Mr. Taylor often remarked that he should never have been a successful traveller had he not been a poet; and it might be added that persons, in whom the power to recall the past through the debris of the present is wholly lacking, had better not travel at all. There are hills in Pennsylvania, or New Hampshire, far more picturesque than the Acropolis, and on them might be erected a tolerably accurate copy of the Propylæa, Erechtheum, and Parthenon as they now stand, and the curious might visit them to observe the beauty of the architecture and remark the foolishness of those who constructed them. Unconnected with any history, and the originals unheard of, they would be nothing but mere monuments to folly, with all their symmetry. Take away from Athens the records of its grand humanity; the stories of its achievements; the tales concerning the wonders of its genius; the renown of its arms; the memories of its misfortunes; and all the life, the spirit, that shines through its fragments, as the soul beams through the eye of a loved face, would be extinguished, and no great good could come from seeing them.
We mention these things, not to excuse Mr. Taylor for his strong assertions concerning the effect these ruins had upon him, but to give to the student a clearer insight into the nature and life of the poet, Bayard Taylor. From Athens, after visiting the king and queen, Mr. Taylor made excursions into the interior, and to the Island of Crete, visiting, in his various tours, Candia, Rhithymnos, Corinth, Leuetra, Mycenæ, Arcadia, Sparta, Parnassus, Platea, Thermopylæ, and various other fields, mountains, and ruins connected with ancient Greece. At Crete he was most graciously welcomed by the Turkish governor, and was treated with the most generous hospitality by the people and officials, throughout a somewhat lengthy journey about the island. It was there that he met the American consul who was going to start the commerce of Crete by bringing in a cargo of rum to exchange for the products of the island, and who was so startled by Mr. Taylor’s frankly avowed hope, that the ship would be wrecked before the curse of drunkenness was added to the other Cretan vices. Mr. Taylor gave a somewhat different version of the affair, not changing however its exposition of his sentiments on the subject of drunkenness. But it is to be supposed, that the consul, who was so severely rebuked, would have the best reason for remembering it, and, as his version throws no discredit on Mr. Taylor, and varies in no important particular from that given by Mr. Taylor, we give the consul the benefit of the story.