His Marriage.—German Relatives.—Intention of visiting Siberia.—Goes to Greece instead.—Dalmatia.—Spolato.—Arrival at Athens.—His first View of the Propyl?a.—The Parthenon.—Excursion to Crete.—Earthquake at Corinth.—Mycen?.—Sparta.—The Ruins of Olympia.—Visit to Thermopyl?.—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 vividly[266] before 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 could[267] accompany 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 Pir?us.
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 ancient[268] Greece. 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 Tyrt?us, 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 other[269] American 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 Propyl?a, 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 so[270] affected, 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 Propyl?a. 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............