The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard TaylorConwell, Russell H.
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The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor
Conwell, Russell H.
Taylor, Bayard, 1825-1878
At Corinth he had a startling experience in an earthquake, feeling the
earth rise and fall with that sickening movement, creating a nausea like
the sea-sickness of a whole voyage concentrated into a few minutes, and
saw the stone walls of the house crumbling and splitting about him. He
arrived after the greatest shock had passed, or he would have seen whole
streets of buildings thrown down, for the village was half in ruins
when he reached the place. Near Corinth he saw the plain whereon were
celebrated the Isthmian games and repeated sections of Schiller’s poem,
“The Gods of Greece.”
At Argolis he saw the gateway of Mycenæ, guarded by the celebrated stone
lions, and tried to connect Agamemnon and Orestes with the landscapes.
At Sparta he trod the sward above the buried palaces, and having no
poets’ names to rhyme with Lycurgus and Leonidas, he hurried on to scenes
less suggestive of mere physical endurance and bloody encounters.
In Mania, within the boundaries of ancient Sparta, he was delighted to
find the descendants of the ancient Greeks, whose blood was not diluted
by that of Turks, Slavs, Italians, and Egyptians. He found there what no
other part of Greece visited by him could boast, the Greek face and form
such as Phidias, Praxiteles, and Lysippus portrayed in their immortal
sculptures. At Olympia he saw the home of Xenophon, and the foundations
of that temple of Olympus from whence the Greek chronology was taken,
near which were celebrated the great Olympian Games, around which were
once those sacred groves so often mentioned in Greek poetry and tragedy,
and where the most artistic work of Phidias stood,—the ivory statue of
Jupiter.
At Thebes he recalled the deeds of Pindar, Epaminondas, and the heroes of
the Trojan War.
At Delphi he looked over the forests that clothe the lofty Parnassus,
gazed into the rocky cleft from which the priestesses received their
communications, and saw the sites of temples used for gardens, and blocks
from the sacred shrines used for cellar walls.
At Thermopylæ he marked the spot where the heroes fought and the narrow
gorge where they fell, with feelings of respect and pride. He said that
the story of such deeds should never be allowed to die.
At “Aulis” he saw where Jason launched his ships to sail in search of
the Golden Fleece, and repeated a part of the Argonautic story in modern
Greek.
On all these journeys Mr. Taylor displayed the same fearless, adventurous
spirit, and was frequently in danger. By fortunate accidents he was
prevented from falling into the hands of brigands, and returned to
Athens, after his prolonged journeys, in good health, and with the
accounts of his journeys nearly complete in his pocket.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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