“Always a charming companion, Bayard Taylor was delightful in his own home at Cedarcroft. I remember visiting him there when he gave his ‘house-warming,’ and the merriment we had over a play which we wrote together, speech by speech, and scene by scene, and which we performed to the great delectation of his friends and neighbors. Many of the latter had never seen a theatrical performance before, and, I dare say, have never seen one since. Our play was a great success, and ought to have been, for there was not a word in it which had not done duty a thousand times before! We called it ‘Love in a Hotel.’ ‘Miller Redivivus’ would have answered just as well, if not better. “The recollections of thirty years cannot be recalled at will, and seldom while those who shared them with us are overshadowed by death.” I remember merry days and nights without number, and I remember sorrows which are better forgotten. One of my sorrows was deeply felt by Bayard Taylor, who, fresh from the reading of the second part of ‘Faust,’ saw in my loss a vision of Goethe’s ‘Euphorion.’ “The last time, but one, when I saw my friend alone was three or four nights before his departure for Berlin. It was one night at my own house, at a little gathering to which I had invited our common friends, comrades of ten and twenty years’ standing, poets, artists, and good fellows of both sexes. It was notable on one account, for our great poet Bryant came thither to do honor to his younger brother, Bayard Taylor. I cannot say that it was a happy night, for it was to be followed by an absence which was close at hand,—an absence which was to endure forever. Before two months had passed, the Nestor of our poets was gathered to his fathers in the fullness of his renown. His sons bewailed their father; my good friend Stedman, in a noble poem in the ‘Atlantic Monthly,’ and Bayard Taylor in a solemn ‘Epicedium’ in ‘Scribner’s Monthly.’ And now Bayard Taylor is gone! “‘Insatiate archer, could not one suffice?’ The world of American letters has lost a poet in Bayard Taylor; but we who knew and loved him—have lost a friend. “R. H. STODDARD.” “NEW YORK, DEC. 19, 1878.” Mr. Edmund C. Stedman, the poet, who enjoyed a very close intimacy with Mr. Taylor, spoke of him to the editor as follows:—