After several days spent in visiting the small fishing villages along the northern coast, they again turned southward and disembarked at Drontheim, from which place they took passage to Bergen.
From Bergen they travelled on horseback and by boats, over the interior lakes to Christiania, and from that city through the interior of Wermeland and Delecarlia to Stockholm, where they arrived about the middle of September. There Mr. Taylor remained long enough to call on many of the friends whom he had made during the previous winter, and then the “triad” departed for Berlin and Gotha.
CHAPTER XXVII.
His Marriage.—German Relatives.—Intention of visiting Siberia.—Goes to Greece instead.—Dalmatia.—Spolato.—Arrival at Athens.—His first View of the Propylæa.—The Parthenon.—Excursion to Crete.—Earthquake at Corinth.—Mycenæ.—Sparta.—The Ruins of Olympia.—Visit to Thermopylæ.—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 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 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.