Excerpt from Tales of a Traveler: Selected After a brief __sojourn in Germany and France, Irving went, in 1826, to Spain, where he remained three years, working upon his Life of Columbus. The labor resulted also in three/other books of imperishable beauty and interest, The Alhambra, the Conquest of Granada, and the Legends of the Conquest of Spain. While there he received unexpectedly the appointment of Secretary of Legation to the court of St. James, and in 1830 he resumed his residence in England. His Columbus had just appeared from the press, and honors of every kind now poured in upon him. From the Royal Society of Literature he received the gold medal of King George, and from the University of Oxford the degree of which title, however, his mod esty never permitted him to use. Two years later he returned to America, and met with an overwhelming reception from his ad miring countrymen. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.