Hudson,  and  continued  to  make  it  his  abode  for  the  rest  of  his
life.  Those  who  passed  up  and  down  the  river  before  the  year
1835,  may  remember  a  neglected  cottage  on  a  green  bank,  with
a  few  locust-trees  before  it,  close  to  where  a  little  brook  brings
in  its  tribute  to  the  mightier  stream.  In  that  year  Irving  be-
came its  possessor  ;  he  gave  it  the  name  it  now  wears,  planted
its  pleasant  slopes  with  trees  and  shrubs,  laid  it  out  in  walks,
built  outhouses,  and  converted  the  cottage  into  a  more  spacious
dwelling,  in  the  old  Dutch  style  of  architecture,  with  crow-steps
on  the  gables  ;  a  quaint,  picturesque  building,  with  "  as  many
angles  and  corners,"  to  use  his  own  words,  "  as  a  cocked  hat."
He  caused  creeping  plants  and  climbing  roses  to  be  trained  up
its  walls  ;  the  trees  he  planted  prospered  in  that  sheltered  situa-
tion, and  were  filled  with  birds,  which  would  not  leave  their
nests  at  the  approach  of  the  kind  master  of  the  place.  The
house  became  almost  hidden  from  sight  by  their  lofty  summits,
the  perpetual  rustlings  of  which,  to  those  who  sat  within,  were
blended  with  the  murmurs  cf  the  water.  Van  Tassel  would
have  had  some  difficulty  in  recognizing  his  old  abode  in  this  lit-
tle paradise,  with  the  beauty  of  which  one  of  Irving's  friends  *
has  made  the  public  familiar  in  prose  and  verse.
