His visit to the Mexican capital was an occasion of great interest to him, and brought up freshly and vividly the story which Prescott has so well told of the Aztecs and the heroic age of Cortez. No scene in Europe is said to combine such extremes of sweetness and grandeur, of light and shade, of valley and hill, of plain and cragged highland, of land and water, of art and nature, as the valley of Mexico. There he saw the evidences of prehistoric civilization, and looked with curiosity and awe upon the towering fortress of Chapultepec, which connects the present with the ages past. However, Mr. Taylor could not stop long in that charming vale, and hastened on over the battle-fields of Scott to Vera Cruz. From Vera Cruz he went by steamer to Mobile, from thence overland to Charleston, S. C., and by way of North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, to New York, where, about the middle of March, he resumed his duties as editor of the “Tribune” with the thought that there he might stay the remainder of his life. CHAPTER XVI. The Poet’s First Love.—Playmates.—Miss Mary S. Agnew.—His Fidelity.—Poems Inspired by Affection.—Her Failing Health.—Consumption.—His Return to Her.—The Marriage at the Death-bed.—Her Death.—The Poet’s Grief.—His Inner Life.—The Story in his own Rhyme. We now enter upon the most holy ground ever trod by the biographer,—the sacred recesses of the human heart. In the annals of ordinary life, or even in those of many great men, the record of their early love may not be important to the reader. But to the poet, these more subtle and more tender emotions are events of the greatest importance. Every heart contains more or less of the poetical sentiment, and the love and marriage of any individual is a matter of great moment to him, although it may not be to his biographer. But here we write of a poet. To him, all the strings of human feeling had a clear and unmistakable sound. To him, the undertones of life played an important part in the harmony of his being. All that was pure and sweet in love he saw. All that was beautiful and lovable in life he felt, with a keenness none but the poet can know. Hence to him, we find, as in the history of the grand poets of ancient days, his love was a holy sentiment, to be valued as God’s best gift, and to be worshipped as a part of Him.