‘While memory bids me weep thee, Nor thoughts nor words are free, The grief is fixed too deeply That mourns a man like thee.’ “JAMES T. FIELDS.” “DEAR SIR:—I am very sorry that my engagements compel me to decline your invitation to attend the meeting in memory of Bayard Taylor. But no one will say any word of praise of his manly and generous character, or of gratitude for his noble example of faithful industry, to which my heart will not respond. I knew him well for nearly thirty years, and when I said good-by to him last May, as he departed, amid universal applause and satisfaction, upon a mission to Germany, he was as frank and simple and earnest as the youth whom I remember long ago. He died in the fulness of his activity and hope; but the death of a man so true and upright leaves us a sorrow wholly unmixed with the wish that his life might have been different, or with regret that it was only a promise. Like the knight-at-arms, whose name he bore, he was a gentle knight of letters, without fear and without reproach, and by those of us who personally knew him well he will be long and tenderly remembered. “Truly yours, “GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.” “DEAR SIR:—Nothing but an imperative engagement elsewhere could keep me from uniting with those friends of my friend—Bayard Taylor—who propose next Friday, in Boston, to commemorate his life and virtues. From our professional association, I could not but know him intimately, and he was one of the few men of distinction with whom every added year of intimacy continued to brighten, not merely your affection, but also your respect. The essential characteristic alike of his life, and his work, was its inherent honesty. He described what he saw; he wrote what he thought; he meant friendship if he gave you his hand. I never knew him to shrink from expressing an opinion, merely because it was unpopular; and, I am sure, he never sought a man merely because the man was powerful. He had an honest pride in what he had done,—a pride that made him eager to share his good fame and fortune with his earliest and humblest friends. He had the genius of hard work. He did many things; he came to do most of them extremely well, and not a few of them easily; but he never undertook any task, however familiar, or however humble, without doing his best. Those who did not know him, have sometimes described him as more German than American; but if these be German qualities, we may well be eager to see them naturalized.