72 Washington Irving.
the back side nearly to the ground. The hillside orchard and the inevitable cabbage-plot completes the picture.
We are somewhat weary with our day's tramp, the sun is low in the west, our carriage is waiting at the appointed place, and so we ride slowly back over the hills to Tarrytown. In the morning we are driven down the broad shady streets toward Sunnyside. Probably nowhere outside of England are there so many attractive country-
seats as beautify the landscape here on the eastern hillside shore of the Hudson. Nature furnished as picturesque scenery as there is in the world, and wealth has adorned it in a most luxurious manner. Almost every style of architecture is represented, from the gray old
feudal-castle looking structures which stand upon the topmost heights, the plain but rich home of the world renowned millionaire with its white marble pillars and semi-Grecian porticos, to the most ornate of modern Elizabethan cottages.
The finest cattle in the country graze contentedly in luxuriant pastures. Grand old willows and elms hang over moss-covered walls or droop their branches in mimic lakes.
Our driver turns out of the broad macadamized road to the right and we find we have entered the " lonely, rambling, down-hill lane,
overhung: with trees which leads to the historic cottagre." On the right is the stately country-seat of Edward S. Jaffray, whose estate
adjoins Sunnyside. Then is the " neighboring ravine," down which Sunnyside brook goes babbling toward the Tappan Zee, and in a few minutes we drive up to the gateway which opens into the grounds in
front of the historic cottage. Its windows and many gables look out from a mass of ivy and woodbine and rose vines, which almost completely cover the walls. The old gardener who lived with Mr. Irving
for many years and still survives him, told us that the original slips of the ivy vines were clipped by Sir Walter Scott from those growing
at Abbotsford, and by him sent over to Irving-.
Mr. Irving's nieces still occupy the cottage, and by them we were kindly admitted to the room which the author occupied as his study,
