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to see them filling it with ice but they were not cutting and would not begin until Monday, so we continued our ride down the river and back through Ames corners. The wind blew and in places the river was drifted full. Sunday was a beautiful day. Eastman and I walked out to the Cemetery. The snow was very deep and Gertrudes barely perceptible mound of snow. There were tears in Eastmans eyes as we stood there and talked of her. To think of her whom he saw last full of life, asleep under the snow. When we came back I got Taylors letters together and in the evening I read some of them. We came back today on the noon train my father and Sara driving us over on the ice. We met Platt at the depot and we three sat together all the way down and

FOREIGN TRIBUTES TO MR. TAYLOR.

Moncure D. Conway, in The Academy.

In a mournful season, the death of Bayard Taylor stands out as an event of exceptional painfulness. A brave and earnest life had just gained its fairly-won summit, commanding a beautiful prospect for itself crowned with the finest opportunity for literary service, when, lo! it has all faded away for ever.

It is but a few months since the apparently robust American author was in London, in Paris, receiving from is friends felicitations upon his appointment as Minister to Berlin, as cordial as those which two great nations exchanged on his departure from home and his arrival at his post. He was young in years, the extent of his work being considered; and his enthusiasm, his freshness of spirit, his happiness, made him seen even youthful. If thirty-four years ago the youth who crossed the Atlantic with only £28 in his pocket, and wandered through Europe for two years, paying his way with correspondence and type-setting, had disclosed his highest vision, it would probably ave fallen beneath the attainment of his fifty-third year.

When the selection for the Berlin Mission as made known the approval was national, and it is probable that the festivities which preceded Bayard Taylor's departure for Germany are unique in diplomatic experience.

[Particulars of Mr. Taylor's early life and literary labors are here omitted.]

While Bayard Taylor travelled he also studied. His perfect acquaintance with German and French languages enabled him to bring European knowledge to the aid of his own fresh American eyes. He recently delivered lectures on Egypt which showed a large amount of study as well as personal observation. He was a good traveler, making friends wherever he went. When he visited China the American legation there at once "attached" him. He was also for a time Secretary of Legation and Chargé d'Affaires at St. Petersburg.

Bayard Taylor's poetical works are numerous and varied in style and subject. "A Book of Romances," "Lyrics and Songs," "Poems of the Orient," "Poems of Home and Travel," are the principal volumes of an original character. Whatever may be the position ultimately awarded him as a poet, one can peruse these volumes without being impressed by his versatility and uniform vigor of thought. Larges as is the quantity of his writing, his poems are never hasty, never slovenly; he might rather, indeed, be criticised for over-elaboration. His finest successes have been in styles and subjects far apart——as in the classical fragment "Hylas," and the dreamy, passionate piece, "The Arab to the Palm." His works are all his own, his style simple and pure, while a certain metaphysical tendency in some of his larger poems has probably prevented their becoming popular. But there can be no doubt that his poetical translation of "Faust" is a great work. The rendering of the second part amounts, indeed, to an interpretation also; while the notes to both volumes constitute a learned and masterly contribution to Faust mythology and Faust literature.

The excellence of this work excites the greater sorry that Bayard Taylor has died before the completion of his Life of Goethe. On this work he has been employed for nearly twelve years. Germany would appear to have recognized him as the man fitted to tell the full history of her greatest son. The Duke of Saxe-Coburg ha long interested himself to procure for the biographer documents of value hitherto unpublished, and the papers of this character which had been entrusted to Mr. Taylor are of the highest importance. There is reason to hope that a work so long on hand has reached a sufficient degree of completeness to be published. It is fortunate for the world that in his wife, a daughter of the late Professor Hansen, the astronomer of Gotha, Mr. Taylor had a true helper, and one thoroughly competent to make the best use of his papers.

In view of the arrest of such unceasing labors, beside a grave in which so much is buried, the latest work of Bayard Taylor will be read with profound interest. "Prince Deukalion," a lyrical drama, published in November by Mr. Trübner, is a poem, in my opinion, too remarkable, in some respects wonderful, to be criticised casually. There are sentences in it that might be written on the tomb of the dead author:

"'Growth is the law——and death.'
Who spoke? Or was it some last echo blown
From ended struggles?"

And these are the last lines of this book which comes to the world along with tidings of his death:

"Now, as a child in April hours
Clasps tight its handful of first flowers,
Homeward to meet His purpose, go!——
These things are all ye need to know."

From the London News.

Mr. Taylor came to Berlin in buoyant spirits, proud of an honor which he justly felt that he had deserved, gratified that he would have enlarged opportunities for bringing Germany and America together, and modestly thankful that new facilities had been opened for the next great literary labor of his life. His appointment was peculiarly welcome to Germany, his reception cordial and even enthusiastic on all sides. He took a boyish, almost näive slight in the attentions and compliments that were paid to him by all classes, from the highest to the lowest; and would relate with a quail frankness and pardonable pride how the Emperor thanked him for making his presentation speech in German instead of the conventional French; or how Prince Bismarck, with that exquisite tact of which he is such a master, received him on his first visit in his garden, and walked up and down with him under the great trees, talking of poetry and literature, and showing a surprising intimacy with the new Minister's own admirable productions. "It shall not be the last time," said the Chancellor, "that we walk in this grove, and hear the singing of the birds and discuss the great masters of poetry." In this kindly assurance he was, of course, incorrect; but there was nothing insincere in the pleasure that he felt and showed in turning from treaties and diplomacy and parliaments to enjoy the society of a poet and a scholar. Indeed, it is hard to see how anybody could be insincere with Mr. Taylor. Although he was a man who had travelled far and known many peoples, he retained through all his experience that gentle, winning manner which disarmed suspicion and converted the suspicious into immediate friends. The grasp of his hand was firm and true, he looked into your eyes steadily and openly, and his smile was indescribably sweet. And yet he was a person of firmness and determination when a wrong was to be corrected, or the right had to be maintained. In his affection for Germany he never forgot, personally or officially, that he was an American; in his hands the interests of the citizens, whether native or adopted, of the Republic were safe. Nor was he a novice in diplomacy. He had served his country in more than one post, and always with credit. He seemed to possess, in an unusual degree for a poet, a practical faculty for affairs; and his successor will find that the routine work of the Legation was well kept up, under his personal direction, almost to the last hour of his life.

Aside, however, from his official relations, Mr. Taylor was accredited in a peculiar degree to the German people. In this sense he was a worthy successor of Mr. Bancroft. If the historian belonged rather to the scholars and professors, Mr. Taylor had long been adopted into the fraternity of poets and wits and purely literary people of Germany, and they welcomed him hither in his new character as one of themselves. The Minister's knowledge of the language was exact and flexible. He had not learned it like a philologist, and perhaps never took a German grammar in his dads; but he had a literary acquaintance, learned through the study of all the masters, and a practical familiarity acquired through years of life in the country, and the most intimate intercourse with the best people. He spoke German fluently on the platform without preparation, and successfully wooed the German muse with his pen. And he had such a complete consciousness of his power over the language that he never needed to display it, but would cheerfully submit to be bored by this ambitious Teutons who essayed their mysterious English in his presence.