Salmagundi; or, The whim-whams and opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, esq. [pseud.] and others. By William Irving, James Kirke Paulding and Washington Irving. Printed from the original ed., with a preface and notes by Evert A. Duyckinck.

RON-BOUND PHYSIOGNOMIES. 267
and entertainment, has the good of his fellow citizens at heart,
a retrospect is but a sorry amusement. Like the industrious
husbandman, he often contemplates in silent disappointment his
labors wasted on a barren soil, or the seeds he has carefully
sown, choked by a redundancy of worthless weeds. I expected
long ere this to have seen a complete reformation in manners
alid morals, achieved by our united efforts. My fancy echoed to
the applauding voices of a retrieved generation; I anticipated,
with proud satisfaction, the period, not far distant, when our
work would be introduced into the academies with which every
lane and alley.of our cities abounds; when our precepts would
be gently inducted into every unlucky urchin by force of birch,
and my iron-bound physiognomy, as taken by WVill Wizard, be
as notorious as that of Noah Webster, junr. Esq. or his no less
renowned predecessor, the illustrious Dilworth of spellingbook immortality.* But, well-a-day! to let my readers into
a profound secret —the expectations of man are like the varied
hues that tinge the distant prospect; never to be realized, never
to be enjoyed but in perspective. Luckless Launcelot, that the
humblest of the many air castles thou hast erected should prove
a "baseless fabric!" Much does it grieve me to confess, that
* Dr. Francis, in his remarks on the life and character of Washington
Irving, before the Historical Society, alludes to this conflict of spellingbooks at the school in which they were both instructed. " There was a
curious conflict existing in the school between the principal and his
assistant instructor; the former a legitimate burgher of the city, the latter a New England pedagogue. So far as I can remember, something
depended on the choice of the boy's parents in the selection of his
studies; but if not expressed otherwise, the principal stuck earnestly to
Dilworth, while the assistant, for his section of instruction, held to Noah
Webster."