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 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 his But while the building was being slowly and carefully 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 “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 money 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 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!” 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 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 most “If they should fire on Pickens, let the Colonel in command Put me upon the rampart, with the flagstaff in my hand: No odds how hot the cannon-smoke, or how the shells may fly; 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!’ And when the fight is hottest, before the traitors fly, When shell and ball are screeching 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 situated 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 reminders 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 chafed much less under his great suspense 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 cosy housekeeping, and returned to America. CEDARCROFT, KENNETT SQUARE, PA. When he again opened the doors of his dwelling at Kennett, which he had given the poetical name of NICHOLAS BRIDGE |