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. The party left Gotha in the early part of December, 1857, and going down the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic Gulf, visited the ancient town of Spolato, where the ruins of the Emperor Diocletian’s palaces are still imposing and beautiful. Without losing the steamer, which put in at all the small ports along the route, they skirted the southern shores of the Gulf of Corinth; and, after crossing the Isthmus near Ancient Corinth, sailed direct for Piræus.