George P. Bradford had the department of Belle Lettres. Of him, after
his decease, his former friend and pupil, George William Curtis, wrote
as follows in _Harper's Monthly_ for May, 1890:--
"The recollection of George Bradford is that of a long life as serene
and happy as it was blameless and delightful to others. It was a life
of affection and many interests and friendly devotion; but it was not
that of a recluse scholar like Edward Fitzgerald, with the pensive
consciousness of something desired but undone. George Bradford was in
full sympathy with the best spirit of his time. He had all the
distinctive American interest in public affairs. His conscience was as
sensitive to public wrongs and perilous tendencies as to private and
personal conduct. He voted with strong convictions, and wondered
sometimes that the course so plain to him was not equally plain to
others.
"It was a life with nothing of what we call achievement, and yet a life
beneficent to every other life that it touched, like a summer wind
laden with a thousand invisible seeds that, dropping everywhere, spring
up into flowers and fruit. It is a name which to most readers of these
words is wholly unknown, and which will not be written, like that of so
many of the friends of him who bore it, in our literature and upon the
memory of his countrymen.
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