Loving a bottle of beer, or wine, for the sake of sociability, for in his younger days it was universally considered a necessity, he never drank to excess, nor was ever regarded by his companions as an intemperate man. Envious simpletons have sometimes accused him of intemperate habits during those two years; but so well-known and frank was his life, that it would have been then, as it certainly is now, a waste of time to deny so absurd a statement. So-called temperance men are often the most intemperate people known in public life. As temperance, in fact, consists of temperance in all things, as well as in the use of intoxicating drinks, the real temperance people of America will discourage alike the excess in the use of stimulants, and that excess in the use of epithets and misrepresentation, which, by the resulting reaction, encourages the use of that which they wish to prohibit. Intemperate speeches, like intemperate laws, and intemperate drinking, are to be condemned and avoided by all who believe the Highest Moral Standard known to man. It is exceedingly intemperate to circulate a falsehood about any person, and especially of one of our own American family, who has done so much for our nation, and “never wished harm to any man.” It had long been Mr. Taylor’s wish to take his sisters and brother to Europe with him, in order that they might enjoy those scenes which had pleased him so much; and he had often mentioned, in his letters to them from abroad, how much more he would enjoy the advantages of travel, if they could be with him to share in his pleasure. He was too generous to desire the exclusive enjoyment of anything, and was especially anxious that those related to him should reap the benefits of all his labors. Hence, in the spring of 1856 (not without correspondence with one in Gotha, however), he arranged his plans for another series of excursions in Europe, and persuaded his sisters and brother to accompany him. It was during those two years of labor that he made the acquaintance of many of the distinguished literary men of Massachusetts, and in one of those years—1855—he secured the acquaintance and friendship of William Makepeace Thackeray, who visited this country then for the second time, and delivered his long-remembered lectures on the “English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century,” and “The Four Georges.” So well known, and so much respected had Mr. Taylor become, that he was sought by the great of both continents, and when he departed for Europe, in the spring of 1856, the kind wishes of thousands of America’s representative men and women went with him, and a welcome awaited him on the shores of England from as many more. CHAPTER XXVI.