But, clasping thee as mortal passion clasps
Bosom to Bosom, let my being thus
Assure itself, and thine.”
—Taylor’s Deukalion.
After a few weeks spent in and about that pleasant city, to which he was destined to return and claim his bride, and in which he was to pass many of the sweetest days of his life, he journeyed to London. There he made his arrangements for a trip into China, and hastened away to Gibraltar.
On the 6th of November he left the great rock and took passage in a steamer for Cadiz, in Spain. There he walked the streets three thousand years old, and wherein, it is said, that Hercules strode. Yet there is but little now to be seen that would remind one of antiquity. He noticed, however, the beautiful and graceful women. From Cadiz he went by boat up the Guadalquiver River to the pretty town of Seville. There were the old Moorish houses; there the massive Cathedral; there the Saracenic palace of Alcazar, with all its porches, galleries, arches, and sculptures; there was the palace called Pilate’s House, with its decorations from Arabia, and inscriptions from the Koran; and there was the museum containing Murillo’s best paintings.
But it requires only a short time to visit all the attractions of Seville, and Mr. Taylor soon proceeded to Granada. In nearly all the cities which he visited he was reminded, directly or indirectly, of the visit of his friend, Washington Irving. He found the same guides, or lodged at the same hotel, or visited some celebrated locality of which Irving had written.
In Granada was the celebrated fortress of Alhambra, which was captured from the Moors by the troops of Ferdinand and Isabella the same year that Columbus discovered America; there was the palace of Charles V.; there the Carthusian convent, the Monastery of St. Geronimo, and there the cathedral with the remains of Ferdinand and Isabella. He made a hasty trip to Cordova and its ancient Moslem mosque. Then, visiting Alhama, Malaga, and Ronda, he returned hastily to Gibraltar and examined the renowned fortress, said to be the strongest citadel in the world.
In that somewhat hasty view of Southern Spain he obtained much valuable information and an experience which often served him in his literary work as a writer for the public press. Southern Spain and Southern France, next to Rome itself, are replete with warlike and romantic associations. Gauls, Romans, Moors, and Spaniards, have made nearly every plain a battle-field; and the toppling walls of the ancient towers and palaces tell of the fiercest contests, the most terrible inquisitions, and the narrowest of narrow escapes. Song and story in prose and rhyme have combined in every form to make the land attractive, and it is a matter of deep regret that Mr. Taylor, who was so capable of developing all these characteristics, had not more time in which to visit them and write out his experience.