Bayard Taylor in 1841, when he was sixteen, contributed to the Philadelphia ‘Saturday Evening Post’ the verses entitled ‘Soliloquy of a Young Poet.’ In 1878, the year of his death, he was still planning new literary enterprises, and in so far as declining health permitted, carrying them out. If unwearied devotion through nearly forty years to the literary life, great fecundity in production, much taste, no little scholarship, and unquestioned sincerity in the exercise of his art entitle one to be called by the honorable name of man of letters, who is more deserving than the author of _The Masque of the Gods_? To be sure, only a few of his many books are read. But Taylor is in no worse case than many men who tower giant-fashion above him. They likewise have written forty volumes and are known and measured by two or three. Taylor was partly of German, partly of English Quaker stock, and could boast an ancestor (Robert Taylor) who had come to America with William Penn. The fourth of the ten children of Joseph and Rebecca (Way) Taylor, he was born at Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, on January 11, 1825. His education was got at the neighboring academies of Westchester and Unionville. He was a rhymester at the age of seven, and had become an industrious writer by the time he was twelve. Having no inclination towards school-teaching and still less towards his father’s vocation, farming, Taylor was apprenticed to a printer. He was presently seized with a passion for travel, and in 1844, with one hundred and forty dollars in his pocket, payment in advance for certain letters he was to write for Philadelphia journals, he set out on a pedestrian tour of Europe. He had a few remittances from home. Greeley promised to print some of his letters provided they were ‘not descriptive’ and that before writing them the young traveller made sure that he had been in Europe ‘long enough to know something.’ Seventeen of Taylor’s letters appeared in the ‘Tribune.’ By rigid economy Taylor managed to get on. But one must have youth to endure the hardships of such a journey. Especially must one have youth if he proposes, as Taylor did, to walk from Marseilles to Paris in the cold winter rains. The history of these two years of wandering is recounted in _Views Afoot, or Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff_ (1846). Taylor returned to America and took up journalism. Failing in an attempt to make of the ‘Phœnixville Pioneer’ a paper according to his ideal, he went to New York (December, 1847). After various experiences he secured a place on the ‘Tribune,’ was rapidly advanced, and became in time a stockholder. He was sent to California to report on the gold discoveries. This journey furnished him with the matter for his second book of travel, _El Dorado, or Adventures in the Path of Empire_ (1850).