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 of[277] June. 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.
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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 his[279] attention, 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 carefully[280] constructed, 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 he[281] longed 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 stil............