With the French authors he did not have a very extended personal acquaintance, although he had met many of them, and frequently exchanged books with Victor Hugo and Guillaume Lejean. His acquaintances in America included nearly every living author of his generation, and he numbered among his intimate friends the most gifted men in the land. Nearest to him, perhaps, stood Richard H. Stoddard, of New York, and his talented wife, Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard. Both were born in Massachusetts, and have frequently spent the summer months at Mrs. Stoddard’s old home in Mattapoisett, in company with Mr. Taylor and his family. A jolly household it was, when the Taylors and the Stoddards united their families, as they frequently did, in the city, or on the seashore. One of Mr. Stoddard’s many books, viz., the Life of Humboldt, contains an introduction by Mr. Taylor, and many of Mr. Taylor’s poems were submitted to Mr. and Mrs. Stoddard for their criticism, before he published them. With them, and with Mr. George Ripley, he appears to have maintained the most confidential relations to the day of his death. Many of his early friends have preceded him to that “silent shore,” and many tears did he shed over their graves. Nathaniel P. Willis, his earliest friend in the great city, who encouraged him and introduced him into a literary life, died at his home of “Idlewild,” in 1867. Washington Irving, who in his old ago was earnest enough to leave his home at “Sunnyside” and go to New York, to urge Mr. Taylor to persevere in his poetical undertakings, and whose advice assisted Mr. Taylor so much in his various trips into Spain, died in 1873. Dr. E. K. Kane, who aided Mr. Taylor in laying out his route through Norway, and whose letters of introduction and commendation to George Peabody, the great banker, and to other influential men in England, opened the way for Mr. Taylor into the best society of that capital, did not live to meet Mr. Taylor on his return from Norway, as had been arranged, but died alone, at Havana, in 1857. William Cullen Bryant, whose master-pieces were Mr. Taylor’s study, and whose personal friendship was so much valued, that Mr. Taylor visited the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, wherein the “Thanatopsis” had its birth, to note “if the scenes would have the same influence on a stranger, that they appeared to have had on a native,”—he whose counsel and companionship had, through many years, been counted among the “richest boons of life,” died a few months before Mr. Taylor, and the shadow had not passed from Mr. Taylor’s brow, and his poetical tribute to Bryant was hardly in print, before he was called “to join the caravan that moves to that mysterious realm.” Fitz-Greene Halleck, who used to caution the young poet, and who took pride in every new achievement of the traveller, died in 1867.