart Newton, all of

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them American artists; when he sought companionship for his walking tours, it was to Dr. Henry, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Joseph C. Cabell of Virginia, Thomas Brandon, or William C. Preston, that he turned; when his interest in the theater was at its height, his most intimate companion was John Howard Payne, the American dramatist; and he built upon the foundations of his diplomatic career a friendship for McLane, Vail, Alexander Everett, and Van Buren, all of them American envoys to European nations. It was to Henry Brevoort, the most intimate friend of his middle life, that he wrote the record of his despondency in business failure as well as of his successes in other aspects of his career. His friendships alone are sufficient to discredit any hint that in mind or heart he was disloyal to his native country.

Whether it be cause or effect, most of these friends of Irving seem to have shared something of his attitude of detachment in traveling. The most notable example of this is Henry Brevoort, a man of almost identically his age and much of his temperament. Brevoort's trip to England fell between Irving's two earlier ones, as he landed at Cherbourg in April, 1812, and later the same year crossed the Channel to stay through the winter and spring. At the outset, his attitude was somewhat different from Irving's, for he writes to his friend that he had made a resolution to know as few of his countrymen as possible during his stay abroad, but he longs for Irving in France to assist him "in laughing at this most ludicrous, characteristic, quizzical, nonsensical and delightful of all nations under the canopy of heaven." It is in such matters that the two men found each other most congenial.

Brevoort was not slow in making European friends, for one of his first requests is that Irving find some way of