The business details connected with his finances and outfit for Spain and China also called him to London, and arranging his tour so as to accomplish these diverse ends he visited Malta, where he was delayed ten days, and then sailed to Sicily, where he witnessed the Catanian centennial festival in honor of St. Agatha, and where he beheld the awful spectacle of Ætna in eruption. From Sicily he sailed up the coast to that Naples which, as a wayfarer in Rome seven years before, he had so much longed to see, and filled his letters with praises of its beautiful bay and charming circle of mountain, city, town, cliffs, and islands. Without changing steamers he proceeded to Leghorn, and going to Florence experienced that delight of all delights,—in Florence a second time. Feeling that his time was limited, and “drawn by an unseen influence,” he hastened on to Venice, and thence through the regions of the Austrian Tyrol to Munich and Gotha. Gladsome days at Gotha! Was it not the country of his beloved friend? Was it not the home of his friend’s niece, Marie Hansen? The daughter of the great astronomer, Peter Andreas Hansen, was a worthy child of a noble sire. Mr. Taylor had listened to her praises, but had hardly hoped to meet her. “Now the night is overpast, And the mist is cleared away: On my barren life at last Breaks the bright, reluctant day.” “Quick, fiery thrills, which only are not pangs Because so warm and welcome, pierce my frame, As were its airy substance suddenly Clothed on with flesh; the ichor in my veins Begins to redden with the pulse of blood, And, from the recognition of the eyes That now behold me, something I receive Of man’s incarnate beauty. Thou, as well Confessest this bright change: across thy cheeks A faintest wild-rose color comes and goes, And, on thy proud lips, Phyra, sits a flame! Oh, we are nearer!—not suffice me now The touch of marble hands, reliance cold, And destiny’s pale promises of love; 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.