CHAPTER XXVII.

RUSSIAN SLEDGES.

However, the needs of the present crowded out the dreams of the future, as they so often do in the lives of others, and after a delightful summer in the lands he loved, and a visit to those who were now dearer than the most gorgeous landscapes, he determined upon a trip to the frozen regions of Lapland. He undertook that journey with evident reluctance. His communion with the best minds of America and Europe had taught him that of the works which he had published hispoetry would live much longer than his travels. He found that the place of a poet in the scale of human merit was loftier than that of a journalistic traveller. He had left home with a feeling of uncertainty about his future course; but there was no longer hesitation or doubt. He would follow out the routes laid out and keep his promises to the newspapers and publishers, and was determined to acquire an insight into the Scandinavian language in view of an enterprise in the way of translation, which, however, was never fully matured nor undertaken. But his interest in travel had lost its chiefest charms. It would not, could not, satisfy his ambition. Some critics have accounted for this lack of zeal by the nearness of his marriage, which would take him from his wanderings. But the best reason is the one he gave himself; viz., that he desired to undertake some more permanent task—one that should live when his travels were forgotten.

Hence, that indescribable lack which his readers have so universally found in his books of travels published after that date. He could not rid himself of the burden, nor cease to ponder upon the subjects which seemed worthy of a great poem.

Starting from Germany Dec. 1, 1856, and embarking on a steamer which ran between Lubec and Stockholm, he entered upon an undertaking more hazardous and uncomfortable than anything he had ventured upon before. But his experience taught him to fear nothing and to move on so long as any other livingbeing had lived on the same route. He had determined to see a day without a sunrise and a night without a sunset. To be able to state that fact in a book, would, in itself, ensure its ready sale. Of this he had been assured in New York by his friend Dr. E. K. Kane, whose opinion was entitled to much consideration, as the Doctor had been far more extensively engaged in explorations, and had travelled many thousand miles further than Mr. Taylor. Having once decided to see that wonderful sight, nothing in the way of privation could prevent the accomplishment of his purpose.

The steamer from Lubec was a rough, uncouth, inconvenient craft, and the sea-sick voyage which Mr. Taylor and his friend made to Stockholm was not an auspicious beginning for a tour so long and so dangerous. But he relapsed into his old habit, acquired in Asia, of regarding no delay with surprise or impatience, and refusing to feel certain of anything until he possessed it; and as neither carelessness, neglect, lack of sleep or food was allowed to disturb him, he made the company cheerful under the most distressing circumstances.

LAZARETTO CHRISTIANSAND.

On his arrival in Stockholm he could not speak a word of the language, and had to depend mostly upon his own common-sense in the selection of an outfit. But his quick ear and tractile tongue soon caught up words and phrases, the meaning of which he learned by their effect when spoken, and when he started northwardhe was able to ask for nearly everything he needed in the native language. Of his ride from town to town, by diligence and by lumbering sleighs, along the shores of the Bothnian Gulf, we cannot give any extended account, and it can easily be found by any reader who did not peruse it at the time of its publication. But it answers our purpose to note how he appeared and what he suffered. It was a terrible ride. Day after day and night after night he pushed on, losing many meals, and often without sleep, in a temperature creeping downward far below zero, and the sun sinking lower and lower on the southern horizon. Frequently overturned in the snow, his beard and hair a mass of solid ice, his eyelids frozen together, his nose frost-bitten, his hands and feet momentarily in danger of freezing, he kept heroically on his course, allowing no rumors of unendurable cold or impassable mountains, of snow ahead to drive him from his purpose. With a wisdom that saved his life, he fell with perfectabandoninto the habits of Swedes, Finns, and Lapps, as he in turn found himself in their country and society, eating what they ate, and wearing such skins as they wore, and following their habits, excepting their dirt and their promiscuous arrangements for sleeping. Around the gulf to Tornea, and thence to Muoniovara, he sped northward with a haste which astonished the natives, and a shortness of time which has surprised many travellers who have followed him on that difficult route. He made such acquaintancesand such friends on his way northward that they wished him God-speed as he passed on, and welcomed him in a royal manner on his return. On the borders of Lapland he took his first lessons in reindeer-driving, and a most amusing experience he had of it. He could not at first balance himself in the narrow boat which was built for snow navigation, and he was frequently overturned in fathomless piles of snow; and as he did not fully understand how to check the speed of the animal, he flew like the wind over drifts, hollows, and around corners with a most dangerous speed. Many men would have given up the task, after being frozen, kicked, bruised, and pulled half out of joint by the first trial. But such experiences were regarded by him as a joke, and laughing over past mishaps, he tried again and again, until he could guide a deer and balance himself in the narrow pulk as skilfully as the Lapps themselves. He was not a traveller who sought luxury and ease. He wished to sound all the shoals and depths of local experiences. Some of the trials were very hazardous, and make one’s hair rise as he reads of them. Yet Mr. Taylor appears to have put a blind trust in fate and went boldly on. In all these visits and undertakings he forgot not his Muse, and repeated “Afraja” and the “Arctic Lover” when the snow blew too furiously or the cold was too far below zero to engage in original composition.

With the thermometer varying from zero to forty degrees below he traversed the wildest part of Lapland,which lies between the Bothnian Gulf and the Northern Ocean.

At Kautockeino, far beyond the Arctic Circle, he found friends, through the letter of a mutual acquaintance, and recorded with his usual kindness of heart, how good and how generous they were to him. There, too, he saw the day without a sunrise, which he had promised himself to see, and his description of the white earth, the blue sky, the saffron and orange flushes of the morning, and the crimson glow of the evening, all combined in a few moments of time as the sun approached the line of the horizon and sank again without peeping over it, is one of the most charming and graphic paragraphs to be found in literature. There, too, he saw the moon wheel through her entire circuit, without a rising and without a setting. There he made sketches of the dwellings and the people which, after so much practice, he was able to take in a very accurate and artistic manner, and which served afterwards for illustrations in the pages of a magazine. There he met a Lapp by the name of “Lars,” and meeting the name often afterwards, suggested the name for that poem of “Lars,” now as popular in Norway as in the United States. There, in that extreme north, in the house of a native missionary, he found a piano, and was half beside himself with joy when the kind-hearted ministers wife played “Yankee Doodle.” She had heard Ole Bull play it at Christiania, and caught the tune in that way.

His return to Stockholm was more tedious and dangerous than his northward journey, for the weather was colder and the storms more severe. But his reception at the miserable huts along the route, where he had stopped on his journey northward, was always so hearty and friendly that he felt no longer in a strange land. It was a repetition of his experience elsewhere. He was loved at sight, and has not been forgotten to this day by the humble friends he made. Nothing shows the whole-souled manner in which he threw himself into the feelings and habits of the people, better than the expressions which he used in his letters concerning the scenery. He felt so much like a Swede, that he loved the landscapes with the devotion, of a native. Notwithstanding he had used all the superlative terms which our language furnished, in which to describe the scenery of the tropics, yet there he went further and declares with great enthusiasm, that the South had no such beautiful scenery as the ice-bound forests and mountains of Sweden. To him, when he saw them, there were no landscapes to compare with those before him. The transparent crystals, the purity of the snow, the shape of the half-buried trees, the boundless plains of white, and the gleams of acres of diamonds when the frosty spirals greet the morning sun, all possessed a charm beyond the attractions of any other land, so long as he was their associate. He became a Swede, and knew, when his experience was over, just how a Swede lived and how he felt, what heloved and what he enjoyed. Thus he came to a more thorough understanding of the people, and had a better appreciation of their literature, than any other traveller known to the public prints.

On his return to Stockholm, February 14, he set about the work of learning the language and literature of the Swedes. For nearly three months he kept close to his books and his practice in the gymnasium, and although it seems almost impossible, it is said by his associates that he could then read fluently any work to be found in the Norse language.

He left Stockholm on the 6th of May, taking a steamer for Copenhagen, from which place he purposed to take a steamer for Germany. At Copenhagen he met Hans Christian Andersen, the great Danish poet, by whom Mr. Taylor was received most cordially. Thus, one after another, the great men of the world were added to the list of friends found by this son of an humble American farmer. Andersen afterwards sent Mr. Taylor copies of his poems and essays before they were printed, and in many ways showed his regard for the American poet. There Mr. Taylor met Prof. Rafn, the archæologist, and Goldschmidt, the author of the “The Jew,” and editor of a magazine.

Prof. Rafn, gave Mr. Taylor his initiation into the beauties of Icelandic poetry, for the professor was an earnest admirer of northern lore, and loved to converse with any one who took an interest in it. Ho read some of the verses which he especially admired, for Mr. Taylor’scriticism, and Mr. Taylor was so delighted with them that he resolved to study the literature of Iceland and at some time to visit the Island.

From Copenhagen Mr. Taylor hurried over to Germany to look after his friends, and after a stay of a few days hastened to London on business connected with his books. He left London about the first of July, after seeing his relatives depart for America, and taking a steamer at Hull, sailed for Christiania in Norway. The steamer stopped at Christiansand, where the rugged, broken promontories loom up so grandly over sea and bay. No harbor is more picturesque than that of Christiansand, and no coast more uneven. Perhaps the best description of the coast from Christiansand to Apendal, given by Mr. Taylor, is to be found in his poem of “Lars,” wherein Lars and his Quaker wife sailed from Hull for Apendal.

“Calm autumn skies were o’er them and the seaSwelled in unwrinkled glass: they scarcely knewHow sped the voyage until Lindesnaes,At first a cloud, stood fast and spread awayTo flanking capes, with gaps of blue between;Then rose, and showed, above the precipice,The firs of Norway climbing thick and highTo wilder crests that made the inland gloom.In front, the sprinkled skerries pierced the wave;Between then, slowly glided in and outThe tawny sails, while houses low and redHailed their return or sent them fearless forth.‘This is thy Norway, Lars; it looks like thee,’Said Ruth: ‘it has a forehead firm and bold:It sets its foot below the reach of storms,Yet hides, methinks, in each retiring vale,Delight in toil, contentment, love, and peace.’”“‘To starboard, yonder lies the isleAs I described it; here, upon our leeIs mainland all, and there the Nid comes down,The timber-shouldering Nid, from endless woodsAnd wilder valleys where scant grain is grown.Now bend your glances as my finger points,—Lo, there it is, the spire of Apendal.’”

“Calm autumn skies were o’er them and the sea

Swelled in unwrinkled glass: they scarcely knew

How sped the voyage until Lindesnaes,

At first a cloud, stood fast and spread away

To flanking capes, with gaps of blue between;

Then rose, and showed, above the precipice,

The firs of Norway climbing thick and high

To wilder crests that made the inland gloom.

In front, the sprinkled skerries pierced the wave;

Between then, slowly glided in and out

The tawny sails, while houses low and red

Hailed their return or sent them fearless forth.

‘This is thy Norway, Lars; it looks like thee,’

Said Ruth: ‘it has a forehead firm and bold:

It sets its foot below the reach of storms,

Yet hides, methinks, in each retiring vale,

Delight in toil, contentment, love, and peace.’”

“‘To starboard, yonder lies the isleAs I described it; here, upon our leeIs mainland all, and there the Nid comes down,The timber-shouldering Nid, from endless woodsAnd wilder valleys where scant grain is grown.Now bend your glances as my finger points,—Lo, there it is, the spire of Apendal.’”

“‘To starboard, yonder lies the isle

As I described it; here, upon our lee

Is mainland all, and there the Nid comes down,

The timber-shouldering Nid, from endless woods

And wilder valleys where scant grain is grown.

Now bend your glances as my finger points,—

Lo, there it is, the spire of Apendal.’”

Arrangements had been made with his intimate German friend, whom he first met in Egypt, and in whom Mr. Taylor then took such a deep interest, to meet him at the hotel in Christiania, from which place they purposed to start on a trip overland through Norway to Drontheim, and from that city by steamer to the northern capes of Norway, where the summer sun did not rise or set. Another “sacred triad” was formed—one German and two Americans—equally fortunate and equally pleasant with the former triad in Egypt.

Their course lay through the rugged and drear landscape of Southern Norway, and at the time they made their journey the sky was overcast and the air loaded with moisture, giving every bleak cliff a bleaker appearance, and every barren waste a gloomier aspect. With all his poetical nature, Mr. Taylor did not find much to admire on his way to Drontheim. His sympathy was aroused for the poor farmers who dwell in such a solitude as seemed to envelop the land, and he was gladwhen the gleams of the river announced their approach to Drontheim.

From Drontheim they sailed by the Hammerfest line on the 18th of July, following the coast so noted for its fantastic crags and startling cliffs. The coast scenery from Drontheim to Hammerfest is unquestionably the most broken and grand in the world. Its black towers, enormous arches, gigantic peaks, and resounding caverns excel anything in the way of sombre grandeur that travellers elsewhere have described.

As they approached the Arctic Circle the mountains became capped with snow, and chilly winds blew off the land, and the days became so long that the evening and the morning succeeded each other with but an intervening twilight. Gradually the midnights grew brighter until, as they proceeded round the North Cape, the sun shone in all its splendor throughout the twenty-four hours.

After several days spent in visiting the small fishing villages along the northern coast, they again turned southward and disembarked at Drontheim, from which place they took passage to Bergen.

From Bergen they travelled on horseback and by boats, over the interior lakes to Christiania, and from that city through the interior of Wermeland and Delecarlia to Stockholm, where they arrived about the middle of September. There Mr. Taylor remained long enough to call on many of the friends whom he had made during the previous winter, and then the “triad” departed for Berlin and Gotha.

His Marriage.—German Relatives.—Intention of visiting Siberia.—Goes to Greece instead.—Dalmatia.—Spolato.—Arrival at Athens.—His first View of the Propylæa.—The Parthenon.—Excursion to Crete.—Earthquake at Corinth.—Mycenæ.—Sparta.—The Ruins of Olympia.—Visit to Thermopylæ.—Aulis.—Return to Athens.—His Acquirements.

Mr. Taylor was married in October following his return from Norway and Sweden, to Marie Hansen, whose father had already gained a world-wide reputation as an astronomer through his works on Physical Astronomy, and was then winning renown for his “Tables de la Lune,” for which he was given a prize by the English Government, as a public benefactor. He was a man of remarkable mathematical genius, universally respected, and the founder of the Erfurt Observatory near Gotha. It was a family of scholars which received Mr. Taylor as a son and brother, and a fortunate alliance for the world of letters. It would be interesting to our readers, no doubt, to know all about the ceremony, the guests, the letters, and the relatives. But that which at some future day may be elevated to the plane of history, would be mere gossip now; and could only serve, for the present, to bring more vividlybefore his loved ones living, the greatness and reality of their loss.

Not even such an event as his marriage was allowed to interfere with his work. His travels in the North had been in a great measure described in detail from day to day, as he stopped for food and rest, and when he left Stockholm for Germany, a large pile of manuscript had accumulated, which needed correction and arrangement before being sent to his publishers in New York. To this he applied himself closely, and a month after his marriage, was in London making the closing arrangements for the appearance of his book on “Northern Travel,” published by G. P. Putnam & Sons, and containing a condensed account of his winter and summer in the Norse countries.

Immediately after despatching the manuscript for the book, together with several letters for the press, he made his preparations for a winter’s sojourn in Greece. He had purposed to take a trip from St. Petersburg across the continent of Asia, through Siberia to Kamtschatka, and returning through Persia and by the shores of the Black Sea. But it appears that neither Mr. Greeley, nor Mr. Putnam, nor his German relatives approved of the undertaking, which, together with some unsatisfactory financial details, caused him to abandon the snows of Siberia for the sunshine of Attica.

This arrangement must have been a far more pleasant one for him, as Mrs. Taylor and other friends couldaccompany him to Athens, and as that land was so connected with the richest themes for poets and scholars. Many of Byron’s poems had been favorites with Mr. Taylor from his boyhood, and especially familiar were those passages relating to Greece; for the reading-books in use by American scholars, in his school-days, contained, very wisely, several selections from Byron’s patriotic poems relating to Greece. To this was added an appreciation of “Childe Harold,” gained by visiting the Italian scenery where Byron lived during those years of his voluntary exile.

The party left Gotha in the early part of December, 1857, and going down the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic Gulf, visited the ancient town of Spolato, where the ruins of the Emperor Diocletian’s palaces are still imposing and beautiful. Without losing the steamer, which put in at all the small ports along the route, they skirted the southern shores of the Gulf of Corinth; and, after crossing the Isthmus near Ancient Corinth, sailed direct for Piræus.

To a man of Mr. Taylor’s mental capacity and disposition, the country afforded the means for the highest enjoyment. Men may be as unsentimental as a beast, and as regardless of ancient greatness as a savage, and yet their lives will be influenced more or less by a sojourn in old Greece. Later philosophers declare, and attempt to prove it on scientific principles, that the typography of the country, added to the influences of the climate, produced the great minds of ancientGreece. If so, which may be wholly or partially true, then the same hills and the same valleys, combined with the same climate, must influence the mental characteristics of those who live there now. If, however, as is too frequently the fact to make a clear case of the philosophers’ claims, men do reside under the Acropolis and in the Academian groves wholly unaffected by the scenery, certain it is that to a poet whose whole ambition and only joy was found in a determination to follow the lead of Homer, Simonides, and Tyrtæus, it was an ecstasy of mental satisfaction to feel the influence of the surrounding associations. Even Mr. Taylor feared that his name as a poet would lead people to consider his descriptions to be somewhat colored by the imagination, and labored hard to avoid the imputation. He, with great candor and truth, claimed that men are as great as they were in the days of Demosthenes and Aristides, although the community to which they belonged has moved farther west. He did not believe that all the great and noble and good belonged to the past. He recognized the great fact that dead men have better reputations than living ones, and that the longer a man lies in his grave the greater seem his virtues, and the less the number and magnitude of his faults,i. e.if he is not forgotten altogether. So, Mr. Taylor inserted such thoughts in his letters and conversation, for the sake of seasoning his enthusiasm, which he feared was too active. But it was as useless for him as it was for Byron, and as it has been for otherAmerican poets who visited those ancient groves, to keep above or outside the subtle and powerful influences which Greece puts forth. Oh! land of heroes, patriots, poets, philosophers, orators, and musicians! Oh, land of republics and birthplace of fleets! How like a visit to the homes of Solon, Plato, Socrates, and Polycrates it is to walk thy fields, and how like a flight to the homes of the gods, to dream through thy moonlit nights!

Mr. Taylor made the most of his winter in Greece, and visited every place of ancient renown which was accessible to travellers. He scarcely waited for the dawn of his first day in Athens before he hastened to the Acropolis, and admired its marvels and historical suggestions. At the Propylæa, which crowns the mountain with beauty and majesty, where all the destructive inventions of two thousand years have failed to annihilate the monument which Phidias and Calicrates erected to their genius, Mr. Taylor was overwhelmed with emotions, and gazed with wonder at the chaste sculpture which adorns the most graceful structure ever made of marble, and in silent awe contemplated the pillars, cornices, tablets, pavements, and broken ornaments with which he was surrounded. Where was the Coliseum he had praised so much when a boy? Where were the cathedrals, palaces, and castles he had regarded as so sublime? Everything he had seen sank into insignificance beside the ponderous yet exquisitely beautiful pile before him. He was soaffected, that when he spoke he whispered, as if in the presence of Jupiter, and his eyes grew moist as he tried to compass the grandeur of the lofty Parthenon and Propylæa. This language will seem extravagant to the reader who has not felt such sensations. The writer, who makes no pretensions of being a poet either in letters or by nature, has been so filled with the unspeakable grandeur of some of the scenes from the heights of the Alps, Himalayas, and Rocky Mountains, as to find himself, to his own surprise, shedding copious streams of tears. It is a sensation unknown to common experience, and our language has no adequate terms with which to describe it. Such a feeling, beyond a doubt, was that which reigned in his sensitive nature when he stood in the porch of the Parthenon. To him, those marvels of art produced the impression which nothing but the mightiest mountain-peaks could awaken in others. It must have been grand to possess such a nature; and it is grand to follow him through his letters and books. There was the crowning point of all his travel. It had been reserved until near the end of his wanderings, and a fitting climax it was. The poet and traveller amid the ruins of Athens! He spent many happy hours amid the crumbling evidences of Athenian greatness. Temples uncounted lay half-buried in the broken soil. Those of Demeter, Hercules, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hephæstus, Theseus, Dioscuri, could be traced in the earth, or confronted the antiquarian with majestic porches; while the Odeon,Gymnasium, Museum, Aglaurium, Lyceum, Prytanæum, Erechtheum, Propylæa, and Parthenon, can easily be reconstructed in the imagination of any student of Greek history with the aid of their wonderful ruins. And when those colossal edifices stand forth in their beauty, it is but a step to the sublimest dreams, wherein Socrates, Anaxagoras, Pericles, Eschylus, Sophocles, Ictinus, Mnesicles, and their noble cotemporaries, walked through the colonnades, along the payed streets, and among the verdant, classic groves which bordered on the Ilissus. The walls of Athens, extending from Hymettus to the distant sea, the city crowded with the wealth of the commercial world, and the fields as verdant and fruitful as now.

Mr. Taylor often remarked that he should never have been a successful traveller had he not been a poet; and it might be added that persons, in whom the power to recall the past through the debris of the present is wholly lacking, had better not travel at all. There are hills in Pennsylvania, or New Hampshire, far more picturesque than the Acropolis, and on them might be erected a tolerably accurate copy of the Propylæa, Erechtheum, and Parthenon as they now stand, and the curious might visit them to observe the beauty of the architecture and remark the foolishness of those who constructed them. Unconnected with any history, and the originals unheard of, they would be nothing but mere monuments to folly, with all their symmetry. Take away from Athens the records of its grandhumanity; the stories of its achievements; the tales concerning the wonders of its genius; the renown of its arms; the memories of its misfortunes; and all the life, the spirit, that shines through its fragments, as the soul beams through the eye of a loved face, would be extinguished, and no great good could come from seeing them.

We mention these things, not to excuse Mr. Taylor for his strong assertions concerning the effect these ruins had upon him, but to give to the student a clearer insight into the nature and life of the poet, Bayard Taylor. From Athens, after visiting the king and queen, Mr. Taylor made excursions into the interior, and to the Island of Crete, visiting, in his various tours, Candia, Rhithymnos, Corinth, Leuetra, Mycenæ, Arcadia, Sparta, Parnassus, Platea, Thermopylæ, and various other fields, mountains, and ruins connected with ancient Greece. At Crete he was most graciously welcomed by the Turkish governor, and was treated with the most generous hospitality by the people and officials, throughout a somewhat lengthy journey about the island. It was there that he met the American consul who was going to start the commerce of Crete by bringing in a cargo of rum to exchange for the products of the island, and who was so startled by Mr. Taylor’s frankly avowed hope, that the ship would be wrecked before the curse of drunkenness was added to the other Cretan vices. Mr. Taylor gave a somewhat different version of the affair, not changing howeverits exposition of his sentiments on the subject of drunkenness. But it is to be supposed, that the consul, who was so severely rebuked, would have the best reason for remembering it, and, as his version throws no discredit on Mr. Taylor, and varies in no important particular from that given by Mr. Taylor, we give the consul the benefit of the story.

At Corinth he had a startling experience in an earthquake, feeling the earth rise and fall with that sickening movement, creating a nausea like the sea-sickness of a whole voyage concentrated into a few minutes, and saw the stone walls of the house crumbling and splitting about him. He arrived after the greatest shock had passed, or he would have seen whole streets of buildings thrown down, for the village was half in ruins when he reached the place. Near Corinth he saw the plain whereon were celebrated the Isthmian games and repeated sections of Schiller’s poem, “The Gods of Greece.”

At Argolis he saw the gateway of Mycenæ, guarded by the celebrated stone lions, and tried to connect Agamemnon and Orestes with the landscapes.

At Sparta he trod the sward above the buried palaces, and having no poets’ names to rhyme with Lycurgus and Leonidas, he hurried on to scenes less suggestive of mere physical endurance and bloody encounters.

In Mania, within the boundaries of ancient Sparta, he was delighted to find the descendants of the ancientGreeks, whose blood was not diluted by that of Turks, Slavs, Italians, and Egyptians. He found there what no other part of Greece visited by him could boast, the Greek face and form such as Phidias, Praxiteles, and Lysippus portrayed in their immortal sculptures. At Olympia he saw the home of Xenophon, and the foundations of that temple of Olympus from whence the Greek chronology was taken, near which were celebrated the great Olympian Games, around which were once those sacred groves so often mentioned in Greek poetry and tragedy, and where the most artistic work of Phidias stood,—the ivory statue of Jupiter.

At Thebes he recalled the deeds of Pindar, Epaminondas, and the heroes of the Trojan War.

At Delphi he looked over the forests that clothe the lofty Parnassus, gazed into the rocky cleft from which the priestesses received their communications, and saw the sites of temples used for gardens, and blocks from the sacred shrines used for cellar walls.

At Thermopylæ he marked the spot where the heroes fought and the narrow gorge where they fell, with feelings of respect and pride. He said that the story of such deeds should never be allowed to die.

At “Aulis” he saw where Jason launched his ships to sail in search of the Golden Fleece, and repeated a part of the Argonautic story in modern Greek.

On all these journeys Mr. Taylor displayed the same fearless, adventurous spirit, and was frequently in danger. By fortunate accidents he was preventedfrom falling into the hands of brigands, and returned to Athens, after his prolonged journeys, in good health, and with the accounts of his journeys nearly complete in his pocket.

When he left Athens in the spring for Constantinople, he had become acquainted with all parts of ancient Greece, and was able to give to his readers a fund of valuable information concerning the country and its products, the people and their industries. He had kept up that triple life which characterized all his later travels in Europe and Asia, and saw everything modern in the way of manners, races, products, commerce, government, and everything that remained of the ancient days in the shape of monuments, temples, or ruins, together with those undefinable yet real suggestions which come to the poet, and to him alone.

From Constantinople to Gotha.—Visit to Russia.—Moscow and St. Petersburg.—Return to Prussia.—Arrival in the United States.—Incessant Work.—Lecturing and Travels in California.—The Construction of Cedarcroft.—His Patriotic Addresses and Poems.—Visits Germany in 1861.—Anxiety for the Fate of His Nation.—Life at Cedarcroft.

After a short stay in Constantinople, the party, under the guidance of Mr. Taylor, went by steamer to the mouth of the Danube, and thence up that river to his new home at Gotha. Mr. Taylor had set his heart on building a residence in the oak woodland near his old home at Kennett, and now that he was married, his anxiety to see it completed led him to think seriously of returning at once to the United States. Having, however, a vague fear that he might not again visit Europe as a traveller, and being unwilling to leave the largest empire in the world unvisited, he resolved to make a hasty trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg. It was not a tour which he would personally enjoy as he had his stay in Greece, yet it was needed to make complete his knowledge of Europe. Hence he hastened away from Gotha, and, taking Cracow, the salt mines of Wieliczka and Warsaw in his route, arrived at Moscow about the middle ofJune. Having seen the wonders of that ancient capital of Russia, he went by railroad direct to St. Petersburg. There he was much interested in the massive structures of granite and marble which stand over the land which was once an impassable marsh, and pondered, with feelings of great wonder, upon the control which man exercises over nature. The grand squares, the wide Boulevards, the ponderous bridges, the extensive palaces, the solid cathedral, and the broad quays and docks, give an impression of grandeur in simplicity, which no other city possesses. The great capital has none of that air of gayety and ostentation which one notices in Paris and London; but is stately, dignified, grand. Everything is done on a large scale, and the buildings, halls, streets, and parades, are alike suggestive of might, and a strong will. The city is Peter the Great in stone. It conveys the impression to the traveller, of strength without coarseness, and of beauty without display.

Little did Mr. Taylor expect, when he bade those extensive, massive palaces adieu, that he should return to that city, in a few years, as the official representative of a powerful nation. Probably the idea of being again in those galleries of art, was as remote from his calculations as was the idea of being minister of the United States at the court of the German Empire, when he walked reverently along the Unter-den-Linden at Berlin for the first time, trying to get a peep at the distant carriage of the king.

From St. Petersburg, he took the inland route for Prussia, passing through the Baltic provinces, and studying the habits and appearance of the people. His return to Gotha, from Russia, was regarded by himself, and by his friends, as the close of his wanderings, and, with a sigh of relief, he laid down his pen, and declared that he wished for nothing more than to “settle down in a home of his own near the old farm in the States.” A few weeks later, and he was receiving the congratulations of his friends in New York, and had taken his place at the familiar desk in the office of the New York “Tribune.”

Then began another season of closest and severest mental labor. Rest, during his waking hours, seemed impossible, and even the hours which he spent at the Literary Club and at his rooms, were more or less connected with his work. Literature was his work, and literature was his play. He had become enamored of Goethe and Schiller, and already conceived the idea of giving to the world a translation of their best works. He had the “Argument” of the “Poet’s Journal” in his mind, and every visit to the scenes of his first love, in the companionship of the second, served to urge him to complete and publish it.

He had become one of the noted men of America, and the calls, to lecture, to write, to visit, to attend dinners, and write editorials, were incessant and persistent.

The construction of his house took much of hisattention, and he ransacked his collections of sketches, and photographs of villas, palaces, and cottages in the Old World, to find such a plan as he could be satisfied to adopt. It was no child’s play with him to construct the building wherein to make his home. He had thought of the matter from boyhood, and that clump of oaks on the highland, about a mile to the westward of Kennett Square, and within a short distance of the old homestead, had ever been his choice. His years of wanderings had sharpened his desire for a permanent home, and, with characteristic care and thoroughness, he investigated his plans and means. He had owned the land for five years, and had gloried in being the owner of American soil, without which one can hardly claim to be an American. He attended to all the details of rooms, closets, stairways, windows, brick, stone, cornices, roof, tower, with caution and deliberation; and when he contracted with the masons, carpenters, and gardeners, he knew just what was needed, and told to each what was expected of them. There was a ceremony attendant on breaking the ground, a procession, and a box of records deposited in the foundation, when the corner-stone was laid, and such a house-warming when it was dedicated October 18 and 19, 1860, as Americans seldom enjoy. There was feasting, singing, original poetry, original plays, and one of the happiest, merriest companies ever gathered under a hospitable roof.

But while the building was being slowly and carefullyconstructed, with its thick walls of stone and brick, Mr. Taylor, was engaged no less in his editorial tasks. The summer after his return from Europe, he made several excursions in an editorial capacity, one of which took him again to California. The great changes in the city of San Francisco, and in the appearance of the entire State, so far as he visited it, were marvellous, and were as marvellously pictured to the minds of his readers. His time was much occupied in delivering lectures in the various cities of the State; but he used his disciplined eyes and ears to such advantage that he gave in his book the most full and accurate account of California,—its agriculture, its institutions, its lakes, its mountains, its great trees, its mines, its enterprises, and its people,—to be found in any work of the kind now in print. It is astonishing how much he could put into a paragraph, without giving it a crowded appearance!

His time, from the day he returned from California, was mostly engaged in delivering lectures and writing letters. He was not rich, and he was generous. He had a house to build, and to pay for. Furniture must be had, and his accumulated fortune was not large enough for all. Hence he travelled, and he delivered lectures, notwithstanding the disagreeable experiences which he was compelled to endure. He yearned to be at the translation of “Faust”; but necessity drove him to talk of travel and biography. He had a home, for “it is home where the heart is,” and helonged to be in it. But necessity sent him forth with a rude hand, and held him aloof from his own. Oh! that is the saddest experience in human life! To feel called to a certain work; to know that there is one task for which one is peculiarly fitted by nature and by discipline; to see before him still the beckoning forms which have hovered in the glory of every setting sun, since earliest childhood; to feel that one’s productions, which might be valuable, are unfinished, and hardly shaped, before they are forced into the hands of conscienceless critics, is one of the most miserable conditions in life. This condition, which has worn out so many men of genius, and which has, with tyrannical coldness, compelled authors to fence up their own literary highway, or die, was not felt by Mr. Taylor in that degree that it was by some of his cotemporaries,—and by many since his time. But he felt it often enough and keenly enough to sympathize with others, and most forcibly expressed their feelings in his “Picture of Saint John.”

“But soon assailed my home the need of gold,The miserable wants that plague and fret,Repeated ever, battling with our holdOn all immortal aims, lest, overboldIn arrogance of gift, we dare forgetThe balanced curse; ah, me! that finest powers,Must stoop to menial services, and setTheir growth below the unlaborious flowers.”

“But soon assailed my home the need of gold,

The miserable wants that plague and fret,

Repeated ever, battling with our hold

On all immortal aims, lest, overbold

In arrogance of gift, we dare forget

The balanced curse; ah, me! that finest powers,

Must stoop to menial services, and set

Their growth below the unlaborious flowers.”

Yet manfully did he toil, neglecting sleep and food, eager to teach, determined to earn honestly the moneywhich he was to receive. He desired to have a home free from debt, to which he could invite his friends, and feel that his hospitality could be safely and honestly extended to all those whom he loved and honored. So he toiled, as men seldom toil, using every moment on railway and steamboat, to write out those pages which his engagements prevented him from doing at home. As a consequence, his health began to decline, and oft-repeated warnings of friends and of physicians, which he tried to keep from the knowledge of his relatives, drove him from the lucrative field of lecturing.

With his face set, steadfastly set, toward the tombs of Goethe and of Schiller, seeing the great obligation he was under, to a Providence which had so richly endowed him, to give to man some masterpiece, he turned at once toward his loved Germany, when he felt the necessity of a change of home, and a change of work.

But the exciting events immediately preceding the War of the Great Rebellion, so stirred his patriotic soul, that he turned his thought and work into patriotic channels, and worked on until late in the spring of 1861. His words in the newspapers, in the magazines, and on the rostrum, were ringing trumpet-calls to the defence of the Republic. The Chinese say that “there are words which are deeds.” That could be said of those Mr. Taylor uttered. His public addresses were enthusiastic appeals for the salvation of the nation, and his poems had in them the boldest spirit of patriotism.

In his poem, “Through Baltimore,” written in April, 1861, he described the approach of the Union soldiers to Baltimore, the onset of the mob, and closed the story with these words:—

“No, never! By that outrage black,A solemn oath we swore,To bring the Keystone’s thousands back,Strike down the dastards who attack,And leave a red and fiery trackThrough Baltimore!Bow down, in haste, thy guilty head!God’s wrath is swift and sore:The sky with gathering bolts is red,—Cleanse from thy skirts the slaughter shed,Or make thyself an ashen bed,O Baltimore!”

“No, never! By that outrage black,A solemn oath we swore,To bring the Keystone’s thousands back,Strike down the dastards who attack,And leave a red and fiery trackThrough Baltimore!

“No, never! By that outrage black,

A solemn oath we swore,

To bring the Keystone’s thousands back,

Strike down the dastards who attack,

And leave a red and fiery track

Through Baltimore!

Bow down, in haste, thy guilty head!God’s wrath is swift and sore:The sky with gathering bolts is red,—Cleanse from thy skirts the slaughter shed,Or make thyself an ashen bed,O Baltimore!”

Bow down, in haste, thy guilty head!

God’s wrath is swift and sore:

The sky with gathering bolts is red,—

Cleanse from thy skirts the slaughter shed,

Or make thyself an ashen bed,

O Baltimore!”

On the 30th of April, 1861, he wrote an address to the American people, the last verse of which expressed the sentiment of the whole poem and we insert it here:—

“Slow to resolve, be swift to do!Teach ye the False how fight the True!How bucklered Perfidy shall feelIn her black heart the Patriot’s steel;How sure the bolt that Justice wings;How weak the arm a traitor brings;How mighty they, who steadfast standFor Freedom’s Flag and Freedom’s Land!”

“Slow to resolve, be swift to do!

Teach ye the False how fight the True!

How bucklered Perfidy shall feel

In her black heart the Patriot’s steel;

How sure the bolt that Justice wings;

How weak the arm a traitor brings;

How mighty they, who steadfast stand

For Freedom’s Flag and Freedom’s Land!”

But the poem which created the greatest enthusiasm at the time of its publication, and which is still a mosttouchingly inspiring selection, was written at about the same time as the “Address to the American People,” possibly ten days later, and it was given the title of “Scott and the Veteran.” To fully appreciate the power of those verses, one needs to recall the hesitation, and the excitement, and the uncertainty which the nation felt in that dark hour. In a time like that, a few clear, unmistakable words work wonders with a people. Well does the writer recall the electrical effect of that poem in 1861, when read at a patriotic gathering of the yeomen, in a valley of the Berkshire Hills, in Western Massachusetts. The lines were not so polished, nor the words so choice as many other verses which Mr. Taylor had written; but they seem to come again as they were then recited, and awaken memories of mountain glens, and “mountain boys”; of camps and battles, of fields of cotton made fields of carnage; of loved faces looking skyward, cold and still; of a nation saved, redeemed, renewed. The three closing verses we have never forgotten.

Back to Index Next