CHAPTER IX.

Visit to the Home of Burns.—The Poet’s Cottage.—The Celebration.—Walks and Rides in the Rain.—Edinburgh.—Its Associations.—The Teachings of History.—Home of Drummond.—Abbotsford.—Melrose.—Jedburgh Abbey.—Newcastle-on-Tyne.

Bayard’s visit to Ayr was the first of a long series of like visitations to the homes of celebrated poets, and being then a novel experience was doubly enjoyed. It may be that the similar occupation, and like inspiration, which characterized both himself and Burns, made the spot more attractive. Had they not both followed the plough through the thick sward? Had not both milked the cows; drove the horses to the water; planted the corn; dug up the weeds; cut the hay, and all the while sang and recited original verses? Had he not been ridiculed by his playmates, and sneered at by his neighbors, in common with that great poet of Scotland? To look over the farm on which Burns toiled; to be shown the spot on which it is claimed Burns overturned—

“That wee bit heap o’ leaves and stibble,”

the home of the “mousie,” and to be shown the cottage he was born in, and the scenes which inspiredhis songs, interesting as they are to the writer of prose, must have been peculiarly satisfactory to him. He does not speak of it, however, with the enthusiasm one would expect, and it is quite probable that he was not yet wholly inured to the inconveniences of a wet climate, and could not think or muse in a crowd as satisfactorily as when dry and alone. When he arrived in the town, the streets were filled by an immense throng, and there could have been little satisfaction in trying to fall into poetical dreams. It is a great satisfaction to those of Bayard’s friends who have loved him, and put their faith in him, to know that he put himself on record in some of his early letters, in no light terms, as having an unutterable disgust for the drunken brawling which went on in the name of Burns that day in Ayr. He felt, with great keenness, the disgrace which every American feels that it is to Scotland, that the old cottage, so sacred for its associations as the birthplace of Burns, should be occupied as a drinking-saloon, and be crowded with intoxicated vagabonds. It seemed like making a dog-kennel of a chapel in St. Paul’s. Anything but genius, intellect, or wit characterizes the crowd that usually frequent Burns’ Cottage on such days; and it is said to have been, in 1844, the resort of a more beastly class than are those wretches who get intoxicated there now, and, naturally, on such a great day as that on which Bayard visited it, every Scotsman who indulged at all became furiously drunk. Besides that inconvenience,the trustees of the monument, on the day when so many thousands came to see it and its treasures, voted to lock it up; and Bayard, with the others, was shut out from its interesting collection of relics and mementoes. Still further, it was so arranged by the marshals of the occasion, that the grand stand, with its literary feast and the ceremonies appurtenant to the occasion, were shut out from the populace to whom the poet sang, and Bayard being only a strange boy, with no more of a title than Robert Burns had, was obliged to content himself with a seat on the ridge of the “brig o’ Doon.” He did see old Alloway kirk, and heard its bell. He saw within its ruined walls the rank weeds, and without, the graves of the poet’s ancestry. He did have a cheerful pedestrian tour; for the home of Burns, with Alloway kirk and the bonnie Doon, are three miles from the city of Ayr in open country. He saw the sister and sons of the poet. He heard the assembled thousands sing, “Ye banks and braes’ o’ bonnie Doon.” He saw a grandson of Tam O’Shanter. He had to walk the three miles, returning through mud and rain, and he had to stand in an open car, exposed to a driving rain-storm, throughout the two hours’ ride by railroad to Glasgow. How different his reception then, as a boy and unknown, from that which he received in his riper age, after his fame was secured, at the home of Germany’s greatest poet.

We follow Bayard in his first tour in Europe with greater detail than we shall do with other journeys,because in this he developed so much of that character which made him famous. History being written, not for the dead, but for the instruction and encouragement of the living, should show clearly how a great life was attained, as a guide for similar genius in the days to come. In a volume of hasty sketches like this, we cannot hope to do the work as thoroughly as we should so much love to do it; but as far as can be done at this early day, we give those events which had the greatest effect upon his life as a writer of prose and poetry.

He must have feasted in Edinburgh. Richest storehouse in Scotland, for all such as follow letters! There was the monument to Scott, suggestive of the most beautiful in art, but so insignificant as a reminder of him, while the walls of Salisbury Crags, and the dome of Arthur’s Seat, frown beyond and above it. There was Holyrood Palace, with its stains of blood, the couch of the beautiful queen, and the collections of historical relics. No place but the Tower of London has received such attention from gifted and famous literary men. Historians, poets, philosophers, educators, preachers, and lawyers have written and discoursed upon it. There was Calton Hill, with its monuments to great men. There was the great University, and there was the old Castle, that sat like a crown on the head of the city. All had been described by the most facile pens. All were full of living interest, and when Bayard tried to describe them, he found himselfattempting to compete with the greatest essayists of the English-speaking world. The Grass Market, where Porteous was executed; Cowgate Street, with its aristocratic associations; St. Giles’ Church, with its memories of John Knox and the Heart of Mid-Lothian, were described by him, about which it is a kind of literary sacrilege to speak in other than classic language. It was a school that included every other, and Bayard was an apt and diligent scholar.

A short distance from Edinburgh, the pedestrians saw the birthplace and hermitage of Drummond. It is a delightful, sequestered chateau, called “Hawthornden,” and in it the poet wrote nearly all his elegant sonnets, and it was there that old Ben Jonson, after a walk from London, was entertained by Drummond, and Drummond was in turn entertained by Jonson. Going by the way of Galashiels and Selkirk, the party visited Abbotsford and its environs, where the immortal Scott lived and wrote. In the beautiful mansion which Scott built, and in which he wrote his most popular works, they read his manuscripts; sat at his desk; wandered in his gardens; gazed intently over the wide lawn and the distant Tweed; scrutinized the enormous variety of relics which had been collected by that antiquarian, to whom kings and queens were glad to become tributary. Thence they walked along the hard and smooth highway to old Melrose.

Ruins they would see in the near England, and onthe distant continent, which would enclose a dozen abbeys such as this; Gothic arches they would enter which would make those of Melrose seem as a toy; and ivy and carving and chancels would be noticed, so much more rich and beautiful, that these would suffer sadly if put in comparison. But nowhere else in all the wide world would they find a locality made more interesting than this. The associations are almost everything. And to the initiated, the great magician, Scott, still speaks in the groined arches, flowering pillars, old clock, and willow-like windows. Melrose Abbey is a marked illustration of the power of a master-mind to give influence, life, and interest to inanimate things. Bayard felt this truth and mentioned it. He read “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” in the shadow of the arches, and imagined how the ruins glowed when the grave of the wizard opened and the book was revealed. Who knows but it was there, in the presence of those stirring associations, that he first conceived the plan which led him to make classic in poetry and fiction the fields, hills, and Quakers of his native county. Had he lived ten years longer than he did, his loved Kennett might have been as classic in song and story as Abbotsford itself.

From Melrose the young pedestrians walked to Jedburgh, omitting the delightful excursion to Dryburgh, but passing the home of Pringle, who had been the founder of “Blackwood’s Magazine,” and who had been also a poet and wanderer like Bayard. Whilepassing the Cheviot Hills, the party met an excursionist in a carriage, fast asleep, which appeared to amuse Bayard very much. Probably he afterwards saw more amusing scenes than that, wherein travellers did not appreciate their privileges. The writer, as late as the summer of 1878, saw an American who had worked most industriously to lay up the funds to visit Switzerland, ride up the entire ascent of the glorious Alps at St. Gothard, on the top of a coach, fast asleep. Such marvels does the world of humanity contain. Bayard did not sleep when anything of interest called upon him for investigation, nor when the beauties of nature were to be enjoyed. They crossed the border between Scotland and England, over the battle-fields of the Percys, and by streams that were often, in days past, actually swollen with blood. There, “Marmion,” with all its tales historical, and legends mythical, was quoted andlivedas only the cultured traveller can live it. There was instruction in every scene, every stranger, and every inn. How well Bayard availed himself of their lessons, is illustrated in all his excellent letters on foreign travel, and in his books compiled from them. At Newcastle he noticed a group of miners begging in the streets, and when he heard how they had struck for higher wages, because they could not longer exist on the pittance allowed them, and how they and their families were turned out upon the streets to starve, his indignation was very great, and in his book he utters a prophecy that soon that murmur from the oppressedpeople would increase to a roar, and be heard “by the dull ears of power.” From Newcastle he went by boat to London, reaching that city in the early morning near the end of August.

Visit in London.—Exhibition of Relics.—The Lessons of Travel.—Historical Association.—London to Ostend.—The Cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle.—The Great Cathedral at Cologne.—Voyage up the Rhine.—Longfellow’s “Hyperion.”—Visit to Frankfort.—Kind Friends.—Reaches Heidelberg.—Climbing the Mountains.

London is a world in itself, as has often been written and, to such an impressible mind as that of Bayard, was a place, replete with pleasure and instruction. London instructs by two methods; one by agreeable, and the other by disagreeable examples. Bayard was equally taught by both. There was Westminster Abbey, with its numberless tombs of the talented and noble; and there was the Tower of London, with its dungeons and beheading blocks. There were the palatial residences of the West End, and there the hovels and holes of the Wych Street district. There were the great mercantile houses of Holborn and Regent Street, and there were the gambling dens of Drury Lane. There were the magnificent galleries of art, at the Museum, at the Palaces, at Westminster, and at Kensington; and there were the dirty, slimy exhibitions of marred humanity along the wharves of the Thames. There were the zoölogical wonders of the parks, andthere were the dog-shows, and cock-pits of the St. Giles Rookery. There was the palace of the Queen, and there the Old Bailey. There was the office of the “Thunderer” (Daily Times), and there were the attics from whence flowed the vilest trash that man ever printed. There were Hyde Park, Regent’s Park, St. James Park, and the broad squares; and there were the filthy alleys and narrow lanes about London Bridge. There were the Rothschilds, and there the poor Micawbers and deserted Nicholas Nicklebys. The richest, the poorest, the best, the worst; the most cultivated, and the most ignorant; the most powerful monarch, and the most degraded fishmongers. Extremes! Extremes that meet in everything there. They all instruct by teaching the beholder what he ought to be, and what he ought not to be. One sees much in London that ought not to have been; and, strange to relate, many of the relics connected with such things, are exhibited with great pride. If there is any one thing above all others, for which the American should be thankful, it is for the fact that the dungeon, the rack, the wheel, the thumbscrew, the guillotine, the gibbet, the headsman’s block, the deadly hates of royalty, the cruelty of kings, and the jealousy of queens, have no place in the history of the Republic of the West. Yet there, somehow, the officials and guides who open to the public the records of the past and show visitors their institutions, give the most prominent places to deeds of horridcruelty and shameless murders, as if they took pride in such fearful annals. It would seem as if, had our rulers butchered in cold blood their sons and daughters; had they cruelly starved their friends and relatives, we in America would be ashamed of it. It would be regarded as very natural here, if an ancestor was hung and quartered and his head carried about on a pole, to speak of it as seldom as possible. It would appear consistent if, had our national government oppressed the weak, degraded the poor, killed inoffensive captives, and, for selfish ambition, laid waste the cities and fields of an innocent people, we should attempt to bury the remembrance of those deeds so deep as to make a resurrection impossible. But there, in Europe, they appear to revel in the hideous doings of their ancestors, and will show you where human heads or bands were exhibited, and where noble men and women were persecuted to martyrdom, with the air of the circus manager who announces the clown. Who can hear the guide on London Bridge, “Here was posted the bleeding head of Sir William Wallace, the Scotch warrior and patriot, while the quarters of his body were at Stirling, Berwick, Perth, and Newcastle,” and not curse, with the deepest feeling, the people who murdered one of the greatest and best of men?

TOWER OF LONDON.

It is clear that these things made a strong impression upon Bayard, for we find him more frequently and more decidedly praising his own land, as he saw moreand more of Europe. He saw, also, many of the advantages which European nations enjoy in art, literature, and commerce, and failed not to suggest them to his readers. But, unlike those shallow tourists, who would ape European manners, and think all European institutions should be at once imported here, his patriotic regard for the institutions and people of his own land, increased with the desire to benefit them. How reverently he speaks of George Washington; how touchingly does he speak with the European peasants who accost him, of the home of the free beyond the great ocean.

A whole week those young men searched the great city for valuable information. They slept and ate in the rudest of taverns, and tramped the city with the workmen and the beggars, but they were gathering the forces for a useful life. Bayard was filled with the sublimity of the mighty human torrent that, like a tide, rolls into London in the morning, dashes about the highways during the day, and surges outward at night. He felt the grandeur of St. Paul’s, the conflicting and exciting associations of Westminster, the marvellous feat of tunnelling under the Thames, the enormous wealth of churches, monuments, halls, and galleries, and carried away with him to the Continent a very complete idea of the institutions and the queer customs of the great metropolis.

From London, the party proceeded to Dover, and from thence to Ostend and Bruges. They travelled inthe cheapest manner, walking wherever practicable, and going from Bruges to Ghent in a canal-boat, thence by railroad across the border to Aix-la-Chapelle. Here was another treat. The description which he gave in his letters of his visit to the old Cathedral, where rest the remains of Charlemagne, was one of the most vivid recitals to be found in the annals of travel. For some reason, he so abridged it in his book, as to take away the finest and most original delineations. Every reader of his first narration, who may never have visited Aix-la-Chapelle, can in imagination see the old Cathedral, with its shrines, its antique windows, and the shadows of saints on the floor, and hear the sweet undulations of the organ’s solemn peal. While to the traveller who follows him through those aisles, and under those magnificent arches, his words give life and language to the pillars, altars, and luminous decorations. To the least poetic or sentimental of travellers, it is a solemn place; and if so to them, how deep and impressive must it have been to a soul so full of emotion as that of Bayard! There he wrote his well-known poem, “The Tomb of Charlemagne.”

This grand old pile was succeeded next day by the great Gothic Cathedral, at Cologne, which was not then finished, is not now completed, and will never see the end of the mason’s labors, because the time taken in the construction is so long that the very stone decays, and must be replaced at the base by the time the delicate tracery of the towers is set on those skywardheights. The structure must be constantly in process of reconstruction, from the bottom, upwards. When Bayard looked upon this wonderful building, which since 1248 had been in an uncompleted state, two hundred and fifty years having been spent in active labor, he said it impressed him most deeply, by way of comparison. Two hundred and forty years before America was discovered, the foundations of that church were laid, and here they are working on it still! By such lessons is an American made to know his place in the history of the world. Had the history of these old lands been less barbarous and cruel, we should feel humble indeed. But in view of what the old folks have done, we may be thankful that we are young, and have our record yet to write. But the fact that we are not so old, so great, so artistic, or so cultured as we have flattered ourselves, is wholesome information, and as taught by these old Cathedrals of Europe, is very necessary to the success of our young men. How deeply these things moved Bayard, is seen by the very frequent mention we find in his writings, of aisle, or arch, or dome, or spire.

But one of the most attractive spots to that young voyager, in all his wanderings in Europe, he saw while going up the Rhine, from Cologne to Mayence. He viewed with satisfaction the vineyards and villages along the banks; he was charmed with the crags and crumbling towers of the innumerable old castles which ornament the tops of all the most prominent hills andmountains. The walled cities, the legendary caves and grottos, the most exquisite fables that account for the miraculous construction of cliff, and convent, and crusaders’ halls, all came upon him as he glided by them on the muddy river, as dreams come to the drinker of hashish. But beyond all these in interest to our young wanderer, was the little walled town of Boppart, whose feudal history is nearly lost, but whose romantic connection with Longfellow’s “Hyperion,” has given it a fresh lease of life. Bayard there recalled his life at home, and his days of anxious waiting; for, had not this same “Hyperion,” with entrancing interest, spurred on his hope to one day travel along the Rhine? Had not this same “Hyperion” given the impulse that started his cousin on such a great journey to the university at Heidelberg? And were not those houses in the town of Boppart, and was not that cottage the very Inn of the “Star,” and might not that woman, near the shore, be “Paul Flemming’s” boatwoman? Oh! grand and revered Longfellow! when we note how many a life, like these, has turned upon the reading of your inspired words, one feels as if to have seen your face and heard your voice, and to have been beneath the same roof, was an honor greater than kings could bestow!

But Boppart, Lurlei Berg, Oberwisel, Bingen, and Geisenheim were soon left behind, and Mayence, with its Cathedral six centuries old, its walls and fortresses, welcomed them to its monotonous shades.

A beautiful trait of Bayard’s character comes gracefully into view as we read his grateful acknowledgments of the kindnesses he received. On his first walk in his apprentice days, in Pennsylvania, having determined to see some mountains, although he had to walk two hundred miles to view them, he was kindly served at a well, on the way, by a farmer’s girl, who cheerfully drew the bucket from the well and ran for a glass, that he, a dusty, thirsty stranger, might drink without further fatigue; and in his later years he records the fact in his book, with the sweetest expressions of thankfulness. So when he arrived at Frankfort, and was kindly received and entertained by Mr. Richard S. Willis, the American consul, brother of Bayard’s old friend, Nathaniel P. Willis, he sits down at once, and in his letters to his friends, and in his public correspondence, he speaks of the generosity and thoughtfulness of his old friend, and the hospitable and cultured characteristics of his new friend. They were noble friends, who made for him a home at their fireside in Frankfort, and deserve the thanks of every admirer of Bayard Taylor. His thanks they had throughout a long life, and not only thanks, but grateful deeds.

It was Bayard’s purpose to go to Heidelberg, with his cousin, and give himself to close study, at the University, or with private tutors; but just how he was going to obtain the means to pay his expenses was something of an enigma. It may be that his good fortune in the outset made him too confident andcareless in regard to other undertakings. At all events, his stay in Heidelberg was much shorter than he had at first intended that it should be, and his studies were much more broken and superficial than his letters show he thought they would be. He was not constituted for close, hard, metaphysical study, and made but little attempts in that direction, after he arrived at Heidelberg. He loved the grand old Castle better than the whittled benches of the University. He enjoyed the Kaisersthul and the lesser mountains, far more than the monotonous recital of German theories. The river Neckar called him in its murmurs, the clouds beckoned to him as they flew over the Heligen Berg, the wind called for him as it sighed around the vineyards of Ziegelhausen, and all thoughts of private, quiet study fled at the summons. So he climbed the mountains. It was always a passion with him to gain an altitude as high as possible, and look out upon the world. He tells how, when a boy, he ventured out of a chamber window in the old farm-house at Kennett, and seeing a row of slats which the carpenters had used for steps in ascending the roof, he sallied forth, and there astride of the roof, gained his first view of a landscape. He said afterward, that the roof appeared to be so high and the view so extensive, that he imagined he could see Niagara Falls. Whether this inclination to climb up came to him through the stories of his old Swiss nurse, whose bed-time stories were of the mighty Alps and their towering cones, or whetherit was an hereditary trait in his nature, none may be able to decide. He was certainly prone to go upwards, and had a tendency, for horizontal motion equally as strong. He would not remain stationary; hence, at Heidelberg, he inspected every nook and crevice of the picturesque old Castle, crouched through its conduits, rapped its ponderous tun, scaled its roofless and crumbling walls, rushed into the recesses of the adjacent thickets, and tested the celebrated beer at the students’ resorts. He joined excursion parties which visited the neighboring mountains, and after he had been there a month, he knew the fields, rocks, trees, valleys, dells, and peaks, as well as a native, and appears to have loved them with a patriotic regard almost equal to the eldest burgher.

Study in Frankfort.—Lack of Money.—Different Effect of Want on Travellers.—Bayard’s Privations.—Again sets out on Foot.—Visit to the Hartz Mountains.—The Brocken.—Scenes in “Faust.”—Locality in Literature.—The Battle-field at Leipsic.—Auerbach’s Cellar.

For the purposes of this work, an outline of Bayard’s travels is all that can be attempted; except where some remarkable incident occurred that had an unusual influence on his subsequent life. Leaving Heidelberg in the latter part of October (1844), Bayard walked through the Odenwald to Frankfort, where he could pursue his study of the German language, and observe the customs and characteristics of the people to better advantage and at a less expense. In attempting to see Europe on such a limited allowance of money, he necessarily met with many inconveniences and privations. His sufferings were at times most intense. He knew what it was to fast for whole days; he felt the pains of blistered bare feet. He was exposed to the severest storms of summer and winter; he was familiar with the homes of beggary and the hard, swarming beds of third-class taverns. He must have suffered beyond his own estimate, for, as he so well says, the pains of travel are soon forgotten and the pleasuresvividly remembered. There was a youthfulabandonin his almost reckless adventures which startles the reader of his tours. But yet the pains he felt so keenly, the dangers he encountered so frequently, did not seem to abate his enthusiasm for the great works and beautiful scenes which Europe exhibits. To find ourselves in a strange city, where no one speaks our native language; where it is not possible that any person can know us or any of our friends; without money, or food, or work, is one of the most disheartening situations that can be imagined. Yet such an experience came often to Bayard. It would seem as if, on some occasions, he ran into such difficulties needlessly and for very wantonness. Yet, as was sometimes the experience of the writer, and from one of which dangerous situations Mr. Taylor generously rescued him, there somehow opens a way out from such ventures, which is found on the very verge of starvation and despair. But the trait of character, which in Bayard commanded such respect, was something so unusual, that his daring example cannot be safely followed by the multitude. It is far better to have a supply of money for the necessary expenses of travel in Europe or Asia, than to run risks for the sake of the romance which Bayard found in such straits. To many tourists, even the parks of Homburg, the castle of Drachenfels, or the palace of the Vatican, would become insignificant baubles before the stronger demands of the body for food and raiment. But seldomdid any fatigue or annoyance or loss, abate his wonderful zeal in his search for the poetical, the strange, the historical, and the beautiful. Some of his most exquisite descriptions of art or nature, were written from notes made when his stomach was empty and his limbs chilled with wet and cold. Such young men are few; and for one with less perseverance, endurance, or genius to attempt such things on such a scale, would be to meet with disheartening failure.

Of his life in Frankfort, during the winter of 1845, he often speaks with great satisfaction. He made excellent progress in the language, and in that understanding of the habits of the people which Mr. Greeley had so pointedly urged upon him as an ambitious aspirant for the favors of the “Tribune.” He comes out of that study a matured thinker. His descriptions assume a more thoughtful tone. His sympathies are more often awakened for the people, and he sees as a man sees, and less juvenile are all his undertakings and communications. He there acquired a love of German poetry, and became acquainted with many of the noted men of Frankfort. He visited the aged Mendelssohn, and tells with charming simplicity how he was received by the composer of “St. Paul” and “Elijah.” Thus introduced to German literature, art, and music, he entered again upon his travels at the opening of spring, with new and increasing appreciativeness.

Again, on foot, he went into the untried way of Europe. His first attraction was for the Hartz Mountains,so intimately connected with Goethe’s “Faust,” with which Bayard was already in love, and which he afterwards translated in a masterly manner. So he went through Friedberg and Giessen, into Hesse-Cassel, making the acquaintance of peasants and merchants on his way, and moralizing upon the curious circumstance that the descendants of the Hessians, who fought so doggedly at Brandywine, should receive so hospitably the descendant of those who filled the “plains of Trenton with the short Hessian graves.” Thence by Münden, Göttingen and Osterode, enduring sickening fatigues and dangerous exposure, he reached the Brocken mountain, where, through thickets, rocks, chasms, snow and cold, he at last rested in a cottage at its summit, amid the associations awakened by the weird tales of witches and the superstitious explanations of that singular illusion,—the “Spectre of the Brocken.” If he had any “wish” on that “Walpurgis night,” which he passed on the highest mountain of the Hartz range, it was probably to be relieved of the tortures which his weak frame endured, and from which the physician had failed to relieve him. It would not be surprising if he recited from “Faust” the words of scene IV.:—

“Through some familiar tone, retrievingMy thoughts from torment, led me on,And sweet, clear echoes came, deceivingA faith bequeathed from childhood’s dawn,Yet now I curse whate’er enticesAnd snares the soul with visions vain;With dazzling cheats and dear devicesConfines it in this cave of pain!Cursed be, at once, the high ambition.Wherewith the mind itself deludes!Cursed be the glare of apparition,That on the finer sense intrudes.”

“Through some familiar tone, retrieving

My thoughts from torment, led me on,

And sweet, clear echoes came, deceiving

A faith bequeathed from childhood’s dawn,

Yet now I curse whate’er entices

And snares the soul with visions vain;

With dazzling cheats and dear devices

Confines it in this cave of pain!

Cursed be, at once, the high ambition.

Wherewith the mind itself deludes!

Cursed be the glare of apparition,

That on the finer sense intrudes.”

We cannot forbear to add another quotation from the same Act, so illustrative is it of Bayard’s note-taking life:—

“No need to tell me twice to do it!I think, how useful ’tis to write;For what one has in black and white,One carries home and then goes through it.”

“No need to tell me twice to do it!

I think, how useful ’tis to write;

For what one has in black and white,

One carries home and then goes through it.”

His visit to the Brocken was one of the most fascinating trips of his whole pedestrian tour, notwithstanding his narrow escape from death in the snow, and from destruction by falling into the partially concealed caves that beset his way to the summit. He mentioned long afterward the view he had from the summit-house, through the rifts in the clouds, of the plains and cities of Germany. Thirty cities and several hundred villages lay within sight, and all of them more or less closely interwoven with the literature of Germany. The plains of Brunswick and Magdeburg stretch away for seventy miles, with all the various shadings of green intermingled with the sparkling silver of stream and lake. It is a scene so grand that no pen could portray its sublimity and no tongue accurately convey an idea of its varied beauty. With thatromantic persistency which no amount of fatigue overcame, Bayard descended the mountain by that rugged and nerve-shaking path up which Faust was said to have ascended with Mephistopheles (scene XXI. of Taylor’s translation) who says:—

“How sadly rises, incomplete and ruddy,The moon’s lone disk, with its belated glow,And lights so dimly, that, as one advances,At every step one strikes a rock or tree!Let us, then, use a Jack-o’-Lantern’s glances:I see one yonder, burning merrily.Ho, there! my friend! I’ll levy thine attendance:Why waste so vainly thy resplendence?Be kind enough to light us up the steep.”

“How sadly rises, incomplete and ruddy,

The moon’s lone disk, with its belated glow,

And lights so dimly, that, as one advances,

At every step one strikes a rock or tree!

Let us, then, use a Jack-o’-Lantern’s glances:

I see one yonder, burning merrily.

Ho, there! my friend! I’ll levy thine attendance:

Why waste so vainly thy resplendence?

Be kind enough to light us up the steep.”

After which Faust, in a musing mood, looks down from the Brocken heights and replies:—

“How strangely glimmers through the hollowsA dreary light, like that of dawn!Its exhalation tracks and followsThe deepest gorges, faint and wan.Here steam, there rolling vapor sweepeth;Here burns the glow through film and haze:Now like a tender thread it creepeth,Now like a fountain leaps and plays.Here winds away, and in a hundredDivided veins the valley braids:There in a corner pressed and sundered,Itself detaches, spreads and fades.Here gush the sparkles incandescentLike scattered showers of golden sand;—But, see! in all their height at present,The rocky ramparts blazing stand.”

“How strangely glimmers through the hollows

A dreary light, like that of dawn!

Its exhalation tracks and follows

The deepest gorges, faint and wan.

Here steam, there rolling vapor sweepeth;

Here burns the glow through film and haze:

Now like a tender thread it creepeth,

Now like a fountain leaps and plays.

Here winds away, and in a hundred

Divided veins the valley braids:

There in a corner pressed and sundered,

Itself detaches, spreads and fades.

Here gush the sparkles incandescent

Like scattered showers of golden sand;—

But, see! in all their height at present,

The rocky ramparts blazing stand.”

As Bayard leaped and stumbled down the rocky declivity into the narrow gorge that there divides the mountains to give an outlet for the river Bode, the very difficulties bound him closer to Goethe’s writings. He felt again how important a thing it is in literature to connect it by patriotic links with some actual landscape, and how much more vivid and permanent are the lessons an author would teach when the reader visits the mountains, plains, cities, buildings, and people mentioned in books of classic worth. Thus learning and growing the young traveller plodded on from inn to inn and village to village.

Leipsic, which he reached a day or two after leaving the Brocken, was a place of great interest to Bayard, as it is in fact to all travellers. But the interest in any city or country visited by a tourist depends so much upon his previous reading, and the taste and opportunities for reading are so diverse, that it seldom happens that any two persons in the same party enjoy the same scene with equal satisfaction. Bayard had read of Leipsic and Dresden in his boyhood when other boys were catching rabbits or playing ball, and as when he sees the great citadel at Magdeburg which once held Baron Trenck a prisoner, so when at Leipsic he looks over the field where Blucher and Schwartzenberg met Napoleon, he is startled with the vividness of the pictures in his imagination. Hundreds of thousands rushing to combat and scattering in retreat while smoke rollsupward from hundreds of cannon and the streams are choked with piles of bloody dead!

There too was Auerbach’s Cellar, in which Goethe’s Faust and Mephistopheles are so humorously placed. There was the same drinking-saloon, there the descendant of the old bar-keeper, and there the same characteristic crowd of loafers, as when Faust and Mephistopheles drank there, and when amid songs and jokes, the latter drew all kinds of wine from the gimlet holes in the leaf of the old wooden table. Bayard’s estimate of the people appears to have confirmed that of Mephistopheles who says (scene V.):—

“Before all else I bring thee hitherWhere boon companions meet together,To let thee see how smooth life runs away.Here, for the folk, each day’s a holiday:With little wit, and ease to suit them,They whirl in narrow, circling trails,Like kittens playing with their tails:And if no headache persecute them,So long the host may credit give,They merrily and careless live.”

“Before all else I bring thee hither

Where boon companions meet together,

To let thee see how smooth life runs away.

Here, for the folk, each day’s a holiday:

With little wit, and ease to suit them,

They whirl in narrow, circling trails,

Like kittens playing with their tails:

And if no headache persecute them,

So long the host may credit give,

They merrily and careless live.”

The peasantry still crowd the cellar, still sing the old lays, and each day tell over again the old legend of Mephistopheles’ miraculous exit.

“I saw him, with these eyes, upon a wine cask ridingOut of the cellar door, just now.”

“I saw him, with these eyes, upon a wine cask riding

Out of the cellar door, just now.”

Pictures at Dresden.—Raphael’s Madonna.—Bayard’s Art Education.—His Exalted Ideas of Art.—His Enthusiasm.—Visits Bohemia.—Stay in Prague.—The Curiosities of Vienna.—Tomb of Beethoven.—Respect for Religion.—Listens to Strauss.—View of Lintz.—Munich and its Decorations.—The Home of Schiller.—Poetic Landscapes, and Charming People.—Statue by Thorwaldsen.—Walk to Heidelberg.

At Dresden, Bayard visited the picture-gallery, for the purpose of seeing Raphael’s Madonna and Child, known as theMadonna di San Sisto. His description of that painting, so unfortunately abridged in his book, was one of the finest examples of art criticism to be found in print. His appreciation of painting and sculpture was remarkable, indeed, for one who never made them a professional study, and whose rude sketches in pencil in his note books, contained nearly all of his undertakings as an amateur. His soul seemed cast in the proper mould for that kind of work, but his hand was never trained to materialize the pictures that filled the galleries of his imagination. He had all those finer sensibilities and acute instincts which fitted him for art in poetry or stone, and he saw in paintings and statuary, beauties or defects which thousands of colder but more studious critics failed to notice.

He spoke of that Madonna at Dresden, as a painting that moved his whole nature in admiration. He enjoyed it. He feasted on it. He read it as one follows an exciting romance. He felt the power of the picture as Raphael felt it, and seemed to appreciate it even more keenly than the artist. How much satisfaction and delight he found in the enormous collections of art in the Old World, cannot be told or understood by any one whose natural genius leads them not in such a direction. His mental appetite for such things grew so keen, as he went on from city to city and gallery to gallery, that he much preferred to leave his meals untasted, than pass a great painting without study. Like the true artist, his mind took in the grand ideals, and his respect and admiration for the divine handiwork in producing man and beast, caused him often to wince under the suggestive and degrading obtrusiveness of fig-leaves and rude drapery in sculpture. The human form in all its heavenly beauty and godlike majesty, as reproduced in marble by the great artists, was too sacred and pure to him, to be marred by the suggestions of sin. No man or woman will ever become an artist, in its highest, noblest sense, until their love for beauty, simplicity, and purity, lifts them above the impressions that are born of ignorance, vulgarity, and sin. Bayard, in after years, thus beautifully wrote of sculpture:—

“In clay the statue stood complete,As beautiful a form, and fair,As ever walked a Roman streetOr breathed the blue Athenian air:The perfect limbs, divinely bare,Their old, heroic freedom kept,And in the features, fine and rare,A calm, immortal sweetness slept.O’er common men it towered, a god,And smote their meaner life with shame,For while its feet the highway trod,Its lifted brow was crowned with flameAnd purified from touch of blame:Yet wholly human was the face,And over them who saw it cameThe knowledge of their own disgrace.It stood, regardless of the crowd,And simply showed what men might be:Its solemn beauty disavowedThe curse of lost humanity.Erect and proud, and pure and free,It overlooked each loathsome lawThe life, travels, and literary career of Bayard TaylorWhereunto others bend the knee,And only what was noble saw.”The blameless spirit of a lofty aimSees not a line that asks to be concealedBy dextrous evasion; but, revealedAs truth demands, doth Nature smite with shameThem, who with artifice of ivy-leafUnsex the splendid loins, or shrink the frameFrom life’s pure honesty, as shrinks a thief,While stands a hero ignorant of blame!“Each part expressed its nicely measured share,In the mysterious being of the whole:Not from the eye or lip looked forth the soul,But made her habitation everywhereWithin the bounds of flesh; and Art might steal,As once, of old, her purest triumphs there.”

“In clay the statue stood complete,

As beautiful a form, and fair,

As ever walked a Roman street

Or breathed the blue Athenian air:

The perfect limbs, divinely bare,

Their old, heroic freedom kept,

And in the features, fine and rare,

A calm, immortal sweetness slept.

O’er common men it towered, a god,And smote their meaner life with shame,For while its feet the highway trod,Its lifted brow was crowned with flameAnd purified from touch of blame:Yet wholly human was the face,And over them who saw it cameThe knowledge of their own disgrace.

O’er common men it towered, a god,

And smote their meaner life with shame,

For while its feet the highway trod,

Its lifted brow was crowned with flame

And purified from touch of blame:

Yet wholly human was the face,

And over them who saw it came

The knowledge of their own disgrace.

It stood, regardless of the crowd,And simply showed what men might be:Its solemn beauty disavowedThe curse of lost humanity.Erect and proud, and pure and free,It overlooked each loathsome lawThe life, travels, and literary career of Bayard TaylorWhereunto others bend the knee,And only what was noble saw.”

It stood, regardless of the crowd,

And simply showed what men might be:

Its solemn beauty disavowed

The curse of lost humanity.

Erect and proud, and pure and free,

It overlooked each loathsome law

The life, travels, and literary career of Bayard Taylor

Whereunto others bend the knee,

And only what was noble saw.”

The blameless spirit of a lofty aimSees not a line that asks to be concealedBy dextrous evasion; but, revealedAs truth demands, doth Nature smite with shameThem, who with artifice of ivy-leafUnsex the splendid loins, or shrink the frameFrom life’s pure honesty, as shrinks a thief,While stands a hero ignorant of blame!

The blameless spirit of a lofty aim

Sees not a line that asks to be concealed

By dextrous evasion; but, revealed

As truth demands, doth Nature smite with shame

Them, who with artifice of ivy-leaf

Unsex the splendid loins, or shrink the frame

From life’s pure honesty, as shrinks a thief,

While stands a hero ignorant of blame!

“Each part expressed its nicely measured share,In the mysterious being of the whole:Not from the eye or lip looked forth the soul,But made her habitation everywhereWithin the bounds of flesh; and Art might steal,As once, of old, her purest triumphs there.”

“Each part expressed its nicely measured share,

In the mysterious being of the whole:

Not from the eye or lip looked forth the soul,

But made her habitation everywhere

Within the bounds of flesh; and Art might steal,

As once, of old, her purest triumphs there.”

This appreciation of the inner feelings of the sculptor and painter, is the more astonishing, because of the unusual disadvantages under which he first studied the works of the ancient masters. Aching limbs, bruised feet, and an empty stomach are not usually aids to the critic in forming a judgment of the symmetry or grace of any work of art. But his enthusiastic recitals of his visits to the celebrated paintings, show no less rapture when he saw them in fatigue and hunger, than when he looked upon them in rest and bodily satiety. Thus, most naturally, he became the companion and intimate friend of a large number of the European artists, and was sought and highly esteemed by all the American painters and sculptors whom he met in Europe. He understood them. He sympathized with their enthusiasm and sacrifices; while a great, cold world went by them without a comforting word or a smile of recognition.

Dresden was like a door to his higher art life, and its collection of paintings is worthy of such a place. There were, besides the Sistine Madonna, the “Ascension,” by Raphael Mengs, the “Notte,” by Correggio, and galleries of master-pieces by Titian, Da Vinci, Veronese, Del Sarto, Rubens, Vandyck, Lorraine and Teniers; with sculpture in marble, ivory, bronze and jewels, from Michael Angelo and his cotemporaries. Being the widest and most diversified collection in Germany, it was eagerly sought by Bayard, and more reluctantly left behind. More grand than thebattle of Napoleon before its gates, and more lasting in their effects, were the historic works of art which Dresden is so proud to possess.

THE DANUBE AT LINTZ.

From Dresden, Bayard walked to Prague, leaving behind him, as he then thought forever, the cheerful, hospitable, kind-hearted people, with whose kin he afterwards became so intimately and advantageously connected. In Prague, he ascended the heights where the Bohemian kings and Amazon queens used to reside, heard the solemn mass in one of Europe’s most solemn Cathedrals, visited the bridge under which the Saint Johannes floated with the miraculous stars about his corpse, lost himself in the bedlam of Jewish clothing-shops, and then, staff in hand, hastened on over the monotonous plains, and through the highways almost fenced with wretchedly painted shrines, to the Paris of the west, Vienna.

There again were rare, treasures of art on which he might study, and in study, increase in that dignity and expansion of soul which only such contemplation can give. He was delighted to hear the composer Strauss, and his orchestra, and amusingly describes the queer antics of that nervous little musician. He gazed with awe at the stained banners of the Crusaders, and, with uncovered head, listened to the grand chants in St. Stephen’s Cathedral; but his pathetic mention of his visit to the tomb of Beethoven is the most characteristic.

There was a most lovable trait in Bayard’s character,which became even more prominent in his after years of travel, which deserves mention in this connection. He never railed upon the dead, nor ridiculed the religious belief or acts of devotion of any people, however ignorant or heathenish. He often mentioned, with emotion, the efforts of the darkened human mind to find its Creator and Ruler. He treated with sincerest respect every act of devotion performed in his presence, whether by Protestant, Catholic, or Mahomedan. There was that in his nature, and his early Quaker education, that not only kept him in the paths of morality and on the side of virtue, but through all his writings there runs a thread of faith in God, which cannot be better expressed than by quoting one of his own sweet hymns.

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