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1Author:  Irving Washington 1783-1859Requires cookie*
 Title:  The sketch book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the town-crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the range of my observations. My holiday afternoons were spent in rambles about the surrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places famous in history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery had been committed, or a ghost been seen. I visited the neighbouring villages, and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits and customs, and conversing with their sages and great men. I even journeyed one long summer's day to the summit of the most distant hill, from whence I stretched my eye over many a mile of terra incognita, and was astonished to find how vast a globe I inhabited. It is with feelings of deep regret that I have noticed the literary animosity daily growing up between England and America. Great curiosity has been awakened of late with respect to the United States, and the London press has teemed with volumes of travels through the republic; but they seem intended to diffuse error rather than knowledge; and so successful have they been, that, notwithstanding the constant intercourse between the nations, there is none concerning which the great mass of the British people have less pure information, or more prejudices. On a soft sunny morning, in the month of May, I made an excursion to Windsor, to visit the castle. It is a proud old pile, stretching its irregular walls and massive towers along the brow of a lofty ridge, waving its royal banner in the clouds, and looking down with a lordly air upon the surrounding world. It is a place that I love to visit, for it is full of storied and poetical associations. On this morning, the weather was of that soft vernal kind that calls forth the latent romance of a man's temperament, and makes him quote poetry, and dream of beauty. In wandering through the magnificent saloons and long echoing galleries of the old castle, I felt myself most disposed to linger in the chamber where hang the portraits of the beauties that once flourished in the gay court of Charles the Second. As I traversed the “large green courts,” with sunshine beaming on the gray walls, and glancing along the velvet turf, I called to mind the tender, the gallant, but hapless Surrey's account of his loiterings about them in his stripling days, when enamoured of the Lady Geraldine— “With eyes cast up unto the maiden's tower, With easie sighs, such as men draw in love.” A COLLOQUY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
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