PAULDING.

those critics, at home and abroad, who deny that there

is any essential nationality in our literature, we commend the works of Paulding. The oldest of our living authors, and after Brockden Brown, the first to make a creditable mark in our literary history, every thing he has written is not only American in subject and material, but as thoroughly imbued with the national spirit as any such body of works that ever proceeded from the brain and heart of a patriot. It is half a century since he made his first

appearance in print, and at seventy-five he continues to write with the vivacity, good sense, and earnest love of country, for which he has been distinguished from the beginning.

Before proceeding with a description of the residence of the veteran novelist, let us briefly sketch the life which is drawing to its close in a place so congenial and beautiful.

Mr. Paulding is of the old Dutch stock, and of a family ennobled by sacrifices when sacrifices were the seals of devotion to liberty. It has been stated that he was born in Pawling, on the Hudson, so named in honor of one of his ancestors, who spelt his name in this way; but his real birth-place was Pleasant Valley, a town in the same vicinity, where he came into the world on the twenty-second of August, 1778. His father was a member of the first NewYork Committee of Safety, and Commissary General of the State troops; and a cousin-the son of his father's elder brother was John Paulding, who assisted in the capture of Andre.

While the army was suffering from cold and hunger in the Highlands, from the inability of Congress to afford adequate supplies, Commissary Paulding on his own responsibility furnished the necessary means for their subsistence. When the war was over he presented his account for adjustment at the office of the Auditor General; it was refused, and he returned to his family ruined in fortune, to be thrown into prison by a public creditor. His confinement was at length ended by the burning of the prison, after which he was permitted to walk unmolested to his home,

where the remainder of his life was passed in poverty and such depression as might well be induced by a recollection of his wrongs and sufferings.

This brief notice of the father furnishes an index to the carly life of our author. He was the youngest son, and his elder brothers being compelled to go from home in order to make their way in the world, he was left without associates to wile away his boyhood in the reading of such books as were in the family library, or could be borrowed in the neighborhood. Country houses, in those days, were not filled with the vagabond literature which cloys, weakens and depraves the mind of the now rising generation. The works apt to be found in them were standard travels, biographies, histories, essays, and treatises in practical religion, and they were rarely too numerous to be well digested during a studious minority, to the great advantage of one's intellectual health and character. Thus, in the society of his mother, and without further instruction than could be obtained at a little log school-house about two miles away, in listless and dreamy solitude passed the early years of the author of "The Dutchman's Fireside," till with the assistance of one of his brothers he obtained a place in a public office in New-York.

His sister had married Mr. Peter Irving, a merchant of high character, afterward well known as a representative of the city in Congress, and through him he became acquainted with his younger brother, Washington Irving, with whom he contracted at once an intimate and lasting friendship. They had written some trifles for the gazettes-Paulding a few hits at the follies of society, and Irving his "Oliver Old

style" essays, and, meeting one evening at a party, it was proposed in a gay conversation to establish a periodical in which to lash and amuse the town. When they next met each had prepared an introductory paper, and as both had some points too good to be sacrificed, they were blended into one, Paulding's serving as the basis. They adopted the title of "Salmagundi," and soon after published a small edition of their first number, little thinking of the extraor dinary success which awaited it. The work had a great deal of freshness; its humor, though unequal, was nearly always lively and piquant, and as its satire was general, every body was pleased. Its reception perhaps determined the subsequent devotion of the authors to literature. The publisher found it profitable, as he paid nothing for the copyright, and on his refusal to make any remuneration for it, with the completion of the second volume it was suspended. In the following half dozen years Mr. Paulding attended to business and cultivated the increasing and brilliant society of wits and men of genius then growing up in the city; and in 1813, having in the mean while written occasionally for the magazines, he printed his next book, "The Lay of a Scotch Fiddle," a satirical poem, and "Jokeby," a burlesque of "Rokeby," in six cantos; and in the succeeding spring "The United States and England," in reply to an attack on C. J. Ingersoll's "Inchiquin Letters," in the Quarterly Review. "The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan," the most successful of his satires, appeared in 1816. The allegory is well sustained, and the style has a homely simplicity and vigor that remind us of Swift. A part of this year was passed in Virginia, where he wrote his

"Letters from the South," published in 1817. The humor in them is not in his happiest vein, and the soundness of some views here displayed respecting education, paper currency, and other subjects, may be questioned; but the volumes contain many interesting sketches of scenery, manners, and personal character, and, with his previous writings, they commended him to the notice of President Madison, who became his warm friend, and secured for him, on the close of the war with England, the secretaryship of the Board of Navy Commissioners, which he held as may be stated. here until he was made Navy Agent in New-York, which office he resigned, after twelve years, to enter the cabinet of President Van Buren.

In 1818 he published "The Backwoodsman," a descriptive poem, and in the next year the second series of "Salmagundi," of which he was the sole author. "Koningsmarke, or Old Times in the New World," a novel founded on incidents in the early history of Swedish settlements on the Delaware, appeared in 1823; "John Bull in America" in 1824; and "Merry Tales of the Three Wise Men of Gotham" in 1826. The idea that the progress of mankind is more apparent than actual, is a favorite one with. him, and modern improvements, and discoveries in political economy and productive labor, and new theories of philosophy, are here ingeniously ridiculed. "The Book of St. Nicholas," a collection of stories purporting to be translated from the Dutch, "The New Pilgrim's Progress," containing some of the best specimens of his satire, and "Tales of a Good Woman, by a Doubtful Gentleman," came out in the three following years.