158 BOARD OF REGENTS. 



endeared him to his friends in no common measure. By his death American scholar- 

 ship has sustained a heavy loss, this institution has heen deprived of an efficient col- 

 laborator, and the community at large of a virtuous and distinguished citizen. 



On motion of Hon. J. G. Berret, it was — 



Resolved, That a copy of this resolution, with the introductory remarks, be trans- 

 mitted to the family of the deceased. 



The resolutions were adopted. 



Professor Felton then addressed the Board as follows : 



I have also, Mr. Chancellor, to call the attention of the Board to the death of an 

 honorary member of the Smithsonian Institution — the beloved and illustrious "Wash- 

 ington Irving, the most venerated representative of American literature. He was 

 born April 3, 1783, in New York, and died at his residence, at Sunnyside, on the 

 banks of the Hudson, November 28, 1859, in the 77th year of his age. His literary 

 career extends over a period of more than half a century. For many years he has 

 stood undoubtedly at the head of American literature. He enjoyed only the common 

 opportunities of education in his youth ; but the oldest universities of England and 

 America honored themselves by conferring their highest honors on him in his man- 

 hood. At an early age he commenced the study of the law. His health failing, he 

 travelled two years in Europe, and resuming his professional studies on his return, 

 was admitted to the bar. Not finding the practice of the profession congenial to his 

 tastes, he relinquished it, and became a partner in a mercantile house with his brother. 

 But he was not destined to remain long in the career of trade ; the failure of the house 

 in the crisis that followed the peace of 1815 turned his attention to literature as a per- 

 manent pursuit. He had already shown by the most decided proofs that nature had 

 endowed him with the richest gifts of genius. His early writings, especially his con- 

 tributions to Salmagundi, and Knickerbocker's History of New York, exhibit the 

 keenest power of observation, the most brilliant wit, and an English style at once 

 pure, copious, and expressive. But when he resolved to devote himself to letters as 

 the business of his life, instead of the amusement of his leisure hours, he gave to the 

 culture of style the thought, care, and labor, that the painter and the sculptor expend 

 in acquiring a mastery over the materials, principles, and processes of their respective 

 arts. In the choice of his words and the structure of his sentences he exercised a re- 

 fined taste and a delicate discrimination, allowing nothing to escape him which was 

 not justified by the most fastidious judgment. He studied the best authors of the best 

 ages in English literature, and disciplined his genius by a strict conformity to the es- 

 tablished idiom of the mother tongue. Oddity and extravagance of expression, which 

 some writers of our age mistake for originality of genius, found no favor with him. 

 His genial nature, his sensibility to all that is beautiful in the works of God, his 

 ready sympathy with the best affections of the human heart, were thus embodied in a 

 style of marvellous grace, purity, and harmony. His imagination gentle, yet power- 

 ful, brightened everything it fell upon; his wit exhilarated and gladdened; his 

 humor charmed by its sparkling play ; his pathos, so true, so tender, colored with the 

 unforgotten sorrow of his own early bereavement, touched the chords of sympathy 

 in every heart. He was an elegant essayist, a delightful biographer, a profound and 

 brilliant historian, and his whole life was loyal to the highest interests of humanity. 

 In private friendships he was faithful and generous. He had all the excellencies of 

 the literary character, with none of its defects. He had no rivalries to disturb the 

 serenity of his days, no jealousies to irritate his temper. While enjoying his own 

 brilliant success, with a modest appreciation of its value, he rejoiced in the successes 

 of others, and delighted to aid them with his powerful influence. He never had an 

 enemy, for all men were his friends. He never uttered a word that could wound the 

 feelings of the most sensitive ; he never wrote a sentence that could offend the most 

 delicate ; he never printed a line which, dying, he could wish to blot. His genius 

 has been recognized throughout the civilized world ; his works are read and his name 

 revered wherever a cultivated language has been the organ of a national literature. 

 The legends of Spain and Italy have furnished congenial subjects for his pen. The 

 manners and life of England have been more brilliantly illustrated by him than by 

 any English writer of our time. His native land, however, has been crowned by the 

 richer and maturer products of his genius. The picturesque banks of the Hudson 

 have been made classical by the charm with which his creations — poetical in all but 

 the form — have invested them. It is his peculiar felicity to have built the most endur- 



