John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

The Sun, to the making of which he had given his constant thought and his best work, had become not only the most powerful, but one of the most profitable newspapers of the day. It had made him rich, and surrounded him with comfort and luxury, and with these, as the fierceness of the struggle abated, came the desire and the determination to travel beyond sea. So long as he was on duty at his task of making a daily newspaper, it was as natural for him to do the work of writer and editor as it was for the mechanic to ply the art by which he made his living. With the regularity of the clock, day in and day out, week in and week out, year in and year out, he devoted himself to his task, till the time came for him to play, and then he played with just as much earnestness and joy as he had worked. Always a student of languages, literature, art, and philosophy, he gave them every day of his life such a part of his time as he could spare from actual work. And in this no Chinese scholar who works throughout life and never finishes his education could have been more avaricious of his time or more methodical in the use he made of it.

As will be remembered, Dana made his first visit to Europe to observe and report upon the revolutionary movements of 1848 and 1849. He made his second visit in 1879, and his third in 1882. During the next decade he went many times, his travels lasting three or four months and taking him in turn to England, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. While he manifested but little curiosity to see the rulers or the courts, or to mingle with the official classes, he studied the people closely and gave much time to art of every kind. On one of his visits to Rome he had a private audience of the pope, during which they discussed Dante and quoted from the “Divine Comedy,” to their mutual gratification. On another he crossed the Black Sea, and, after visiting Tiflis, went north through the Caucasus to Nijni-Novgorod, Moscow, St. Petersburg,