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 unwilling3 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 granite4 and marble which stand over the land which was once an impassable marsh5, and pondered, with feelings of great wonder, upon the control which man exercises over nature. The grand squares, the wide Boulevards, the ponderous6 bridges, the extensive palaces, the solid cathedral, and the broad quays7 and docks, give an impression of grandeur8 in simplicity9, which no other city possesses. The great capital has none of that air of gayety and ostentation10 which one notices in Paris and London; but is stately, dignified11, 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 reverently12 along the Unter-den-Linden at Berlin for the first time, trying to get a peep at the distant carriage of the king.
[278]
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 labor13. 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 noted14 men of America, and the calls, to lecture, to write, to visit, to attend dinners, and write editorials, were incessant and persistent15.
The construction of his house took much of his[279] attention, and he ransacked16 his collections of sketches17, and photographs of villas18, 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 clump19 of oaks on the highland20, about a mile to the westward21 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 dedicated22 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 hospitable23 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 yearned25 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 forth26 with a rude hand, and held him aloof27 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 beckoning28 forms which have hovered29 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 miserable30 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.”
Repeated ever, battling with our hold
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 toil35, neglecting sleep and food, eager to teach, determined36 to earn honestly the money[282] which 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 toiled37, 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 lucrative38 field of lecturing.
With his face set, steadfastly40 set, toward the tombs of Goethe and of Schiller, seeing the great obligation he was under, to a Providence41 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 salvation42 of the nation, and his poems had in them the boldest spirit of patriotism43.
[283]
In his poem, “Through Baltimore,” written in April, 1861, he described the approach of the union soldiers to Baltimore, the onset44 of the mob, and closed the story with these words:—
A solemn oath we swore,
To bring the Keystone’s thousands back,
Strike down the dastards who attack,
Through Baltimore!
Bow down, in haste, thy guilty head!
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!
In her black heart the Patriot’s steel;
How sure the bolt that Justice wings;
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 most[284] touchingly55 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 fully24 appreciate the power of those verses, one needs to recall the hesitation56, and the excitement, and the uncertainty57 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 awaken58 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, redeemed59, renewed. The three closing verses we have never forgotten.
“If they should fire on Pickens, let the Colonel in command
Put me upon the rampart, with the flagstaff in my hand:
I’ll hold the Stars and Stripes aloft, and hold them till I die!
I’m ready, General, so you let a post to me be given,
Where Washington can see me, as he looks from highest heaven,
And say to Putnam at his side, or, may be, General Wayne;
‘There stands old Billy Johnson, that fought at Lundy’s Lane!’
[285]
When shell and ball are screeching62 and bursting in the sky,
If any shot should hit me, and lay me on my face,
My soul would go to Washington’s, and not to Arnold’s place!”
In June, the necessity of rest, and the desire to obtain it in such a way as to get pleasure and advantage from his release, influenced him to take a trip to his wife’s old home, and to spend a month at the country residence of a friend which was situated63 on slopes of the Thuringian Forest, not far from Weimar and Gotha. It was a lovely spot, and a pretty cottage, and about him were numberless reminders64 of Schiller and Goethe, with whose names he was so creditably to connect his own. Whether he gained the rest he needed or not, is a question still undecided. Certainly he did not gain as much as he would, had he left Goethe’s “Faust,” and his own new volume of poems behind him, and chafed65 much less under his great suspense66 concerning the results of the American War. He ran up the American flag to the ridge-pole of his cottage, and walked about uneasily, awaiting news from home. He talked of the war with his neighbors and visitors, wrote about it to whomsoever of his friends he thought might not understand the merits of the contest, and, at last, about the 1st of August, hastily broke up his cosy67 housekeeping, and returned to America.
CEDARCROFT, KENNETT SQUARE, PA.
When he again opened the doors of his dwelling68 at Kennett, which he had given the poetical69 name of[286] “Cedarcroft,” it was to welcome to his fireside all who loved their country. But, as he afterwards proudly declared, no traitor ever crossed its threshold. Many distinguished70 men visited him, including members of Congress, and of the President’s Cabinet.
NICHOLAS BRIDGE
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1
incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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marsh
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| n.沼泽，湿地 | |
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ponderous
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| adj.沉重的，笨重的，(文章)冗长的 | |
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quays
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| 码头( quay的名词复数 ) | |
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grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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ostentation
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| n.夸耀，卖弄 | |
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dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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reverently
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| adv.虔诚地 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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ransacked
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| v.彻底搜查( ransack的过去式和过去分词 )；抢劫，掠夺 | |
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sketches
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| n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概 | |
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villas
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| 别墅，公馆( villa的名词复数 )； （城郊）住宅 | |
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clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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highland
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| n.(pl.)高地，山地 | |
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westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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dedicated
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| adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的 | |
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hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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yearned
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| 渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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beckoning
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| adj.引诱人的，令人心动的v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的现在分词 ) | |
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29
hovered
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| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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fret
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| v.(使)烦恼；(使)焦急；(使)腐蚀，(使)磨损 | |
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immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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arrogance
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| n.傲慢，自大 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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lucrative
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| adj.赚钱的，可获利的 | |
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steadfast
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| adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的 | |
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steadfastly
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| adv.踏实地，不变地；岿然；坚定不渝 | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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42
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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44
onset
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| n.进攻，袭击，开始，突然开始 | |
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outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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cleanse
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| vt.使清洁，使纯洁，清洗 | |
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50
slaughter
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| n.屠杀，屠宰；vt.屠杀，宰杀 | |
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51
ashen
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| adj.灰的 | |
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perfidy
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| n.背信弃义，不忠贞 | |
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53
traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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54
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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55
touchingly
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| adv.令人同情地，感人地，动人地 | |
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56
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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58
awaken
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| vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起 | |
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59
redeemed
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| adj. 可赎回的，可救赎的 动词redeem的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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60
odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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61
traitors
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| 卖国贼( traitor的名词复数 )； 叛徒； 背叛者； 背信弃义的人 | |
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62
screeching
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| v.发出尖叫声( screech的现在分词 )；发出粗而刺耳的声音；高叫 | |
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situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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reminders
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| n.令人回忆起…的东西( reminder的名词复数 )；提醒…的东西；（告知该做某事的）通知单；提示信 | |
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65
chafed
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| v.擦热（尤指皮肤）( chafe的过去式 )；擦痛；发怒；惹怒 | |
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66
suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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cosy
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| adj.温暖而舒适的，安逸的 | |
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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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