The New -York Historical Society Sevilla he wrote to Alexander H. Everett on February 14, 1829, "I am loath to see a man superseded who has filled his station worthily. These frequent changes in our administration are prejudicial to the country: we ought to be wary of using our power of changing our Chief Magistrate when the welfare of the' country does not demand it." Well, after the recent election of F.D.R. to a fourth term there would have been no occasion for Washington Irving to criticize if he continued to feel that frequent changes of administration were "prejudicial," but after living seventeen years abroad he processed that "his feelings & political creed was changed," that the contrast between the discontent of Europe and "the general animation, cheerful pressing on to something better ahead, which appeared everywhere in this country, kept him in a fever of excitement and exultation." And Philip Hone, in his diary, describes a party given in Irving's honor on May 24th, 1832, from which Irving "came out a Jackson man." Now to go back a little: — Irving never married: he was very much in love with Matilda, the daughter of a distinguished lawyer in New York, Josiah Ogden Hoffman, with whom he got his first law job, but shortly after the engagement was announced Matilda became ill and died, leaving a very disconsolate Washington. After the publication of Knickerbocker's History there was a lull in the literary ambitions of Irving; he rested on his laurels and took it easy until the war with England induced him to accept an appointment as Secretary to Governor Tompkins, which position he held down until peace was declared in 1815, when he felt the urge to go abroad again, and this time he remained on the other side those seventeen years referred to earlier. In 1819 Irving published the book by which he is most popularly known — the Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. This was heartily welcomed on both sides of the Atlantic and two of the stories, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy 10