CHAPTER XII.

“In the peace of hearts at rest,In the child at mother’s breast,In the lives that now surround us,In the deaths that sorely wound us,Though we may not understand,Father, we behold Thy hand!”

“In the peace of hearts at rest,

In the child at mother’s breast,

In the lives that now surround us,

In the deaths that sorely wound us,

Though we may not understand,

Father, we behold Thy hand!”

After leaving Vienna, he went, by the way of Enns to Lintz, which is situated in one of the most picturesque landscapes of the Danube. The city is surrounded by towers unconnected by walls and has a very romantic history. Bayard in his letters speaks of the rural scenes about Lintz in terms of the highest admiration. It was in these Austrian landscapes thathe composed that poem entitled “The Wayside Dream,” and in which we find the following descriptive lines:

“The deep and lordly DanubeGoes winding far below;I see the white-walled hamletsAmid his vineyards glow,And southward, through the ether, shineThe Styrian hills of snow.“O’er many a league of landscapeSleeps the warm haze of noon;The wooing winds come freightedWith messages of June,And down among the corn and flowersI hear the water’s tune.“The meadow-lark is singing,As if it still were morn;Within the dark pine-forestThe hunter winds his horn,And the cuckoo’s shy, complaining noteMocks the maidens in the corn.”

“The deep and lordly DanubeGoes winding far below;I see the white-walled hamletsAmid his vineyards glow,And southward, through the ether, shineThe Styrian hills of snow.

“The deep and lordly Danube

Goes winding far below;

I see the white-walled hamlets

Amid his vineyards glow,

And southward, through the ether, shine

The Styrian hills of snow.

“O’er many a league of landscapeSleeps the warm haze of noon;The wooing winds come freightedWith messages of June,And down among the corn and flowersI hear the water’s tune.

“O’er many a league of landscape

Sleeps the warm haze of noon;

The wooing winds come freighted

With messages of June,

And down among the corn and flowers

I hear the water’s tune.

“The meadow-lark is singing,As if it still were morn;Within the dark pine-forestThe hunter winds his horn,And the cuckoo’s shy, complaining noteMocks the maidens in the corn.”

“The meadow-lark is singing,

As if it still were morn;

Within the dark pine-forest

The hunter winds his horn,

And the cuckoo’s shy, complaining note

Mocks the maidens in the corn.”

From Lintz, over hills and by meadows, among the merry farmers and their light-hearted children, they walked on, through Salzburg and Hohenlinden, to Munich, where another magnificent display of paintings, sculpture, palaces, parks, and historic localities, rewarded him for his long walk and limited supply of food. He had so little money that he was compelled to live on twenty cents a day. There he found the great works of Thorwaldsen, Cornelius,and Schwanthaler, and copies in marble of almost every celebrated piece of antique sculpture. There were the gorgeous palaces of kings and dukes, the beautifully wrought halls and churches, with the spacious avenues and charming parks. No city in the world contains such rich decorations, such unique and profuse ornamentation, or such harmony of design and arrangement, as is shown in the palace halls and public edifices of Munich. How a visit to them sweetens everything else in after life, and how the memory of them ever lightens the burden of care! What American could walk those pavements and floors and not yearn for the power to give to his own country something to match those marvellous structures! Bayard must have felt that impulse in common with others; but, unlike many others, he kept his promise, which was to awaken a love in every American heart for art in its grand and stable forms; and many are the promptings and rebukes which we, as a people, have received from his pen as writer, and from his lips as a lecturer.

From Munich, the route chosen by Bayard lay through Augsburg, Ulm, and Wurtemberg, and when he entered the latter country, at Esslingen, he said the very atmosphere was permeated with poetry. He was delighted with the green vales, lofty hills, lovely vineyards, waving forests, and feudal ruins. He was grateful to the kind people, and was made happy by their universal cheerfulness and good-nature. It wasthe home of Schiller! There the first nine years of the poet’s life were spent, and scarce a nook is there about the interesting old cities which that boy did not explore. It was toward Wurtemberg, as his childhood’s home, Schiller exhibited the greatest regard; alas, it was there, too, in Stuttgart, that the tyrannical Duke imprisoned him for publishing his first play. There, too, the patriotic Uhland sat in the halls of legislation, and wrote those poems which fired the hearts of his countrymen to a brave defence of fatherland.

Bayard’s happy stay in Esslingen, and his word-pictures of its attractions, show the progress which he had already made in his love for that German poetry, of which he was to become so popular an expounder. He praises the river Neckar and its flowery banks, he lauds the people, he portrays the landscapes in the brightest colors which poetry may lend to prose. Bright day! one he never recalled without exclamations of pleasure!

After such interest as he exhibited in the country of Schiller, it is no surprise, the next day after leaving Esslingen, to find him in Stuttgart, looking up into the pensive face of Thorwaldsen’s colossal statue of Schiller. So attracted and entranced was he by the interpretation of Schiller, made by the natives, the scenery, and the old home, that when beautiful Stuttgart opens its avenues, parks, cathedrals, palaces, and galleries to him, he forsakes and neglects them all for this huge but faithfully wrought counterfeit in stone ofthe persecuted singer. To his naturally sentimental and sensitive character, the German poet was revealed in ideals more fascinating than any realities. He studied the face of his brother poet, praised his beauty, repeated a broken stanza of “William Tell,” and left the other attractions of Stuttgart unseen.

Passing the castle of Ludwigsburg, and skirting the village of Marbach, the birthplace of Schiller, a village then about the size of Kennett now, but obliged to push on for fear of starvation, he walked to Betigheim, and thence the next day to his first German home, Heidelberg.

Starts for Switzerland and Italy.—First View of the Alps.—The Falls of the Rhine.—Zurich.—A Poet’s Home.—Lake Lucerne.—Goethe’s Cottage.—Scenes in the Life of William Tell.—Ascent of the Alps at St. Gothard.—Descent into Italy.—The Cathedral at Milan.—Bayard’s Characteristics.—Tramp to Genoa.—Visits Leghorn and Pisa.—Lovely Florence.—Delightful Visits.—The Home of Art.

August 1, 1845, Bayard again started from Frankfort on his pedestrian wanderings, having made up his mind to visit Switzerland, Florence, Venice, Rome, and perhaps Athens. On this trip his cousin Frank was again his companion. With their knapsacks on their shoulders and staffs in hand they began another pilgrimage, confident and strong. With but a small supply of money, and with but shadowy probabilities of more, they launched out into a world to them untried and unknown. With excited imaginations and the keenest anticipations they rose above every difficulty and faced boldly the probabilities of fatigue and want. They made a short stay at Freiburg and entered the Black Forest, passing the Titi Lake and the Feldberg peak. Bayard’s disposition for ascending mountains, which inclined him to see the top of everything, led him to go up the cragged side of the Feldberg, fromthe summit of which he could just make out the white crests of the Alps. On the nearer approach to them, and when from the last ranges of the hills of the Black Forest, they beheld the white Alps in all their indescribable grandeur looming up at the other side of the vast plain, Bayard spoke of the patriotic feelings which such a sight must excite in the mind and heart of a Swiss returning after a long absence to his native land. He thought of his old nurse and her tales of the Alpine scenery, and of the knolls and vales of his own home. It is no wonder that the Swiss are free and brave and strong. The waterfalls, cliffs, and cloud-piercing mountains fill the soul with a sense of grandeur and glory which tends toward great deeds and fervent patriotism. Who can recall the eternal snows, the towering shafts of rock, the roaring caverns, and sweetest of blue lakes, without the most thrilling emotions! If there are any travellers upon whom the memory of Switzerland brings no such feelings, they are the exceptions. Bayard’s nature was such as to enjoy to the full, and sometimes with an intensity that was almost pain, all those sublime exhibitions of the power and majesty of the great Creator.

The fall of the Rhine near Schaffhausen hardly met the expectations of these travellers, who had heard their German friends speak in such strong terms of its greatness. It is a most beautiful waterfall, and when viewed from the platform at the base of the cliff beneath the castle, startles the spectator with itsthundering plunges and foaming whirlpools. To a native of the same land with Niagara, the Yosemite, and the Yellowstone, its size is insignificant. But its beauty as a picturesque scene, when the high banks, the long rapids, the surging pools beneath, and the jagged rocks that rise through and above the spray and rainbows, are included in the panorama, can be described only in the strongest language.

From Schaffhausen they hurried on by the fields of the free and happy Swiss farmers, and along highways that reminded him of his Pennsylvania home, into the city of Zurich. There he carefully noted the character and customs of the people. He was cheered by their friendly greetings, he was surprised at their intelligence, he was pleased by the happy faces of the children, and he was proud of the apparent influence of a republic over its people. He visited the celebrated poet, Freiligrath, at his villa on the shores of the lake, where the young American poet and his elder German brother had a most social talk of Bryant, Longfellow, and Whittier. From Freiligrath’s exile home, they walked by the “Devil’s Bridge” to the Abbey of Einsiedeln, where the crowd of pilgrims and the sweetest of singers in the church choir made a pleasant and charming impression upon Bayard’s mind. Thence by valleys, and mountains, so broken and grand, and by streams so delicately blue that descended to the placid Zug, they journeyed to Lake Lucerne. There, on the shore, in a charming grotto, upon whichthe Righi and Pilatus look down, while above and beyond them the white peaks of the loftier Alps shimmer in the sunshine above the clouds, William Tell, the father of Swiss liberty, had his home. There, in an embowered cottage, that peeped from the leaves like a maiden so coy, resided for a long time the poet Goethe; and there, according to his own account, he studied the plot for a poem, but which was afterwards embodied by his friend Schiller in the drama of “William Tell.” There was the rock on which Tell leaped from Gessler’s boat; there grew the linden-tree where Tell shot the apple from the head of his son; there the chapel of William Tell, and there the hundreds of interesting localities connected more or less closely with the early tyranny of Austria and the heroic resistance of the Swiss patriots. Bayard loved the works of Schiller, as, in fact, could hardly be avoided by any one who reads them in the original tongue and amid the scenes so strikingly described.

From Burglen, where Tell was born and where he so heroically died while attempting to save a child from drowning, they marched upward along the banks of the Reuss to Amsteg, and thence along the precipices where the craggy mountains rose thousands of feet above them, and, the wild stream surged and raged far, far below them. No scene more wild and overwhelmingly grand than that at the “Devil’s Bridge,” over which they crossed on their way to the summit of St. Gothard. Black chasms yawned at their feet; enormousshelving rocks hung threatening overhead. Clouds of spray, like steam from huge caldrons, arose from numberless pits, wherein the streams boiled and hissed in their crevice-like channels. The clear air was like wine. The peaks seemed to reach to heaven, and gleamed with celestial purity. The charm of the scenery lifted the mind and awakened the holiest emotions, while the balm of health permeated the body, and gave it a strength seemingly supernatural. What person is there who loves not the dear old peaks of Switzerland! Who has passed the heights of St. Gothard and not awakened a glow in his body and an impulse in his soul that strengthen him ever after!

But it is not our purpose to portray to the reader the scenes, in the description of which Bayard so much excelled, and hence, making note only of such things as had a marked influence on his life and writings, we hastily follow him in his pilgrimage through the vale of Ticino, over Lago Maggiore, to the gates of Milan, under the clear blue sky of lovely Italy. There the most magnificent marble Cathedral in all the world, when considered as a triumph of art in reproducing the Beautiful, lifted its spires and figures above the roofs of churches and palaces. A bewildering forest of peaks and towers confuse the student of its outline, and innumerable collections of exquisitely wrought groups and statues dishearten and confuse the student of art. Yet the unity of its proportions, and the symmetry of its arches and cornices, were recognizedby all. Bayard trod its artistic pavement with feelings of awe and admiration. He gazed long upon its aisles and pillars, and crept on tip-toe into the shadows of its great altar. It is one of the most solemn things in life to stand in such a temple of genius. The stained windows, with their sacred figures and symbols, the sweet reverberations of the sacred music, the low chant of the priests, the kneeling forms of penitent worshippers, the strength of the workmanship and vastness of its sombre recesses, awaken sensations that sleep in the open air. The naturally vicious and cruel avoid those chancels, and the wise and good gain encouragement from the supreme calm that reigns therein. Bayard enjoyed his stay in Milan and his visits to the Cathedral most heartily, and it was an important experience in the development of his natural character. How his skill in observation, and his interest in everything had increased! Bright and acute by nature, he saw and noted many things when he first landed, which others would have passed without observing; but those months of discipline and anxious research had developed this characteristic, until, as he enters Italy, he notices every shrub, every animal, every building, every man, woman and child; and at a glance passes them under such close scrutiny that he is able, months after, to describe them in all the details of form, color, nature, association, habits, and occupation. How boundless and fathomless is the unobserved about us! How few notice the myriad ofinteresting and enlightening objects and incidents that come within the range of their vision! The disposition and aptitude for observation is as indispensable to the traveller, as it is convenient to one who plods the dull routine of home life. Bayard was naturally discerning and inclined to investigate. Such will be the deliberate conclusion of one who studies his life as a whole, although his enemies have sometimes taken advantage of his modest suppressions to accuse him of blindness. Bayard sees a child in the garments of priesthood, and pities him for his solitary life. He meets a poor woman and notices the texture of her dress, and the scar upon her cheek. He looks at a painting of the Cathedral, and observes that a spire is wanting. He looks at the towers, and compares those creations of art with the more rugged spires of Monte Rosa’s ice-crags. He laments the ignorance of the people whose features advertised their needs. He studies and criticises the shape and position of the Arch of Peace, and the bronze groups that adorn its summit: shops, toy-stands, cabs, soldiers, flowers, priests, dukes, houses, fields, schools, coin, clothing, atmosphere, and food,—all are noticed and laid away for recollection, as without order they attracted his attention. He discovered more worth relating in Milan, than some travellers saw in the whole of Europe.[1]

From Milan the party walked to Genoa, going through the battle-fields of Hannibal and the Cæsars, along highways once the paved roads of the Roman Empire, and under the shadows of ancient castles whose walls once bristled with the shields of knights and spears of yeomen. It was a glorious, though tedious journey, and by thus travelling in the manner of pilgrims they met the inhabitants at their usual occupations, and learned much of the customs and feelings of the common people. Such information comes not through the windows of railroad carriages, nor enters by the portals of grand hotels.

Having visited the ducal palaces, cathedrals, and parks of Genoa, he went by boat to Leghorn, and thence to Pisa. There he saw, in the Cathedral, the swinging chandelier which led Galileo to investigate the laws of gravitation, and satisfied his curiosity by ascending the Leaning Tower, and left the city with those melodies of unearthly sweetness, which the echoes of the Baptistry give forth, still ringing in his ears. After riding all night in a rickety cart, and suffering horribly from the terrible storm and jolting conveyance, he entered the sacred precincts of that hallowed city, so beautiful, so dear to the heart of the poet and painter,—Florence.

In his poem, “The Picture of St. John,” Bayard thus speaks of that enchanted locality:—

“Ah, lovely Florence! never city woreSo shining robes as I on thee bestowed:For all the rapture of my being flowedAround thy beauty, filling, flooding o’erThe banks of Arno and the circling hills,With light no wind of sunset ever spillsFrom out its saffron seas! Once, and no more,Life’s voyage touches the enchanted shore.”

“Ah, lovely Florence! never city wore

So shining robes as I on thee bestowed:

For all the rapture of my being flowed

Around thy beauty, filling, flooding o’er

The banks of Arno and the circling hills,

With light no wind of sunset ever spills

From out its saffron seas! Once, and no more,

Life’s voyage touches the enchanted shore.”

During his stay in Florence, Bayard wrote a poem which so clearly expressed his affection for the maiden in Kennett, whom he afterwards married, that many have supposed the fictitious title, by which he addressed her, to be her real name. In that poem he thus referred to Florence:—

“Dear Lillian, all I wished is won!I sit beneath Italia’s sun,Where olive orchards gleam and quiverAlong the banks of Arno’s river.Rich is the soil with fancy’s gold;The stirring memories of oldRise thronging in my haunted vision,And wake my spirit’s young ambition.”

“Dear Lillian, all I wished is won!I sit beneath Italia’s sun,Where olive orchards gleam and quiverAlong the banks of Arno’s river.

“Dear Lillian, all I wished is won!

I sit beneath Italia’s sun,

Where olive orchards gleam and quiver

Along the banks of Arno’s river.

Rich is the soil with fancy’s gold;The stirring memories of oldRise thronging in my haunted vision,And wake my spirit’s young ambition.”

Rich is the soil with fancy’s gold;

The stirring memories of old

Rise thronging in my haunted vision,

And wake my spirit’s young ambition.”

That Italian paradise, situated in the beautiful vale of that most charming river, is perhaps the loveliest spot in all that land. Being the home of such artists as Michael Angelo and Raphael, the abode of such poets as Dante, and of such scientific men as Galileo, it possessed an intense interest because of its association with them. Being also the seat of the De Medici, of Machiavelli, of Pitti, and the resort of the greatest American poets and sculptors, its themes for verse and prose are almost numberless. There Bayard made astay of several months. He devoted himself to the study of the Italian language, in which he soon became proficient, and visited every castle, monastery, amphitheatre, and mountain in the suburbs, and carefully scrutinized the tombs of Sante Croce, the inlaid work of the Duomo, and those marvels of art in the Pitti and Uffizi galleries. He ever after mentioned his first stay in Florence as a season of the most intense delight, and knowing how vast is the field for study and recreation, and his peculiar susceptibility to all the lights and shades of art, we see how full was his heart of the purest and most satisfactory intellectual joy. There he saw Raphael’s “St. John in the Desert,” and it is probable that the painting prompted him to write the poem entitled “The Picture of St. John,” the scene of which is laid partly in Florence, and is one of his most valued literary productions. There he saw theMadonna della Sediaof Raphael, the companion piece of theMadonnahe saw and so much admired in Dresden. There he saw Titian’s Goddess, so radiant with feminine beauty, and there Michael Angelo’s first attempt at sculpture;—so many treasures of art are there, and so many sacred places renowned in history, that the great city gains its living from the visitors and students that fill its hotels, and crowd its churches and museums. Bayard actually loved Florence, and returned to it afterwards with that irresistible yearning which a young man feels for the home of his lover.

There remains in all the world but one other place for the artist after he has seen and appreciated Florence. His love for the exquisitely sweet and beautiful is satisfied,—all the tender and delicate links between art and nature can there be seen and felt. An exhibition of the mighty, grand, colossal side of art remains; and to the lover of such exhibitions, and to the romance-seeker who, like Bayard, desires to walk the dusty halls, peopled with the ghosts of half-forgotten ages, Rome still waits.

Visit to Rome.—Attractions of its Ruins.—Bayard’s Persistent Searches.—His Limited Means.—Sights and Experiences.—Journey to Marseilles.—Walks to Lyons.—Desperate Circumstances.—Stay in Paris.—Employment of his Time.—Departure for London.—Failure to obtain Money or Work.—Seeks a Friend.—Obtains Help from a Stranger.—Voyage to New York.—Arrival Home.

Who has entered the aged city of Rome and not felt the power of its thrilling associations? How the doors of history swing open before the traveller, and how sublime the panorama which unfolds to his view! How swiftly pass the scenes of pomp and the parades of heroes! It cannot be described. It must be felt to be understood. It requires no very active imagination to see again the strong walls, the towers, the gates, the majestic temples, and the superb Capitol rising over all. To be able to walk its paved streets, and wend about its Corinthian porches, and through its marvellous arches; to rush with the crowds of Romans to a seat in the Coliseum; to march in the triumphal processions, and to listen to the echo of Cicero’s voice among the pillars of the Forum, is no very difficult dream, when the same buildings which saw and heard those things are yet before you. Onecan stand in the shadows of ancient ruins, when the moon gives light enough to see the outline, but not sufficient to show the scars which the ages have given them, and witness again the gatherings of the Roman people, and make out the forms of Cincinnatus, of Scipio, of Marius, of Cæsar, of Cicero, of Augustus, or of Constantine, as their lumbering chariots jolt over the pavements and around the palace walls. The Tiber, which rolls on its ceaseless course, and which saw the faces of Livy, Horace, and Virgil, moves by the Tarpeian Rock, and the Campus Martius, with the same eddying playfulness as it exhibited then. New glories gild the clouds, and new temples adorn the adjacent plains. Jupiter gives way to Jehovah, priests of Janus and Venus stand aside for monks and friars to fill their office. The Coliseum crumbles, as St. Paul’s lifts its grand façades. Capitolinus falls and St. Peter’s fills the bow of heaven. Marvels of ancient art grow dusty with the ages, while new forms, so divinely conceived, so incomparably wrought, and so immaculate in modesty and matchless in color, spring into being at the call of the later civilization. All is interesting, exciting, glorious! One walks the streets in dreams, lulled by the musical cadences of the rippling native language. Words cannot convey the feelings awakened by that new sense, which discerns and interprets the ancient and modern associations of Rome. The traveller feels as if he were a companion of the great and powerful, of the refined andgood, who have walked those streets before him, and ever after the words they spoke, and the books they wrote, have a fresh and unabating interest.

THE ARENA OF THE COLISEUM.

So Bayard saw the ancient city, although he has described it somewhat differently. Rome was to Florence what the Apollo is to the Venus de Medici, each enhancing the beauty of the other, and losing nothing by comparison. It was near the first of January, 1846, when the subject of these sketches entered Rome and took up his abode in a lowly tavern opposite the front of the Pantheon. In a most humble, almost beggarly way, he obtained his food at the cheapest places, and walked among those old ruins in the most unobtrusive manner. He was too poor, and earned too little as a newspaper correspondent, to spend aught on the luxuries of Rome. Hence all his time and attention were on that which pleased the eye and satisfied the mind, rather than upon those things which gratify the appetite or inflate the pride. He walked to the Coliseum by moonlight, and heeded not fatigue. For within its cragged circuit he saw again the excited hosts, the gay ladies about the imperial throne, the writhing Christian, and the lions with bloody jaws. Or he saw the fiercer human beings engaged in the gladiatorial combat, saw the flash of shields and swords, heard the groan of the dying as it was drowned by the rising shouts for the victor. He searched the hidden recesses of the baths, palaces, arches, prisons, and churches, which remain as remindersof the old city; he marched far out on the Appian Way and contemplated its tombs and mysterious piles in laborious detail; he sketched the spirals of Trajan’s Column, and drew a plan of the ancient Capitol. In awe-stricken silence he walked beneath the dome of mighty St. Peter’s, and marvelled in worshipful mood before those exquisite mosaics. He lingered long and lovingly in the great labyrinth of the Vatican, wept at the sight of some of those great paintings, and bowed with respect to the greatest productions of the greatest sculptors. Few will give credit to the glowing pictures which he draws of the arts in Rome, nor believe the strong assertions we herein make, who have not been there and experienced the same sensations.

He visited in pious respect the tombs of Tasso, Keats, and Shelley, and found his way into the studios of the modern artists. He took short trips into the country, and once stopped for the night under the shadows of the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. Beyond Rome he could not go. For once, Dame Fortune turned her back upon him. If he would see Naples, Pompeii, and Samos, he must have money. Money he could not get. Grievously disappointed, yet thankful for what he had seen, he most devoutly thanks God, and turns northward.

At Civita Vecchia to which place he, as usual, walked, he embarked, third class, on a steamboat for Marseilles. The beds were rough planks, the food was drenched like himself, and fleas infested every stitch ofcovering. It stormed, and Bayard might have perished with exposure to the bad weather, had not a sailor taken compassion on him and his companion, and lent them some clothing. That kindness he ever remembered, and it may have been in his mind when, after meeting many sailors, he wrote of them:—

“They do not act with a studied grace,They do not speak in delicate phrase,But the candor of heaven is on their face,And the freedom of ocean in all their ways.They cannot fathom the subtle cheats,The lying arts that the landsmen learn:Each looks in the eyes of the man he meets,And whoso trusts him, he trusts in turn.But whether they die on sea or shore,And lie under water, or sand, or sod,Christ give them the rest that he keeps in store,And anchor their souls in the harbor of God!”

“They do not act with a studied grace,They do not speak in delicate phrase,But the candor of heaven is on their face,And the freedom of ocean in all their ways.

“They do not act with a studied grace,

They do not speak in delicate phrase,

But the candor of heaven is on their face,

And the freedom of ocean in all their ways.

They cannot fathom the subtle cheats,The lying arts that the landsmen learn:Each looks in the eyes of the man he meets,And whoso trusts him, he trusts in turn.

They cannot fathom the subtle cheats,

The lying arts that the landsmen learn:

Each looks in the eyes of the man he meets,

And whoso trusts him, he trusts in turn.

But whether they die on sea or shore,And lie under water, or sand, or sod,Christ give them the rest that he keeps in store,And anchor their souls in the harbor of God!”

But whether they die on sea or shore,

And lie under water, or sand, or sod,

Christ give them the rest that he keeps in store,

And anchor their souls in the harbor of God!”

He arrived at Marseilles with but five dollars for the expense of a journey of five hundred miles on foot. Dark outlook, indeed, on entering for the first time a country with whose language he was unacquainted. Through rain and mud, sunshine and darkness, he moved on, courageous as ever, and enjoying with the same zest his glimpses of ancient cathedrals and renowned localities. At Lyons he received a small amount of money by mail, and at a time when death by starvation seemed but a few hours removed. Thestory of his mishaps by land and by water, on his way from Lyons to Paris is a very exciting narration, as he relates them in his “Views Afoot,” and yet shows the best side of a most terrible experience. But Paris was reached at last, and in the first week of February, 1846, they found a lodging place in the Rue de la Harpe, at the rate of two dollars and eighty cents a month. He lived on twenty cents a day, and in place of a teacher of French, subscribed at a circulating library and picked out the words and phrases by downright hard study in his fireless and damp attic. For five weeks he studied and rambled and endured privation, learning Paris by heart and finding himself made free and happy by the atmosphere of gayety which pervades everything there. His favorite resort was the Place de la Concorde, which is an open space at one side of the palace of the Tuileries, and at the foot of that magnificent embowered avenue called the Champs Elysées. There were then, as now, the enchanting groves, with the gardens, concert bowers, and shy booths. There was the obelisk from Luxor, which called Bayard’s attention to Egypt and created a strong desire to see that ancient land of the Nile. There were the solid walls of the Tuileries upon one side, the river Seine upon another, while the twin palaces, with the distant front of the Madeleine Church showing between them, shut out the populous city on the other. But the pavements, flowers, fountains, bronze figures, obelisk and palaces were the least of the attractionswhich called this persevering young student to that celebrated square. It was there that many of the most important acts in the history of France were performed. It was there that kings were made, and there they were beheaded. It was there that priests had preached, and there that they were murdered. It was there that in the crimson and lurid days of ’94, the Red Revolutionists each day filled the baskets at the foot of the guillotine with the heads of twoscore and often threescore citizens. Who would surmise that in a city so gay, so cheerful, so imbued with the very spirit of pleasure and childlike life, such hideous deeds of blood and destruction could be performed! Quick-tempered, excitable people, going with the flash of a thought from one extreme to the other. No place in all Paris better exhibits the character of the nation, than the Place de la Concorde. There Bayard often lingered and pondered, seeing clearly through the film of gay attire, garlands of roses, delightful wines, and gorgeous carriages, the dangerous yet often heroic elements, which have so often thrown off the crust of fashion and politeness, and flooded the beautiful city with seething torrents from the deepest hell.

PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.

He sought out the master-pieces of art in the galleries, cathedrals, and parks, and dwelt long and caressingly upon their entrancing forms, having now passed through a school that left him a competent critic. He gazed after the carriage where Louis Philippe rode in state, and wondered if such a monarchy could endure,and with a powerful yearning fumbled the unintelligible leaves of Victor Hugo, Beranger, and Lamartine—not, however, to be long unintelligible.

There, again, he was in financial distress, and was saved from great suffering by the unexpected kindness of a merchant, who, like Mr. Chandler and Mr. Patterson at the beginning of his career, loaned him money, although Bayard was a stranger and could give no security.

From ParisviaVersailles and Rouen, he walked to Dieppe, and, after crossing the Channel, travelled by third-class car to London, where he arrived with but thirty cents in French money. With no money to pay his lodging, with a letter from home in the post-office, on which he could not pay the postage, he made desperate attempts to obtain employment as a printer. But the “Trade Unions” were so omnipotent, that no stranger without a certificate could be set at work without a “strike.” At last, when long without his usual meals, and sure of being refused a lodging, he applied to Mr. Putnam, who was conducting the London agency of the American publishing firm, who loaned him five dollars, and he could again eat and sleep. Several weeks of waiting intervened, in which Mr. Putnam kindly kept Bayard in employment, at a salary sufficient to pay his board, before the money came from America to take them home. Even then the captain of the vessel on which he returned with his two friends who started with him nearly two years before, was compelled to take apromise for a part of the fare. Captain Morgan, who commanded the vessel, was one of the noblest men that ever paced a deck, and so popular did he become, that his biography was published thirty years after this passage, in an illustrated number of “Scribner’s Magazine.” Their voyage was a fair one, their landing in New York a happy one; but no pen except his own can describe the joy of seeing again his own country, and of walking at evening into the door of that home which he left two years before asa boy, and to which he then returneda man.

Edits a Country Newspaper.—The “Phœnixville Pioneer.”—The Discouragements.—The Suspension.—Publishes “Views Afoot.”—Introduction to Literary Men.—Contributes to the “Literary World.”—Becomes an Editor of the New York “Tribune.”—The Gold Excitement of 1849.—Resolves to visit the Eldorado.—Arrival in California.

Bayard Taylor’s gifts were not such as would contribute toward the success of a country newspaper—so delicate, refined, poetical, and classical, we wonder that he should ever have undertaken so uncongenial a work. The best things which he could write would be dull as lead to the majority of his readers. The more literary merit his editorials and poems contained, the less likely were they to receive the praise of his subscribers. Yet his disposition to work was so inherent in every nerve, that he had not been at home one week from his tour of Europe before he was searching for a place for editorial work or correspondence. Mr. Frederick Foster, who was an old acquaintance and who also had been in the office of the West Chester “Village Record,” suggested the establishment of a weekly newspaper. As they looked for an opening for such an enterprise, they hit upon the town of Phœnixville, Pa., as the most advantageous locality. Phœnixville was then aprosperous village, containing about two thousand inhabitants, twenty-seven miles from Philadelphia and thirty-one miles from Reading. There were rolling-mills, furnaces, and a variety of manufactories in the town, and the people constituted an enterprising and unusually vigorous community. There Mr. Taylor and Mr. Foster began the publication of the “Pioneer,” and with high hopes and an alarming confidence, waited neither for capital nor subscribers.

Mr. Taylor has often related to his friends some most amusing anecdotes connected with his life as a country editor. One subscriber wanted a glossary, another wished to see the local gossip about John Henry Smith’s surprise party, instead of the dull columns of literary reviews. One suggested that two editors would kill any paper, while another ventured to assert that he himself would edit the paper for them at three hundred dollars a year and “find shears.”

It was a difficult task. To edit the New York “Herald” would have been far easier and better suited to Mr. Taylor’s genius. The people, of Phœnixville, however, began to appreciate their privileges after the lack of support compelled the young journalists to close their office and suspend the publication of the paper; and financial aid to re-establish the “Pioneer” was generously offered. But one year in such an unappreciated labor was enough for Mr. Taylor, and he left Phœnixville, according to his own account, considerably wiser and poorer than he was when he entered it. Ifany of our readers has attempted to start a literary paper in the country, and passed through the perplexities of financial management and rude discouragements, he will need no words to prompt his most hearty sympathy with the work, and the suspension of Mr. Taylor’s undertaking. To make successful a publication of that character in a scattered and small community, requires a greater diversity of talent, greater manual labor, and a closer study of all-various human nature, than it does to conduct the largest establishments in the limitless field of a great city. Mr. Taylor’s experience simply added another illustration of the universal rule. His best articles were unappreciated or believed to be borrowed, and everything hindered the pursuit of that conscientious literary aspiration which feels keenly the failings and improprieties of superficial work.

It was in this year that Mr. Taylor prepared, and Mr. Putnam published, his surprisingly attractive volume, entitled “Views Afoot.” With such Quaker-like simplicity was it written, and such a noble spirit of poetry pervaded the descriptions of scenery, men, and art, that it leaped into popular favor on the prestige of its advance sheets. Its success was a forcible example of the winning power of simple truth. Its interest will never abate, because he did not assume the pompous airs of an infallible critic, but rather chose to pretend to nothing but describe what he saw as it appeared to him.

The success of that book introduced him at once into the literary circles of New York, where, with the friendship of Mr. Willis, Mr. Parke Godwin, Mr. Horace Greeley, Mr. William Cullen Bryant, and many others, well known as men of the highest culture, he received a most cordial welcome. He was at once secured by the management of the “Literary World,” a periodical issued weekly in New York, and which, from 1847 to 1853, held the highest place in literary criticism and classical composition gained by any American magazine or paper of that period.

When he sought employment on the New York “Tribune,” in 1848, a place was readily found for him, and he began, by the contribution of small articles, his long and honorable career as one of the editors of that influential journal.

In the spring of 1849, Mr. Greeley suggested to Mr. Taylor the importance of having some trustworthy information from the gold regions of California, about which there was then so much excitement. The people read, with the greatest avidity, every scrap of news or gossip from the gold-fields, and thousands were on their way by steam and by overland mule-trains to seek their fortunes in that Eldorado. At no period of our nation’s history, not excepting the agitation at the beginning of great wars, have the people of this country exhibited such uncontrollable excitement as they displayed at that time.

The rich sold their property to the first bidder, andtook the first conveyance; while the poor started on foot, with nothing to preserve them from the starvation which followed in the desert. For a time it appeared as if New England and the Middle States would be left without sufficient male population to carry on the routine of official duty.

In the height of that feverish exodus Mr. Taylor decided to fall in with the tide, and drifting with the current, tell the readers of the “Tribune” what he saw and heard. Hence, in June, he took passage on a crowded steamer for Panama, and after a dreadful experience in crossing the Isthmus, steamed up the Pacific Coast and entered the Golden Gate.

Entrance to California.—The Camp at San Francisco in 1849.—Description of the People.—Gold-Hunters.—Speculations.—Prices of Merchandise.—Visit to the Diggings.—Adventures on the Route.—The First Election.—The Constitutional Convention.—San Francisco after Two Months’ Absence.—Poetical Descriptions.—Departure for Mexico.—Arrival at Mazatlan.—Overland to the Capital.—Adventure with Robbers.—Return to New York.

The circumstances under which Mr. Taylor entered California, were in striking contrast with those which surrounded him when he made his first attempt to see the world. For, when he started for his European tour, and throughout the whole period of his stay there, he was hindered and annoyed by the lack of money, and by the lack of acquaintances. Then, he was dependent wholly upon his own earnings and economy for every privilege he enjoyed. He had nothing substantial behind him, and nothing certain before him. But in California he moves among the people with the prestige and capital of a powerful journal behind him, and before him the certainty of ample remuneration for all his trials. He is no longer the unknown, uncared-for stripling, whose adventures are regarded as visionary, and whose company was anintrusion. He was the welcomed guest of naval officers, of army officers, and invited to the home of the Military Governor, and to the headquarters of Gen. John C. Fremont.

When he entered San Francisco, that place was only a miners’ camp, composed of tents, barracks, piles of merchandise, and tethered mules. How utterly incomprehensible it seems now to the visitor to that great metropolis, when he reads that, as late as 1849, there were only huts and tents where now stand the palatial business blocks, gorgeous hotels, and miles of residences made of brick and stone! It was an interesting time to visit the Pacific shore, and most interestingly did Mr. Taylor describe it in his letters, and in his book entitled “Eldorado.” The great camp of San Francisco was but a few weeks old when he arrived there; but, in its boiling humanity, Mr. Taylor noticed Malays, Chinamen, Mexicans, Germans, Englishmen, Yankees, Indians, Japanese, Chilians, Hawaiians, and Kanakas, rushing, shouting, gesticulating, like madmen. Gold! Gold! Gold! Everything, anything for gold! Though hundreds lay in the swamps of Panama, dead or dying with the cholera; although the bleaching bones of many enthusiasts gleamed in the sun on the great American desert; although thousands had perished in the thickets, snows, and floods of the Sierra Nevada, their eyes never to be gratified with the sight of gold-dust; yet the increasing multitude followed faster,and more recklessly in their footsteps. Into such a mass of half-insane humanity, did Mr. Taylor thrust himself, that the world, as well as himself, might profit thereby. Great names were given to the smallest things, and prices larger than the names. The Parker House was a board shanty with lodging-rooms at twenty-five dollars a week, and was not more than seventy feet square, but rented to the landlord for one hundred and ten thousand dollars a year. Newspapers sold for a dollar each, and nearly every class of merchandise from the Eastern States brought a profit of several thousand per cent. The wages of a common laborer were from fifteen dollars to twenty dollars a day, while real estate went up so fast in price, that few dared to sell, lest the next day should show that they had lost a fortune. One man, who died insolvent, but having, in his name a small tract of land, left after all a million of dollars to his heirs, so much did the lands increase in value before the estate was settled.

Fortunes were made in a single day. If a man arrived there with anything to sell, he could put his own price upon it, and dispose of it to the first comer. One man, whose store was a log-cabin with a canvas roof, made five hundred thousand dollars in eight months. Gambling was carried on in an equally magnificent scale. Greater bets than Baden-Baden or Monaco ever saw, were common-place there. Millions of dollars changed hands every day. Gold was soplentiful, that boys made immense profits, gathering, out of the dust in the streets, the nuggets and fine gold which had been carelessly allowed to drop from the miners’ bags or pockets.

From that strangest of all strange medleys, Mr. Taylor travelled, mule-back, through a wild and dangerous region, to Stockton, and thence to the productive “diggings” on Mokelumne River. There he saw the miners hard at work gathering the gold in the most primitive manner. The sands found in the dry bed of the river were mixed with gold, while in the crevices and little holes in the rocks, pieces of gold, varying from the size of a five-cent piece to that of a hen’s egg, were frequently found. Gold from the sand was gathered by shaking a bowlful of it until the heaviest particles fell through to the bottom; and by washing away the finer particles of dirt, and picking out the stones with the fingers. Nearly every miner found some gold; but those who made the immense fortunes were quite rare. For many of such as were in luck, and who found great sums, were so sure of finding more, that they squandered what they had discovered, in a manner most unfortunate for them, but very fortunate for those who had found nothing. All the details, experiences, and adventures of these followers of Mammon were exhibited to Mr. Taylor, and the most tempting offers made to him to dig for himself. But, true to his employers, he turned from mines “with millions in them,” and wroteletters for the “Tribune.” Over jagged mountains, through thickets of thorns, through muddy rivers, over desert plains, and along routes, dangerous alike from man and beast, he fearlessly pursued his journey of observation, exhibiting many of those characteristics which have distinguished H. M. Stanley, that other great correspondent. Sights he saw that curdled the blood; men he met, pale, haggard, and dying; bones he saw of lost and starved miners; and the extremes of misery and joy, wealth and poverty, generosity and meanness, faith in God, and worship of the devil, which must have bewildered him.

The fact that he had money and social influence did not protect him from the hardships common to all travellers who visited the gold mines of California at that early period. Many nights he slept in the open air, having his single blanket and the cold earth for a bed. Often he made his couch on a table or the floor in some rude and dirty cabin. Sometimes he was lost in the woods or among the mountains, and frequently suffered long for food and water. He was determined to see the land and its freight of human life in its most practical form, although by so doing he often risked the loss of comfort, of property, and occasionally of his life.

One of the most interesting chapters of history to be found in any work connected with life in the United States, is to be found in his simple but graphic account of the first election in California. The rough, disintegrated,and shifting communities of that new land had for a year and a half depended for law and order upon the innate respect for the rights of others to be found in the hearts of a majority of civilized men. Beyond this there were organized in some of the mining towns a vigilance committee, and in a few others a judge with almost supreme power was elected by a vote of the people. These officials administered justice by common consent, having no commission or authority from the National Government. The enormous crowds of immigrants which filled towns and cities in a single month made the necessity for some form of State or Territorial government apparent to the least thoughtful. So a few of the more enterprising individuals, advised and assisted by the military authorities, undertook to bring order out of chaos by calling upon the people to elect delegates to a Constitutional Convention. The readiness and systematic manner in which the people of that whole region responded to the call, was one of the most remarkable as well as one of the most instructive popular movements to be found in the annals of freedom. The meeting of that Constitutional Convention at Monterey; the rude accommodations, the ability of the body, the harmony of their deliberations, and the wisdom of their regulations and provisions, was the subject of many most enthusiastic epistles from the pen of Mr. Taylor. In his celebrated book, now so much prized by the people of California, and by students of American history, he gives manylittle details and incidents which are left out of other books and so often overlooked by authors and correspondents, but which are of inestimable importance in gaining an accurate knowledge of the inside social and political beginnings of that powerful State. He described the appearance of the building in which the Convention met, gives sketches of the prominent actors in the assembly, and, as if foreseeing how posterity would like to preserve the memory of that great day, he gives the complexion, color of the hair, stature, and dress of the noted men who held seats. It is as exciting as one of Scott’s novels to read of the emotion, the tears, among those legislators when the new State was born, and when the “thirty-first” gun was fired from the fort to announce the completion of the great event. Thus, from the consent of the governed in its most literal sense, the officers of the State of California derived their just powers. And without discord, rebellious or seditious conspiracies, a new government took its place among the empires of the world. The description of that event in his simple, straightforward way was one of Mr. Taylor’s best deeds.

Yet every incident and scene had its poetic side to him, and, while that phase of his nature did not lead him to exaggeration in prose, it often led him to break into independent poetic effusions. He appears to have long looked upon the Pacific coast as a field of poetry and song, for, before he had any idea of visiting the country, he wrote several poems, and locatedthem there. “The Fight of Paso del Mar” was one of those early poems, and the scene was the cliff at the entrance to the harbor at Santa Barbara.

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