The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor, by Russell H. Conwell.

AUTHOR OF “LIFE OF PRESIDENT HAYES,” “WHY AND HOW THE CHINESE EMIGRATE,”
“HISTORY OF THE GREAT FIRE IN BOSTON,” “HISTORY OF THE GREAT FIRE
IN SAINT JOHN, N. B.,” “LESSONS OF TRAVEL,” ETC., ETC.

BOSTON:
B. B. RUSSELL & CO., No. 57 CORNHILL.
DETROIT: R. D. S. TYLER & CO. PORTLAND: JOHN RUSSELL.
PHILADELPHIA: QUAKER CITY PUBLISHING HOUSE.
NEW YORK: CHARLES DREW. CHICAGO: ANDREWS & DORMAN.
INDIANAPOLIS, IND.: FRED L. HORTON & CO.
1879.

TO THE MISTRESS OF MY HOME.

PREFACE.

It is a solemn yet pleasant duty to compile in comprehensive order the records of a life so eventful and influential as that of Bayard Taylor. It is solemn, because the sad tears which began to flow at his death, are coursing freely still. Pleasant, because there is no task more satisfactory than that of recounting the deeds of a virtuous, industrious, heroic life. No test-book of morals, or of general history, is so effective in educating the young as the annals of well-spent years, gathered for that purpose. There is more or less influence in fables and mythological tales; and there is considerable power in a well written, skilfully plotted work of fiction; but the direct and unavoidable appeal of a noble life, which has closed with honor and deserved renown, is far more potent and permanent in the culture and reformation of the world, than all other forms of intellectual and moral quickening. No apology is needed for writing such a biography. It would be inexcusable to leave the world in need of it. When the time comes for a book more complete in its arrangement and details, and more select in its diction, this will find its proper place in library and reading-room. Until that time it may be at work renewing the memories of a friend, refreshing the recollection of his sweet words, and calling the attention of the stranger to the American who[6] has paid to Europe some of the literary debt we have owed so long.

The writer does not expect that this book will occupy the permanent place in literature, which he sincerely hopes will reward those authors who may follow him on this same topic. Written amid the pressing calls of a busy profession, and in the season when lyceum lecture engagements, which he could not postpone, have kept him continually away from his home; he has attempted nothing more than to give an outline of a remarkable life, for the purpose of satisfying the present demand. Errors may be found by critics, such as all hastily written volumes are liable to contain; but should this work, as a whole, incline the reader to honor the manhood, love the poetry, and revere the memory of one whom the writer for many years has admired and loved, it will answer the purpose for which it has been written.

The author cannot do less than acknowledge, in this place, his great obligations to the father and mother of Mr. Taylor, to Mrs. Annie Carey, his sister, and to Dr. Franklin Taylor, his cousin, for their generous courtesy and most important assistance in gathering the facts for this volume.

The account of the funeral found in this volume was written subsequent to the other portions of the work, as the obsequies and burial took place after the first edition was printed and sold.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE
LIFE, TRAVELS, AND LITERARY CAREER
OF
BAYARD TAYLOR.

CHAPTER I.

The nearness and magnitude of Bayard Taylor’s life make it one exceedingly difficult to comprehend and classify. His adventures were so many, his struggles so severe, his experience so varied, and his final success so remarkable, that the materials are too abundant, and often serve to clog and confuse the student of his career. An artist who views the mountain from its base, loses many of the finest effects and most charming outlines, because of his very close proximity to them. So, in looking upon the wonderful career of such a versatile and gifted man, at a time so near his death, we are less able to form a comprehensive idea of his life, as a symmetrical whole, than we[14] shall be when the years have carried us farther away from him, and the outlines of his greatness are more distinct. Whether it were better to wait until a part of the life has been forgotten, and until the more harsh and angular features have been lost in the general outline, or whether it were more desirable to describe the life in all its actual details, and in the natural ruggedness which the close view reveals, is, however, a mere matter of taste. To those who love to read of a man in whose work there was no unevenness and in whose experience nothing unbroken is seen, the life of one so long dead that the writer is compelled to fill up the forgotten years with ideal events and motives may furnish the choicest theme. But to those students who love scientific scrutiny, who would estimate the life for what it is really worth as an example, the biography which is written amid all the facts, and by one who comes in actual contact with them, is perhaps esteemed the most valuable, although, as a whole, less symmetrical.

Bayard Taylor’s life was rugged and cragged with startling events, when viewed from the kindly poetical stand-point of his character. He felt all the extremes of joy and sorrow. He knew all the pains and honors of poverty and wealth. He was loved by many, he was betrayed by many. He lived in the most enlightened lands, he also sojourned among the most barbarous people. He saw man in peace and in war. He rode the ocean in calm and in storm. He was the[15] welcomed guest in the lowliest huts, and in the most gorgeous palaces. He sweltered in the sands of tropical deserts, and he was benumbed by the fierce winds of the Northern ice-fields. He boldly entered the haunts of wild beasts, and loved the company of harmless and faithful domestics. He was a man of many virtues and some faults, each of which made his life more eventful and fascinating.

The literary position which he held at the time of his death, and which was so romantically attained, was one of almost universal favor. He was respected by all and loved by many. As a writer of fiction he attained but little celebrity, and it appears that he had little expectation of achieving any high honors in that field. As a writer upon travels, and as a delineator of human character as found in strange places, and in but partially known countries, he was second to none. His books upon travel will be read for a century to come, whether thousands or few visit the localities and tribes he has described. As an orator, he never held a high rank. He was chaste, concise, and clear in his choice of words, and had an incisive, pungent way of stating his ideas. He could instruct the student and amuse the populace, but had not the power to agitate and carry away large bodies of men, and seems never to have been very ambitious to do so. As a translator of German literature, he was fast becoming recognized in all English-speaking countries as an excellent authority, and it is deeply to be regretted[16] that he was called away with so many uncompleted translation, and unfinished plans for translations, from the standards of German literature. But it is as a poet that he receives the greatest homage. Yet how little he printed! Unless there shall be found laid away many poems unpublished, he may be classed as one of the least prolific poets of his generation. His lines are so simple, so true to life, such incarnate sentences, so expressive, that, to one who has had a similar experience with the poet, every stanza is a panorama, vivid and indelible. We shall see as we pursue the tale, how sensitive he was to everything poetical, and how deeply he was moved by all those finer and more subtle emotions, which only a poet can feel. His love was deep and abiding. His friendship, like the oaks of his Cedarcroft woodland. His old home was to him the sweetest place in all the beautiful lands he saw. His life was full of romantic incidents, and he recognized them and appreciated them, for the poetry they suggested. We venture to say that his poetry will live in every household, if all his other works should be forgotten.

CHAPTER II.

The ancestry of Bayard Taylor were connected with some of the best blood of England and Germany. His grandmothers were both German, and his grandfathers both English. The German line comes from that body of emigrants, consisting of large numbers from Weimar, Jena, Cassel, Göttingen, Hanover, and perhaps Gotha, who sailed from Bremen and Hamburg between 1730 and 1745. The continued quarrels among the dukes and princes of Germany,—the wars in progress and impending, wherein the peace of the people was incessantly disturbed,—caused a universal uneasiness among the people of those small nations. They never were quite sure of a day’s rest. If they sowed unmolested, there was a grave doubt whether some complication with France, England, or Poland might not bring foreign invaders or allies to destroy or devour the crops. The wars were so incessant, and the quarrels among the petty lords so frequent, that the people became disheartened. They[18] were weary of building for others to destroy, and of rearing sons to be sacrificed to some individual’s ambition. All those German provinces, or duchies, had to accommodate themselves to the religion of their princes, and, at times, the winds that played about the hills of the Black Forest were far less uncertain. To the fathers of these emigrants, who sought America as a haven of religious and political rest, George Fox and his Quaker disciples had taught the doctrines of “The Holy Spirit,” and, under various guises, the tenets of that belief still survived in the German heart.

Those Germans who settled in the counties of Pennsylvania, lying to the south and south-west of Philadelphia, came to this country during the disturbances in the Fatherland, caused by Augustus, Maria Theresa, Frederick, and the scores of other princes who were in power, or seeking to secure it, in the numerous states and free cities of Germany. It is no light excuse, no desire for mere wealth, no hasty search for the fountains of youth, that causes the solid, earnest, patriotic people of Saxony, Baden, or Bavaria to leave forever the home of their nativity. It is a little curious to see how these races, which so cordially and hospitably received the Quaker missionaries from England, should at last unite with them in the settlement of the New World, and, by their intermarriage, produce such offshoots of the united stock as Bayard Taylor and his cotemporaries.

The Quaker ancestry of the poet,—the Taylors[19] and the Ways,—run back through a long line of industrious men and women, more or less known in Central Pennsylvania, to the colony which William Penn sent over from England to cultivate the great land-grant, which King Charles II., of England, gave him, in consideration of his father’s services as admiral in the British navy. They, too, were driven from their homes by the incessant turmoil either of wars or religious persecutions. Their preachers had again and again been imprisoned, while some had died the death of martyrs. Even Penn himself was often in chains and in prison, for being a peaceable believer in the truth of the Quaker doctrines; but so blameless were the lives of these people, and so forgiving their Christian behavior, that the term “Quakers,” which was at first applied to them in derision, became at last a title of respect and honor. “The fear of the Lord did make us quake,” was a common expression with George Fox, the founder of the sect, and the name “Quakers” originated in sneers at that devout sentence.

It is easy to trace in the history of the State of Pennsylvania, the influence of the Quaker spirit, and its impression upon the institutions of the American nation is also strikingly apparent. But when one takes up the life of one of their descendants, and studies his habits, his style of thought, and his ideas of social and political institutions, the hereditary Quaker element, in a modified form, is detected in[20] every motion and expression. It would seem as if any reader, to whom the author is unknown, would detect at once, in any volume of Taylor’s poetry or travels, the fact that he came from Quaker stock. As will be more clearly shown in a subsequent chapter, the teachings of the Quakers, and their manner of expression by gesture and phrase, have unconsciously and charmingly crept into the bosom of his best works. It is a great boon to be born of such a physical and mental combination as that of the German soldiers, with all their coolness and bravery, and the even-tempered, God-fearing Quakers, with all their grace and wisdom. Such intermixture has given to our young nation much of its surprising enterprise and originality, and must, at last, when consolidated into a compact people, produce a nation and a race wholly unlike any other on the earth.

It is not known that any of Bayard Taylor’s ancestry were literary men, or that any of them were endowed with special genius, beyond that which was necessary to clear the forests, cultivate the soil, manage manufacturing enterprises, and carry on small mercantile establishments. Solid people, with wide common-sense, industrious hands and generous hearts, they have modestly held their way, doing their simple duty, and, Quaker-like, making no display.

CHAPTER III.

Bayard Taylor was born at Kennett Square, Penn., Jan. 11, 1825. His mother, whose maiden name was Rebecca Way, was then twenty-nine years of age, and his father was thirty-one. The house then occupied was a two-story stone-and-mortar structure, such as are yet very common in the farming regions of central Pennsylvania. The house was long and narrow, having a porch that extended along the whole front. The rooms were small and low, but it was considered by the farmers of that time as a very comfortable and respectable home. It was located at the junction of two highways, and near the centre of the little hamlet called the “Square,” and sometimes the “Village.” But few families resided there in 1825, and the people were all more or less engaged in the cultivation of the soil. The little rude Quaker meeting-house, so box-like and cold in its aspect, was doubtless the centre of attraction, and the desire to be near the house of God, led those devoted[22] Quakers to build their dwellings on that portion of their lands which lay nearest the church.

The village has increased in growth, and now has a population of six or seven hundred, with several churches belonging to other denominations, and very flourishing schools. But the old homestead building, in which Bayard was born, was destroyed by fire in 1876.

At the time of his birth, his father kept a miscellaneous stock of merchandise in one room of his house, and supplied the necessities of the farmers, so far as the small capital of a country store could anticipate their wants. Situated thirty-five miles from Philadelphia, to which place he was compelled to send the produce he received, and in which place he purchased his simple stock of goods, the merchant had a task on his hands which cannot be appreciated or understood in these days of railways, telegraphs, and commercial travellers. One of his neighbors, living in 1872, used to relate how Mr. Taylor, having had a call for two hay-rakes, which he could not supply, drove all the way to West Chester, the distance of a dozen miles, to get those tools for his customer.

At the time of Bayard’s birth, his parents had been married seven years. Their life had already been subject to many trials, and was fated to meet many more. Of a family of ten children, only one-half the number survived to see mature years. The losses by mercantile ventures, by failing crops, by sickness[23] and accidents, often swept away the hard earnings of many a month. Yet they struggled on, industrious and cheerful, keeping themselves and their children ever busy.

When Bayard was two or three years old, his father purchased a farm about a mile from the village, and giving up his mercantile avocations, turned his whole attention to farming. On that farm Bayard spent the opening years of his life, and on one section of it did he build his beautiful home of “Cedarcroft.”

How deeply he loved his home, how sincere his affection for the rolling fields, the chestnut and the walnut woodland, the old stone farm-house, the clumsy barn, the old highway, the acres of corn and wheat, the distant village and its quaint old church, can be seen in a thousand expressions finding place in his published works. His poetical nature opened to his view beautiful landscapes and charming associations which others would not detect. The birds sang in an intelligible language; the leaves on the corn entered into conversation; the lowing of the cows could be interpreted; and the rocks were romantic story-tellers. He loved them all. That farm was his Mecca in all his travels. When he left, he says he promised bird, beast, trees, and knolls, that he would return to them. To the writer, who went to Cedarcroft after[24] the poet’s death, and who has so long loved and admired his poetry, it seemed as if the trees patiently awaited his return. All things in nature must have loved and trusted him, or they would not have confided to him so many of their secrets.

Of the pastoral life in Pennsylvania he speaks with pleasing directness in his volume entitled “Home Pastorals.” In one place the aged farmer says:—

No description in prose can as well describe his occupation as a boy, as his own lines, in the poem of the “Holly Tree.”

Such was the farm when he left it, in words of the poet’s choosing, and what he found when, after a quarter of a century of wanderings, he can best describe.

There must be many things in the events of common life which find no voice in poetry, as every life has its prose side. At all events, there were some duties connected with agricultural work which young Bayard never enjoyed. He never was ambitious to follow the plough, or do the miscellaneous odd jobs which perplex and weary a farmer’s boy. Yet, like Burns, he worked cheerfully, and wrung more or less poetry out of every occupation. He was a spare, wiry, nervous boy, quick at work, study, or play, and consequently had many leisure moments, when other boys were drudging along with ceaseless toil. His schoolmates, and the only school-teacher now living (1879) who taught him in his boyhood, all agree that he was a mischievous boy. He loved practical jokes, and, in fact, jokes of every kind. But he was ceaselessly framing verses. When his lesson was mastered, which was always in an incredibly[27] short space of time after he took up his book, he plunged recklessly into poetry. Verses about the teacher, about snowbanks, about buttercups, about pigs, about courting, funerals, church services, schoolmates, and countless other themes filled his desk, pockets, and hat.

Often he wrote love letters, couched in the most delicate phraseology, and signing the name of some classmate to them, would send them to astonished ploughboys and blushing maidens. One old gentleman in West Chester, Penn., always claimed that a set of Bayard’s burlesque verses, sent out in that way, induced him to court and marry a girl with whom he had no acquaintance, until the explanation of his tender epistle was demanded by her father. What volumes of poetry he must have written, which never saw the type, and how much more of that which he was in the habit of repeating to himself was left unwritten! The life he led, from his earliest school days, until he was fifteen years of age, was that of every farmer’s boy in America, who is compelled to work hard through the spring, summer, and autumn, and attend the district school in the winter. The only remarkable difference between Bayard and many other boys, was found in his strong desire to read, and his genius for poetry. He gathered the greater part of his youthful education from books, which he read at home, and by himself.

He had a noble father, and a lovely mother, God[28] bless them! and they made it as easy for Bayard as they could in justice to the other children. They might not have fully understood the signs of genius which he displayed; but they put no needless stumbling-blocks in his way. No better proof of this is needed, than the excellent record of the other children, all of whom hold enviable positions in society. One brother, Dr. J. Howard Taylor, is a physician, and connected with the health department of the city of Philadelphia; another, William W. Taylor, is a most skilful civil engineer; while a third, Col. Frederick Taylor, was killed at the battle of Gettysburg, when leading the celebrated Bucktail Regiment of Pennsylvania. Two sisters are living,—Mrs. Annie Carey, wife of a Swiss gentleman; and Mrs. Lamborn, wife of Col. Charles B. Lamborn, of Colorado. Growing up in such a family, as an elder brother, involved much patient toil, and great responsibility. The best tribute to him, in those days, was paid by an old lady, of Reading, Penn., who knew him in his youth, and who summed up her evidence to the writer in the words, “He did all he could.”

CHAPTER IV.

Joseph Taylor was too intelligent and observing not to notice how unfit was his son Bayard for tending sheep, hoeing corn, and weeding beds of vegetables. The intellectual inclination exhibited by the boy in every undertaking, and his frail form, led Mr. and Mrs. Taylor to look about for some occupation for their son more fitting than the hard drudgery of a farm. The eagerness with which he devoted himself to the study of such books as could then be secured; his schemes for obtaining volumes considered by his parents, until then, wholly beyond their reach; his poems and essays, learned in the hayfield, and written out after the day’s work was done, all confirmed them in the feeling that it was their duty to give up his assistance on the homestead, and permit him to follow the leading of his genius. It was with no little anxiety that they sent him “away to school”; for they felt then that they might not[30] have their son, as a companion, at home again. Mr. Gause then taught an excellent high school at West Chester, the county seat, and to that they sent him for a short time. One of his classmates at that school, now residing in Baltimore, says he remembers distinctly how awkward and rustic Bayard appeared when he first entered the school, and how radical and rapid was the change from the ploughboy to the student. He became a universal favorite, and was so able to teach, and so ready to help, that he had a large number of scholars following him about half the time, for the purpose of getting assistance at their lessons. Yet he found much time to read other books than those containing his studies, and as in a village of the size of West Chester, there were some small libraries, his desire for reading could be gratified. Geography was his favorite study, and, in the pursuit of information, he sought out and read so many books relating to the places mentioned in the text-book, that his classmates used to say that “Bayard knows all about his geography without even reading his lessons over.”

He was soon well acquainted with the history of the world, and had the most interesting events connected with the wars of Europe fresh in his mind. He read about Edinburgh, London, Paris, Berlin, and Dresden; of William the Conqueror, Peter the Great, Charlemagne, and Mahomet; of the adventures of the Crusaders, of the wars of the Roses, the Thirty Years’ War, and Napoleon’s campaigns; and, with[31] each volume, built higher those castles in the air, which many youths construct on the excitement of such themes. It seems astonishing how a boy of fourteen years could appreciate so much of the books he read, when we recall the dulness and dryness which characterized almost every history then extant, and the exceedingly difficult subjects of which they treated. He read, one day, for a few minutes, in Unionville, in 1839, from a book that lay on the mantel-shelf, and although the subject was that of art and the beauty of Raphael’s Madonna and child, he understood it so well, and remembered it so clearly, that, in 1845, when at Dresden, where the picture was exhibited, he was able to recall the words of that description, and the name of the writer.

The circumstances in which his parents were placed, made it impossible for them to support him long at school, neither was he inclined to be a charge upon them. He desired to be able to earn money for himself, both to relieve his parents of the expense, and to furnish means for purchasing books. He was a bold youth. He seemed to fear nothing. He had a sublime faith in his own success, which was not egotism nor pride, but an inspiration. Very often, when he had read a book, he would sit down and write to the author; which fact was not, in itself, so astonishing as the fact that he wrote letters so bright and sensible, that in nearly every case he obtained a courteous, and often a lengthy reply. In this way, he made the[32] acquaintance of many men well known in the literary circles of America, several of whom were of great assistance to him a few years after. When he was but ten years old, and still on the old farm, he read “Pencillings by the Way,” which was a narrative of foreign travel, written by Nathaniel P. Willis, and published in the New York “Mirror,” of which Mr. Willis was then an associate editor.

Young Bayard soon after entered into a correspondence with Mr. Willis on literary matters, and continued the interchange of letters until the death of Mr. Willis, in 1867. In the same manner young Bayard secured the attention, advice, and assistance of Rufus W. Griswold, who edited the “New World” and the “New Yorker,” and who, in 1842 and 1843, edited “Graham’s Magazine,” in Philadelphia. Dr. Griswold was also a poet, and in fact had been in every branch of literary work, from writing items in Boston for a weekly paper, through type-setting, reporting, and compiling, to writing sermons as a Baptist minister. He had led a wandering life, had seen much of the world, and was well acquainted, as an editor and reviewer, with all the best works of history, travel, and poetry. From him Bayard received much sensible advice and much encouragement. To him Bayard sent some of his earliest poems, and thus secured their publication.

It is probable that Bayard became acquainted with Henry S. Evans, editor of the West Chester “Village[33] Record,” through some of his poetical contributions to that paper. However that may be, he sought the office of that paper for an opportunity to learn the printer’s trade, when it had been decided by his parents to let him go. The “Village Record” had long been a respected and favorite journal for that county, and had, under the editorial management of Hon. Charles Miner, been the intellectual training-school of many influential and noted men. Mr. Evans was conducting the paper with much ability, and it was then usually considered a great opportunity for any young man if an opening was found for him in the office of that periodical.

Yet Bayard did not like the work of a printer, and especially despised the work which naturally fell to his lot as a new apprentice. He took to sketching; and having added the instruction of a teacher, for a few weeks, to a natural tact for drawing, he “illustrated” almost everything within reach which had a smooth surface. He caricatured the printers and editors, and brought out the worst features of his associates in horrible cartoons. He sent to delinquent correspondents pictures of ink-bottles and long quills. He sketched himself in the mirror, and sent the copy to inquiring friends. Far too intent upon drawings, poetry, and travels to make much progress as a printer, he became tired of the occupation and longed to be free. There came to his hands some time before[34] he entered the printing-office, a small book, intended partly for home reading and partly as a guide-book for European travellers, entitled “The Tourist in Europe.” It was written by George P. Putnam, of New York, and told the routes, and described the wonders to be seen, in a very fascinating way to one like Bayard, whose imagination was already excited to the most enthusiastic pitch. The boy appears to have studied that book with the greatest and most persevering zeal. He used it for a plan of reading, and taking it by course, borrowed books relating to the places mentioned by Mr. Putnam, until one by one he had learned the history, occupation, literary achievements, and habits of every city or town of note in the whole of Europe. He made up his mind that he was going to Europe. Just how or when was a mystery. But that he was going soon he had no doubt. He spoke of his trip to England and Germany with the confidence of one who has his ticket and letter of credit already in his pocket. Yet he was a penniless boy, who had scarcely seen a ship, and who knew but a few phrases outside of his native tongue. His friends laughed at him, and gravely told his relatives that if Bayard did not curb his rambling disposition he would become a beggar and a disgrace. Even that chosen schoolmate, whose dark eyes and tresses held more influence over his thoughts and movements than the world knew, or he himself would publicly acknowledge, laughed incredulously as he[35] told her of his projected visits to the castles, towers, shrines, and battle-fields of Europe and Asia.

The months rolled heavily away, and his fingers wearied with the type, and his heart became sad because of the long delay. He began to be ashamed of his boasts, but patiently waited. For two years he studied, planned, prophesied, yearned for a trip to Europe; having in the meantime made a short and hazardous tramp to the Catskills, with money saved from his clothing allowance as an apprentice. He ventured to write to some ship-owners in Philadelphia, to ascertain if he could work his passage. He often mentioned his proposed trip to his employer, and asked to be released from his engagement and agreement as an apprentice. Mr. Evans only smiled and said that Bayard need not trouble himself about that at present; it would be all right when the time came for him to go. Thus, with a conviction that he should certainly go, and yet heart-sick at the delay, Bayard reached his nineteenth birthday.

CHAPTER V.

Bayard had a cousin Frank, or Franklin, whom he held in great respect, and whose subsequent life, as will be seen hereafter, justified the high esteem in which Bayard held him. This young man, a few years older than Bayard, had, by much patience and perseverance, succeeded in obtaining sufficient money to support himself in an economical manner in Germany, and had made up his mind to attend the lectures at the university in Heidelberg.

“I do not know where it is coming from, not even for my outfit, but I am going with you.”

Bayard had written to a great many people, of whom he had heard, asking them about the expense and outfit for a tour in Europe. Some of them had made the journey, and some had completed their preparations;[37] but they all placed the amount so high as to appear like a fabulous sum to the poor apprentice. None placed the fare at less than five hundred dollars, while some of the estimates were as high as eighteen hundred dollars. Of course this poor boy could not earn nor borrow either of these amounts. Yet he was confident that in some way he would be able to overcome the difficulty.

Dr. Griswold, of whom mention was made in the last chapter, had suggested that it might be wise for Bayard to publish, in small book-form, his sonnets and other poems, and sell them to friends and admirers; and when he found that Frank was going, he determined to try that method of raising a little money. He went to some of his old friends and neighbors for assistance to print his little volume; but so little was their faith in the boy they had known from his birth, that they told him they would not encourage him in a scheme so absurd and impracticable. But Bayard only became the more determined with each defeat. He renewed his application to friends more distant, and, as is usually the case, he found they had more confidence than those who looked upon him as the boy they knew on the farm. From those distant friends, living in Philadelphia and West Chester, he at last obtained such assistance as to be able to print a few copies of his poems. He christened his first volume “Ximena, and other Poems,” and finding many kindly disposed persons who would like to help[38] him to the small sum asked for the book, but who would have been ashamed to present him with so diminutive an amount, he was enabled to dispose of enough in a few days to pay his expenses and a profit of twenty dollars. Acting upon the advice of Nathaniel P. Willis, he applied to the editors of the various newspapers in Philadelphia for employment as a travelling correspondent; but letters from Europe were becoming stale, and correspondence was overdone, so that he was met with discouraging refusals on every hand. Fortunately, some one suggested to him the names of the “Saturday Evening Post,” and the “United States Gazette.” He was, however, without hope of anything from them. He has since said to his friends, that he then thought as he could not fare any worse than he had done, it would do no harm to try again. His confidence in his final success was so great, that he had made a settlement with Mr. Evans, of the “Village Record,” and had left the employment of a printer before he had found or thought of a way to secure funds for his intended trip. He had no money, no outfit, no employment; and yet he was sure he should go. In that condition, and in a state of mind bordering on wonder, because the way which was to open had so long remained shut, this thin, awkward youth walked confidently into the office of the “Saturday Evening Post.” Mr. S. D. Patterson was then its editor, and, while he was disposed to assist the young man, he did not have much faith in[39] his success as a correspondent. Mr. Patterson, however, gave Bayard some encouragement, and the youth, with lighter step, went to the office of the “United States Gazette.” Not finding Mr. J. R. Chandler at his editorial room, Bayard went to the editor’s residence. Mr. Chandler was sick in bed; but he was able to converse with Bayard, and received him very pleasantly. The young man had never met Mr. Chandler before; but he stated his cause with such frankness and clearness, and showed such confidence in his final triumph, that Mr. Chandler took out his pocket-book and gave Bayard fifty dollars, saying that if he sent any letters of sufficient interest they would be inserted in the columns of the “Gazette.” Mr. Chandler did not, at the time, care for letters from Europe, and did not expect to publish any; but, acting from the promptings of a generous heart, he freely gave the assistance desired. Of Mr. Chandler’s honorable career, more will be said in another chapter.

On returning to Mr. Patterson, Bayard found him willing to do as he had proposed, and the sum of fifty dollars was added to the gift of Mr. Chandler. Then, as if fortunes, like misfortunes, come not singly, he found a customer for some manuscript poems in a friend of Dr. Griswold,—George R. Graham. From him Bayard received twenty dollars, making the round sum of one hundred and forty dollars with which to begin his journey to the Old World. Bayard[40] now felt independent and happy. At least he could get across the Atlantic Ocean. He might have to work as a compositor, or as a common laborer, or even beg for his bread after he arrived on the other side; he did not know, and seemed to care but little. He had encountered a hard fortune here, and conquered, and he felt sure that he could do as well there. Happy, proud day was it for him when he returned with the money to his home at Kennett Square. Sad day for Mary Agnew. But as she and Bayard were only playmates and schoolmates, she must not appear to be especially grieved.

The next thing to be done was to obtain a passport from the United States Government. It could only be obtained in Washington, and as they could not afford the expense of the stages, Frank and Bayard started for Washington on foot. It would seem as if such a journey of one hundred and twenty miles,—in which they walked thirty miles to Port Deposit, thence in a rickety tow-boat to Baltimore, and from that city to Washington, they tramped all night without food or drink,—would have discouraged any one from attempting to walk through the countries of Europe. For they must have returned from this first walk footsore and lame in every joint. Yet they came back as full of hope as when they started out, having seen Mr. Calhoun, then Secretary of State, and many other celebrities then inhabiting the capital city,—June, 1844.

Oh! those farewells! To the parents who had watched over him so long, it seemed like losing him forever, so far away and mythical did Europe seem to be. Their lips consented, but their hearts kept rapping no, no, no, in rebellious throbs. The brothers and sisters wept with a grief never before so keen, and a dread never before so deep. But to the youth, before whom the great unexplored world lay in its beauty, and who could not then realize, as he did so keenly afterwards, that in all the world he would find no spot so sweet and interesting to him as would be the one he was leaving, it was a joy over which the sadness of parting for a time was but as the shadow of a cloud on the summer sea. High hopes, great aspirations, drove him along, while romantic castles and fortresses, brilliant rivers, heavenly gardens, majestic mountains, wise people, delightful music, gorgeous galleries of art, and indescribable landscapes, beckoned him to come. Giddy with anticipation, trembling with conflicting emotions, he stood in the shade of the oak and the hickory of the old home that morning, bidding his loved ones good-by. He was a hero. There was the sense of present loss, and of danger to come; but it weighed not with him as against the great ambition of his life.

Did he bid Mary Agnew farewell? Perhaps! The mature poet will tell us, in his own sweet way, by and by.

CHAPTER VI.

Bayard was not an exception to the universal rule, found true by nearly every scholar, and every successful statesman. He was ridiculed by a thoughtless throng. His success in the matters he undertook subjected him to the slights and backbiting of envious simpletons, and everywhere the looks and shrugs of his acquaintances told with what contempt they looked upon his endeavors to be a poet, and to see the world. It was the same old trial, and only those young men who, like Bayard, are able to stand firm against ridicule and envy, ever reach the acropolis of[43] their ambition. No record has been found of the effect these things had upon Bayard, or upon the two noble young men who were his companions; but we do know that they turned not from their purpose. Bayard’s sensitive nature, his warm heart, his innocent ambition must have felt the stings, and, at times in after life, he spoke as one who had not forgotten. How grand and honorable the exceptional appearance of the few who were generous and faithful to the poor boy on the threshold of his life!

Taking with them only such baggage as they could carry in their hands, these three young men,—Bayard Taylor, Franklin Taylor, and Barclay Pennock.—started for New York the last week in June, 1844. There had been but little delay, notwithstanding the day for departure had been set before Bayard knew where the funds were to come from to defray his expenses.

There was a strong hope in Bayard’s mind that Mr. N. P. Willis, who had written him such encouraging letters, would be able to assist him in securing employment as a travelling correspondent of some of the New York daily papers. Mr. Willis was widely known, and greatly respected in New York, and, on the arrival of Bayard at his office, he entered heartily into the work of procuring such a situation for his young friend. But foreign correspondence had been as much overdone in New York as in Philadelphia. So many writers had tried to make a name[44] by imitating the first successful correspondents, that the people were weary with the monotonous story. It was as well known then as it is now, that copyists and imitators are not what a live, active, original newspaper requires. Correspondence from almost anywhere could be made interesting and amusing, if the writer would only write naturally, and describe the things he saw in just the light they appeared to him. No one thought that this boy would do anything else but follow in the old track. Hence they wished for none of his writings. One gentleman told him that it was useless to make engagements, for a youth, going into a strange country in that hap-hazard way, would not live to write any letters. Mr. Willis’ generous assistance availed Bayard nothing with a people who had so often been compelled to form their own opinion of the people they wished to employ, and who considered themselves the best judges.

In the editorial room of the New York “Tribune” sat the editor, whose name is being written higher, on the list of America’s great men, by every succeeding year. To his quick eye, there was promise of noble things in the countenance of the boy. He had himself been a venturesome, ambitious, penniless boy, and, like Bayard, he had boldly pushed his boat into the dangerous billows. He may have remembered Benjamin Franklin’s hazardous trip, as a boy, to Philadelphia, for Bayard was mentioned by Mr. Willis as a young man from the Quaker city. Whatever may[45] have been his thoughts, he treated Bayard with his usual consideration, and informed the youth that he was ready to publish and pay for all letters that were worth inserting in the “Tribune.” But he solemnly warned Bayard against attempting to write anything until he knew enough about the country to write intelligently. Bayard told Mr. Greeley that he would try to get acquainted with the people of Germany and their institutions, and, as soon as he felt competent, would send a few letters for Mr. Greeley’s criticism. The busy editor nodded as the boy thanked him, bade him good-day, and, doubtless, instantly forgot there had ever been such a visitor; and left the fact in oblivion, until it was brought to mind some months afterwards by the arrival of a letter from Germany.

Mr. Willis told Bayard, as he said afterwards, to keep up his courage, and go forward: “The way to Valhalla is broad and smooth to the hero, but narrow and dangerous to the coward.” It appears by the brief account which is given in the introduction to his “Views Afoot,” published by Putnam & Sons, New York, that the party had a difficult task to find a vessel in which the accommodations, rates of passage, and port of destination were within their plan. They intended at first to take a vessel direct for the Continent; but in such of them as were bound for continental ports, the fare was too high. They were, however, on the point of taking passage in a Dutch sailing vessel, the consignees of which were[46] acquaintances of Mr. Willis, and consequently made some reduction in the fares, when an opportunity offered itself for a steerage passage in a vessel bound for Liverpool. In that way, they would be conveyed to England for the sum of twenty-four dollars. But such a passage! Think of it, ye disconsolate, fault-finding tourists, who lie in the soft beds of a steamer, with fresh air and plenty of light! Think of it, ye sufferers that occupy the great forward hall of a steamship, and who curse your fate that you are compelled to take a steerage passage! What would you do or say should you be crowded into a cabin of rough planks, eight feet long, and seven feet wide, with nine passengers and eight narrow berths, in a clumsy, dirty little sailing vessel? Yet this was the young adventurer’s choice, rather than expend the small sum of twenty-five dollars from his small store. These three boys were compelled, by the terms of passage, to furnish their own provisions and bedding, and the fact that the unexpected honesty and kindness of a warehouse clerk prevented their starting off without enough food to last through the voyage, is another proof that “fortune favors the brave.”

As there was one more adult passenger in the steerage than there were berths, Bayard and his cousin Frank good-naturedly agreed to occupy one together. To the writer, who has frequently crossed the treacherous Atlantic, there seems to be no experience so inconceivably miserable and sickening as a steerage[47] passage in a sailing vessel must be to the landsman. But when to the usual discomforts of dampness, darkness, sea-sickness, and strange company, are added the cramps caused by being packed with another passenger like a sandwich into a narrow box, and the absence of fresh air, no tortures of the Inquisition would seem to equal it. Bayard often referred to his first discouraging sensation of sea-sickness. Coming, as it always does to the passenger, just as he is taking his last sad look at the fading shores of his native country, it is always a disheartening experience. Bayard shed tears as he began to realize that he was actually afloat upon the wide ocean, and could not if he would return to the land. He has since well said, that had he known more of life, and the dangers of travel, his alarm and discouragement would have been much greater than they were, and of longer duration. Youth borrows no trouble; hence it is happy and victorious.

Of that voyage, and its sufferings, in the ship “Oxford,” beginning on the first day of July, and ending at Liverpool on the twenty-ninth of the same month, he made but brief mention; yet his experience in getting the ship’s cook to boil their potatoes, in eating their meals of pilot-bread, and in the company of their English, Scotch, Irish, and German cabin-mates, was most charmingly told in his letters to the “Gazette” and to the “Post,” as well as in “Views Afoot,” to which reference has already been made. His German[48] companion was not only a social advantage, but furnished the adventurous youths with a pleasant opportunity to get some of the German phrases, and to hear descriptions of the country they were to visit. They were also favored by the captain’s permission to use books from the cabin library, which contained several entertaining books of travel and of fiction. The closing days of the voyage appear to have been pleasant in some respects, for the beauty of the sea made a lasting impression upon his mind, and might possibly have been still in his memory when he wrote the lines in his “Poems of Home and Travel,” running thus:—

It may be that the beauty and joy of the sea appeared more remarkable because of the great contrast between its free and wild life, and the crowded and stifled existence of the mortals who witnessed its gambols. At all events he was not so delighted with the sea that he could not shout with the others, when the dark outlines of Ireland’s mountains appeared through the mist. The sleepless nights, the company of howling Iowa Indians, the musty cabin, the terrible nausea—all[49] were forgotten in the sight of land, and as the goal grew nearer, the more like a dream became all the disagreeable experiences of the voyage, until when, after tacking from northern Ireland to Scotland, from Scotland to Ireland, and from Ireland to the Isle of Man, they sailed up the Mersey to Liverpool, the inconveniences of the voyage had wholly faded out, and only the few agreeable incidents remained a reality. They passed the dreaded officials of the custom-house without difficulty, and by the advice of a “wild Englishman,” who was one of their travelling companions, they went to the Chorley Tavern, and there enjoyed a bountiful dinner, as only passengers by sea can enjoy them when first they step on shore. Bayard was impressed by the sombre appearance of the city, and amused by the use of the middle of the streets for sidewalks, and by the pink each man carried in his buttonhole.

CHAPTER VII.

Bayard and his companions, including the German student, with whom there had sprung up an intimate friendship, left Liverpool on the same day on which they arrived there, having found that they would reach Scotland via the Giant’s Causeway, as soon as they could by waiting for the more direct line. With an exercise of common-sense, such as characterizes too few Americans in this day of fashionable travel, they took passage second-class, finding themselves in no way the worse for the temporary inconvenience, while their fare was but one-sixth the amount of a first-class passage. It was not a comfortable night’s voyage on the way from Liverpool to Port Rush, in the north of Ireland, starting at ten o’clock in the evening, and arriving at eleven o’clock the next night. It may be that the cold and wet, the crowd of Irish passengers, the unvaried diet of bread and cheese, served the purpose of making the shores and bluffs more attractive,[51] as the mind naturally seeks and usually obtains some comfort and recreation in the most doleful surroundings. It is a glorious thing to look upon those basaltic hexagons of the Giant’s Causeway, under any circumstances. Those enormous natural columns, set side by side, so close as to make a floor along their tops, so strange, so unaccountably symmetrical, fill the soul with awe, and half persuade the least credulous beholder that there were giants in the days of yore, and that they really did build a thoroughfare of these huge prisms across to Scotland. Any traveller contemplates those matchless piles with surprise, and every sojourner is delighted beyond estimation by the contour and echoes of the vast caverns, into which the ocean rolls with such enchanting combinations of sound and motion. But to young men who had seen but little of the world and its natural wonders, and who had suffered a kind of martyrdom for the sake of visiting them, those resounding caverns, and those mighty ruins of gigantic natural temples, must have been inspiring beyond measure. Every traveller recalls with the most clear and grateful remembrance, the first landscapes of Europe, on which rest his ocean-weary eyes. To these young men the landscapes were about their only joy, and they appreciated them accordingly. Bayard seems to have been very enthusiastic. He scrutinized everything and questioned everybody. He let nothing pass him unnoticed, although in his books he left much unmentioned. He clambered into the[52] lofty recesses of the Causeway, and let himself down into the strange niches. He halloed in the caves for the thundering echoes; he drank three times at the magical Giant’s Well. He strayed from the highway that led from Port Rush to the Causeway, to look into the weird nooks which the sea has carved in the mutable shore. Dunluce Castle, with its broken walls and ghastly towers—home of proud Lord Antrim—and home as well of that family’s terrible banshee, was the first old ruin which Bayard visited. It stands on the verge of the cragged cliffs, with the sea beating about its base, and bellowing in the cavern under it. It is located near the highway which leads from Port Rush to the Causeway. Across the narrow footway, and into these ruins, Bayard rushed most eagerly. The same old man who now shows travellers the battlements, and tells to wondering hundreds the tales of tournament and banqueting-hall, was there then, and rehearsed the tale to him. The boy is gone. But the old man, whom Bayard mentions as an old man then, lives on in his dull routine, yet living less in a half century than Bayard lived in a single year.

All this was fresh and glorious to the youth, and gave him a very pleasant foretaste of the rich experiences in store for him. But, as if the fates conspired to chill his intellectual joys with physical discomforts, a rain came pouring upon them as they returned, the wind blew in fierce gusts, darkness, deep and black, settled upon the land; they lost their way, and floundered[53] about in muddy ravines, and barely escaped destruction as they trod the edges of the precipices above the wildest of seas. They became separated from each other, and the howling of winds and waves among the crags was so hideous that they could not for a long time hear each other’s call, and the worst of fears for each other were added to their own dismay. But they somehow blundered upon the path as it emerged from the wild rocks, and together walked the beach to their hotel, soaking and half frozen. But all those trying experiences fade when the skin is dry, and the sweet sleep of healthy youth comes with its comforting oblivion; only the gorgeous landscapes, and the romantic places, like the memories of boyhood, remain to shape the dreams.

Bayard was shocked by the miserable condition of the Irish peasantry, and his description of their huts, and their appearance, given in his letters, shows great sympathy for their distress, and great disgust at their degraded customs. On his way to Greenock from Port Rush, he fell in with a company of them, who chanced to take the same steamer, and he did not enjoy their drunken and beastly songs and riots. But on his trip from Greenock, up the Clyde to Dumbarton, he had more acceptable companionship, and in his book he refers, with a most touching simplicity, to the music of a strolling musician on board the boat, who played “Hail Columbia” and “Home, Sweet Home.”

Old Scotland! Noble old hills! Charming lakes, and enchanting valleys! How like the awakened memories of loved faces, they come back to us when we hear the word “Dumbarton”! What exciting tales of Baliol, of Wallace, of Bruce, of Queen Mary, of Cromwell, come again as we recall the sugar-loaf rock, on which the remnant of the old fortress stands! Those bright youths must have feasted on the associations connected with Dumbarton. As they peered from Wallace’s tower, handled Wallace’s sword, and gazed over the wide landscape, with the sites of battle-fields, castles, palaces, the home of Bruce, the cottage of Wallace, the beautiful valleys of the Clyde and Leven, the majestic Ben Lomond, and the crests of the Highlands, they grew in intellectual stature, and breathed a moral atmosphere as pure as the air that encircled the flagstaff at the summit. There is no education like the actual contact with the scenes connected with heroic self-sacrifice, to train young men for patriots and poets. No discipline is more necessary to the development of a broad and virtuous manhood among any class of young men, than studious travel in foreign countries. To young Bayard, lacking other culture than the few years at the district school, the few months at the academy, and the studious perusal of histories and poems, this experience was of vast importance. Its beneficial effects were seen throughout his life, and frequently show themselves in his editorials, poems, novels, and narratives.

At Dumbarton, Bayard had his first narrow escape, and he said that when he reached the ground, after daring to scale, for flowers, the precipice up which Wallace climbed with his followers for glory and fatherland, he was in such a tremor of terror, in view of his having so narrowly escaped death, that he could scarcely speak. The unusual strength of a little tuft of wild grass, growing in a crevice of the cliff, had saved him from being dashed to pieces. It must have given him a very vivid impression of the daring feats of those old Scotch warriors, who not only faced these perpendicular walls, but fearlessly encountered the foes at the top.

From Dumbarton, Bayard and his friends walked through the valley of the River Leven to Loch Lomond. All his letters and contributions to the newspapers speak of this walk as one of the most enjoyable of all his rambles. In his “Views Afoot,” with which every reader is or should be familiar, he mentions it as a glorious walk. The pastoral beauty of the fields, the clearness of the stream, the ivy-grown towers, the dense forests, the early home of Smollett, whose dashing pen astonished the kingdom in 1748, the summer parks of Scottish noblemen, the mild, soothing August sunshine, were a combination rarely found, and when found as rarely appreciated.

These young travellers had been diligent readers, and, when the steamer hurried them over the lake, the appearance of Ben Lomond and Ben Voirlich, of “Bull’s Rock,” and Rob Roy’s Cave, of Inversnaid[56] and Glen Falloch, called up the shades of the Campbells, Macgregors, Malcolms, Rothesays, Macfarlanes, Macphersons; making each beach and rock along Loch Lomond a feature of romantic interest.

With youthful enthusiasm, Bayard clambered to the rugged top of Ben Lomond, having waded through deep morass and thorny thicket, to reach it, and, from that lookout, gazed around on the peaks of lesser mountains, down upon the sweet Lomond lake, away to the oceans on either side of Scotland, discerning the smoke over Glasgow, the dark plains of Ayr, and, but for a mist, the embattled towers of Stirling and Edinburgh. After a short stop, he descended with his old companions, and a new one (he was constantly finding new friends), along the slippery, stony slopes; and, after a dinner of oatmeal cakes and milk at a cottage near the base, trudged and waded on through that wild tract of woodland and swamp to Loch Katrine. There was the home of poetry. The great forests, through which the Clan-Alpine horns had echoed, the dense forest, through which the scarfs and bows did gleam in the old days of the Highland clans, had disappeared. The blossoming heather and bare rocks made a sorry substitute. But to Bayard, whose life was set to poetry, who had so often studied and declaimed of Fitz-James and Roderick Dhu, and who had often dreamed of the Ellen’s Isle, and the gathering clans, as Walter Scott described them, it must have been an enchanted spot. One may recite[57] and analyze for half a century that poem, and may flatter himself that he has detected all its beauty, and understands all its historic references; but one hour on Loch Katrine is worth more than all that. There the reader lives the poem, and it is a part of his being ever more. Bayard felt compensated there for all the sufferings, by sea and by land, which he had experienced. He gazed fondly upon the glassy, land-locked water; he studied closely the features, manners, and songs of the Highland boatmen, those descendants of the old clans; he sketched, with the keenest interest, Ben Ann, Ben Venue, the gate of the Trosachs, and the curved lines of the sandy shore, and he awoke the echoes at the Goblin’s Gave and Beal-nam-bo. Rich experiences! In such does the youth develop fast into a cultured manhood.

From Loch Katrine, the party walked by way of Loch Vennachar, Coilantogle Ford, and Ben Ledi, to Doune,—the home of royalty during the sixteenth century, and whose old castle is still a majestic ruin. Thence through the plains to Stirling Castle, crowned and battle-honored, and looking down on the valleys of the Forth and Allan Water, and out upon the bloody fields of Bannockburn and Sheriff-muir. Having inspected the dungeons and halls of the castle, looked with horror upon the spot where royalty murdered a friend, and threw the body to the dogs; and after contemplating the grave of the girlish martyrs, they hastily took the shortest route to Glasgow,[58] and thence to the home of Burns, where a great celebration, or memorial gathering, was to be held, to honor the memory of the “rustic bard,” on the banks of his own “Bonnie Doon.”

CHAPTER VIII.

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—

the home of the “mousie,” and to be shown the cottage he was born in, and the scenes which inspired[60] his 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,[61] 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,[62] 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 himself[63] attempting 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 on[64] the 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. While[65] passing 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 and lived as 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 oppressed[66] people 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.

CHAPTER IX.

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, and[68] there 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 horrid[69] cruelty 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?

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 more[70] and 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 in[71] the 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 skyward[72] heights. 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 and[73] mountains. 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 and[75] careless 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 whether[76] it 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.

CHAPTER X.

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 pleasures[78] vividly remembered. There was a youthful abandon in 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 seldom[79] did 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,[80] 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.:—

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

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 that[82] romantic 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:—

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

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 rolls[84] upward 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.):—

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

CHAPTER XI.

At Dresden, Bayard visited the picture-gallery, for the purpose of seeing Raphael’s Madonna and Child, known as the Madonna 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:—

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 the[89] battle of Napoleon before its gates, and more lasting in their effects, were the historic works of art which Dresden is so proud to possess.

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,[90] 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.

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 that[91] he composed that poem entitled “The Wayside Dream,” and in which we find the following descriptive lines:

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,[92] 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 was[93] the 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 of[94] the 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.

CHAPTER XII.

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, from[96] the 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 its[97] thundering 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 which[98] the 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; enormous[99] shelving 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 recognized[100] by 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 of[101] interesting 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:—

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:—

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 a[104] stay 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 the Madonna della Sedia of Raphael, the companion piece of the Madonna he 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.

CHAPTER XIII.

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. One[107] can 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 and[108] good, 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.

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 reminders[109] of 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 of[110] covering. 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:—

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. The[111] story 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 attractions[112] which 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.

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,[113] 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 Paris via Versailles 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 a[114] promise 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 as a boy, and to which he then returned a man.

CHAPTER XIV.

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 a[116] prosperous 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. If[117] any 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, and[119] took 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.

CHAPTER XV.

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 an[121] intrusion. 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,[122] 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 so[123] plentiful, 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 wrote[124] letters 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,[125] 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 many[126] little 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 located[127] them 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.

Most sweetly sang he of the climate, and the prolific gifts of nature in California, and one verse of his “Manuela” contains a very vivid and accurate picture of some of California, as seen by many travellers.

he foretold, in “The Pine Forest of Monterey,” what has already happened in that magic land of sunshine, gold, and miraculous progress.

He portrayed his California experiences in rhyme, when he sang of “The Summer Camp,” and we quote a few lines of it, so appropriate to his departure from San Francisco.

He mentioned the deep impression of ceaseless progress which the change of a few weeks had made in the growth of San Francisco. When he re-entered it, after his short stay in the mountains, he could not recognize the streets, while the inhabitants and their manners had undergone a change still more astonishing. Where there were tents a few days before, now were large buildings of wood, while the log-cabins and Chinese houses had, in many places, given place to structures of brick and stone. Wharves had been built, streets regularly laid out, banks opened, wholesale stores established, lines of steamers running to the various ports along the coast, and up the rivers; while the rude, dirty, careless, rushing multitude had assumed a cleanliness and a gravity, unequal of course to that of an Eastern city, but astonishingly in advance of the previous wildness. Law offices, brokers’ boards, smelting establishments, barber-shops, hotels, bakeries, laundries, and news-stands had all been established[130] in a confusingly short space of time. The place he found as a frontier camp, he found four months later a swarming yet civilized city, with all the officials, and some of the red tape which characterize older corporations. But San Francisco was not alone in its growth; for Sacramento, San José, Monterey, and many other towns and cities, had been as nothing, less than a year before. At the time he left San Francisco, they were populous cities and villages, teeming with a resistless, sleepless activity. To accurately record such a change, to give an anxious public correct information regarding that wonderland, and the fortune of their friends, and to bear a share in the work of establishing such a State, was the task of Mr. Taylor, and most creditably did he perform his part.

On leaving California, about the first of January, 1850, he decided to go down the coast to Mazatlan and thence overland through Mexico. He came to that conclusion after long consultations with his friends, none of whom could or dared accompany him, while all told him of robbers, deserts, impassable streams, and dangerous wild beasts which awaited all travellers in that benighted and trackless country. Mr. Taylor would have enjoyed some thrilling adventures; and the fears of his advisers only made him more decided in his determination to go. So, alone, and with but slight knowledge of the Spanish language, he disembarked at Mazatlan on the Mexican coast, near the[131] mouth of the Gulf of California, and with a pair of pistols and a dwarfed mule, started into the unknown wilds of that tropical land.

His hardships were many, and his fatigue at times almost unbearable; but his love for things new and strange, for the unexplored and unknown, kept him moving perseveringly on through the thickets and ravines of upper Mexico. By great skill and considerable assurance he managed to keep in the good graces of the people he met, and for several days, in the forests and in the villages, he met, with very kind and hospitable treatment.

On one occasion, however, he fell among thieves. Before he arrived at the city of Mexico, and while still in the wilderness of the interior of the Mexican highlands, he was suddenly attacked by three Mexican robbers, to whose marauding purposes he could make no resistance, he having placed such reliance upon the good faith of the natives as to carry his pistol without a cartridge in it. The banditti made him dismount and hand over what little money in coin he happened to have, and after taking such blankets and trinkets as they desired, left him with his hands tied behind him, to get on as best he could. Fortunately they did not want his horse, which he had bought in place of the useless mule, and after extricating himself from his bonds by long struggles, he mounted his horse and rode on to Mexico with his drafts for money all intact. He seems to have placed less reliance on the Mexicans,[132] after that encounter, and took good care to ride out of range of their muskets and to keep himself supplied with ammunition.

His visit to the Mexican capital was an occasion of great interest to him, and brought up freshly and vividly the story which Prescott has so well told of the Aztecs and the heroic age of Cortez. No scene in Europe is said to combine such extremes of sweetness and grandeur, of light and shade, of valley and hill, of plain and cragged highland, of land and water, of art and nature, as the valley of Mexico. There he saw the evidences of prehistoric civilization, and looked with curiosity and awe upon the towering fortress of Chapultepec, which connects the present with the ages past. However, Mr. Taylor could not stop long in that charming vale, and hastened on over the battle-fields of Scott to Vera Cruz. From Vera Cruz he went by steamer to Mobile, from thence overland to Charleston, S. C., and by way of North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, to New York, where, about the middle of March, he resumed his duties as editor of the “Tribune” with the thought that there he might stay the remainder of his life.

CHAPTER XVI.

We now enter upon the most holy ground ever trod by the biographer,—the sacred recesses of the human heart. In the annals of ordinary life, or even in those of many great men, the record of their early love may not be important to the reader. But to the poet, these more subtle and more tender emotions are events of the greatest importance. Every heart contains more or less of the poetical sentiment, and the love and marriage of any individual is a matter of great moment to him, although it may not be to his biographer. But here we write of a poet. To him, all the strings of human feeling had a clear and unmistakable sound. To him, the undertones of life played an important part in the harmony of his being. All that was pure and sweet in love he saw. All that was beautiful and lovable in life he felt, with a keenness none but the poet can know. Hence to him, we find, as in the history of the grand poets of ancient days, his love was a holy sentiment, to be[134] valued as God’s best gift, and to be worshipped as a part of Him.

In a neighboring farm-house, but a short distance from his father’s farm, lived Mary S. Agnew. She was born and reared in the same community, went to the same school, attended the same church, and was a playmate, classmate, and trusted companion. They sought each other in childhood’s days, and their friendship ripened into love as imperceptibly and surely as the coming and going of the years developed their lives, and pressed them forward into manhood and womanhood. Her dark hair and eyes, her slender form, her lovable disposition, her conscientiousness and purity were presented to him in that strong light, under which all lovers see the merits and virtues of their sweethearts. Added to that was the romance and insight of that other sense which poets are said to possess. He built a shrine to this idol wherever he went, and through all his early years she was, as he said in verse, the representative to him of the goodness of God. On the farm, he made verses in her honor; at the Quaker meeting he was thankful for her; at the parties and social gatherings among the young folks, she was the centre of his thought. Not foolishly or blindly did he exhibit his affection. Not extravagantly or obtrusively did he follow his wooing. But his poetry and his prose give here and there a clew to the deep and fervent love of his youthful days. Some of his very sweetest poetry found its inspiration in[135] that love, and when the volume is published, if ever it is, in which shall appear those sonnets, which have modestly been kept thus far from the public gaze, there will be found gems that the world cannot well spare. How sincere, disinterested, and noble was his affection, was proved by his faithful and unabated love, after he had seen the world and its loveliest ladies, and after the cruel hand of disease had chiselled away the round and rosy cheeks, and left, in place of the sparkling, blushing maiden of his early love, a pallid spectre—a shadow of her former self. In all his wanderings, he never neglected her. In all his most tender writings, her image is more or less clear. In one of his volumes, “The Poet’s Journal,” he gives a history of his love and sorrow; of the awakening, after years of death, in the sweetest and most touching of all his poems.

He allowed some of his earlier verses to see the light of print, wherein he makes mention, indirectly, of Mary S. Agnew. When travelling along the Danube, in 1845, he thus writes:—

When in Florence, in 1846, he wrote a poem entitled “In Italy,” wherein were the following expressive lines:—

When he reached London in 1846, after his long pilgrimage, and when so reduced in funds and friends, he yet had the time and mind to write of her these graceful rhymes:—

It is an interesting study and one not altogether unprofitable, to follow, through an author’s works the marks of his peculiar likes, joys, and sorrows. For in science, philosophy, history or poetry, the feelings of the student will unguardedly creep into his manuscripts as if between the lines, and often a little word, or a thoughtlessly inserted sentence or comment, will reveal whole chapters of a life which has been carefully, scrupulously hidden. So in Bayard Taylor’s poetry, written on sea and on land, at home and abroad, in poverty and in affluence, there is a certain[138] vein of originality, and certain references to his own life, which, when placed together, give the clew to his inner life, and reveal a charming domestic scene, which cannot be described in prose. One of his characters in “The Poet’s Journal,” says:—

To which another makes reply in the words below, which so delicately and feelingly refer to his early love, his sorrow at the death of Mary, his first wife, and the brightness of the later affection. To one who has passed through the same trying experience, these lines are marvellously expressive:—

Then he goes on to recite a tale so like his own, that it needs scarce any change, but to substitute the names[139] of himself, and those he loved, for the fictitious names we find in the poems. But, before making further quotation, the reader should be made acquainted with the circumstances which prompted those illuminated lines.

While Mr. Taylor was away, Miss Agnew gradually and surely declined in health, until consumption, with all its terrible certainty and serpent-like stealth, made her its victim. It was one of those unaccountable visitations which sometimes come to the young and beautiful in the midst of joy and perfect content. How sadly the news of her sickness fell upon the heart of her lover, and how tenderly and anxiously he prayed and waited for letters from her, which should contain better tidings, he has himself related. Pale and weak, she greeted him on his return from California, with the prediction that she could not live beyond the falling leaves. No skill, no tender nursing, no charm of an abiding love, could stay the hand of death, which, as unseen and secret as the decay in a rose, gradually stole away her color, her beauty, and her life.

He felt that he must lose her; and the whole world, which had before appeared so bright, became dark and chilly. The test showed that while his ambition led him to see the great nations of the earth, to write poems for posterity, and to write his name in italics on the scrolls of fame, there was one solace, one comfort, one desire, which included all the others and made them subservient. He was true to his plighted word.[140] He had become noted and prosperous, while she had remained at the country farm-house in Kennett. He was the associate of Bryant, Greeley, Webster, and Willis; she, the companion of the farmers and Quakers of Chester County. But strong, manly, and honest, his love knew no abatement and his respect felt no check.

It is a touching picture—that simple, solemn marriage in the room of the patient, an almost helpless invalid! He came to redeem his pledge; and in that simple abode, with death standing just outside the door, with a bride scarce able to whisper that she took him for her lawful spouse, he became a husband. The dim, appealing eyes, the tender little flush in her cheek, the tremor of her thin hand, told the joy in her pure heart, but showed also that her happiness would be as brief as it was sincere.

The marriage took place Oct. 24th, 1850, and on the 21st of the following December his wife died. She lingered much longer than her friends expected. At the marriage it was said that she could not live but a very few days. Yet, so soon was it after their union, that the day which is usually the happiest and the day which is usually the gloomiest in a man’s life, came to him within ten weeks of each other. A year after her death, he wrote a poem, “Winter Solstice,” in which he mentions his bereavement:—

Still later, he gave expression to his loneliness in that most pathetic of all his writings, “The Phantom.”

In his “Picture of St. John” he describes, with a feeling born of experience, a scene like the closing one in the life of his wife.

A sonnet of that dark hour, written on a leaf of his diary, remains to us, from which we quote two verses:—

How accurately he portrayed his inner life, from the death of Mary to his subsequent marriage, can only be understood by reading his poem of “The Poet’s Journal” entire. But, as far as brief quotations may give it, we will try to supply enough for the purposes of a book suck as this is intended to be. In his despair he writes:—

“And every gift that Life to me had given

Lies at my feet, in useless fragments trod:

There is no justice or in Earth or Heaven:

There is no pity in the heart of God.”

...

“I pine for something human,

Man, woman, young or old—

Something to meet and welcome,

Something to clasp and hold.

I have a mouth for kisses,

But there’s no one to give and take;

I have a heart in my bosom

Beating for nobody’s sake.”

[146]

“The sea might rise and drown me,—

Cliffs fall and crush my head,—

Were there one to love me, living,

Or weep to see me dead!”

...

“Last night the Tempter came to me, and said:

‘Why sorrow any longer for the dead?

The wrong is done: thy tears and groans are naught:

Forget the Past,—thy pain but lives in thought.

Night after night, I hear thy cries implore

An answer: she will answer thee no more.

Give up thine idle prayer that Death may come

And thou mayst somewhere find her: Death is dumb

To those that seek him. Live: for youth is thine.

Let not thy rich blood, like neglected wine,

Grow thin and stale, but rouse thyself, at last,

And take a man’s revenge upon the Past.’”

...

“This heart is flesh, I cannot make it stone:

This blood is hot, I cannot stop its flow,

These arms are vacant—whereso’er I go,

Love lies in other’s arms and shuns my own.”

...

“Long, long ago, the Hand whereat I railed

In blindness gave me courage to subdue

This wild revolt: I see wherein I failed:

My heart was false, when most I thought it true,

My sorrow selfish, when I thought it pure.

For those we lose, if still their love endure

Translation to that other land, where Love

Breathes the immortal wisdom, ask in heaven

No greater sacrifice than we had given

On earth, our love’s integrity to prove.

If we are blest to know the other blest,

Then treason lies in sorrow.”

...

“I had knelt, in the awful Presence,

And covered my guilty head,

[147]

And received His absolution,

For my sins toward the dead.”

“Now first I dare remember

That day of death and woe:

Within, the dreadful silence,

Without, the sun and snow.”

...

“When wild azaleas deck the knoll,

And cinque-foil stars the fields of home,

And winds, that take the white-weed, roll

The meadows into foam:

Then from the jubilee I turn

To other Mays that I have seen,

Where more resplendent blossoms burn,

And statelier woods are green;—

Mays, when my heart expanded first,

A honeyed blossom, fresh with dew;

And one sweet wind of heaven dispersed

The only clouds I knew.

For she, whose softly-murmured name

The music of the month expressed,

Walked by my side, in holy shame

Of girlish love confessed.”

“The old, old tale of girl and boy,

Repeated ever, never old:

To each in turn the gates of joy,

The gates of heaven unfold.”

...

“So I think, when days are sweetest,

And the world is wholly fair,

She may sometime steal upon me

Through the dimness of the air,

With the cross upon her bosom

And the amaranth in her hair.

[148]

Once to meet her, ah! to meet her,

And to hold her gently fast

Till I blessed her, till she blessed me,—

That were happiness, at last:

That were bliss beyond our meetings

In the autumns of the Past!”

...

“Still, still that lovely ghost appears,

Too fair, too pure, to bid depart;

No riper love of later years

Can steal its beauty from the heart.”

“Dear, boyish heart that trembled so

With bashful fear and fond unrest,—

More frightened than a dove, to know

Another bird within its nest!”

...

“Restored and comforted, I go

To grapple with my tasks again;

Through silent worship taught to know

The blessed peace that follows pain.”

...

“If Love should come again, I ask my heart

In tender tremors, not unmixed with pain,

Couldst thou be calm, nor feel thine ancient smart,

If Love should come again?”

“Couldst thou unbar the chambers where his nest

So long was made, and made, alas! in vain,

Nor with embarrassed welcome chill thy guest,

If Love should come again?”

...

“Have I passed through Death’s unconscious birth,

In a dream the midnight bare?

I look on another and fairer Earth:

I breathe a wondrous air!”

“Is it she that shines, as never before,

The tremulous hills above,—

Or the heart within me, awake once more

To the dawning light of love?”

[149]

“Bathed in the morning, let my heart surrender

The doubts that darkness gave,

And rise to meet the advancing splendor—

O Night! no more thy slave.”

...

“One thought sits brooding in my bosom,

As broodeth in her nest the dove;

A strange, delicious doubt o’ercomes me,—

But is it love?”

“I see her, hear her, daily, nightly:

My secret dreams around her move,

Still nearer drawn in sweet attraction;—

Can this be love?”

“I breathe but peace when she is near me,—

A peace her absence takes away:

My heart commands her constant presence;

Will hers obey?”

...

“‘Canst thou forgive me, Angel mine,’

I cried: ‘that Love at last beguiled

My heart to build a second shrine?

See, still I kneel and weep at thine,

But I am human, thou divine!’

Still silently she smiled.

“‘Dost undivided worship claim,

To keep thine altar undefiled?

Or must I bear thy tender blame,

And in thy pardon feel my shame,

Whene’er I breathe another name?’

She looked at me, and smiled.”

...

“No treason in my love I see,

For treason cannot dwell with truth:

But later blossoms crown a tree

Too deeply set to die in youth.

[150]

The blighted promise of the old

In this new love is reconciled;

For, when my heart confessed its hold,

The lips of ancient sorrow smiled!

It brightens backward through the Past

And gilds the gloomy path I trod,

And forward, till it fades at last

In light, before the feet of God,

Where stands the saint, whose radiant brow

This solace beams, while I adore:

Be happy: if thou lovedst not now,

Thou never couldst have loved before!”

...

“Would she, my freedom and my bliss to know,

With my disloyalty be reconciled,

And from her bower in Eden look below,

And bless the Soldan’s child?

For she is lost: but she, the later bride,

Who came my ruined fortune to restore,

Back from the desert wanders at my side,

And leads me home once more.

If human love, she sighs, could move a wife

The holiest sacrifice of love to make,

Then the transfigured angel of thy life

Is happier for thy sake!”

...

“‘It was our wedding-day

A month ago,’ dear heart, I hear you say.

If months, or years, or ages since have passed,

I know not: I have ceased to question Time.

I only know that once there pealed a chime

Of joyous bells, and then I held you fast,

And all stood back, and none my right denied,

And forth we walked: the world was free and wide

Before us. Since that day

I count my life: The Past is washed away.”

CHAPTER XVII.

The great grief which Mr. Taylor felt when his wife died, was so deep and keen that he was for many months unreconciled, and in a mental state somewhat akin to despair. His appearance among his friends, whether at Kennett or in the office of the “Tribune” at New York, did not, however, betray his feelings so much as his private correspondence and occasional poems. He was the sincerest of mourners; and his natural susceptibility to every shade of emotion made this severe bereavement an occasion of untold suffering. In his endeavors to banish the gloomy spectre, he resorted to hard work. Hence, the first half of the year 1851 was one of the busiest seasons of his life. He wrote early and late. He composed poems and essays, wrote editorials, and edited correspondence, some of it being the labor attached to his profession, but a great share of it written to occupy his mind and shut out his affliction.

His “Rhymes of Travel,” which had been published after his return from California, called the attention of the reading public to him as a poet, and there was a strong demand for another volume. His friends urged him to write, his uneasy heart pushed him into work, and the newspapers kept questioning him about the advent of a second volume, until he decided to bring out his book of “Romances, Lyrics, and Songs.” There was one poem in that volume which was very sweet when wholly disconnected with history, but which becomes fascinating and sad as Milton’s lament for his eyesight, when we once know the circumstances and the mental condition in which it was written. Two verses of that poem were printed, as follows:—

It was then that he wrote those pathetic lines, so full of his sadness and so descriptive of his bereavement, that he was never satisfied with a name for them and finally left them without a title, the first couplet of which sufficiently indicates the tenor,—

Such a sorrowful heart and such an overworked brain were too great a load for one human body to carry. His physical strength had never been remarkable, and there had been seasons before his visit to Europe when his health seemed permanently impaired. So when this great strain was made upon his system it began to weaken. To continue the effort was suicidal, and stoutly condemned by his relatives and friends. He then recalled his exhilarating walks among the Alps and on the plains of Europe. He kindled anew his zeal for adventure. He studied the map of the world to decide where was presented the most favorable field for discovery. He wished for rest from sorrow, and rest from close application to literary work. Such a relief could only be found in a climate and among a people wholly different from his own. In this choice he was guided somewhat by a fortunate opportunity to cross the Atlantic as a guest and friend, and by the accounts which a literary companion in the office of the “Tribune” gave of the interesting people and scenery along the coast of Palestine and Greece.

The winter had passed and the soothing winds of summer seemed so grateful and necessary, that he decided to pass the next winter on the Mediterranean, should his health admit of the necessary outlay of strength. In writing about that undertaking afterwards, he said a trip into Africa would furnish good material for a travelling correspondent and hence that continent was selected. “But,” he said, “there were other influences acting upon me which I did not fully comprehend at the time, and cannot now describe without going too deeply into matters of private history.” But while in Central Africa, enjoying the invigorating breezes along the Nile, he reveals a part of that private history by an incidental exclamation published in a letter to the “Tribune.” “Oh! what a rest is this from the tantalizing and sorrowful suggestions of civilization.” He fled from sorrow—driven into the desert.

Having reached Smyrna, on the coast of Asia Minor, by the overland route to Constantinople via Vienna, he re-embarked at that port for Alexandria in Egypt, arriving at the latter place Nov. 1, 1851. We shall not attempt here to give in any satisfactory detail the record of his wanderings in Africa, as they are so charmingly and instructively told in the book which he wrote concerning them, and as no book of travel in Egypt, except a scientific work, can supplant or equal the many which already honor our shelves. The writer having been over a large portion of Mr.[155] Taylor’s routes, and feeling much indebted to him for his works, which were often used as guides, has perhaps a greater interest in recording his travels, than the reader would have in going through the story a second time. Hence, for the purposes of this outline sketch of Mr. Taylor’s life, we shall introduce only such incidents and facts connected with his wanderings as appear to have some direct or unusual bearing upon his character, or which display some peculiarity of his genius or taste.

He said, in a letter to a friend in New York, that he “owed a debt of gratitude” to the Providence which led him, to the country which attracted him, and to the vessel which carried him from Smyrna to Alexandria. That sentiment was awakened in his heart by the way in which some of the important events in his after life pointed back to that trip and to the valuable friend he met there. Mr. Taylor was of a genial, approachable nature, and easily made the acquaintance of any person whom he met. But having German blood in his veins, loving the German language, and entertaining a sincere respect for German literature, he naturally sought the company of the German people. On the very threshold of this trip into Africa he made the acquaintance of a German gentleman, whose culture and geniality made him a great acquisition in a strange land. They seem to have taken a deep interest in each other from the first time they met. It may be because their condition in life, socially and circumstantially, was so similar;[156] but the more reasonable explanation is found in their similar tastes and equal regard for the works of genius and the beauties of nature. It will be like a romance, when told in all its detail, as it might be now, and will be when the present generation passes away. How little could his human understanding comprehend the great results turning upon the simple, common-place self-introduction to a German travelling companion! This friend, whom he met, and with whom he made the journey up to the cataracts of the Nile, was perhaps as remarkable a man as Taylor, and belonged to a family of scholars and long respected agricultural citizens of the German principality of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

The chief merit of Mr. Taylor’s descriptions lay in their apparent frankness and their charming details. He appeared to think that every reader was acquainted with the works of those great archæologists, Lepsius and Champollion, and did not attempt to supply to his readers the information they had already given. He seems to have imagined that all the reading public wished to follow him, and he gave such information as the tourist would need. He told about the clothes he purchased in Alexandria, about the fit of his Arab attire, about the cost of a dinner, the conversation between dragomen and boatmen, the personal appearance of his companions, the faithlessness of his guide, the dirty appearance of his boat, and the gorgeous sunset. He described his own sensations and actions with the boldness of one unconscious of any motive to conceal[157] or deceive. He reveals the sorrow of his heart by occasional remarks such as these: “For many months past I had known no mood of mind so peaceful and grateful.”—“I am away from reminders of sorrow.”—“It is not the beauty of the desert that gratifies me so much, in these days, after all, as the absence of civilization.”

The party, which consisted of Mr. Taylor, the German companion, and an Italian, engaged one of the Nile boats, at Alexandria, for the trip up the Nile, and after testing the comforts, or misery, of the Egyptian hotels, seeing Cleopatra’s Needle (now in London) and Pompey’s Pillar, which were then as in later years about all that there was to be seen of interest in Alexandria, they started on their lazy voyage up the wonderful Nile. He wrote with great enthusiasm of the sweet rest he found in a pipe of tobacco, after the manner of all habitual smokers. He seems to have had plenty of time to muse and smoke as he slowly ascended the stream. It has often been a subject of wonder that he could afterwards remember so many incidents and the impressions they had made on him, when perhaps weeks of time and some more exciting transactions had intervened. But Mr. Taylor did not wait long before recording his ideas and comments, and was in the habit of keeping a memoranda-book always at hand, and while travelling, noted with a pencil any peculiar thought or incident which awakened attention.

At Atfeh, which has been for hundreds of years an[158] intermediate stopping-place on the highway and river between Alexandria and Cairo, he clambered up into the town and witnessed a marriage procession. He appears to have been inclined to get a near view of the bride; but the relatives hurried her off, and with cries and threatening gestures drove him back to cover. But he decided that if he could not see the bride, he would do the next best thing, and accordingly visited her father. The disconsolate parent was being comforted by a hoarse chant and appeared to be as cheerful as could be expected considering the din.

At the town of Nadir he went into a low mud hut, which pretended to be a cafe, and there saw the Egyptian fandango danced by the inmates. He records the shape and sound of the musical instruments and with polished and concise language pictured the scene to the reader’s eye. This, with the accounts of the improvements, rates of toll, and the manner of passing the boats by locks, and government officials, with many minor details is told in a manner which, notwithstanding the dryness of the subject, makes most fascinating reading.

But he counted his entrance into Cairo, the capital of Egypt, as the actual beginning of his tour into Africa. For at Alexandria and along the Nile as far as Bourak the people exhibited some traits which connect them with the civilized West. But Cairo is wholly Egyptian. The centuries have made no apparent changes in the people. The donkeys, the veiled[159] women, the fierce Arabs, the water-skins, the fountains, the slaves, the palms, the white domes, and the low shops revive the historical associations and personify the Past. Like an oasis in the adjacent desert was the Hotel d’Europe. But it served to impress the reality of these surroundings more forcibly upon the travellers. With a readiness and enjoyment which his companions did not share, he accustomed himself to the manners and appearance of the people, and it was scarcely a day before Mr. Taylor would smoke his perfumed chibouk, sit cross-legged, and eat with his fingers like a native Arab. He rode the little donkeys as well as any citizen of Cairo, and was even more reckless than they, if that were possible, as he rode through the market-places at a furious speed. The Egyptians, like the Germans, Italians, French, Hungarians, and Syrians, felt a kind of fellowship for Mr. Taylor, and admired his good-sense in appreciating and adopting so many of their customs. He was the acquaintance and confidential friend of a dozen old Arabs before he had been two days in Cairo. He was a lover of mankind. He sympathized with them all. As the Shereef of Mecca rides by, Mr. Taylor admires his dignity and his imposing retinue. As a marriage procession files through the streets, he comments on the playing of the flutes, the crimson robes of the bride, and the diadem, with the simplicity of a country maiden in America. He enjoys the athletic tricks of the showmen, the skill of the swordsmen, the voices of the singers, the zeal of[160] the beggars, and the endurance of the laborers. He is one of the same human family. They know it, and feel it, and he is welcome.

The German acquaintance, who had not intended to go farther than Cairo, was so delighted with Mr. Taylor’s companionship and Mr. Taylor was so interested in him, that he decided to go up the Nile as far as Assouan, which was on the border of the Central African countries. Mr. Taylor speaks with sentiments of enthusiastic thankfulness of his good fortune in thus securing a travelling companion, whose tastes and sentiments were so akin to his own. He little thought then, that while trying to shut out his sorrow by voluntary exile, he was opening the door to a second love. Mr. Taylor’s singular admiration and love for his companion is almost unaccountable, unless we adopt some theory of foreordination or providential design.

A most interesting, amusing, and friendly trip they had up the stream, for thousands of years so historic, in a boat manned by ten boatmen, and of which they were the commanders. Neither of them had ever been in Egypt before, but their maps and guide-books, coupled with their early historical training, made the localities along their route seem more familiar to them than to the dragomen, who made it a business to guide travellers. They named their boat the “Cleopatra,” ran up the Stars and Stripes to the peak, and, with contented minds but active brains, enjoyed to the full the strange scenes and historic ruins which showed[161] themselves on every hand. They first visited the Pyramids, where Mr. Taylor gratified his taste for climbing heights, and nearly killed himself by rushing down. With characteristic regard for those who were to come after him, Mr. Taylor rebuked the importunities of the backsheesh-loving Arabs about the Pyramids, and obtaining no satisfaction from them, he reported them to the chief, who compelled the greedy desperadoes to submit to a severe whipping.

They visited ancient Memphis, which the French explorer, Mariette, was then exhuming, and trod the pavements over which had passed the feet of Menes, Amasis, Pharaoh, Strabo, and Cambyses. They were hospitably entertained by the great antiquarian, and felt that such a visit was ample reward for all their outlay. From Memphis they proceeded to Siout, and on the way talked, composed, and sung the praises of Father Nile. It may be that Mr. Taylor’s mood, which he so often mentions, had an influence upon his taste, or it may be that the season was one peculiarly adapted to the exhibition of beauty in the Nile, but the writer, in a later year, was not so charmed by the scenery and river as Mr. Taylor appears to have been. No other traveller has written such glowing encomiums upon the Nile as Mr. Taylor recorded in his letters, and either he appreciated nature more than other travellers, or there was something in his circumstances which placed a halo of beauty about the palms and meadows. In the “Nilotic Drinking-Song” Mr. Taylor said:—

His admiration was not spasmodic, for he always mentioned the Nile as the most majestic of rivers. To the majority of travellers, however, the hoary ruins of mighty cities, the tombs of priests, and the pyramids of kings are so much more exciting and mysterious, that the Nile is itself of secondary importance.

Yet, Mr. Taylor, with all his interest in the river, did not have less in the celebrated localities and ancient remains. He ascended many honeycombed mountains, to creep among the bones of men who lived thirty-five hundred years ago. He gazed with a yearning interest upon the broken columns of unknown temples, and[163] dreamed of their former grandeur, while apathetically overseeing the affairs of his little monarchy over which he kept floating the Stars and Stripes. He became so absorbed in the climate, the people, and the history of the land, that he soon adopted the full costume of the country and became henceforth an Arab with the others. He was marvellously quick in picking up the words and phrases of any language, and soon, with the aid of a small phrase-book, he could readily converse with the natives along the shore. These characteristics made it safe and pleasant for him to travel where many others would have found only misery and death.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Mr. Taylor’s sympathy with all mankind led him to regard with sincere respect the daily religious ceremonies which his Moslem boatmen performed, with their faces toward Mecca. He often mentioned their punctuality and apparent sincerity, and contrasted it with some of the formal, half-hearted proceedings in some Christian churches. His regard for conscientious worship, which appeared to characterize the ignorant Arabs, appears more striking to persons who have travelled the same route over which Mr. Taylor went, for it is so common a sight to see bigoted, conceited Europeans ridiculing the prostrations, prayers, and gestures of the worshippers. The writer most keenly regrets having been compelled to witness the caricaturing of a Moslem at prayer, by a coarse, hard-hearted, brutal Christian countryman, while the sad and shocked[165] believers in Mahomet stood by, scarce able to resist the temptation to throw the Frank into the Nile. In the lovable, noble character of Mr. Taylor, there was no inclination to ridicule the conscientious belief of any man, and instinctively he kept silent and patiently endured the delay when the call to prayer took his employees from their labor. In return for his sincere regard for them, he received the love and most faithful service of the natives. They stole nothing from him. They shielded him from enemies and affectionately cared for his health.

Thus, with friends for boatmen, an admirer for a guide, and a most agreeable comrade for a travelling companion, he floated along, inhaling from every breeze the essence of health and comfort. The banks were covered with the richest and rarest verdure, for it was the Egyptian spring. There were luxuriant grasses, palms and sugar-cane; there flourished wheat, cotton, maize, hemp, indigo, tobacco, oranges, olives, and dates, springing from the richest soil which civilized man has yet seen. Harvests came and went in confused succession; the ripe fruit with blossom; threshing-floors piled with ripe dourra, while around, the new wheat seeking the sunlight, betokened a bounty munificent and inexhaustible. So prolific and speedy was the growth of the crops that the people could not, with their rude implements, avail themselves of the full benefits of one harvest before its rank successors forced them to turn their labor into other[166] channels. Then, as now, the fields, for miles inland from the river, were checkered with canals, and the rude water-wheel and awkward “well-sweep” were kept in constant motion to supply the vast amount of water necessary to the irrigation of hundreds of square miles. There were goats, mules, horses, and a variety of fowl, and in the wild nooks a grand collection of birds of the gayest songs and plumage. The sky was clear, the air balmy, the breezes cool and light, the cabin of their boat was spacious, and their beds comfortable. It was “a soothing experience for an aching heart.”

In the first week of December they arrived at Dendera, where stands in majestic completeness one of the most ancient temples of Egypt. It has for thousands of years been half buried in the earth, and at one time must have been nearly hid by the shifting sands of the desert which once surrounded the pile. The impression which the gigantic columns, sixty feet high, and the enormous blocks of stone, eight feet thick, gave to them, is doubtless shared in some degree by all travellers. As he walked through the shadowy recesses, each aperture seeming like a deep cave in a rocky mountain, he was filled with a solemn sense of awe and sadness, which so overwhelmed him that he peered about the avenues in silence, and involuntarily stood on tip-toe. The sombre grandeur of the massive masonry, the sacred associations connected with the ancient worship of Osiris and Isis, the wonderful[167] tales of wars, tyrannies, famines, plagues, Rameses, Moses, Pharaoh, Alexander, Ptolemy, Cambyses, and Napoleon, which those lofty statues could tell if their symmetrical lips could speak, awaken indescribable emotions, deep, thrilling, and permanent. Mr. Taylor saw a grace and an artistic merit in the stone figures, and in the hieroglyphics that adorned the temple, which few travellers detect or admit. To many travellers the figures on those old porches and halls seem rude and often out of proportion, and the writer confesses to having been one of the latter class. But Mr. Taylor’s appreciating scrutiny may be accounted for on the basis that with his poetical instincts and thorough culture in art, there were beauties in those works of ancient sculptors, latent to others, but apparent and striking to him. But there is no disagreement as to the unspeakable solemnity of the place and the gloom of its lonely halls.

The next night they reached Luxor, and caught the first glimpse of those interesting ruins by moonlight. There, silent and stately, arose the great Colonnade. There, quietly recalling the ancients, stood the twin Obelisk to the one at which Mr. Taylor had often looked in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, when as a boy he dreamed of distant Egypt. For seven miles around the Temple of Luxor are the ruins of ancient Thebes, within which were once the temples of Karnak, Luxor, Goorneh, Memnonium, and hundreds more, which now cumber the otherwise fertile plains.[168] Thebes, with its hundred gates, with its countless armies, with its wise men, its Colossus that sang in the morning sunlight, its avenues of sphinxes and gods in stone, lay broken, spurned, and dead before them. The same moon looked down on them that gazed on the priests of Isis and the palace of its Cæsars. No one can imagine anything so solemn and grand as to stand in the moonlight on the haunted plains of ancient Thebes! One may have thought the Coliseum at Rome impressive beyond description when seen in the favorable light of an autumn moon, but when compared with Thebes it is tame and insignificant. Ages and ages before the rape of the Sabines, these temples had been constructed. They saw the morning of civilization; but now they are ruined and useless, the night seems best fitted for an appreciative view of them. Among the mighty colonnades whose columns are broken and falling, and around gigantic remains of ancient statues carved from a mountain of stone, Mr. Taylor wandered for two whole days. He scrutinized closely the long rows of ancient tombs, and stood in the rocky grave of Rameses I. The pictures on the walls of the tombs, the kind of rock, the original shape of the temples, the employments of the ancient races, the blue sky overhead, the clear atmosphere around, together with sketches of history and poetical allusions, shared in the interesting letters which Mr. Taylor wrote from Thebes. Such scenes contain an inspiration and an education which make scholars and statesmen of such[169] as love history and appreciate the lessons those ruins teach. To one of Mr. Taylor’s disposition, a visit to such a place was a privilege not to be lightly thrown away. He investigated everything, and in a manner bordering on recklessness he descended through small holes into dark subterranean tombs, and with equal hardihood walked the crumbling roofs and cornices of the lofty ruins. He looked with disgust on the evidences of spoliations which were to be seen in splintered columns and fragments of ancient frescoes, and which were the work of scientific explorers. He regarded with a jealous anxiety the evidences of vandalism and decay, and wished sincerely that time and man would allow those precious relics of the old régime to remain forever intact. He appears to have regarded those massive wrecks as half-human, and sympathized with their forsaken and friendless condition.

But in all this antiquarian excitement, which usually occupies the undivided attention of less enthusiastic travellers, Mr. Taylor neglected not the living. He witnessed with interest the graces of the Arabian dancing-girls, noticed the features of the beggar-boys, the methods of teaching children the Koran, and the worn appearance of the water-carriers.

Leaving Luxor, they spent three or four days ascending the river to Assouan, and in visiting the villages, old temples, half-buried cities, and gorgeously decorated tombs in the mountain-sides, which are almost numberless in the valley of Upper Egypt. At[170] Assouan, he was most cordially received by the Governor and was given a friendly greeting by all the officials he met. From that town he made several excursions with his German friend, the most interesting of which was that to the cataract of the Nile and the island of Philæ. There he saw the celebrated temple of the time of the Ptolemies, which he looked upon as modern, because it was not over twenty-two hundred years old. But he felt sufficient interest in the ruins of the old city to describe that marvellous colonnade which has astonished so many visitors to the island of Philæ. The reader of his letters can detect, however, in Mr. Taylor’s description of columns, aisles, roofs, walls, capitals, sculptures, monoliths, and colossi, a vein of sadness which may have colored his views. At all events the ruins of Philæ did not impress him as they seem to have affected other visitors. The fact that he was so soon to part with a companion for whom he felt a love like that of Jonathan for David, may have had more or less influence upon his capacity to enjoy scenery or the remains of antiquity: for the writer looked upon Philæ as one of the most interesting localities of the lower Nile, and cannot but regard the ruined temple as one of the grandest in Egypt. They visited the fields, villages, the tombs, the ancient quarry, wherein half-sculptured statues and columns still remain unmoved, and after a day of antiquarian research they rode back to their boat, as he said “with heavy hearts.” The next day[171] came the hour of parting; and these two men, one a young man, the other an elderly gentleman, who had been utter strangers forty days before, now clung to each other with the sincerest brotherly love and parted in tears. How little did Mr. Taylor think, as he saw the boat sailing away for Cairo with the Saxe-Coburg colors at the peak, where he had so long kept the Stars and Stripes, that they would meet again in the sunny southern lands of Europe, and that another person would join their company for life and make up what he termed “a sacred triad.” He thought then that the parting might be for all time. He was going into an unknown wilderness, while his friend sought again the lands of civilization: it was a long time before either could dispel the gloom which their separation left about them.

Mr. Taylor took another boat at Assouan and proceeded to Korosko, where, with the assistance of the Governor and a wild Arab chieftain, whose friendship was purchased by presents and sociability, he secured the necessary camels and outfit for a trip across the desert. It was a hazardous undertaking for a stranger, alone, unknown, to traverse the desert. If he was murdered, none of the authorities would care, nor would his death become known. He might contract the terrible fever. He was liable to be eaten by wild beasts, and he ran great risk of dying of thirst or hunger on the hot sands of a trackless desert. The way had been travelled many times before, but was all the[172] more dangerous because of the opportunity it gave robbers to lie in wait for tourists. But he unhesitatingly entered upon the journey, trusting in the friendship of his Nubian and Arabian servants, and in his own ability to withstand the heat of the sands and the attacks of African fever. Camping in the desert sands, riding a dromedary in the scorching sun, living upon rudely prepared food, drinking lukewarm water, with the sight of bones and carcasses by the way to warn him, and the occasional appearance of sickly returning caravans to dishearten him, he passed that arm of the desert between the first cataract of the Nile and Abou-Hammed. Thence his little caravan of six camels followed the winding river to a small town, El Mekheyref, where he dismissed his friendly companions, excepting one, who had accompanied him from Cairo, and set sail again on the Nile. Everywhere he was received with kindness and hospitality by the natives and by the Governors. His servants were so much interested in his welfare that they told the natives that he was a high official in the country from which he came, and he was treated with the respect the Eastern people think is due to persons of high rank. All disclaimers from him were considered to be actuated by feelings of modesty and elevated him in the estimation of his entertainers.

His visit to Meroe was an interesting episode in his long pilgrimage, although he did not make such diligent search as an antiquarian among its crumbling[173] walls as he had done in some of the other ancient cities. Yet his descriptions of that place are most vivid pictures and convey an idea of the topography of the capital of that ancient kingdom in a manner most readable to the stranger and very important to students of history.

CHAPTER XIX.

The journey from Meroe to Khartoum on the Ethiopian Nile, Mr. Taylor enjoyed very much, having little to do but amuse the sailors and be in turn amused with stories of Mohammed, of Haroun-al-Raschid, and the oriental wonders contained in songs and traditions. The climate gave him health, his genial good-nature brought him friends, and his experience would supply the necessities of life in after years. There were narrow escapes from animals, men, and treacherous rapids; but he had become accustomed to such things, and assumed enough of the Arab character to exclaim with them, at each escape, “It is the will of Allah.” The day before he arrived at Khartoum was Mr. Taylor’s twenty-seventh birthday.

Having letters to many of the officials of Khartoum, which was a military and trading station at the junction of the Blue and the White Nile, he received a cordial welcome, which made him feel at once that he was among friends. He was then at the extreme outskirts[175] of civilization. All beyond was dark and unknown. Trading caravans consisting of Arabs and natives often visited the interior, and small boats frequently went farther up the Nile for purposes of traffic. But there was little known about the people, the topography of the country, or of the course of the Nile. There was a Catholic mission at Khartoum, where the missionaries treated Mr. Taylor with great consideration and kindness. Some of them had made exploring excursions into the wilds of Central Africa, and it was his hope that he could get into some expedition with them during that season. But in that he was disappointed. None of the missionaries were intending to visit the tribes to the south that season, and no other suitable opportunity presented itself. He did not give up the hope of seeing the unexplored regions of the interior, until he had exhausted every means in his power for procuring a fit escort. The unfortunate combination of circumstances, which prevented him from searching for the sources of the Nile, postponed the revelations which he would have made, until they were unfolded by another newspaper correspondent, H. M. Stanley.

So persistent was Mr. Taylor in his purpose to travel beyond the boundaries of the known, that he resolved to go up the White Nile alone, except a few servants. He had met Captain Peele, whose accounts of the curiosities to be found farther inland made him the more anxious to get a glimpse beyond. So he hired a boat,[176] and amid the doubts of his servants and the misgivings of his new-found friends, he set sail up the White Nile. He could not hire the boatmen for a long voyage, as they feared the fierce cannibals of the interior, and as they were going beyond the protection of any military force. Trusting to his persuasive powers, he started with them, deciding to go just as far as he could get them to accompany him.

On a lone river, where no other sail was to be seen; in a wilderness, where even the human beings were as the lions and hyenas; with no friend of his own race near him, he sailed on, in confidence, never seeming to think that he might die there alone and never be heard of by his relatives again. Crocodiles, hippopotami, and giraffes flourished there, and man was the plaything of both elements and beasts. Through the wildest scenery, among the strangest birds and animals, he pursued his course, trembling night and day lest his crew should at any moment refuse to go farther.

At last they came to the country of the Shillooks. That wild tribe of negroes was known to the boatmen through nursery tales and traditional stories, wherein the savages were given very bad names; and when Mr. Taylor informed them that he purposed to visit the village of those horrid man-eaters, they regarded him with looks of the most profound astonishment. But with a hardihood that by its boldness secured acquiescence, he commanded them to row him to the banks of the Nile, where the long rows of primitive[177] huts were to be seen. Through captives and merchants the kingdom of the Shillooks had become partially known, and a kind of jargon, like the pigeon-English of the Chinese, served the purposes of communication. One of Mr. Taylor’s company could talk with them slightly, and with him as an interpreter, and another servant for a protector, he walked boldly into the village of the savages, taking no weapons, lest he should create suspicion. But they received him coldly and with much show of suspicion and treachery. It was a most dangerous experiment, and it is a matter of wonder that he was allowed to depart. There were large numbers of armed men around him, brandishing spears and clubs, and demanding of him all sorts of impossible presents. But with a calmness and seeming confidence, Mr. Taylor smoked with the chief, and exchanged presents with the subordinate officials, until they became friendly and docile, laying down their weapons and conversing cheerfully through the interpreter. Yet they laid a plan for plundering the party, and would at the last perhaps have murdered the whole crew, had not Mr. Taylor most adroitly and coolly foiled them in their designs.

All attempts to persuade his men to go farther were useless. No urging, no promise of gifts, no threats would induce them to sail farther south, as they believed that it was but a little way to “the end of the world.” How eagerly he yearned for some chance to explore the country beyond, he often mentioned in[178] after life. He was at the centre of a mighty continent. Locked and bolted it had been for all the ages, and it appeared as if the door was now open and he had only to walk in to discover its treasures. But alas! he could not go on alone. He could not swim the length of the river, nor find his way among the elephants and lions of the jungle. The boat turned back toward Khartoum, and he had no choice but to return with it.

However, he made the most of the trip, and frequently visited the shore and had some very pleasant and instructive interviews with the tribes who live in that region. At one place he visited a village of the Hassaniyehs, and contrary to the experience of many other travellers, he was cordially invited to their circle and treated with sincere hospitality. He mentioned in his book the dance of welcome which the young women of the village performed before him, and described with interesting detail their motions, features, forms, voices, and habits. Thus, with visits to savages, interviews with wild beasts, and exquisite views of the wildest scenery ever beheld by man, he floated back to the friends and dwellings of Khartoum.

His stay in Khartoum, on his return, was brief, because of the approaching sickly season; but every hour of his time, when awake, was occupied in visiting and being visited. Native chiefs, Arab merchants, holy men of the Moslem faith, Catholic priests, princesses, soldiers, consuls, boatmen, and tame lions,[179] seemed equally at home in his presence; and his stay was a most delightful one for all concerned. His parting with his friends at Khartoum was akin to the separation of life-long friends, or the breaking of a family circle. To him the whole world was kin.

From Khartoum he travelled in a caravan of camels, chartered by him for an escort, leaving the Nile and striking into the desert. With camel-drivers hard to control, with a burning sun overhead, and sands nearly as hot beneath, he traversed the desert unharmed. Once he slept with a deadly snake under his blanket, unconscious of his fearful danger until he rolled up his blanket in the morning. The open air, the free sun, sleeping on the sand, and eating the coarse food of the natives, gave him a vigor and healthy delight which inconveniences and dangers could not overcome. Sometimes the heat was so intense that the skin of his face peeled off, and once or twice he felt the effects of “the desert intoxication,” resulting from the monotonous scene and terrible heat. It was a dizzy sensation, and is often thought to be a symptom of dangerous disease. Changing camels at intermediate stations, and visiting the ruins of ancient cities and fortresses, where he found them cropping out of the sand or adorning some rugged mountain, he travelled on to Abdom, Dongola and Wady-Halfa, where he embarked in a boat for Assouan. His parting with his old dromedary, and with his guides, at Wady-Halfa, is mentioned by him with[180] the same regret that he experienced in leaving his other friends. But his farewell, in Cairo, to his trusted servant Achmet, who had been his faithful companion from Cairo up the Nile and back, drew tears from the eyes of both.

His voyage from Wady-Halfa to Cairo was so nearly like his trip up the Nile, that for the purposes of this work it is necessary only to say that he visited many scenes and many ruins which were omitted on his way up the river, and refreshed his memory by a second visit to the most celebrated localities. He met many travellers, and heard from civilization again, arriving in the capital of Egypt on the first day of April, 1852, in excellent spirits and in good health, save a troublesome soreness of the eyes, caused by the reflection of the sun on the water. The thin and frail body had assumed a fullness and strength surprising to note, and the broken heart had so accustomed itself to its load of grief that the weight seemed lighter than at first.

CHAPTER XX.

If there is any land where every grain of sand and every blade of grass is pervaded by thrilling associations, that land is Palestine. Especially and peculiarly animated are its hills and vales to a poet such as Taylor proved to be. It may be that some superficial and matter-of-fact people who have visited the Holy Land in the hot season, have not felt the charm of[183] its sacredness, owing to heat, barrenness, vermin, and beggars. There may be a small class of iconoclastic jokers, who, caring not how holy or tender the theme, never fail to use it for ridicule, if it suits their humoristic purpose. But the large class of travellers who visit Jerusalem and the country round about, feel the inspiring presence of the Past, and enjoy in an indescribable fullness the associations connected with it. In a higher and nobler degree, the mind imbued with poetic images, a ready imagination, and a keen discernment of beauty in landscape or history, will avail itself of the great opportunities for pleasure and profit which such a land supplies. In this sense Mr. Taylor enjoyed a great advantage. He made his physical being so subordinate to his mental, that no fatigue, no hunger, no thirst, no annoyance from beggars, nor fears of robbers, could interfere with the appreciation of the beautiful. How greatly he enjoyed his visit to Palestine, none but intimate friends ever knew. In his letters, he often gave way to enthusiastic expressions, and in his book, often gave very vivid descriptions of what had been, as well as that which then existed. But a fear of exaggeration through praise, and a modest misgiving lest his poetical fancy should not suit his readers, led him to write in a more prosy vein than he talked. In conversation with friends in Germany and America, and often in his lectures, after he had finished his tours, he graphically pictured the impressive events of the past connected[184] with Palestine, which seemed to pass like a panorama before him. To him, such a land would be full of interest, whether he trod its fields at a time of the year when it was luxuriant, or at a season when the sun and simoon have made it a desert. To lie upon its burning sands and dream of the sweltering hosts that fought around the spot; to bask in the cool shades of its olives and cedars, and think of Gethsemane and the sweets of Sharon; to stand on the summit of the Mount of Olives, Carmel, or Hermon, and realize the almost overwhelming fact that before him were the plains, hills, valleys, conquered and reconquered since man was made, and which were peopled by the great, the good, the wild, and the bloodthirsty of every age; to recognize the localities where dwelt or fought the heroes of Holy Writ; to feel the presence of the King of kings as “on mysterious wings” he swept the plain and shielded his people; to walk on the very path whereon the Son of God had often placed his feet; to dream in the starlight of Apostles, priests, Romans, Crusaders, and Saracens, was an experience especially gratifying to him, and interesting to a greater or less degree to all travellers. The writer recalls, perhaps in an imperfect form, a verse which Mr. Taylor wrote during his stay in Palestine, and which came to the writer with singular force while carelessly wandering along the valley between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives.

To him the past was real. He saw the fields of corn, the ancient olive-trees, the high walls, and the high towers, upon which the Saviour looked. He saw again Abraham, Samuel, Saul, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Pilate, and their associates. He walked in imagination in the welcoming crowd as they strewed the branches along the path from Bethany to Jerusalem. He saw the council chamber, the cross, and the ascension. He dreamed of the gathering armies at Antioch and Joppa, whose banners at last waved over the palace of Godfrey of Bouillon in Jerusalem. To him the gates of history swung wide open, and he wandered back through the centuries, meeting patriarch and maiden, shepherd and warrior, prophet and judge, seer and apostle, in a companionship social and confidential. It was like long generations of experience[186] to walk those hallowed fields and realize the wonderful tales of history. In this, as much as in the views of the present, is found the profit resulting from travel in such lands. One lives over the tales of which he has read, with each locality serving as a fresh reminder of the unnoted details. He is an old man in experience who has travelled in the right spirit over those eldest lands of the world; and few indeed is the number of tourists who can feel that they have done so.

Mr. Taylor, like Longfellow, Tennyson, and Scott, had a gift of looking through the present into the past, and held delightful communion with the old days. Trying, however, with a laudable desire to instruct his readers, he kept studiously close to the simple facts of his actual experience, and in his narrative seldom allowed himself to fall into poetical expressions.

He left Egypt about the middle of the month of April and landed at Beyrout, which was not at that time, nor since, a very attractive locality. It was made more unpleasant to him by an incarceration in a kind of prison called the “Quarantine.” But with a resignation worthy of the oldest Turk, he made the best of his circumstances, and judging by the account he has given of it, he had an easy, jolly time of it. Released from the prison he travelled down the shore of the Mediterranean to Tyre, with whose remnant he seems to have been deeply impressed. The old Tyre, with its fleets, with its enormous stocks of merchandise,[187] with its lofty piles of cedar timber, with its gorgeous purple robes, with its bulwarks and battlements, with its armed defenders and hosts of besiegers, arose from its crumbled fragments and passed through the panoramic changes which so startle the student of Syrian history.

After leaving the village which now replaces the ancient city, he rode down the sandy shore and composed a poem which was afterwards somewhat changed, but in which was retained the boldness of the waves, which then beat at his feet.

One of the most sublime experiences of life is to stand where he stood, with the great waves rolling up the beach and shaking the earth with their powerful surges, and with the spray breaking about the dark ruins of the ancient city, and there repeat the poem from which the above verses are taken. It gives power and life to the words which can never be felt or seen by those who have never heard the bellowings or felt the shocks of the Mediterranean surf.

From Tyre he ascended Mount Carmel, and following the shore to Jaffa, took the usual route to Jerusalem. It was the most pleasant season of the year (April), and all vegetation was fast springing into its bountiful life. The cactus, orange, and pomegranate were in bloom, and all nature seemed in its most cheerful mood. So like a paradise did it look to him, that it was some little time before he could get into that frame of mind which brought a realization that he was in that land of great renown. But as that thrilling moment arrived when he stepped upon the highest plateau of the mountains near Jerusalem and looked with astonished eyes over the valley and on the “City of our God and the mountain of his holiness,” he felt, with a sudden thrill, that he was in the presence of the Great and the Holy. With emotions that cannot[189] be described he rode over those sacred fields and entered the gates of the city.

From Jerusalem he made an excursion, by the way of Bethany, to the Dead Sea. It was a sultry day, and he suffered much from the heat, having therein a suggestion of the rain of fire and brimstone which destroyed the cities whose ruins are supposed to be petrified at the bottom of the Dead Sea. With his usual hardihood he plunged fearlessly into the bituminous waters of the Dead Sea, and seemed to enjoy what no traveller who has since indulged in that bath is known to have enjoyed, the buoyance of the water and the sensations caused by the volcanic materials held in solution.

On his return to the city he remained for several days examining the sacred localities and contending with the crowds of beggars and guides who blocked the narrow and filthy streets of Jerusalem. The wretchedness, poverty, disease, and filth of the people are so prominent and so loathsome, that unless the ordinary traveller keeps constantly on his guard, he will forget all the old and holy associations in his disgust for the city of to-day. It is said that the city is less dirty and less stricken with disease than it was in 1850. If such be the fact, it is a marvel indeed how Mr. Taylor ever found a fit place for his Muse, which so frequently visited him there. He seems, however, to have been deeply interested in everything, having about as little faith in what the guides told him about[190] the locality of the Holy Sepulchre, Calvary, Gethsemane, and the true cross, as travellers in more modern times appear to entertain. Jerusalem was not only all that we have represented it to be outwardly, but the people would lie beyond the fables of any other people; would steal and would murder. To be much troubled by these facts would destroy the poetry of the place, and Mr. Taylor allowed none of those things to move him. He wrote of the facts as he found them, uncolored by the imagination, and seems to have flattered himself that he was not as sentimental as the travellers who had preceded him. If he was so very practical, whence such beautiful poetry?

On the 7th of May he left Jerusalem, in company with another traveller and the mule-drivers, taking the route by way of Samaria to Nazareth through a country at that season covered with the richest and freshest foliage. Along the entire route the tourist seldom passes out of sight of broken columns, falling fortresses, gray old monasteries, dismal hermitages, and Roman masonry. The olive and fig trees shaded[191] the path, and with the wide fields of grain gave the appearance of thrift and enterprise. He visited Shechem, where it is said that Joseph was buried, and near which he was thrown into the pit by his brethren. There Mr. Taylor saw Samaritans of the original stock, and there he was shown an ancient manuscript of Hebrew Law, said to be three thousand years old.

He made a short stop at Nazareth and was shown where the mother of Christ had resided, the table from which Christ ate, and the school-room (?) in which Christ is said to have been taught.

Going thence he ascended Mount Tabor, as it was his custom to climb all the mountains he could reach, and then hastened on to the Sea of Galilee. There he swam in its crystal water, and visited the Mount of Beatitudes, Joseph’s Well, and Magadala, the home of Mary Magdalene. Passing Cesarea Philippi, and crossing the anti-Lebanon range of mountains in imminent danger of robbery and death from the rebellious tribes of Druses which inhabited that region, they came out on the afternoon of May 19th in view of the lovely city of Damascus.

Mr. Taylor made a sketch of himself as he appeared in his Eastern costume, while seated on an eminence that afternoon, overlooking the most ancient city in the world. In one of the rooms of Mr. Taylor’s lovely home of Cedarcroft there hangs a large painting, of considerable merit, and said to be an excellent portrait, which was executed by a friend from that sketch.[192] It represents Mr. Taylor sitting in Oriental posture, on the mountain-side, with the domes, minarets, and embowered walls of Damascus on the distant plain. He always held that painting to be a treasure, connecting him, as it did, with those scenes of early travel, and with the friend who made the painting, and with those who admired it.

He was delighted with Damascus. It was placed in the centre of a plain whereon grew in the greatest abundance all the fruits and all the varieties of leaf and blossom known to the tropic zone. No other spot yet explored can boast such beautiful trees; such a profusion of roses; such blossoms of jessamine and pomegranate; such loads of walnuts, figs, olives, apricots; such luxuriant grasses, and such productive fields, as that land which has been cultivated by man the longest. Nature has set the crown upon Damascus and blessed it with a superabundance of vegetable life. But what is given to verdure seems to be taken from humanity, for, regarded as a whole, he found the people of the city to be a rather bad lot. Yet there, as elsewhere, he found agreeable companions and warm friends. He made himself so much at home that he soon appeared like a native, and all the labyrinths of bazars and alleys were as familiar to him after a few days’ stay as they seemed to be to the oldest resident. He liked their life so well that he soon learned to enjoy to its full the physical comfort and mental rest of the Turkish bath. He ever after referred to the bath[193] at Damascus as the acme of bodily satisfaction. The fact that so many travellers have been disappointed in the enjoyment of the bath does not show Mr. Taylor’s account to be so much overdrawn, as it shows the difference between the pleasure to be derived from the pastimes of any people by those who adhere more or less to their own tastes and customs, and those who, like Mr. Taylor, fall wholly and heartily into the ways and thoughts of the native. When in Damascus, he not only did as they do outwardly, but he set his mind in the same channel, and knew what it was to be a Turk in aspirations as well as in dress. No other traveller known to literature ever entered so completely into the experience and social companionship of the people whom he visited.

In order that he might leave no habit untried which came within his reach, he took a potion of hashish, to test its strength and effects. The drug did not begin to intoxicate him quite as soon as he expected, and he doubled the dose, thus taking six times as much as would intoxicate an ordinary Turk. It made him terribly ill; and it was almost miraculous that he survived the shock to his system. He did not try the strength of that drug again. Among the friends he made, and whose home he visited at Damascus, was a family of Maronite Christians, who, eight years later, were heinously butchered by the Moslems during the great massacre following the Druses’ and Marnoites’ dispute in 1860.

CHAPTER XXI.

From Damascus Mr. Taylor journeyed to Baalbec, where are the most imposing ruins to be found in Syria, and where stand six of the most symmetrical and exquisitely carved columns to be seen in Asia or Europe. He described the temples and fragments so vividly, that travellers who have taken his “Lands of the Saracen” for a guide have seldom been disappointed or mistaken in their anticipations, the actual scene they look upon being so like the image they formed in their minds while reading his description. The gift of portraying through the combination of words and sentences an accurate picture of a city existing in a[195] strange land and amid a strange people, is a rare gift, and the number is very few of those who are found to possess it. Mr. Taylor was one of those privileged ones. In his description we see the columns, cornices, pediments, walls, platforms, broken pillars, and falling pavilions as distinctly as they appear when we afterwards look upon those romantic piles with the natural eye. To him, as to others, it was a study to determine, if possible, how such enormous blocks of stone, sixty-two feet long and ten feet in diameter, could have been transported and placed in the buildings. It is beyond all the skill of to-day to move nine thousand tons of stone in a single block with the conveniences of that time.

From Baalbec he ascended the Lebanon range of mountains, and looked over the land from the snowy peak of one of its lofty summits. He visited the sacred cedars which have lived on the mountain-side for three thousand years, and then rode on through chasms, along cliffs, and by the sweetest and richest dells, until he descended to the plain of Beyrout.

His appreciation of the hills of Lebanon is more clearly seen in his poetry than in his prose. For, when writing of them afterwards, he said:—

In that city he laid his plans for the future, and abandoned his purposed trip to the Euphrates and Tigris. He relinquished the design to visit Assyria with great reluctance, and decided to pass through the interior of Asia Minor to Constantinople. Acting immediately upon this resolution, without an apparent doubt of being able to traverse safely the unknown interior of Asia Minor, he engaged a vessel and sailed up the coast to the Orontes River, and thence to Aleppo. In that city, by a ludicrous mistake, Mr. Taylor and his travelling companion were invited to the house of one of the wealthiest merchants, and were treated with the greatest hospitality by the owner, who supposed they were titled Englishmen. But when the mistake was revealed, Mr. Taylor had become such an agreeable visitor that his host insisted upon entertaining them during their stay in Aleppo. He had been there but a few days before he became such a general favorite,[197] that he was invited to call on the nobility, was urged to attend feasts, balls, and weddings, and when he left the city, the friendly regrets of hundreds of Moslems and Christians followed him.

Leaving Aleppo early in June, he followed the shore of the Mediterranean around to the plain of Issus, where Alexander the Great won his great victory, and thence to Tarsus, the birthplace of the Apostle Paul. It may have been “no mean city” when Paul was born, but it was a most insignificant village when Mr. Taylor was there. But as the magnificent mountains of the Taurus range loomed up along the northern horizon, his attention was taken from rags, beggary, and ruined fortresses, to snowy cliffs, over which he had a passion for clambering.

Those persons who have ascended the Alps at the Simplon pass, have a very good idea of the Taurus mountains, and can realize somewhat of Mr. Taylor’s satisfaction as he rode up the gorges and peered into the deep valleys. He loved the mountains anywhere. But the Taurus seemed then, in the glow of his return to perfect health and with all the profusion of nature’s living beauties blooming about him, and the eternal snows gleaming above him, to be the most attractive landscape in the world.

His visit to Konia (Iconium), the capital of Karamania, was full of little episodes and personal incidents, which he told afterwards in print in his own inimitable manner. But nothing of unusual moment occurred until he reached ancient Phrygia, where the ruins of olden cities and fortresses interested him much. Their history was almost as unknown as the story of the temples of Yucatan, and consequently had a mysterious appearance which charms in a bewildering way the study of a poet.

Riding on over hills and mountains, across delightful streams, through fertile valleys, associating with the Turks on friendly terms, and studying their habits and language, Mr. Taylor pushed fearlessly into the very heart of Asia Minor. Visiting Oezani in its debris, and the valley of Rhyndacus, they traversed the primeval forests on the Mysian Olympus, and true to his instincts he sought the heights of Olympus, twin mountain, in size and literature, with its Grecian namesake. From that point to Brousa, near the Sea of Marmora, it was but a day’s journey, and seems to have been the most delightful ride of the whole tour. Gardens, orchards, grain-fields, thickets of clematis and roses, patches of beech and oak woodland, and brilliant streams pleased the eye, while the songs of birds and of happy[199] harvesters charmed the ear. Grand mountains pierced the skies, covered with dense forests, behind them, and the plain stretched away—a Garden of Eden—to the shore of a placid inland sea.

They entered Brousa in excellent health and spirits, having seen no unusual fatigue and been in no great danger during the whole journey through a country then almost lost and unknown to the civilized world.

From Brousa, the party descended to the Sea of Marmora, and taking a sail-boat were wafted by the Golden Horn into the interminable fleets of Constantinople. During his stay in that city he witnessed the display of the Turkish holidays, saw the Sultan on his throne, entered the mosque of Saint Sophia, ran to the numerous conflagrations, and unravelled to his satisfaction some of the social and political problems connected with the Sultan’s rule and the state of popular discontent. He foretold a war with Russia, and a contest between the latter and England over the coveted gem of the East and the gate to the Black Sea. His predictions have already been proven to be true, showing an insight into political affairs wholly unlooked for in a young man, and not to be found in such as had travelled to less purpose.

On leaving Constantinople, he proceeded again to Smyrna, which place appeared to so much better advantage on his second visit than it did at his first, that instead of leaving it, as before, with anathemas, he celebrated his visit with a poem.

The reader may not need to be again reminded of Mr. Taylor’s double view of the scenes he visited, or of the fact that he tried to give faithful pictures of the present in his prose and left the ideal and fanciful to his books of poetry. But to understand his disposition, and correctly estimate his ability, they need to be read together; and hence, before taking leave of Asia Minor, we venture to quote a verse from a dedication to his friend Richard H. Stoddard, which we have seen in a volume of Mr. Taylor’s poems.

At Constantinople Mr. Taylor heard of the action which had been taken by the United States, looking to the opening of the ports of Japan to the commerce of America. He heard that a squadron was to leave the United States in November, under the command of Commodore Perry, and he formed the resolution to connect himself with the expedition, if possible. To that end he wrote to his friends and employers in New York, asking them to obtain permission for him to join the fleet. Not knowing just when the expedition would sail, nor at what ports it would stop on its way to Japan, he anxiously watched for information, and inquired at every place where information was likely to be found.

He was determined to visit Spain before he went to China and Japan, and was equally resolved to visit the home of his German travelling companion who ascended the Nile with him, and who had sent pressing invitations to him to come to Gotha.

The business details connected with his finances and outfit for Spain and China also called him to London, and arranging his tour so as to accomplish these diverse ends he visited Malta, where he was delayed ten days, and then sailed to Sicily, where he witnessed[202] the Catanian centennial festival in honor of St. Agatha, and where he beheld the awful spectacle of Ætna in eruption. From Sicily he sailed up the coast to that Naples which, as a wayfarer in Rome seven years before, he had so much longed to see, and filled his letters with praises of its beautiful bay and charming circle of mountain, city, town, cliffs, and islands. Without changing steamers he proceeded to Leghorn, and going to Florence experienced that delight of all delights,—in Florence a second time. Feeling that his time was limited, and “drawn by an unseen influence,” he hastened on to Venice, and thence through the regions of the Austrian Tyrol to Munich and Gotha.

Gladsome days at Gotha! Was it not the country of his beloved friend? Was it not the home of his friend’s niece, Marie Hansen? The daughter of the great astronomer, Peter Andreas Hansen, was a worthy child of a noble sire. Mr. Taylor had listened to her praises, but had hardly hoped to meet her.

After a few weeks spent in and about that pleasant city, to which he was destined to return and claim his bride, and in which he was to pass many of the sweetest days of his life, he journeyed to London. There he made his arrangements for a trip into China, and hastened away to Gibraltar.

On the 6th of November he left the great rock and took passage in a steamer for Cadiz, in Spain. There he walked the streets three thousand years old, and wherein, it is said, that Hercules strode. Yet there is but little now to be seen that would remind one of antiquity. He noticed, however, the beautiful and graceful women. From Cadiz he went by boat up the Guadalquiver River to the pretty town of Seville. There were the old Moorish houses; there the massive Cathedral; there the Saracenic palace of Alcazar, with all its porches, galleries, arches, and sculptures; there was the palace called Pilate’s House, with its decorations[204] from Arabia, and inscriptions from the Koran; and there was the museum containing Murillo’s best paintings.

But it requires only a short time to visit all the attractions of Seville, and Mr. Taylor soon proceeded to Granada. In nearly all the cities which he visited he was reminded, directly or indirectly, of the visit of his friend, Washington Irving. He found the same guides, or lodged at the same hotel, or visited some celebrated locality of which Irving had written.

In Granada was the celebrated fortress of Alhambra, which was captured from the Moors by the troops of Ferdinand and Isabella the same year that Columbus discovered America; there was the palace of Charles V.; there the Carthusian convent, the Monastery of St. Geronimo, and there the cathedral with the remains of Ferdinand and Isabella. He made a hasty trip to Cordova and its ancient Moslem mosque. Then, visiting Alhama, Malaga, and Ronda, he returned hastily to Gibraltar and examined the renowned fortress, said to be the strongest citadel in the world.

In that somewhat hasty view of Southern Spain he obtained much valuable information and an experience which often served him in his literary work as a writer for the public press. Southern Spain and Southern France, next to Rome itself, are replete with warlike and romantic associations. Gauls, Romans, Moors, and Spaniards, have made nearly every plain a battle-field; and the toppling walls of the ancient towers[205] and palaces tell of the fiercest contests, the most terrible inquisitions, and the narrowest of narrow escapes. Song and story in prose and rhyme have combined in every form to make the land attractive, and it is a matter of deep regret that Mr. Taylor, who was so capable of developing all these characteristics, had not more time in which to visit them and write out his experience.

CHAPTER XXII.

By far the most interesting and valuable part of Mr. Taylor’s experience as a traveller was in India, China, and Japan, if we consider only the welfare of his readers. But so far as its influence upon him was[207] concerned, its impression was far less marked than that in Europe and Egypt. At the time he left Gibraltar for Egypt, the lands of India, China, and Japan were comparatively little known to the reading communities in America. Even India, which had so long been the idol of England and the El Dorado for all her adventurous spirits and valorous soldiers, was a country with which America had but little communication, and in whose people Americans took but little interest. It was a neglected field.

Mr. Taylor, in a letter to a friend in Washington, laid much stress upon the importance to American commerce of an accurate description of those lands, and hoped to be the instrument by which an interest in such enterprises might be awakened. It was a laudable, patriotic purpose, and was most conscientiously carried out by him.

He left Gibraltar on the 28th of November, on a Peninsular and Oriental steamer, which touched at that port, on its way from Southampton to Alexandria. He arrived at Alexandria December 8, and sought his old quarters in the city. He felt like one who returns to his home, as he walked the streets of the Egyptian city, and relates with evident satisfaction how pleasant it was to call out to the crowd of donkey-drivers in their native tongue.

But his visit to Cairo gave him the keenest delight, as there he saw many familiar faces, and was greeted with many welcoming smiles. He was especially delighted[208] to meet his faithful dragoman, Achmet, who had been his companion on his trip to the White Nile, and the happiness of the Egyptian on seeing his old employer told very impressively the power and virtue of Mr. Taylor’s character. Men were faithful to him because he had faith in them. They loved him because he understood and appreciated them. Even the little donkey-boy on whose animal Mr. Taylor had rode a year before in one of his reckless canters through the bazaars, remembered him and offered to let him ride again without pay—an act unheard of by other travellers there. It could not be otherwise than sweet to travel in any land where the people were friends and where the wanderer was regarded in the light of an especially intelligent relative.

At that date there were no railroads in Egypt, although one was projected, and Mr. Taylor was compelled, in common with the crowd of other travellers, to ride in a cart, eighty-four miles, through the sandy desert, to Suez. The latter town was then, according to Mr. Taylor’s account, a small, dirty, insignificant place. But the writer, who visited the place after a visit to Japan, China, and India, in 1870, found a very prosperous town, with excellent hotel accommodations. The bazaar was large and stocked with an immense quantity of goods from all parts of the civilized world. It has doubtless grown much since the work was begun on the Suez Canal, and since the harbor has been dredged and the wharves constructed.

His stay in Suez was, however, very brief, as the Mediterranean steamer had arrived much behind time, and consequently all were hurried on board the little tug, and soon walked the deck of an India steamer.

They were on the Red Sea! Now that its barren, sandy shores, the home of the pelican and ostrich, have become so familiar to tourists, and its glaring surface been so often mentioned by correspondents, there is less romance about a voyage from Suez to Aden than in that comparatively early day when Mr. Taylor visited the locality. There was the rugged pass on the west, through which the pillar of fire led the escaping Jews to the shore, and there was the beach and highlands on the east, up which they marched dry-shod from the bed of the sea, while the waves rolled in on the hosts of Pharaoh. There was the hill on which Miriam sang so exultingly; and beyond, the hot peaks of the Sinaitic Wilderness. Somewhere in the vicinity of that sea resided the Queen of Sheba; and not far from its shores were the forgotten mines of ancient Ophir.

But Mr. Taylor felt now that a patriotic duty rested upon him, and avoiding the delicious flights of fancy which pleased him so much in Europe, he devoted himself to the practical things which might be of advantage to his ambitious countrymen. So he told about the sailors who were employed on the steamer, where Hindoos did all the drudgery and Chinamen prepared the food, under the direction of Europeans.[210] He described the character of the passengers, telling where each came from and where they were going. How he ascertained these facts is an enigma; but they were important to commercial people who would compete with the established lines, and who would like to know whom to employ and who would be their patrons. There were physicians, soldiers, officers, merchants, and health-seekers, from each of whom Mr. Taylor managed to gain much information. He did not wait, like the fashionable tourist of this day, until he arrived at his destination, trusting to luck for information and accommodation. He closely studied the country before he arrived there, and frequently astonished his guides and native companions by showing a much more accurate and extensive knowledge of their country than they possessed who had lived there all their lives.

He mentioned the hot red hills and the furnace-like surface of the sea, saying that one part of the Red Sea was the hottest part of the earth’s surface. But he appears to have suffered less than he had in the desert, and was quite happy with his biscuit and claret, and lost no time with useless fans.

He saw Mocha from the deck of the steamer, and immediately set about ascertaining what advantages that port and town offered to commerce. Without leaving the deck he found persons who knew all about Arabia and its products; so he sits down and writes a letter about coffee and its culture in and about Mocha.[211] He was such a devoted lover of coffee that it may have been a peculiarly interesting topic to him. At all events, he wrote so intelligently that an old schoolmate, who was engaged in foreign trade, acted profitably on Mr. Taylor’s hints and started a son in the coffee-trade at Baltimore. Mr. Taylor stated in his letter that fifteen thousand tons of coffee were exported annually from Mocha, it being raised in the interior and brought to Mocha on camels. He said that foreign vessels could best load at Aden, the English stronghold on the south-west coast of Arabia, to which port the native coasting vessels carried nearly all the exports of Mocha and of the other small ports along the Red Sea. He also gave the information that equally good coffee could be obtained on the Abyssinian coast, and at a smaller price.

He entered the port of Aden in the night, and was startled to look out on the port in the morning and see such jagged masses of black rock shooting up from the sand one thousand five hundred feet. It is another Gibraltar, and shrewdly has England held by diplomacy what she obtained by such a show of force. But the heat from the sand and barren rocks is so intense that the quivers of a heated atmosphere are always visible, and very injurious to the eyes. At the time of Mr. Taylor’s visit, the town and the harbor were wretched and dangerous; but in 1870 the writer found a neat village, with good hotels, and a spacious wharf. Mr. Taylor saw the advantages of the port[212] and predicted its growth. He mentioned the form, features, and dispositions of the Arabians; and told what interest the Parsees and Hindoos took in the local trade. He mentioned the articles of commerce to be found there, and gave the prices.

There is not to be found in his letters to the “Tribune,” nor in his book, “India, China, and Japan,” any mention of his sensations when he saw, as he did at Aden, a fire-worshipper (Parsee) for the first time. Being a poet by nature, and an admirer of Moore, he must have been fascinated by the actual presence of a Gheber with whom he could converse, and with whom he could change English money into the coin of the country. How “Lalla Rookh” comes to the tongue’s end when we look a fire-worshipper in the face and recognize the picture Moore had given of him!

At Aden Mr. Taylor witnessed an incident which, to one so broadly charitable and Christian, must have been most revolting. One of the workmen, who had been loading the steamer with coal, was asleep in the hold when the vessel started, and the officers finding him aboard after they had put to sea, forced the poor native overboard and left him to float ashore with the tide or perish in the waves. He whose land was the world, whose brethren were all mankind, whose friends were the humblest heathen as well as the titled official, looked back at the dark speck on the waves, and tears filled his eyes.

From Aden, the steamer entered upon its trip across the Indian Ocean, which was true to its reputation, and was placid and peaceful as an inland lake. But the slow steamer took nine days to sail from Suez to Bombay; and by the time Mr. Taylor was brought into view of the mountains where Brahma and Vishnu had so long been worshipped, he had become acquainted with nearly all the Hindoo sailors, and could secure unusual attendance from the waiters by addressing them in the Hindustanee language. He had learned the names of the principal streets of Bombay, the names of the richest merchants, and the kind of fare to be expected at the hotels. So naturally did he fall into the ways of the people that the boatmen who took him ashore at Bombay mistook him for an old resident and carried him ashore for one rupee, while charging the other passengers three. He seated himself, or rather stretched himself, into a palanquin carried by four men,—one at each end of a long pole,—and like a native rode through the streets of Bombay on the necks of servants. But he did not enjoy that kind of conveyance; he had too much sympathy with the human race to impose his weight on the necks of human beings without misgiving, and he afterwards refused to be carried about in that way when mules were to be had.

At Bombay, he was received with the same good-will and hospitality as he had found in other lands. Parsees, Hindoos, English, and Arabians vied with each other in giving him kindly attentions; the people[214] were pagan in religion, but Christian in generosity and charity. It broadens one’s ideas of theology to be thrown into communion with so many different nations with as many different gods. But its tendency is to confirm, rather than to unsettle, the belief in the Christian doctrines. At all events, such was Mr. Taylor’s experience; and such has been the effect upon others.

He found the common people very servile, and lacking in spirit, and attributed it to the long despotism. But in them he found faithful friends, and learned to respect them. They were nearly all pagans when he was there, and worshipped their huge red idols with a sincerity and self-sacrifice worthy of the highest profession. In order to learn something of India in those remote ages beyond the testimony of history, and even back of the age of tradition, he visited the old temple on the island of Elephanta, about seven miles from Bombay. The massive structure, in partial ruin, so wonderfully wrought and massively constructed, made a deep impression upon his mind. Far, far back in the uncounted ages, the foundations were laid by men who were not low in the scale of civilization, if an idea of the beautiful and the ability to embody it in forms of stone be a test of enlightenment; it stands to-day, defying time, as it has defied earthquakes and cannon-shot. Into the fathomless future will it pass, an immovable monument of the skill and art of man in the childhood of human experience. In the statuary[215] Mr. Taylor found a strange resemblance to the three ages of art; the statue of Brahma representing the style of the Egyptian, Vishnu being represented in a form and carving of the Greek style, while Siva was cut from the stone in such a shape as to remind him of the Mephistopheles of the German school of sculpture.

His keen scrutiny also developed the theory that the pillars were rough copies of the poppy-stem and the lotus-leaf. The latter was the emblem of sanctity in the days of Brahma. Mr. Taylor’s suggestion has been attractively enlarged upon and illustrated within a few years by writers for English literary and art periodicals.

No excursion from Bombay exceeds that to Elephanta in romantic attractions; for there are not only extensive ruins of greater and lesser temples, but the landscape, wherein the greenest islands dot the sheen of a gorgeous bay, is bright with most beautiful flowers and bright leaves, and the air is permeated with the odor of roses and cassia. Soon Elephanta will be a “summer resort,” and Taylor’s description and reflections will be sold by newsboys as a guide-book.

At Bombay he visited the large mercantile establishments and investigated the prospects of trade; saw the people in their homes, at meals, prayers, marriages, and funerals, and studied the work of the carpenters in that celebrated shipyard where was constructed the man-of-war wherein the Star-Spangled Banner was written. He knew all about the city as it was when he saw it,[216] and as it had been from its Portuguese beginning; and yet he remained but a single week. Who was the simpleton that circulated an unauthorized statement that Mr. Taylor travelled far and saw little? In fact, he knew more of the needs and enterprise of Bombay than many old residents.

In his haste to see as much of India as possible, and yet arrive in China in season to join Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan, he determined to ride in one of the mail carts of India a distance of nearly four hundred miles. His new friends advised him not to attempt the journey, and entertained him with the deeds of assassins and robbers along the route, and the results of the fatiguing ride of seven days and nights in a two-wheeled vehicle without springs or mattresses. But his mind was made up to go, and go he would. So, regardless of warnings and advice, he started into the interior in a cart with a driver and the “Royal Mail.” The traveller who now lounges in the luxuriant carriages of the railway trains between Bombay and Calcutta, can have no idea of the trials of such a journey as Mr. Taylor undertook. Then, there were no railroads, no regular stages, even; nothing but lumbering carts drawn by oxen and decrepit old horses. But he endured the fatigue with his usual fortitude and good fortune, while his already remarkable experience among hospitable people was repeated there in a most praiseworthy style. Friends, friends, everywhere! Men divided their meals and[217] beds with him. People with whom he could converse by signs only, gave him food and pressed themselves into his service, and would take no pay. In one place a soldier sat up all night to give the weary traveller his bed. Surely, the essence of human kindness and charity is not confined to Christian lands!

Through jungles, where there was not a single path; along highways, crowded with innumerable carts; riding in wildernesses, where water was scarce, and food not to be found; in every kind of vehicle known to the primitive people, from a horse chaise to a bullock-cart; surrounded by miasmatic marshes, and the lairs of tigers, he hurried on toward Delhi.

On his way he made a short stop at Agra and Futtehpoor-Sikra, where stand some of the mightiest and most costly temples which have been reared since the beginning of the Christian era. It well repays years of work and economy to wander among the palaces, mosques, and mausoleums of those great cities. No palace in all the world can be found to equal that of Akbar, the great Mogul, at Agra. When Mr. Taylor visited the city, nearly all the rubbish, made by wars and sieges, had been cleared away, and the scarred walls and marred mosaics had been restored, so that he stood under mighty domes, amid all the splendor of the East. No one can imagine its beauty and grandeur, unless he has seen it. Such lofty arches! such masses of pure white marble! such a profusion of pearl, jasper, cornelian, agate, and many stones of[218] greater beauty and value! Such exquisite carvings, such lovely mosaics, such labyrinths of inwrought balustrades and porticos! Such tombs, so rich, so beautiful, so great, that the tomb of Napoleon in Paris is lost in comparison!

Mr. Taylor was delighted beyond measure by a visit to the tomb of the Empress Noor-Jehan, wife of the Shah Jehan. Moore uses her romantic history in his “Lalla Rookh,” for verily she was “The Light of the Harem.” Shah Jehan, “Selim,” erected that marvellously beautiful building, with its lofty dome, and slender minarets, its inlaid jewels wherein the walls are made to hold a copy, in Arabic, of the whole Koran. Beautiful as Eastern songs represent Noor-Jehan to be, the tomb in which she lies must surpass her in whiteness and delicacy of outline. Never, in harem of Cashmere, nor in garden of Mogul, were there more delicious odors than those which still fill the air about her tomb. No brighter, more various, or more odorous flowers bloomed in Mahomet’s Paradise, than now bewilder the visitor to that hallowed spot. It was fortunate for Mr. Taylor that he had seen the boasted palaces and temples of Europe and Western Asia, before he visited that enchanted spot. Dreams of Aladdin became literal there. In towers, arches, domes, colonnades, ceilings of pearl and precious stones, pillars wrought with the skilful jeweller’s art, inlaid floors in which no crease appears, in diamond-like foundations, and in the unity of its[219] unbroken sculptures, the temples of Agra and of its suburbs, excel those of Venice and Florence, as the exquisite and angelic echoes in the dome of Queen Noor’s tomb excel, in length and sweetness, those of the Baptistry at Pisa.

From Agra, he rode over the wide highway, one hundred and fifteen miles, to Delhi, the former capital of the Moguls, and which, at that time, boasted the presence, in his palace, of Akbar II. There he was treated with the same hospitality as he had been in other cities, and kind-hearted residents guided him about the streets of the modern city, and accompanied him to the magnificent ruins in various quarters of the plain whereon stood the old city. Pile on pile of massive columns lay in ragged majesty about him, and bewildered his senses with their unnumbered towers. Ruins, ruins, ruins, as far as the eye can trace the broken plain. Palaces, fortresses, temples, mosques, harems, tombs, obelisks, and massive battlements lie hurled together in undistinguished profusion, while here and there the porch of some lofty building, or some imposing arch, still breaks the line of the horizon. One pillar stands in the plain, whose summit is two hundred and forty feet above the ground. Near this gigantic shaft are the ruins of the palace of Aladdin. But the stone that cumber the plain, and the stable platform, once the floor, do not suggest the palace of diamonds, emeralds, pearls, gold, and ivory of which we have read; and the beholder is tempted to believe[220] that there was a mistake of location, and that Agra instead of Delhi, was the place after all. But Mr. Taylor, whose time was limited, could not linger long, nor hope to solve all the riddles which such an inexhaustible antiquarian museum suggested, and after visiting Hindoo temples, adorned with fascinating carvings and unintelligible inscriptions, and tombs covering the remains of known and unknown monarchs, he hastened back to the modern city, with its wide Boulevard, and made preparations to visit the Himalaya Mountains.

He left that interesting city with great regret, for, to the poet, it suggested a very attractive place for fanciful dreams, and peaceful moralizing. Moore incorporated in his poem a Persian inscription, which was shown Mr. Taylor in the palace of Akbar II.: “If there be an Elysium on earth, it is here, it is here.” And it might have been such an Elysium but for the dilapidated, dirty condition of the palace, in which the motto was seen, which did not harmonize with the sentiment, and may have robbed the whole palace of its poetical attractions.

CHAPTER XXIII.

From Delhi Mr. Taylor travelled northward through a country well subjugated, which, under English direction, was made fertile and safe for travellers. His way lay toward the sunnier resort of the invalids and wealthy Europeans, which lay far up in the Himalaya Mountains, where the snow never melted and where the hot, miasmatic winds of the plains cannot follow the fugitive. At Roorkee, while lying in his palanquin, he caught his first glimpse of the Himalayas, and felt that crushing sense of awful sublimity which fills the soul of every new spectator. Towers that the arch of heaven seems to rest upon, white and gleaming as the purest pearl, rise one behind the other, until the farthest are lost in the haze of intervening space. Titanic pillars of snow, so grand, so mighty, so expressive of the most gigantic forces known or imagined by man, how can language convey their immensity? It is useless to attempt it. For you may talk, and talk, of mountains and the glorious[222] sunsets that enamel them in roseate tints, yet no one will shed tears or feel a tremor of awe. But he who beholds them for the first time lets the tears unnoticed fall, and trembles as if thrust suddenly into the personal presence of the Almighty. Such a sense of humility, of abject unworthiness, takes possession of the beholder, that the soul labors heavily under the oppressive load, and the body shrinks from a nearer approach. There is nothing so powerful for driving atheism or egotism out of a man as the near view of the Himalayas or Andes or Rocky Mountains. The noblest races of the world have been reared in the wild regions of lofty mountains, and none so tenaciously revere their Maker, or so willingly sacrifice themselves for their friends or their God as the natives of the mountain passes.

Mr. Taylor approached the highest range as near as the heights of Landowr, which is about sixty miles from the snowy peaks of the loftiest range, and is itself so high as to hold the snow the greater part of the year. There he saw the gorgeous illumination of those heavenly snow-fields, when the sun was setting and when it seems as if a universe was in a blaze, while its lurid glare shone full upon those stupendous monuments of the earthquake’s titanic power. Mr. Taylor gazed upon those masses of the purest white, as twilight began to hide their outlines, and thought that, as he said in one of his lectures, “within three hundred miles of me are mightier mountains than these!”

Having seen the mountains and checked his old desire to stand on top of the highest one, he turned about and started southward for Calcutta, taking the first day’s journey on an elephant kindly loaned him by a new-found friend. He journeyed thence in the horse-carts of that time, via Meerut and Cawnpore, to Lucknow, where he was entertained in a most royal manner by the English officials. After examining that great metropolis of the interior, he hurried on to Benares and thence by quick relays to the great city of Calcutta.

With a peculiar faculty for foreseeing the effect of certain influences on human nature, Mr. Taylor foretold the approaching mutiny. He saw that the English treated the natives with habitual indignity. He saw that three-quarters of the earnings of the people was taken by the government. He saw that the English were in a great minority. He saw that the Sepoy regiments were good soldiers. He saw that influential positions were held by dangerously powerful natives. And he declared that a rebellion was not only possible, but probable.

Four years later began that great rebellion among the natives, which became one of the bloodiest and cruelest contests known in the annals of history. Chiefs and princes who received Mr. Taylor cordially during his visit, were afterwards executed for treason. Fortresses, temples, and cities, which he visited were[224] shattered and torn by the shots of contending armies. Oppression and aristocratic pride resulted, as it naturally would, in horrid carnage and an impoverished treasury. Mr. Taylor’s words of warning as they appeared in America, were probably never read in England, or if they were read, were scouted as the fears of one who did not understand the “permanency of a despotism.”

Although his stay was short in Calcutta, his description of the people, the dwellings, the shipping, and social customs was one of the most clear and complete to be found in print. One who reads it sees the city, the river, the verdant plains, and the sea spread out before him, and becomes acquainted with the shop-keepers, police, Parsees, Arabs, Hindoos, Chinese, and Europeans, that made up the motley throngs. True to his patriotic purpose, he gave the commerce of the port such attention as the interests of our merchants required.

From Calcutta he proceeded by an English steamer to Penang on the coast of the Malay Peninsula. It is a delightful locality, and is as beautiful in situation and vegetation as its clove and nutmeg trees are fragrant. There again he gratified his taste for climbing a mountain, and spent nearly his whole time ascending to the signal station on the highest peak of the peninsula. It was the only place he visited in which he left unseen the attractive nooks, grottos, waterfalls, and jungles, and chose instead the less interesting[225] experience. It was a source of regret to him afterward, that he did not spend the few hours he had, in the lowlands and on the mountain-sides rather than at their tops. Every traveller who has visited Penang could detect the error. Yet, Mr. Taylor set down in his account of his visit more valuable information and a more graphic outline of the landscape than any traveller appears to have done, notwithstanding the beautiful falls of Penang are visited by thousands yearly.

Accompanying the steamer in its usual route, Mr. Taylor stopped at Singapore, at the extreme southern end of the peninsula. It was a new port at that time, and was not so important as it afterwards became; yet he found ten or fifteen thousand people there, mostly dirty and repulsive Chinese. Mr. Taylor was not pleased with the Chinese as a race, for two reasons. First, he heard such reports of their barbarity, beastliness, and dishonesty; second, they were an awkward, unsymmetrical people, devoid of that physical beauty which the artist admires and copies. He dwelt upon the latter fact in his letters, and mentioned it in his book. Neither Phidias, Polycrates, Raphael, or Angelo would have selected a model from among these creatures, and naturally enough the artistic taste of Mr. Taylor was shocked by such natural deformities as the Chinese were, when looked upon with reference to the graceful and beautiful in the human form. It is but just to the Chinese as a nation to say that, according to the writer’s experience among them, the[226] Coolies who emigrate to Singapore, Sydney, and California are by no means a fair sample of the educated and wealthy classes who remain at home and drive out the least useful and least intelligent portion. If one were to judge of the acquirements, ability, or physical beauty of the Chinese nation exclusively by the poor emigrants who cannot successfully compete with their neighbors, and hence are compelled to go away from home for success, he would be nearly as sadly misled as one would be should he form his opinion of the American people by the inmates of their jails and poor-houses. There are many noble men and beautiful women in the interior of China, whether regarded mentally, morally, or physically. Mr. Taylor did not see them, and like a faithful scribe he wrote down only those things he saw, and knew to be true. The Chinese whom he saw in the ports engaged in unloading vessels, or doing like menial services, were not beautiful, and he said so.

When Mr. Taylor arrived in Hong-Kong he was received with the same kind hospitality which his very countenance secured for him in every land. The United States Commissioner, the Hon. Humphrey Marshall, who happened to be at Macao, and whom Mr. Taylor met there on crossing the bay from Hong-Kong, offered to attach Mr. Taylor to his staff, for a trip to the seat of war. The great rebellion in the Kiangsu province, lying north-westerly from Shanghai, had assumed such threatening proportions that the[227] emperor at Peking trembled on his throne. Exaggerated accounts of the fiendish atrocities of the rebels, and rumors of great battles and successful sieges had reached the seaports, and even the peaceful American merchants at Shanghai feared capture and death. In view of all this, Mr. Taylor anticipated an exciting experience. Together with the whole ship’s company, he felt, when the United States steamer left Hong-Kong for Shanghai, as if there was a measure of uncertainty if he ever returned. But the reports had been so much enlarged in their transmission to Hong-Kong, that when they arrived at the port of Shanghai they were delighted to find the place in no immediate danger of attack from the Chinese. In order to show the rebels that the Americans were neutral in all the Chinese quarrels, the Commissioner undertook the hazardous task of ascending the Yang-tse-kiang River to the beleaguered town of Nanking. It seems to have been a foolish undertaking, and viewed from any diplomatic stand-point, to have been indirectly an encouragement of the rebellion. It was not so intended, however, and Mr. Taylor did not give his opinion of the “good faith” which prompted the sending of envoys to a local rebellion in the interior of a “great and friendly nation.” But what good sense could not do, the shoals and incompetency of the native pilots did accomplish; and the Commissioner who was going up the river to pat the rebels on the back and ask them not to hurt their friends, the[228] Americans, was compelled to return to Shanghai. It would have been better for the United States if the second undertaking had been equally unsuccessful; but as Mr. Taylor had no share in it, it is of no further importance here.

While at Shanghai he experienced the sensation of being besieged without seeing an enemy. The frightened people organized themselves into military companies and drilled with the sailors. Breastworks were thrown up and cannon placed ready for action. The streets were patrolled and a guard kept over the provisions and ammunition. Tales of approaching hosts were freely circulated, and once the terrified populace were informed by an intelligent refugee that the enemy were within sight. Yet the days passed on; the Chinese government began to show vitality, and the great rebellion, with all its fearful butchery and refinement of cruelty, was extinguished without the molestation of the foreigners at Shanghai, and was overcome, notwithstanding the encouraging assurance given the rebels by the United States Commissioner that our government was not disposed to interfere with their outrages.

While in Shanghai Mr. Taylor wrote some admirable articles upon the tea culture of China, and upon the possible commerce with the Pacific coast of America, which were published in New York and London. He felt the throes of an earthquake while there, and had some pleasant interviews with the educated classes[229] of China. He saw the parade of the native soldiers, and witnessed their grotesque religious ceremonies. His observation was so close, and his generalization usually so just, that until within a few years there has been no book printed in America which gave so much of the information desired by popular readers in so little space as Taylor’s account of that visit.

Early in May Commodore Perry arrived at Shanghai, prepared for the expedition which the United States had ordered him to make to Japan, and Mr. Taylor’s long-felt desire to embark on that enterprise was gratified. He was compelled to enlist in the navy as master’s mate, and subject himself and all that he should write, to the orders of the navy department and officers of the fleet. It seemed at first to be rather humiliating terms, but after he had made the acquaintance of the officers and learned the ways of a ship he found it a very pleasant position. Thus, from one calling to another, he turned with a readiness and a success which were astonishing.

CHAPTER XXIV.

There was some opposition to Mr. Taylor’s request to be taken into the United States service, but his persistency and gentlemanly address not only overcame the scruples of the Commodore, but soon made him a general favorite. Commodore Perry, after his return to the United States, mentioned the circumstances connected with Mr. Taylor’s enlistment, and used the following language:—

“On my arrival at Shanghai I found there Mr. Bayard Taylor, who had a letter of introduction to me from an esteemed friend in New York. He had been a long time, as I understood, exceedingly anxious to join the squadron, that he might visit Japan, which he could reach in no other way.

“On presenting the letter referred to, he at once made a request to accompany me; but to this application I strongly objected, intimating to him the determination I had made at the commencement of the cruise to admit no civilians, and[231] explaining how the few who were in the squadron had, by signing the shipping articles, subjected themselves to all the restraints and penalties of naval law; that there were no suitable accommodations for him, and that should he join the expedition he would be obliged to suffer, with the other civilians, many discomforts and privations, and would moreover be restricted, under a general order of the navy department, from communicating any information to the public prints or privately to his friends; that all the notes or general observations made by him during the cruise would belong to the government, and therefore must be deposited with me. Notwithstanding this, however, with a full knowledge of all the difficulties and inconveniences which would attend his joining the squadron, he still urged his application.

“Being thus importuned, and withal very favorably impressed with his gentlemanlike and unassuming manners, I at last reluctantly consented, and he joined the mess of Messrs. Heine and Brown on board the ‘Susquehanna.’ During the short time he remained in the squadron he gained the respect and esteem of all, and by his habits of observation, aided by his ready pen, became quite useful in preparing notes descriptive of various incidents that transpired during our first brief visit to Japan and the Islands. It was the only service he could render, and it was afforded cheerfully. These notes have been used in the preparation of my report, and due credit has, I trust, been given to him. Some of the incidents illustrative of the events mentioned in my official communications were, with my consent, written out by Mr. Taylor and sent home by him for publication in the United States. These he has used in his late[232] work. His original journals were honorably deposited in my hands. His reports, like those of every other individual detailed for the performance of a special duty, were of course delivered to me, and became part of the official records of the expedition.”

This tribute of friendship and respect, thus freely bestowed by one holding the high rank of Commodore Perry, gratified the friends of Mr. Taylor very much at the time they were written, and will now be prized by them as a testimonial from the highest and best source.

On leaving the port of Shanghai the squadron of the Commodore proceeded direct to the Loo-Choo Islands, which were a group of thirty-six islands lying to the south-west of Japan, and tributary to that empire. On the 26th of May, 1853, the several steamers and sailing vessels came to anchor in a harbor of the Great Loo-Choo Island, but a few miles from the capital of the kingdom. Immediately Mr. Taylor’s services as a descriptive writer were brought into requisition, and so proficient and industrious was he, and he so much excelled the others with whom he was associated, that the Commodore saw fit to entrust to his quick eye and ready pen many of the most important details of the expedition. His reports or journals of the explorations were never published in full, and as the government kept them from him Mr. Taylor could not use them in his book of travels in Japan and Loo-Choo. This is much to be regretted[233] now, as the greatly condensed narrative which appeared in his book does not give the reader a comprehensive idea of Mr. Taylor’s capabilities. His newspaper correspondence was always more readable and full than were the pages of his book; for, between his desire not to tire the reader nor impoverish the publisher, he frequently culled and abridged too much. What a wonderful volume would that be wherein should be published in full Mr. Taylor’s descriptions of the countries of Loo-Choo and Japan, without condensation or abridgment. To illustrate this thought, and to give a clear specimen of his style, we insert a page from his diary of the 28th of May, 1853, reciting his experience when out in a small boat in the harbor of the Great Loo-Choo Island visiting the coral reef. It was a very little incident, but we ask the reader to notice how full of interesting information and beautiful reference he made his account of it:

“The crew were Chinamen, wholly ignorant of the use of oars, and our trip would have been of little avail had not the sea been perfectly calm. With a little trouble we succeeded in making them keep stroke, and made for the coral reef, which separates the northern from the lower channel. The tide was nearly out, and the water was very shoal on all the approaches to the reef. We found, however, a narrow channel winding between the groves of mimic foliage, and landed on the spongy rock, which rose about a foot above the water. Here the little pools that seamed the surface[234] were alive with crabs, snails, star-fish, sea-prickles, and numbers of small fish of the intensest blue color. We found several handsome shells clinging to the coral. But all our efforts to secure one of the fish failed. The tide was ebbing so fast that we were obliged to return for fear of grounding the boat. We hung for some time over the coral banks, enraptured with the beautiful forms and colors exhibited by this wonderful vegetation of the sea. The coral grew in rounded banks, with the clear, deep spaces of water between, resembling, in miniature, ranges of hills covered with autumnal forests. The loveliest tints of blue, violet, pale-green, yellow, and white gleamed through the waves. And all the varied forms of vegetable life were grouped together along the edges of cliffs and precipices, hanging over the chasms worn by currents below. Through those paths and between the stems of the coral groves, the blue fish shot hither and thither like arrows of the purest lapis-lazuli: and others of a dazzling emerald color, with tails and fins tipped with gold, eluded our chase like the green bird in the Arabian story. Far down below in the dusky depth of the waters we saw now and then some large brown fish hovering stealthily about the entrances to the coral groves, as if lying in wait for their bright little inhabitants. The water was so clear that the eye was deceived as to its depths and we seemed now to rest on the branching tops of some climbing forest, now to hang suspended as in mid air between the crests of two[235] opposing ones. Of all the wonders of the sea, which have furnished food for poetry and fable, this was assuredly the most beautiful.”

That trait, which characterized Mr. Taylor, accounts in a measure for the inclination of all persons who met him to hold his companionship and acquaintance. As Mr. Taylor’s esteemed friend, Mr. E. P. Whipple, of Boston, once beautifully remarked of another, Mr. Taylor was sought by men, “because they learned more of the world and its beauties through his eyes than through their own.” His services in giving an accurate idea of the countries they explored were invaluable, because it was not only necessary to visit those countries and open their ports to commerce, but it was also necessary to give to the American people such a idea of the advantages and conveniences of trade as to induce them to enter upon it. Nothing could be clearer than his views of life in these islands, nothing more complete than his enumeration of the products, manufactures, and needs of the countries they visited. The publication in full of all his notes and observations as suggested to the Naval Department by the officers of the Squadron at the time, would have given our people a better understanding of the importance of the commerce and the character of the people, than any other report could do. However, the Commodore used a great many pages of Mr. Taylor’s journal while making his report to the United States Government.

Mr. Taylor was detailed to attend nearly every important excursion, and was a most hearty and persevering explorer. He pushed into the interior of an unknown jungle, intent on finding new flowers, new minerals, or new animals. He ascended every mountain which was accessible, and ventured into every cave that could be reached by boat or foot. The Great Loo-Choo Island became familiar to him, and its flora and fauna were indelibly catalogued in his mind, while the varied views of mountain, vale, forest, bay, and sea were engraved upon his memory. By his good nature and kindly regard for the welfare of the Loo-Choo natives when they met, he contributed not a little toward the safety and success of the exploration in that island.

From Loo-Choo the fleet sailed to the Bonin Islands, where a harbor suitable for a depot of supplies was found and land purchased by the Commodore for government buildings should his choice of a harbor be confirmed. The ships returned to Loo-Choo and proceeded directly to the bay of Yeddo in Japan.

For two hundred years that important nation had preserved its exclusiveness, and had become almost as unknown to the western nations as an undiscovered continent. Almost every commercial nation had, from time to time, attempted to secure a footing for a trading-post or a harbor for their vessels. In every instance they had failed, and the civilized world had looked upon Japan as a country sealed beyond hope[237] of breaking. It must have appeared to every one, including the Commodore himself, that the undertaking in which he was engaged was an especially difficult enterprise. How could he hope to succeed where England, Portugal, Holland. Italy, and Russia had failed? Yet he succeeded beyond anything the most hopeful had desired; and as a result of his expedition a mighty nation and a fertile country were restored to the family of nations.

In that expedition Mr. Taylor took a deep interest, and with great enthusiasm wrote letters to his home descriptive of Fusiyama, Kanagawa, and the scenery around Yeddo Bay. During the long delay made by the Japanese authorities, to impress the Commodore with their dignity, he was engaged with eye and ear and pen in the service of his country. With the devotion which marked all his undertakings, he noted everything which passed under his scrutiny, in order that the Commodore might be informed of every detail. Many travellers pass months at Yokohama, Yeddo, or Nagasaki, making investigations and excursions, without finding out so much of interest as Mr. Taylor saw in a single day. That natural and acquired acuteness of observation, and that intuitive comprehension which made him so conspicuous, are well worthy of study and imitation by all persons who are ambitious to excel, whether engaged in travelling or in any other occupation. So thoroughly had he disciplined himself in the inspection of all that surrounded[238] him, that when he arrived in Japan, the ships, the junks, the people, their dress, their customs, their food, their language, the vegetation, the minerals, the animals, the birds, the landscapes, the bays, the promontories, the islands, the sea, the air, the sky, the stars, the wind, and the sunlight were each and all full of suggestions and valuable instruction. One could not follow Mr. Taylor’s writings in the closing years of his travels without becoming conscious of ignorance and short-sightedness concerning the commonest things of life. It made his readers feel, oftentimes, when they discovered how much he had noticed which they had overlooked, as boys feel when a playmate finds a silver dollar on a spot which they have passed and repassed without his good luck; with the difference, however, that Mr. Taylor’s good fortune in that respect was the result of hard work and careful culture.

After the close of the preliminary negotiations, and a hasty survey of the bay of Yeddo, the fleet departed on a short cruise to Hong-Kong, in order to give the Japanese emperor time to think over the propositions which the United States Government had made to His Majesty.

The trip to Hong-Kong, by way of the Loo-Choo Islands, was without special incident, and on the 7th of August he was again in the harbor which he had left in the month of March. For five months he had known what it was to be a seaman and made subject[239] to the strict orders enforced on a man-of-war. It was a fresh experience. He was keen enough to recognize the merits and failings of naval discipline and naval drill. He saw that many improvements might be made in both. He thought, furthermore, that the ships themselves might be constructed on a better pattern. Hence, he boldly recommended changes whenever the opportunity came for him to speak through the public prints. He had become much attached to the officers and men of his ship, and parted with them at Hong-Kong with the feeling of sincere regret. He had made it his home on board, and had been so contented and so kindly treated that he felt the pangs of homesickness as he shook hands and went over the side for the last time.

Although he had enlisted for the usual term of years, as the laws of the United States recognized no shorter term, and ran the risk of being held to the terms of his enlistment, yet there was a tacit understanding between him and the Commodore that he should be allowed to resign when the fleet returned to Macao. Consequently, when he presented at that port his resignation it was promptly accepted, and he became a civilian again. He found it nearly as awkward to be a landsman as he had at first to be a sailor, and often looked out on the great men-of-war, as they lay at anchor, with an indescribable yearning to tread their decks.

From Macao, he made excursions to Hong-Kong[240] and Canton, finding friends that pleased him, and an aristocratic snobbery that displeased him, in the former place, and dirt, vice, and cheating in the latter, which made him further disgusted with the Chinese race. In Canton, as elsewhere, he spoke of them in strong terms, condemning their importation into the United States in a manner to please the bitterest hater of the Celestials to be found on our Pacific coast. Yet he visited the shops, practised the “pigeon English,” visited the great temple of Honan, tested the power of opium by smoking it himself, made a tour into the country, interested himself in the foreign factories and the local government, and made the acquaintance of many enterprising foreign merchants. But his aversion to the Chinese, doubtless intensified by the wild rumors of barbarous deeds then current on account of the rebellion, was not abated after he had seen the great metropolis; and he frankly admitted, in his letters and in his book, that he was glad to get away from China.

At Canton, he took passage in a sailing vessel bound for New York, that being his most direct and least expensive route. He was anxious to return to the United States, because he had been absent over two years, and because of some financial arrangements which he considered it important to make. He felt also that if he should publish a record of his travels in the form of books, the sooner they were issued after his letters had appeared in the “Tribune,” the better[241] for the publishers and for himself. In this undertaking, however, he was much delayed.

The ship in which he sailed, passed the Philippine Islands and the coast of Java, and rounding the Cape of Good Hope, stopped for water at the isle of St. Helena. The body of the Emperor Napoleon had been removed to Paris, but Mr. Taylor found it a very interesting and romantic spot. He was as much shocked, however, by the desecration of the spot by the practical herd-keepers, as he was by the profanity of the machine-rhymester who marred the grotto of the poet Camoens at Macao with a doggerel composition. Mr. Taylor felt the absurdity of such profanations, as none but poetical natures can feel them.

From St. Helena, the voyage was not unusually eventful, and after one hundred and one days at sea, and with Mr. Taylor nearly that number of days engaged in writing and correcting, they arrived in New York on the 20th of December, 1853. His welcome to New York and to his old home was one of the most pleasant experiences of his life, and he often mentioned it as being as exciting as the event of his first return when he walked into the old homestead in his German walking-suit.

CHAPTER XXV.

Immediately upon his return from China, he entered again the traces for hard and long literary work. He had written poems, and snatches of poems, verses, and couplets in his spare hours as a traveller, and his note-book and guide-books were full of such impulsive productions, written on the margin and on the fly-leaves. Those scattered compositions he desired to reduce to satisfactory and convenient shape for publication. Some of them had been written on the seas, some on the Nile, one in Spain, one in Constantinople, one in Jerusalem, two in Gotha, and several in railways and steamboats. The thought of publishing them in the form of a book, was suggested to him by one of his intimate friends in New York,—either Mr. Stoddard or Mr. Ripley,—his intention having been to publish them from time to time in some periodical, in much the same manner as he had contributed to the “Union Magazine,” some eight years before.[243] But he had sufficient appreciation of his own genius to act promptly on such a suggestion of his friends, and the first few weeks after his return were occupied with that work, in addition to the work of arranging and correcting his unpublished letters to the “Tribune.” When he had completed the “Poems of the Orient,” it was published by Ticknor & Fields, of Boston, as a companion volume to the “Rhymes of Travel,” and “Book of Romances,” both of which were united in one volume, in 1856, under the title of “Poems of Home and Travel.” In the preparation of these poems, he was greatly assisted by the kindly and discreet criticism of his friend Stoddard, which he not only acknowledged in the remarkable dedication “From Mount Tmolus,” but mentioned it to his relatives with expressions of thankfulness. The public owe a debt to Mr. Stoddard for his generosity and hospitality to Mr. Taylor, as well as for the beautiful poems and truthful biographies which he has written. A true man is a friendly critic, if a critic at all. Such was Richard H. Stoddard.

Mr. Taylor was then called into a new work by a curious public, who wished to see the man who had wandered so far, and had seen so much of this great earth. Hence he was repeatedly called upon to lecture in various cities of the Eastern and Middle States. His financial condition was not so prosperous as to preclude the possibility of future needs, and as the invitations to lecture were accompanied by very liberal[244] offers in the way of remuneration, he accepted many of them. It was, however, an uncongenial occupation. Public speaking had never been recognized as one of his great gifts, and the great masses who gather on such occasions, gather more for amusement than study. They wished to see how he appeared. The ladies desired to know if he was handsome, well dressed, and what was the color of his eyes and hair. The men wished to see if he had become a foreigner in speech or manner. The boys wanted to hear bear stories, and the girls of wild giraffes and affectionate gazelles. Not that the public desired to hear pure nonsense; but that it wished its lessons very much diluted. The polished essays of Mr. Taylor, with their poetical language and refinement of expression, were of little or no account, and a view of his portly physique, and the right to say that they had seen him, and heard him, satisfied the greater portion. To him, such audiences were not agreeable. Whenever he could find a friend like O’Brien or Stoddard, he enjoyed reading his own productions; but to be set up as a show, had in it no such satisfaction. Being also very much engaged in preparing his books of travel, and in writing for the “Tribune,” often writing on the railway trains, and in hotels, he was weary, and could not enter into the labor of public teaching with the zest which might otherwise have been expected of him. Yet, in point of numbers, and financial returns, his tour, during the winter of 1854, was successful,[245] and the harvest for the season of 1855 promised to be still larger.

In addition to the work already mentioned, he had a great number of private correspondents, whose letters he answered with astonishing punctuality. Men in Egypt, China, England, Germany, California, and the United States, sent him letters of inquiry about the best routes, and cheapest outfit for travel. To which he replied as fully as he could, always remembering the like favors done him when in the printing-office at West Chester. There was a large number of friendly acquaintances in many parts of the world who desired to sustain a correspondence with him, and, often, his desk at the “Tribune” had piled upon it as many as fourscore letters, brought by a single mail. It seems incredible when we think of the amount of writing Mr. Taylor did during the years of 1854 and 1855.

Owing to the great amount of work which could not be postponed, and the fact that the “Tribune” had the moral right to his letters before he offered them for sale in the form of a book, the last of his three volumes of travel did not appear until August, 1855.

At one time, he entertained the idea of publishing a book of songs, and consulted with his publisher concerning the probable success of such a volume. But having had his attention called to the fact that the veriest trash answered the purpose of musical composers fully as well as sterling poetry, he abandoned[246] the idea. The thought was probably suggested to him by the writings of Thomas Moore, whose “Lalla Rookh” was frequently brought to mind while Mr. Taylor was writing out the chapters of his book, wherein he described his visit to Agra and Delhi in India. The objections which he found to a volume of songs, seemed equally applicable to single productions which might be included in such a category, and he not only suppressed many he had written, but cautiously cut out verses in such as had been printed, before he allowed them to be published again. He went so far as to request that the song for which he obtained the Jenny Lind prize in 1850, should be kept forever out of print. Some of these are said to be among his papers in Germany, where his body now lies, and the writer sincerely wishes to see them all in print at a day not very remote, together with the epistolary poems and friendly sonnets which have been sent by him to the distinguished scholars and poets who enjoyed his friendship. It will take time to gather them, but, when collected, will make the best of reading, and will show the joyous, simple, sincere character of the poet, as no amount of prose can do.

As early as October, 1854, Mr. Taylor conceived the idea of building a summer residence near the old homestead at Kennett. It may have been a purpose entertained in his youth, for he often mentions, directly and indirectly, in his early writings, the scenery and the people about his home at Kennett. But in that[247] year the idea appears to have assumed the form of a possibility, for he wrote to one of his old schoolmates, who resided that autumn in Jersey City, saying that he began to see his way for a house of his own at Kennett. The letter set in circulation the report that he was soon to be married; but he had kept his own counsel so well, and held aloof so studiously from the company of ladies, that none of the gossips could possibly hint at the person of his choice. This loyalty to his home and desire to return to it like a weary bird to its nest, was a beautiful trait of his character, and testifies strongly to his natural goodness of heart. For it will be found that the noblest men of all ages and professions have loved the homes of their childhood, while the selfish, narrow, barbarous, and mean, universally regard their early associations with neglect or contempt.

A touching scene arises before the writer, as he reaches this theme, and the tears will come to the eye and cheek! Away in that German land sleeps the son and brother. The romantic home at Kennett, stands cosy, yet stately, among the winter-stricken trees. Inside are the dear ones whom neither years, nor honors, nor wanderings have induced him to forget—the father and the mother in the mansion of their son. There is the sister, whose feet, after years of absence, tread again the paths of home. There the visitor feels the gloom of a distant death. Windows that flashed with light; drawing-rooms that were[248] made charming by the cheerful faces of the great and good, are now suggestive of sadness and disaster. The cold winds shake the dry vines, and cry around its cornices. The loved ones are there,—waiting, waiting for him to come home! He never disappointed them before. Why comes he not? Why do not his letters come with the mail?

Ever looking forward to the time when he could give his parents a more luxurious home, feeling most keenly the rapid strides of time, as he looked upon their whitening locks, unwilling to prosper alone, and promoting ever the welfare of those he loved, he strove with an unchangeable determination to accumulate sufficient money to build a house near the old farm, that should be a home for all, and a resting-place for himself. To this, in part, was due his incessant work through the years of 1854 and 1855. His books brought him a considerable return; he received a reasonable compensation as editor and lecturer, and he had lifted the load of debt which the “Phœnixville Pioneer” had bequeathed to him, but which no one believed he was able to pay; and could look forward to a competency and, perhaps, to wealth. Yet, in all his work, there was a cheerfulness that seemed to give rest while the[249] work went on. He often indulged in fun, was ever joking with his friends, and indulging in playful pranks with his acquaintances. Usually, however, his facetiousness was itself a method of self-discipline,—a different kind of work. He used to visit his friends whenever an evening could be spared from necessary labor, and spend the hours in writing and exchanging humorous burlesques, acrostics, sonnets, and parodies. Sometimes he would “race” with his literary friends in writing lines of poetry on a given subject, and although, as he afterward acknowledged, he often came in second best, yet he enjoyed the sport and the satisfaction of the victor none the less. The same fun-loving, mischievous, kind-hearted boy, who enjoyed writing extravagant verses, and sending them to his schoolmates, walked the streets of New York in 1855. Time had given discretion, sorrow had given reserve; but the fun bubbled out whenever the waters were moved. His mirth was less ostentatious, but not less hearty. Loving a bottle of beer, or wine, for the sake of sociability, for in his younger days it was universally considered a necessity, he never drank to excess, nor was ever regarded by his companions as an intemperate man. Envious simpletons have sometimes accused him of intemperate habits during those two years; but so well-known and frank was his life, that it would have been then, as it certainly is now, a waste of time to deny so absurd a statement. So-called temperance men are often the most intemperate[250] people known in public life. As temperance, in fact, consists of temperance in all things, as well as in the use of intoxicating drinks, the real temperance people of America will discourage alike the excess in the use of stimulants, and that excess in the use of epithets and misrepresentation, which, by the resulting reaction, encourages the use of that which they wish to prohibit. Intemperate speeches, like intemperate laws, and intemperate drinking, are to be condemned and avoided by all who believe the Highest Moral Standard known to man. It is exceedingly intemperate to circulate a falsehood about any person, and especially of one of our own American family, who has done so much for our nation, and “never wished harm to any man.”

It had long been Mr. Taylor’s wish to take his sisters and brother to Europe with him, in order that they might enjoy those scenes which had pleased him so much; and he had often mentioned, in his letters to them from abroad, how much more he would enjoy the advantages of travel, if they could be with him to share in his pleasure. He was too generous to desire the exclusive enjoyment of anything, and was especially anxious that those related to him should reap the benefits of all his labors. Hence, in the spring of 1856 (not without correspondence with one in Gotha, however), he arranged his plans for another series of excursions in Europe, and persuaded his sisters and brother to accompany him.

It was during those two years of labor that he made the acquaintance of many of the distinguished literary men of Massachusetts, and in one of those years—1855—he secured the acquaintance and friendship of William Makepeace Thackeray, who visited this country then for the second time, and delivered his long-remembered lectures on the “English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century,” and “The Four Georges.” So well known, and so much respected had Mr. Taylor become, that he was sought by the great of both continents, and when he departed for Europe, in the spring of 1856, the kind wishes of thousands of America’s representative men and women went with him, and a welcome awaited him on the shores of England from as many more.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Without bringing the living into a notoriety which they certainly do not seek, and which might be unpleasant for them, we cannot give an extended account of that summer trip of Mr. Taylor and his friends in the countries of Europe, already so familiar to him. He devoted himself to the welfare of his companions, and appeared to enjoy himself exceedingly. England appeared brighter and more attractive than he supposed it possible; and his pleasure in visiting historical places was doubled by the fact that he had others to appreciate and enjoy it with him. His sisters inherited enough of that same instinctive comprehension of vegetable nature, and enough of that fellowship with kindred human nature, to regard the landscapes and the people as he had regarded them, and made, as he wrote to his friends in Philadelphia, wonderfully[253] observing travellers. Other friends there were, who, with his brother, made up a pleasant party, over which Mr. Taylor was for the time the guide and protector. He visited many places where he had never been before, but he had studied his theme so closely during his previous visits to Europe that even in strange places he felt the gratification of one who had been there before, and to whom each scene and relic was familiar. His little party was often interrupted by the calls made upon him to attend dinner-parties and select gatherings of literary people; but he was not a neglectful escort. His acquaintance with the men and women of London whose names are known to all readers of English literature, was promoted very much by the kindness of Mr. Thackeray, who spared no pains to introduce Mr. Taylor into that “charmed circle.” No one can appreciate the pleasure there was in being introduced to the authors of whom the world has said so much, unless he has followed them like a friend through their various volumes and learned to love them there. Historians, essayists, biographers, poets, musical composers, and scientific authors clasped his hand in London and welcomed him to their homes and their love. At last he felt that he had reached the heights for which he had been striving, and was regarded as an equal by those whose plane of thought he had so long striven to reach. But that feeling had its reaction, for he often examined himself and repeated to himself his published poetry, and, as he described it[254] himself, wondered what there could be in it worthy of reproduction in Old England. His association with the master-minds of England opened to him a wider field of literature, and impressed him with the importance of writing something loftier and more artistic than anything he yet had undertaken. To that task he turned all the forces of his nature; so that on leaving England his friends noticed through all his vivacity and unceasing attention a tendency to abstraction; as though some important theme unspoken was uppermost in his mind. He was searching for an ideal which should not copy Tennyson, nor Wordsworth, nor Browning, but should equal theirs in conception and execution. He felt that irresistible yearning for the highest poetical work, which is the surest indication of genius. He was not egotistic, he was not foolishly ambitious, but all his life he had been seeking his place in the realms of poetry, feeling morally sure, notwithstanding his own temporary misgivings, that there was a great work for him to do.

However, the needs of the present crowded out the dreams of the future, as they so often do in the lives of others, and after a delightful summer in the lands he loved, and a visit to those who were now dearer than the most gorgeous landscapes, he determined upon a trip to the frozen regions of Lapland. He undertook that journey with evident reluctance. His communion with the best minds of America and Europe had taught him that of the works which he had published his[255] poetry would live much longer than his travels. He found that the place of a poet in the scale of human merit was loftier than that of a journalistic traveller. He had left home with a feeling of uncertainty about his future course; but there was no longer hesitation or doubt. He would follow out the routes laid out and keep his promises to the newspapers and publishers, and was determined to acquire an insight into the Scandinavian language in view of an enterprise in the way of translation, which, however, was never fully matured nor undertaken. But his interest in travel had lost its chiefest charms. It would not, could not, satisfy his ambition. Some critics have accounted for this lack of zeal by the nearness of his marriage, which would take him from his wanderings. But the best reason is the one he gave himself; viz., that he desired to undertake some more permanent task—one that should live when his travels were forgotten.

Hence, that indescribable lack which his readers have so universally found in his books of travels published after that date. He could not rid himself of the burden, nor cease to ponder upon the subjects which seemed worthy of a great poem.

Starting from Germany Dec. 1, 1856, and embarking on a steamer which ran between Lubec and Stockholm, he entered upon an undertaking more hazardous and uncomfortable than anything he had ventured upon before. But his experience taught him to fear nothing and to move on so long as any other living[256] being had lived on the same route. He had determined to see a day without a sunrise and a night without a sunset. To be able to state that fact in a book, would, in itself, ensure its ready sale. Of this he had been assured in New York by his friend Dr. E. K. Kane, whose opinion was entitled to much consideration, as the Doctor had been far more extensively engaged in explorations, and had travelled many thousand miles further than Mr. Taylor. Having once decided to see that wonderful sight, nothing in the way of privation could prevent the accomplishment of his purpose.

The steamer from Lubec was a rough, uncouth, inconvenient craft, and the sea-sick voyage which Mr. Taylor and his friend made to Stockholm was not an auspicious beginning for a tour so long and so dangerous. But he relapsed into his old habit, acquired in Asia, of regarding no delay with surprise or impatience, and refusing to feel certain of anything until he possessed it; and as neither carelessness, neglect, lack of sleep or food was allowed to disturb him, he made the company cheerful under the most distressing circumstances.

On his arrival in Stockholm he could not speak a word of the language, and had to depend mostly upon his own common-sense in the selection of an outfit. But his quick ear and tractile tongue soon caught up words and phrases, the meaning of which he learned by their effect when spoken, and when he started northward[257] he was able to ask for nearly everything he needed in the native language. Of his ride from town to town, by diligence and by lumbering sleighs, along the shores of the Bothnian Gulf, we cannot give any extended account, and it can easily be found by any reader who did not peruse it at the time of its publication. But it answers our purpose to note how he appeared and what he suffered. It was a terrible ride. Day after day and night after night he pushed on, losing many meals, and often without sleep, in a temperature creeping downward far below zero, and the sun sinking lower and lower on the southern horizon. Frequently overturned in the snow, his beard and hair a mass of solid ice, his eyelids frozen together, his nose frost-bitten, his hands and feet momentarily in danger of freezing, he kept heroically on his course, allowing no rumors of unendurable cold or impassable mountains, of snow ahead to drive him from his purpose. With a wisdom that saved his life, he fell with perfect abandon into the habits of Swedes, Finns, and Lapps, as he in turn found himself in their country and society, eating what they ate, and wearing such skins as they wore, and following their habits, excepting their dirt and their promiscuous arrangements for sleeping. Around the gulf to Tornea, and thence to Muoniovara, he sped northward with a haste which astonished the natives, and a shortness of time which has surprised many travellers who have followed him on that difficult route. He made such acquaintances[258] and such friends on his way northward that they wished him God-speed as he passed on, and welcomed him in a royal manner on his return. On the borders of Lapland he took his first lessons in reindeer-driving, and a most amusing experience he had of it. He could not at first balance himself in the narrow boat which was built for snow navigation, and he was frequently overturned in fathomless piles of snow; and as he did not fully understand how to check the speed of the animal, he flew like the wind over drifts, hollows, and around corners with a most dangerous speed. Many men would have given up the task, after being frozen, kicked, bruised, and pulled half out of joint by the first trial. But such experiences were regarded by him as a joke, and laughing over past mishaps, he tried again and again, until he could guide a deer and balance himself in the narrow pulk as skilfully as the Lapps themselves. He was not a traveller who sought luxury and ease. He wished to sound all the shoals and depths of local experiences. Some of the trials were very hazardous, and make one’s hair rise as he reads of them. Yet Mr. Taylor appears to have put a blind trust in fate and went boldly on. In all these visits and undertakings he forgot not his Muse, and repeated “Afraja” and the “Arctic Lover” when the snow blew too furiously or the cold was too far below zero to engage in original composition.

With the thermometer varying from zero to forty degrees below he traversed the wildest part of Lapland,[259] which lies between the Bothnian Gulf and the Northern Ocean.

At Kautockeino, far beyond the Arctic Circle, he found friends, through the letter of a mutual acquaintance, and recorded with his usual kindness of heart, how good and how generous they were to him. There, too, he saw the day without a sunrise, which he had promised himself to see, and his description of the white earth, the blue sky, the saffron and orange flushes of the morning, and the crimson glow of the evening, all combined in a few moments of time as the sun approached the line of the horizon and sank again without peeping over it, is one of the most charming and graphic paragraphs to be found in literature. There, too, he saw the moon wheel through her entire circuit, without a rising and without a setting. There he made sketches of the dwellings and the people which, after so much practice, he was able to take in a very accurate and artistic manner, and which served afterwards for illustrations in the pages of a magazine. There he met a Lapp by the name of “Lars,” and meeting the name often afterwards, suggested the name for that poem of “Lars,” now as popular in Norway as in the United States. There, in that extreme north, in the house of a native missionary, he found a piano, and was half beside himself with joy when the kind-hearted ministers wife played “Yankee Doodle.” She had heard Ole Bull play it at Christiania, and caught the tune in that way.

His return to Stockholm was more tedious and dangerous than his northward journey, for the weather was colder and the storms more severe. But his reception at the miserable huts along the route, where he had stopped on his journey northward, was always so hearty and friendly that he felt no longer in a strange land. It was a repetition of his experience elsewhere. He was loved at sight, and has not been forgotten to this day by the humble friends he made. Nothing shows the whole-souled manner in which he threw himself into the feelings and habits of the people, better than the expressions which he used in his letters concerning the scenery. He felt so much like a Swede, that he loved the landscapes with the devotion, of a native. Notwithstanding he had used all the superlative terms which our language furnished, in which to describe the scenery of the tropics, yet there he went further and declares with great enthusiasm, that the South had no such beautiful scenery as the ice-bound forests and mountains of Sweden. To him, when he saw them, there were no landscapes to compare with those before him. The transparent crystals, the purity of the snow, the shape of the half-buried trees, the boundless plains of white, and the gleams of acres of diamonds when the frosty spirals greet the morning sun, all possessed a charm beyond the attractions of any other land, so long as he was their associate. He became a Swede, and knew, when his experience was over, just how a Swede lived and how he felt, what he[261] loved and what he enjoyed. Thus he came to a more thorough understanding of the people, and had a better appreciation of their literature, than any other traveller known to the public prints.

On his return to Stockholm, February 14, he set about the work of learning the language and literature of the Swedes. For nearly three months he kept close to his books and his practice in the gymnasium, and although it seems almost impossible, it is said by his associates that he could then read fluently any work to be found in the Norse language.

He left Stockholm on the 6th of May, taking a steamer for Copenhagen, from which place he purposed to take a steamer for Germany. At Copenhagen he met Hans Christian Andersen, the great Danish poet, by whom Mr. Taylor was received most cordially. Thus, one after another, the great men of the world were added to the list of friends found by this son of an humble American farmer. Andersen afterwards sent Mr. Taylor copies of his poems and essays before they were printed, and in many ways showed his regard for the American poet. There Mr. Taylor met Prof. Rafn, the archæologist, and Goldschmidt, the author of the “The Jew,” and editor of a magazine.

Prof. Rafn, gave Mr. Taylor his initiation into the beauties of Icelandic poetry, for the professor was an earnest admirer of northern lore, and loved to converse with any one who took an interest in it. Ho read some of the verses which he especially admired, for Mr. Taylor’s[262] criticism, and Mr. Taylor was so delighted with them that he resolved to study the literature of Iceland and at some time to visit the Island.

From Copenhagen Mr. Taylor hurried over to Germany to look after his friends, and after a stay of a few days hastened to London on business connected with his books. He left London about the first of July, after seeing his relatives depart for America, and taking a steamer at Hull, sailed for Christiania in Norway. The steamer stopped at Christiansand, where the rugged, broken promontories loom up so grandly over sea and bay. No harbor is more picturesque than that of Christiansand, and no coast more uneven. Perhaps the best description of the coast from Christiansand to Apendal, given by Mr. Taylor, is to be found in his poem of “Lars,” wherein Lars and his Quaker wife sailed from Hull for Apendal.

Arrangements had been made with his intimate German friend, whom he first met in Egypt, and in whom Mr. Taylor then took such a deep interest, to meet him at the hotel in Christiania, from which place they purposed to start on a trip overland through Norway to Drontheim, and from that city by steamer to the northern capes of Norway, where the summer sun did not rise or set. Another “sacred triad” was formed—one German and two Americans—equally fortunate and equally pleasant with the former triad in Egypt.

Their course lay through the rugged and drear landscape of Southern Norway, and at the time they made their journey the sky was overcast and the air loaded with moisture, giving every bleak cliff a bleaker appearance, and every barren waste a gloomier aspect. With all his poetical nature, Mr. Taylor did not find much to admire on his way to Drontheim. His sympathy was aroused for the poor farmers who dwell in such a solitude as seemed to envelop the land, and he was glad[264] when the gleams of the river announced their approach to Drontheim.

From Drontheim they sailed by the Hammerfest line on the 18th of July, following the coast so noted for its fantastic crags and startling cliffs. The coast scenery from Drontheim to Hammerfest is unquestionably the most broken and grand in the world. Its black towers, enormous arches, gigantic peaks, and resounding caverns excel anything in the way of sombre grandeur that travellers elsewhere have described.

As they approached the Arctic Circle the mountains became capped with snow, and chilly winds blew off the land, and the days became so long that the evening and the morning succeeded each other with but an intervening twilight. Gradually the midnights grew brighter until, as they proceeded round the North Cape, the sun shone in all its splendor throughout the twenty-four hours.

After several days spent in visiting the small fishing villages along the northern coast, they again turned southward and disembarked at Drontheim, from which place they took passage to Bergen.

From Bergen they travelled on horseback and by boats, over the interior lakes to Christiania, and from that city through the interior of Wermeland and Delecarlia to Stockholm, where they arrived about the middle of September. There Mr. Taylor remained long enough to call on many of the friends whom he had made during the previous winter, and then the “triad” departed for Berlin and Gotha.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Mr. Taylor was married in October following his return from Norway and Sweden, to Marie Hansen, whose father had already gained a world-wide reputation as an astronomer through his works on Physical Astronomy, and was then winning renown for his “Tables de la Lune,” for which he was given a prize by the English Government, as a public benefactor. He was a man of remarkable mathematical genius, universally respected, and the founder of the Erfurt Observatory near Gotha. It was a family of scholars which received Mr. Taylor as a son and brother, and a fortunate alliance for the world of letters. It would be interesting to our readers, no doubt, to know all about the ceremony, the guests, the letters, and the relatives. But that which at some future day may be elevated to the plane of history, would be mere gossip now; and could only serve, for the present, to bring more vividly[266] before his loved ones living, the greatness and reality of their loss.

Not even such an event as his marriage was allowed to interfere with his work. His travels in the North had been in a great measure described in detail from day to day, as he stopped for food and rest, and when he left Stockholm for Germany, a large pile of manuscript had accumulated, which needed correction and arrangement before being sent to his publishers in New York. To this he applied himself closely, and a month after his marriage, was in London making the closing arrangements for the appearance of his book on “Northern Travel,” published by G. P. Putnam & Sons, and containing a condensed account of his winter and summer in the Norse countries.

Immediately after despatching the manuscript for the book, together with several letters for the press, he made his preparations for a winter’s sojourn in Greece. He had purposed to take a trip from St. Petersburg across the continent of Asia, through Siberia to Kamtschatka, and returning through Persia and by the shores of the Black Sea. But it appears that neither Mr. Greeley, nor Mr. Putnam, nor his German relatives approved of the undertaking, which, together with some unsatisfactory financial details, caused him to abandon the snows of Siberia for the sunshine of Attica.

This arrangement must have been a far more pleasant one for him, as Mrs. Taylor and other friends could[267] accompany him to Athens, and as that land was so connected with the richest themes for poets and scholars. Many of Byron’s poems had been favorites with Mr. Taylor from his boyhood, and especially familiar were those passages relating to Greece; for the reading-books in use by American scholars, in his school-days, contained, very wisely, several selections from Byron’s patriotic poems relating to Greece. To this was added an appreciation of “Childe Harold,” gained by visiting the Italian scenery where Byron lived during those years of his voluntary exile.

The party left Gotha in the early part of December, 1857, and going down the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic Gulf, visited the ancient town of Spolato, where the ruins of the Emperor Diocletian’s palaces are still imposing and beautiful. Without losing the steamer, which put in at all the small ports along the route, they skirted the southern shores of the Gulf of Corinth; and, after crossing the Isthmus near Ancient Corinth, sailed direct for Piræus.

To a man of Mr. Taylor’s mental capacity and disposition, the country afforded the means for the highest enjoyment. Men may be as unsentimental as a beast, and as regardless of ancient greatness as a savage, and yet their lives will be influenced more or less by a sojourn in old Greece. Later philosophers declare, and attempt to prove it on scientific principles, that the typography of the country, added to the influences of the climate, produced the great minds of ancient[268] Greece. If so, which may be wholly or partially true, then the same hills and the same valleys, combined with the same climate, must influence the mental characteristics of those who live there now. If, however, as is too frequently the fact to make a clear case of the philosophers’ claims, men do reside under the Acropolis and in the Academian groves wholly unaffected by the scenery, certain it is that to a poet whose whole ambition and only joy was found in a determination to follow the lead of Homer, Simonides, and Tyrtæus, it was an ecstasy of mental satisfaction to feel the influence of the surrounding associations. Even Mr. Taylor feared that his name as a poet would lead people to consider his descriptions to be somewhat colored by the imagination, and labored hard to avoid the imputation. He, with great candor and truth, claimed that men are as great as they were in the days of Demosthenes and Aristides, although the community to which they belonged has moved farther west. He did not believe that all the great and noble and good belonged to the past. He recognized the great fact that dead men have better reputations than living ones, and that the longer a man lies in his grave the greater seem his virtues, and the less the number and magnitude of his faults, i. e. if he is not forgotten altogether. So, Mr. Taylor inserted such thoughts in his letters and conversation, for the sake of seasoning his enthusiasm, which he feared was too active. But it was as useless for him as it was for Byron, and as it has been for other[269] American poets who visited those ancient groves, to keep above or outside the subtle and powerful influences which Greece puts forth. Oh! land of heroes, patriots, poets, philosophers, orators, and musicians! Oh, land of republics and birthplace of fleets! How like a visit to the homes of Solon, Plato, Socrates, and Polycrates it is to walk thy fields, and how like a flight to the homes of the gods, to dream through thy moonlit nights!

Mr. Taylor made the most of his winter in Greece, and visited every place of ancient renown which was accessible to travellers. He scarcely waited for the dawn of his first day in Athens before he hastened to the Acropolis, and admired its marvels and historical suggestions. At the Propylæa, which crowns the mountain with beauty and majesty, where all the destructive inventions of two thousand years have failed to annihilate the monument which Phidias and Calicrates erected to their genius, Mr. Taylor was overwhelmed with emotions, and gazed with wonder at the chaste sculpture which adorns the most graceful structure ever made of marble, and in silent awe contemplated the pillars, cornices, tablets, pavements, and broken ornaments with which he was surrounded. Where was the Coliseum he had praised so much when a boy? Where were the cathedrals, palaces, and castles he had regarded as so sublime? Everything he had seen sank into insignificance beside the ponderous yet exquisitely beautiful pile before him. He was so[270] affected, that when he spoke he whispered, as if in the presence of Jupiter, and his eyes grew moist as he tried to compass the grandeur of the lofty Parthenon and Propylæa. This language will seem extravagant to the reader who has not felt such sensations. The writer, who makes no pretensions of being a poet either in letters or by nature, has been so filled with the unspeakable grandeur of some of the scenes from the heights of the Alps, Himalayas, and Rocky Mountains, as to find himself, to his own surprise, shedding copious streams of tears. It is a sensation unknown to common experience, and our language has no adequate terms with which to describe it. Such a feeling, beyond a doubt, was that which reigned in his sensitive nature when he stood in the porch of the Parthenon. To him, those marvels of art produced the impression which nothing but the mightiest mountain-peaks could awaken in others. It must have been grand to possess such a nature; and it is grand to follow him through his letters and books. There was the crowning point of all his travel. It had been reserved until near the end of his wanderings, and a fitting climax it was. The poet and traveller amid the ruins of Athens! He spent many happy hours amid the crumbling evidences of Athenian greatness. Temples uncounted lay half-buried in the broken soil. Those of Demeter, Hercules, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hephæstus, Theseus, Dioscuri, could be traced in the earth, or confronted the antiquarian with majestic porches; while the Odeon,[271] Gymnasium, Museum, Aglaurium, Lyceum, Prytanæum, Erechtheum, Propylæa, and Parthenon, can easily be reconstructed in the imagination of any student of Greek history with the aid of their wonderful ruins. And when those colossal edifices stand forth in their beauty, it is but a step to the sublimest dreams, wherein Socrates, Anaxagoras, Pericles, Eschylus, Sophocles, Ictinus, Mnesicles, and their noble cotemporaries, walked through the colonnades, along the payed streets, and among the verdant, classic groves which bordered on the Ilissus. The walls of Athens, extending from Hymettus to the distant sea, the city crowded with the wealth of the commercial world, and the fields as verdant and fruitful as now.

Mr. Taylor often remarked that he should never have been a successful traveller had he not been a poet; and it might be added that persons, in whom the power to recall the past through the debris of the present is wholly lacking, had better not travel at all. There are hills in Pennsylvania, or New Hampshire, far more picturesque than the Acropolis, and on them might be erected a tolerably accurate copy of the Propylæa, Erechtheum, and Parthenon as they now stand, and the curious might visit them to observe the beauty of the architecture and remark the foolishness of those who constructed them. Unconnected with any history, and the originals unheard of, they would be nothing but mere monuments to folly, with all their symmetry. Take away from Athens the records of its grand[272] humanity; the stories of its achievements; the tales concerning the wonders of its genius; the renown of its arms; the memories of its misfortunes; and all the life, the spirit, that shines through its fragments, as the soul beams through the eye of a loved face, would be extinguished, and no great good could come from seeing them.

We mention these things, not to excuse Mr. Taylor for his strong assertions concerning the effect these ruins had upon him, but to give to the student a clearer insight into the nature and life of the poet, Bayard Taylor. From Athens, after visiting the king and queen, Mr. Taylor made excursions into the interior, and to the Island of Crete, visiting, in his various tours, Candia, Rhithymnos, Corinth, Leuetra, Mycenæ, Arcadia, Sparta, Parnassus, Platea, Thermopylæ, and various other fields, mountains, and ruins connected with ancient Greece. At Crete he was most graciously welcomed by the Turkish governor, and was treated with the most generous hospitality by the people and officials, throughout a somewhat lengthy journey about the island. It was there that he met the American consul who was going to start the commerce of Crete by bringing in a cargo of rum to exchange for the products of the island, and who was so startled by Mr. Taylor’s frankly avowed hope, that the ship would be wrecked before the curse of drunkenness was added to the other Cretan vices. Mr. Taylor gave a somewhat different version of the affair, not changing however[273] its exposition of his sentiments on the subject of drunkenness. But it is to be supposed, that the consul, who was so severely rebuked, would have the best reason for remembering it, and, as his version throws no discredit on Mr. Taylor, and varies in no important particular from that given by Mr. Taylor, we give the consul the benefit of the story.

At Corinth he had a startling experience in an earthquake, feeling the earth rise and fall with that sickening movement, creating a nausea like the sea-sickness of a whole voyage concentrated into a few minutes, and saw the stone walls of the house crumbling and splitting about him. He arrived after the greatest shock had passed, or he would have seen whole streets of buildings thrown down, for the village was half in ruins when he reached the place. Near Corinth he saw the plain whereon were celebrated the Isthmian games and repeated sections of Schiller’s poem, “The Gods of Greece.”

At Argolis he saw the gateway of Mycenæ, guarded by the celebrated stone lions, and tried to connect Agamemnon and Orestes with the landscapes.

At Sparta he trod the sward above the buried palaces, and having no poets’ names to rhyme with Lycurgus and Leonidas, he hurried on to scenes less suggestive of mere physical endurance and bloody encounters.

In Mania, within the boundaries of ancient Sparta, he was delighted to find the descendants of the ancient[274] Greeks, whose blood was not diluted by that of Turks, Slavs, Italians, and Egyptians. He found there what no other part of Greece visited by him could boast, the Greek face and form such as Phidias, Praxiteles, and Lysippus portrayed in their immortal sculptures. At Olympia he saw the home of Xenophon, and the foundations of that temple of Olympus from whence the Greek chronology was taken, near which were celebrated the great Olympian Games, around which were once those sacred groves so often mentioned in Greek poetry and tragedy, and where the most artistic work of Phidias stood,—the ivory statue of Jupiter.

At Thebes he recalled the deeds of Pindar, Epaminondas, and the heroes of the Trojan War.

At Delphi he looked over the forests that clothe the lofty Parnassus, gazed into the rocky cleft from which the priestesses received their communications, and saw the sites of temples used for gardens, and blocks from the sacred shrines used for cellar walls.

At Thermopylæ he marked the spot where the heroes fought and the narrow gorge where they fell, with feelings of respect and pride. He said that the story of such deeds should never be allowed to die.

At “Aulis” he saw where Jason launched his ships to sail in search of the Golden Fleece, and repeated a part of the Argonautic story in modern Greek.

On all these journeys Mr. Taylor displayed the same fearless, adventurous spirit, and was frequently in danger. By fortunate accidents he was prevented[275] from falling into the hands of brigands, and returned to Athens, after his prolonged journeys, in good health, and with the accounts of his journeys nearly complete in his pocket.

When he left Athens in the spring for Constantinople, he had become acquainted with all parts of ancient Greece, and was able to give to his readers a fund of valuable information concerning the country and its products, the people and their industries. He had kept up that triple life which characterized all his later travels in Europe and Asia, and saw everything modern in the way of manners, races, products, commerce, government, and everything that remained of the ancient days in the shape of monuments, temples, or ruins, together with those undefinable yet real suggestions which come to the poet, and to him alone.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

After a short stay in Constantinople, the party, under the guidance of Mr. Taylor, went by steamer to the mouth of the Danube, and thence up that river to his new home at Gotha. Mr. Taylor had set his heart on building a residence in the oak woodland near his old home at Kennett, and now that he was married, his anxiety to see it completed led him to think seriously of returning at once to the United States. Having, however, a vague fear that he might not again visit Europe as a traveller, and being unwilling to leave the largest empire in the world unvisited, he resolved to make a hasty trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg. It was not a tour which he would personally enjoy as he had his stay in Greece, yet it was needed to make complete his knowledge of Europe. Hence he hastened away from Gotha, and, taking Cracow, the salt mines of Wieliczka and Warsaw in his route, arrived at Moscow about the middle of[277] June. Having seen the wonders of that ancient capital of Russia, he went by railroad direct to St. Petersburg. There he was much interested in the massive structures of granite and marble which stand over the land which was once an impassable marsh, and pondered, with feelings of great wonder, upon the control which man exercises over nature. The grand squares, the wide Boulevards, the ponderous bridges, the extensive palaces, the solid cathedral, and the broad quays and docks, give an impression of grandeur in simplicity, which no other city possesses. The great capital has none of that air of gayety and ostentation which one notices in Paris and London; but is stately, dignified, grand. Everything is done on a large scale, and the buildings, halls, streets, and parades, are alike suggestive of might, and a strong will. The city is Peter the Great in stone. It conveys the impression to the traveller, of strength without coarseness, and of beauty without display.

Little did Mr. Taylor expect, when he bade those extensive, massive palaces adieu, that he should return to that city, in a few years, as the official representative of a powerful nation. Probably the idea of being again in those galleries of art, was as remote from his calculations as was the idea of being minister of the United States at the court of the German Empire, when he walked reverently along the Unter-den-Linden at Berlin for the first time, trying to get a peep at the distant carriage of the king.

From St. Petersburg, he took the inland route for Prussia, passing through the Baltic provinces, and studying the habits and appearance of the people. His return to Gotha, from Russia, was regarded by himself, and by his friends, as the close of his wanderings, and, with a sigh of relief, he laid down his pen, and declared that he wished for nothing more than to “settle down in a home of his own near the old farm in the States.” A few weeks later, and he was receiving the congratulations of his friends in New York, and had taken his place at the familiar desk in the office of the New York “Tribune.”

Then began another season of closest and severest mental labor. Rest, during his waking hours, seemed impossible, and even the hours which he spent at the Literary Club and at his rooms, were more or less connected with his work. Literature was his work, and literature was his play. He had become enamored of Goethe and Schiller, and already conceived the idea of giving to the world a translation of their best works. He had the “Argument” of the “Poet’s Journal” in his mind, and every visit to the scenes of his first love, in the companionship of the second, served to urge him to complete and publish it.

He had become one of the noted men of America, and the calls, to lecture, to write, to visit, to attend dinners, and write editorials, were incessant and persistent.

The construction of his house took much of his[279] attention, and he ransacked his collections of sketches, and photographs of villas, palaces, and cottages in the Old World, to find such a plan as he could be satisfied to adopt. It was no child’s play with him to construct the building wherein to make his home. He had thought of the matter from boyhood, and that clump of oaks on the highland, about a mile to the westward of Kennett Square, and within a short distance of the old homestead, had ever been his choice. His years of wanderings had sharpened his desire for a permanent home, and, with characteristic care and thoroughness, he investigated his plans and means. He had owned the land for five years, and had gloried in being the owner of American soil, without which one can hardly claim to be an American. He attended to all the details of rooms, closets, stairways, windows, brick, stone, cornices, roof, tower, with caution and deliberation; and when he contracted with the masons, carpenters, and gardeners, he knew just what was needed, and told to each what was expected of them. There was a ceremony attendant on breaking the ground, a procession, and a box of records deposited in the foundation, when the corner-stone was laid, and such a house-warming when it was dedicated October 18 and 19, 1860, as Americans seldom enjoy. There was feasting, singing, original poetry, original plays, and one of the happiest, merriest companies ever gathered under a hospitable roof.

But while the building was being slowly and carefully[280] constructed, with its thick walls of stone and brick, Mr. Taylor, was engaged no less in his editorial tasks. The summer after his return from Europe, he made several excursions in an editorial capacity, one of which took him again to California. The great changes in the city of San Francisco, and in the appearance of the entire State, so far as he visited it, were marvellous, and were as marvellously pictured to the minds of his readers. His time was much occupied in delivering lectures in the various cities of the State; but he used his disciplined eyes and ears to such advantage that he gave in his book the most full and accurate account of California,—its agriculture, its institutions, its lakes, its mountains, its great trees, its mines, its enterprises, and its people,—to be found in any work of the kind now in print. It is astonishing how much he could put into a paragraph, without giving it a crowded appearance!

His time, from the day he returned from California, was mostly engaged in delivering lectures and writing letters. He was not rich, and he was generous. He had a house to build, and to pay for. Furniture must be had, and his accumulated fortune was not large enough for all. Hence he travelled, and he delivered lectures, notwithstanding the disagreeable experiences which he was compelled to endure. He yearned to be at the translation of “Faust”; but necessity drove him to talk of travel and biography. He had a home, for “it is home where the heart is,” and he[281] longed to be in it. But necessity sent him forth with a rude hand, and held him aloof from his own. Oh! that is the saddest experience in human life! To feel called to a certain work; to know that there is one task for which one is peculiarly fitted by nature and by discipline; to see before him still the beckoning forms which have hovered in the glory of every setting sun, since earliest childhood; to feel that one’s productions, which might be valuable, are unfinished, and hardly shaped, before they are forced into the hands of conscienceless critics, is one of the most miserable conditions in life. This condition, which has worn out so many men of genius, and which has, with tyrannical coldness, compelled authors to fence up their own literary highway, or die, was not felt by Mr. Taylor in that degree that it was by some of his cotemporaries,—and by many since his time. But he felt it often enough and keenly enough to sympathize with others, and most forcibly expressed their feelings in his “Picture of Saint John.”

Yet manfully did he toil, neglecting sleep and food, eager to teach, determined to earn honestly the money[282] which he was to receive. He desired to have a home free from debt, to which he could invite his friends, and feel that his hospitality could be safely and honestly extended to all those whom he loved and honored. So he toiled, as men seldom toil, using every moment on railway and steamboat, to write out those pages which his engagements prevented him from doing at home. As a consequence, his health began to decline, and oft-repeated warnings of friends and of physicians, which he tried to keep from the knowledge of his relatives, drove him from the lucrative field of lecturing.

With his face set, steadfastly set, toward the tombs of Goethe and of Schiller, seeing the great obligation he was under, to a Providence which had so richly endowed him, to give to man some masterpiece, he turned at once toward his loved Germany, when he felt the necessity of a change of home, and a change of work.

But the exciting events immediately preceding the War of the Great Rebellion, so stirred his patriotic soul, that he turned his thought and work into patriotic channels, and worked on until late in the spring of 1861. His words in the newspapers, in the magazines, and on the rostrum, were ringing trumpet-calls to the defence of the Republic. The Chinese say that “there are words which are deeds.” That could be said of those Mr. Taylor uttered. His public addresses were enthusiastic appeals for the salvation of the nation, and his poems had in them the boldest spirit of patriotism.

In his poem, “Through Baltimore,” written in April, 1861, he described the approach of the Union soldiers to Baltimore, the onset of the mob, and closed the story with these words:—

On the 30th of April, 1861, he wrote an address to the American people, the last verse of which expressed the sentiment of the whole poem and we insert it here:—

But the poem which created the greatest enthusiasm at the time of its publication, and which is still a most[284] touchingly inspiring selection, was written at about the same time as the “Address to the American People,” possibly ten days later, and it was given the title of “Scott and the Veteran.” To fully appreciate the power of those verses, one needs to recall the hesitation, and the excitement, and the uncertainty which the nation felt in that dark hour. In a time like that, a few clear, unmistakable words work wonders with a people. Well does the writer recall the electrical effect of that poem in 1861, when read at a patriotic gathering of the yeomen, in a valley of the Berkshire Hills, in Western Massachusetts. The lines were not so polished, nor the words so choice as many other verses which Mr. Taylor had written; but they seem to come again as they were then recited, and awaken memories of mountain glens, and “mountain boys”; of camps and battles, of fields of cotton made fields of carnage; of loved faces looking skyward, cold and still; of a nation saved, redeemed, renewed. The three closing verses we have never forgotten.

In June, the necessity of rest, and the desire to obtain it in such a way as to get pleasure and advantage from his release, influenced him to take a trip to his wife’s old home, and to spend a month at the country residence of a friend which was situated on slopes of the Thuringian Forest, not far from Weimar and Gotha. It was a lovely spot, and a pretty cottage, and about him were numberless reminders of Schiller and Goethe, with whose names he was so creditably to connect his own. Whether he gained the rest he needed or not, is a question still undecided. Certainly he did not gain as much as he would, had he left Goethe’s “Faust,” and his own new volume of poems behind him, and chafed much less under his great suspense concerning the results of the American War. He ran up the American flag to the ridge-pole of his cottage, and walked about uneasily, awaiting news from home. He talked of the war with his neighbors and visitors, wrote about it to whomsoever of his friends he thought might not understand the merits of the contest, and, at last, about the 1st of August, hastily broke up his cosy housekeeping, and returned to America.

When he again opened the doors of his dwelling at Kennett, which he had given the poetical name of[286] “Cedarcroft,” it was to welcome to his fireside all who loved their country. But, as he afterwards proudly declared, no traitor ever crossed its threshold. Many distinguished men visited him, including members of Congress, and of the President’s Cabinet.

CHAPTER XXIX.

In the summer of 1862, Mr. Taylor accepted the appointment as Secretary of Legation at St. Petersburg, Russia, for which he was indebted to his life-long friend, the Hon. George H. Boker, of Philadelphia, whose services to the nation as Minister Plenipotentiary, as well as his gifts as an author, have made his name familiar to the reading public of America.

It does not appear that the official duties connected with his office especially pleased Mr. Taylor, and it is believed by his friends that he regarded them in about the same light that Hawthorne looked upon his office. It was an honorable and responsible position, especially so during 1862 and 1863, when the United States was laboring so earnestly, and finally so successfully, to gain the friendship of Russia, and Mr. Taylor appreciated it. Certainly the American Legation at St. Petersburg was never more popular at the Court of the Emperor than during the term of Mr. Taylor’s sojourn.[288] Whatever the credit which is due to the Minister during his stay, it is no disparagement to say that Mr. Taylor made many warm friends in St. Petersburg, who remember him, and weep for his untimely death. When the duties of the Legation devolved entirely upon him, as charge d’affairs, he was treated with the greatest consideration, and for a time the court circles believed that the President of the United States would promote him to the office of Ambassador, as appeared to them to be his due.

But Mr. Taylor was in no wise an office-seeker, and cared more for the honor of writing a good book than for any office in the gift of the President. So the autumn, winter, and spring which Mr. Taylor spent in St. Petersburg were devoted to his studies of literature, so far as he could do so without neglecting his duties. He made several excursions into the interior of Russia, and made himself acquainted with the language and writings of Russian authors. Work! work! work! Incessantly writing, reading, or observing! Such was his life in St. Petersburg. His envious critics have said that his genius all lay in the ability to do hard work. But does not successful hard work exhibit genius in its greatest strength? Some may, in one dash, make themselves famous. Authors may concentrate all their power in a single leap, and reach the heights of fame at one bound. But of such[289] men you seldom hear a second success. Their single work is all that they do well. Not so with Mr. Taylor. The publication of one book only left the way clear for a better successor. His Muse was not uncertain, his genius was not spasmodic. Two of his poems, written in Russia, namely, “The Neva,” and “A Thousand Years,” were afterwards translated into Russian, and received the hearty encomiums of the cultured nobility. His story of “Beauty and the Beast,” located at Novgorod, to which place Mr. Taylor made an excursion while connected with the American Legation at St. Petersburg, has also been translated into the Russian language, together with other selections from his writings, showing that his literary renown did not suffer by his residence in Russia.

But his highest ambition in life was to publish a worthy translation of Goethe and Schiller, together with a biography of both. This had been his purpose from the time he first visited Weimar and Gotha. To this his other labors became gradually subordinated.

How he came to turn his attention to prose fiction can be accounted for on the supposition that he adopted that character for the purpose of testing his own powers, and securing an income which would enable him to prosecute his studies and investigations relating to Goethe and Schiller. He did not hope to be a leading novelist, and the public placed a much higher estimate[290] on his novels than he did. The desire he had to immortalize his old home, the urgent appeals of friends, and the advice of acquaintances, pressed him into a field which he confessed in his lectures was uncongenial. Yet he had no more reason to be ashamed of “Hannah Thurston,” “John Godfrey’s Fortunes,” and the “Story of Kennett,” brought out soon after his return from Russia, than he had thirteen or fourteen years before to be ashamed of the Jenny Lind prize-song, or the poem delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College.

After leaving Russia, he soon returned to the United States, and, with lecturing and writing, occupied the time until again called abroad by a desire to see some localities visited by Goethe, and describe the great Paris Exhibition of 1867. Then followed those years of work at home, and travel abroad and at home, as his duties as author, editor, and correspondent demanded. In 1866 appeared his poem, “Picture of St. John,” which was immediately translated into Italian by an admirer in Florence. His poem, “The Ballad of Abraham Lincoln,” appeared in 1869, “Goethe’s Faust,” in 1871, “The Masque of the Gods,” in 1872, “Lars, a Pastoral of Norway,” in 1873, “The Prophet, a Tragedy,” in 1874, and “Home Pastorals, Ballads, and Lyrics,” in 1875.

In the spring of 1874, Mr. Taylor visited Iceland as[291] the correspondent of the New York “Tribune.” He had visited Egypt, and was to return to America after a short stay in Europe, but the news of the Millennial Celebration, which was to take place on the island August 2d and 3d, called a large number of people to the festivities, and it was fitting that a great American newspaper should be represented. But neither the people of Iceland, nor the editors of the “Tribune,” nor Mr. Taylor, had any idea, when he set out, that his visit would be magnified into a recognition of the event by the people of the United States. His knowledge of the Danish language, and his study of the Icelandic tongue, according to his plan laid in Copenhagen eighteen years before, when on his way to the Northern Ocean, made him peculiarly fitted for the position in which he was, by a conjunction of unforeseen circumstances, unexpectedly thrown. But his genius was as spontaneous as it was persevering; for in a few moments of time, amid confusion, and conversation in which he took part, he wrote the poem, “America to Iceland,” which, when read to the Icelanders in their own language, on the occasion of their largest gathering, created the greatest enthusiasm. One verse ran thus,—

Mr. Taylor’s printed description of the scenery, people, government, and geysers of Iceland, is a standard work on that almost unknown island, and is written in a vein readable and refined. As it shows rather the fruit of a cultured life than the processes of culture, its contents require no extended notice in a work like this.

In the winter (February) of 1878, President Hayes offered Mr. Taylor the vacant mission at Berlin, expressing, at the same time, his conviction that there was no other American living who could so nobly and creditably fill the position of Minister of the United States to the German Empire. Mr. Taylor’s fame as a German scholar; his relation, by marriage, to the German people; his popularity at home and in Germany; and his creditable performance of his duties in a like position at St. Petersburg, made it peculiarly fitting that he should represent the American people in that official capacity.

It was an office unsought by Mr. Taylor, but, nevertheless, it was most cheerfully accepted, as it would give him an opportunity to prosecute his studies of the life of Goethe and the life of Schiller, which could not be so well secured in any other way.

The announcement of the appointment was hailed by the people of the United States with the liveliest demonstrations of approval. Neither the appointment[293] of Mr. Bancroft or Mr. Motley received such universal approbation. All the newspapers, with no known exception, declared it to be one of the wisest appointments made by the administration. All parties applauded at home, and the leading journals of Europe mentioned it with words of praise.

Mr. Taylor was overwhelmed with congratulations, and President Hayes received letters from almost every State and city in the Republic, thanking him for making such a creditable selection, and commending his wisdom. Mr. Taylor was feasted, and “toasted” by his commercial and literary friends with an enthusiasm and liberality never known before on such an occasion. Ovation after ovation was given, and his departure in April from New York was witnessed by hosts of his friends.

His welcome at Berlin was scarcely less hearty. Authors and editors received him with earnest expressions of satisfaction. The Crown Prince, Prince Bismarck, and even the Emperor and Empress greeted him with most unusual marks of respect. With a world looking to him for yet greater things, but thankful for the noble deeds of the past, Mr. Taylor set up a home at Berlin in which he hoped to finish those books on Goethe and Schiller, to which he had already given some of the best years of his life. At last there was rest. Honored by his nation, holding[294] a literary position above the darts of envy, with a gifted wife and lovely daughter, he entered his home in Berlin, saying, “Here I can work in peace. Here we shall be very happy.”

Who can foretell the future; or, in the words of Goethe’s “Mephistopheles,”—

That drear December, of which he had written so much, and which ever seemed to him the saddest of all the year, found him dangerously ill with the dropsy. He tried to be quiet, as the physician directed. He tried to resume the old Arabic resignation which had so often served him in the place of substantial accomplishment. But the habit of years, the overmastering desire to labor, the “passion for work” which made his life successful, held sway over him still.

His nation had commissioned him to serve at the Court of Berlin. There was a call for him at the Legation. He could not refuse to go, if he had the strength to move. So he rises from his bed, and goes forth to fulfil the desires of his people. It is his last work. His beloved America receives his dying attention! The next day (Dec. 19, 1878), just after the messenger had left at his door the first printed copy of his new work, “Deukalion,” the poet, traveller, scholar, patriot, brother, husband, and father, left his work unfinished to enter upon the Eternal Rest.

He had long suffered from a mild form of a kidney[295] disease, but neither he nor his physicians attached any importance to that complaint. On the day that he died, he arose from his bed, dressed, and received visitors. Feeling tired, at noon, he concluded to lie down and rest. He slept for a short time, quietly, but on awakening, his mind wandered, and his symptoms became at once alarming. Dr. Lowe Kalbe, who was Mr. Taylor’s physician, and an old friend, was with him, together with Mrs. Taylor and their daughter Lillian. But he sank rapidly, and at four o’clock in the afternoon, peacefully passed away.

How like a voice from a living Past came to us his own sad lines, when they said to us in sadness,—“Bayard Taylor is dead!”

CHAPTER XXX.

Seldom has the death of a single individual wounded the hearts of so many personal friends. Men have attained to greater renown, and have been, perhaps, as extensively known by their writings and their fame; but rare, indeed, can be found in history the name of one who had so many intimate companions. The number of those who claimed the right to be his friends is beyond computation, at this time,—within a few weeks after his death,—but it includes many of the most noted men of the world.

Alfred Tennyson, the poet-laureate of England, was an acquaintance and correspondent of Mr. Taylor’s, their first meeting being at Mr. Tennyson’s house, Farringford, on the Isle of Wight.

William Makepeace Thackeray was one of Mr. Taylor’s warmest literary friends, from the time when they met at a dinner of the Century Club, in New York, in[297] 1856, until Mr. Thackeray’s death, in 1863. The friendship was kept alive by Mr. Thackeray’s daughters, who first met Mr. Taylor in London, in 1858, and who at that time most hospitably entertained him, together with his brother and sisters.

Robert Browning often invited Mr. Taylor to join his select company in London, their acquaintance having begun in 1851; and Barry Cornwall (Bryan Waller Procter), treated Mr. Taylor with the greatest kindness and hospitality, writing frequently, until he died, in 1874, to inquire after Mr. Taylor’s progress in the translation of “Faust.”

Thomas Carlyle and John Bright were numbered among his correspondents, although it so happened that he met them but seldom.

Among the leaders of English literature whose friendship he enjoyed, there is a very large circle of literary and scientific men who knew Mr. Taylor through their frequent meetings on social and formal occasions, and who were well acquainted with Mr. Taylor’s books. From many of these there came the expressions of great grief, when the fact of Mr. Taylor’s death was announced in London.

In Germany he was quite as well known as their native poets of his time, and he secured the respect and love of nearly every distinguished literary man and woman in that Empire. One of the sweetest friendships of his life was with that most fascinating descriptive writer, Berthold Auerbach, whose “Villa[298] on the Rhine” was given to the American public in 1869, by Mr. Taylor. These two authors were like twin brothers in their authorship, and some of Auerbach’s letters, descriptive of European scenes and people, could be inserted in Mr. Taylor’s books, verbatim, and the interpolation be scarcely detected. Their regard for each other equalled their gifts, and one of the sincerest mourners at the funeral of Mr. Taylor, was that gifted scholar, Berthold Auerbach.

Mr. Taylor’s first acquaintance with Alexander von Humboldt, was in 1856, when Mr. Taylor called upon the great naturalist at his home in Berlin. The reading of Humboldt’s works had been of great benefit to Mr. Taylor, as a correspondent, and he so informed the Professor, at which he seemed much pleased. Humboldt took great pains to secure all of Mr. Taylor’s letters, as they appeared from time to time in the “Tribune,” and most warmly praised him for the remarkable manner in which he pictured the scenes he visited. The acquaintance was frequently renewed, and when Humboldt died, in 1859, Mr. Taylor is said to have been numbered among the mourning friends, by those in charge of the funeral, although he was in the United States at the time. For years the public in America was led to believe that Humboldt ridiculed Mr. Taylor’s writings, although what could have been the motive of the one who originated the falsehood it is hard to conjecture.

With the French authors he did not have a very[299] extended personal acquaintance, although he had met many of them, and frequently exchanged books with Victor Hugo and Guillaume Lejean.

His acquaintances in America included nearly every living author of his generation, and he numbered among his intimate friends the most gifted men in the land. Nearest to him, perhaps, stood Richard H. Stoddard, of New York, and his talented wife, Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard. Both were born in Massachusetts, and have frequently spent the summer months at Mrs. Stoddard’s old home in Mattapoisett, in company with Mr. Taylor and his family. A jolly household it was, when the Taylors and the Stoddards united their families, as they frequently did, in the city, or on the seashore. One of Mr. Stoddard’s many books, viz., the Life of Humboldt, contains an introduction by Mr. Taylor, and many of Mr. Taylor’s poems were submitted to Mr. and Mrs. Stoddard for their criticism, before he published them. With them, and with Mr. George Ripley, he appears to have maintained the most confidential relations to the day of his death.

Many of his early friends have preceded him to that “silent shore,” and many tears did he shed over their graves. Nathaniel P. Willis, his earliest friend in the great city, who encouraged him and introduced him into a literary life, died at his home of “Idlewild,” in 1867. Washington Irving, who in his old ago was earnest enough to leave his home at “Sunnyside” and go to New York, to urge Mr. Taylor to persevere in[300] his poetical undertakings, and whose advice assisted Mr. Taylor so much in his various trips into Spain, died in 1873.

Dr. E. K. Kane, who aided Mr. Taylor in laying out his route through Norway, and whose letters of introduction and commendation to George Peabody, the great banker, and to other influential men in England, opened the way for Mr. Taylor into the best society of that capital, did not live to meet Mr. Taylor on his return from Norway, as had been arranged, but died alone, at Havana, in 1857.

William Cullen Bryant, whose master-pieces were Mr. Taylor’s study, and whose personal friendship was so much valued, that Mr. Taylor visited the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, wherein the “Thanatopsis” had its birth, to note “if the scenes would have the same influence on a stranger, that they appeared to have had on a native,”—he whose counsel and companionship had, through many years, been counted among the “richest boons of life,” died a few months before Mr. Taylor, and the shadow had not passed from Mr. Taylor’s brow, and his poetical tribute to Bryant was hardly in print, before he was called “to join the caravan that moves to that mysterious realm.”

Fitz-Greene Halleck, who used to caution the young poet, and who took pride in every new achievement of the traveller, died in 1867.

Horace Greeley, the editor of the Tribune, whose friendship was of the most steady and substantial kind,[301] and for whom Mr. Taylor felt the respect due to a parent, expired in 1872. It was when writing of Mr. Greeley’s death that Mr. Taylor gave the following sketch of their friendship:—

“My own intercourse with him, though often interrupted by absence or divergence of labor, was frank at the start, and grew closer and more precious with every year. In all my experience of men, I have never found one whose primitive impulses revealed themselves with such marvellous purity and sincerity. His nature often seemed to me as crystal-clear as that of a child. In my younger and more sensitive days, he often gave me a transient wound; but such wounds healed without a scar, and I always found, afterward, that they came from the lance of a physician, not from the knife of an enemy.

“I first saw Mr. Greeley in June, 1844, when I was a boy of nineteen. I applied to him for an engagement to write letters to the ‘Tribune’ from Germany. His reply was terse enough. ‘No descriptive letters!’ he said; ‘I am sick of them. When you have been there long enough to know something, send to me, and, if there is anything in your letters, I will publish them.’ I waited nearly a year, and then sent seventeen letters, which were published. They were shallow enough, I suspect; but what might they not have been without his warning?

“Toward the end of 1847, while I was engaged in the unfortunate enterprise of trying to establish a weekly paper at Phœnixville, Penn., I wrote him—foreseeing the failure of my hopes—asking his assistance in procuring literary work in New York. He advised me (as I suspect he has[302] advised thousands of young men), to stay in the country. But I had stayed in the country, and a year too long; so another month found me in New York, in his office, with my story of disappointment, and my repeated request for his favorable influence. ‘I think you are mistaken,’ he said; ‘but I will bear you in mind, if I hear of any chance.’

“Six weeks afterward, to my great surprise (for I supposed he had quite forgotten me), he sent for me and offered me a place on the ‘Tribune.’ I worked hard and incessantly during the summer of 1848, hearing never a word of commendation or encouragement; but one day in October he suddenly came to my desk, laid his hand on my shoulder, and said, ‘You have been faithful; but now you need rest. Take a week’s holiday, and go into New England.’ I obeyed, and found, on my return, that he had ordered my salary to be increased.”

Hiram Powers, the American sculptor, who so heartily welcomed the young pedestrian to Florence, Italy, and who through the years which followed, showed a most kindly spirit, making Taylor his guest and confidant, passed away from the contemplation of beautiful earthly forms to figures angelic, in 1873.

Mrs. Kirkland, on whose magazine, in 1848, he began to regain the literary prestige which the failure of the “Phœnixville Pioneer” took from him, and who, with Halleck, so kindly opened the way for him to teach a school in New York, to repair his shattered fortunes, was gone, together with a large number of their mutual acquaintances in the literary circles of New York.

Although the ranks were so sadly depleted, there are still living a most brilliant company of his early literary friends.

John G. Whittier, who still resides in Amesbury, his patriotism unabated, his Quaker simplicity unchanged, and his fame as a poet increasing, as civilization and freedom extend. To him Mr. Taylor dedicated his poem of “Lars,” and in it thus mentioned his first meeting with Whittier:—

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lives and sings as in those days when Taylor read the story of “Hyperion” and the poetry of “Voices of the Night,” and resolved to visit Boppart and to be a poet. Mr. Longfellow had a name to be envied in the annals of literature, when the man of whom we write was a rollicking, mischievious boy. Yet Taylor has appeared on the stage of life, has enacted a very important part, and is gone. His friend and benefactor remains, loved and honored in the old Washington mansion at Cambridge.

That marvellously versatile and skilful man, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, though born long before Taylor, still walks the halls of learning, and, while enjoying the deserved rewards of “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table,” “Old Ironsides,” and the numerous other publications in the shape of essays, poems, and medical text-books, was not ashamed to be called the friend of Mr. Taylor, and recalls his association with him in the most affectionate terms.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the poet and essayist, who, like Mr. Holmes, enjoys a world-wide reputation as a man of letters and thoughts, moves among men as of yore, while his younger acquaintance has passed on before.

James Russell Lowell, upon whose brilliant literary career Mr. Taylor said he often “gazed with bewilderment,” but who was among his much-loved literary friends, adorns the court of Spain, as the Minister of the United States, while the life of his colleague which began much later, has ceased to move his hands to friendly grasps, and his lips to living words.

Richard H. Dana, Sr., the “eldest poet,” has been dead but a few days. Amos Bronson Alcott retains his home in Concord, appearing much as he did when George Ripley, Margaret Fuller, and Theodore Parker were with him on the “Dial,” which the Taylors read in Pennsylvania; but he who came to their homes so short a time ago, will cross their thresholds no more.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich remains, and writes on for[305] the love of it, while his friend and early companion in New York,—Taylor, who praised his “Babie Bell” and “Daisie’s Necklace,” has laid down his pen forever, and will sit down with him no more at social boards.

George William Curtis, who was born the year before Mr. Taylor, and whose travels, books, and correspondence for the New York “Tribune,” gave him such a similar experience, now stands at the front in American oratory, and looks forward to wider fields of usefulness, as though life had just begun. As a representative American in literature and in political influence, he has lost in Mr. Taylor an earnest and efficient comrade.

Edwin P. Whipple still lives on Beacon Hill in Boston, and, together with his brilliant wife, recalls the face and words of Taylor with the affectionate regard of appreciative minds and loving hearts.

James T. Fields, of Boston, comes and goes, an authority on literary excellence, and an attractive expounder and biographer, while the boy who came to him long, long ago, to learn if Ticknor & Fields would publish a little poem, has grown into manhood, into fame, and passed on to the Hereafter. The friendship of many years,—so beautiful a sight between publisher and poet,—which the pressure and uncertainty of business could not sever or decrease, is broken, ah! so rudely, by the hand of death.

The Hon. George H. Boker, of Philadelphia, still counts his useful years; while the boy whose poems he[306] purchased, and whose ambition he directed, has seen a long and eventful life, using but a part of the time in which his benefactor has lived. Of him Mr. Taylor wrote in 1855:—

George H. Boker, Jr., and Mrs. Taylor are, by the terms of Mr. Taylor’s will, his literary executors.

The Hon. J. R. Chandler still resides in the same old home at Philadelphia, into which the trembling youth came for the loan of fifty dollars with which to see Europe on foot. After a long and honorable life he sees no act more creditable than the simple-hearted generosity which he displayed toward that ambitious stripling.

His brother, J. Howard Taylor, M.D., and his cousin, Franklin Taylor, M.D., are both at their official posts of honor in Philadelphia, while the sisters and parents survive, still in that haze of doubt which precedes the hard realization that Bayard is dead.

Mr. Whitelaw Reid may search long before he supplies to the “Tribune’s” readers all the characteristics of[307] Mr. Taylor’s writings; the literati of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, will long wait for the congenial companion to take his seat; and the thousands of loving hearts in all the civilized countries of the world and in many uncivilized lands, will not cease to be sore, until

CHAPTER XXXI.

Some portions of Bayard Taylor’s life have been but lightly touched upon in the previous chapters, because the writer felt that if mentioned in their chronological order, he would be compelled to repeat them when he should reach this chapter. In fact, the history of Taylor’s translation of “Faust,” which we propose here to outline, so far as we have been able to learn it, necessarily includes the whole life of Mr. Taylor, from his first visit to Germany to the day when his mortal body gave way under its accumulated load of work. “Faust” was intimately interwoven with all the threads of his life; and whenever Messrs. Houghton, Osgood & Co. publish another edition of Taylor’s translation, they could not better please and instruct the public than by prefacing it with a synopsis of Mr. Taylor’s life, wherein “Faust” was his inspiration and guide.

It appears that when he began the study of the German language at Heidelberg, one of the books used by him contained a selection from the First Part of Goethe’s “Faust.” His instructors and companions there were delighted with Goethe’s works, and, with pride, mentioned him as Germany’s greatest man. Meeting him, as it did, on the very threshold of the language, at a time when there was a romance about the country, and a fascination in the language which only youthful ambition could give, he was ambitious to know more about the master-mind, and sought those works which contained the requisite information.

At Frankfort, he found the works of Goethe and Schiller, and was fortunately a member of a household where those authors were admired and often quoted. He was told, as he afterwards declared, that if he knew enough of German to read Goethe and Schiller, it was all that he would need to know of the language. How much that remark included he did not at the time comprehend, and declared, when his translation was in print, that he did not feel sure that he was able to read all of Goethe as Goethe intended it should be read, and that there were very few Germans who understood the wonderful figures and metaphors found in Goethe’s “Faust.” Being of an ambitious temperament, which would not be satisfied with any half-performed task, but which, nevertheless, aimed at the highest achievements, he conceived the idea, as early as 1850, of translating into English[310] the greatest work of Goethe. He could not at that time comprehend how vast an undertaking he had assumed. It required something more than a mere knowledge of words to be able to translate accurately and fully; and it was no light task for a person to master the common meaning of all the words and compounds which Goethe so recklessly used.

But when it became necessary not only to be able to give the meaning of each word by substituting in its stead one of another language, but also to give the sense and shades of meaning which the words in combination convey to a reader of the original, then the task became formidable. But that was not all. As Goethe, like every great genius, had many eccentricities, as he drew many of his illustrations from events in his own experience and scenes which he had visited, it was necessary to a full understanding of the great theme, to study Goethe’s characteristics, habits of thought, education, and experience.

In short, if one were to translate Goethe, he must be like Goethe in experience and mental composition. He must know what Goethe knew; must look upon man and his complicated life as Goethe looked upon it in his time and circumstances. To the work of education and self-discipline Mr. Taylor applied himself most assiduously.

Twice, when some new difficulty presented itself which he had not foreseen, he became discouraged and resolved to give up the enterprise. Once was when[311] the appearance of Rev. Charles T. Brooks’ translation seemed to forestall him in his hope for a profitable sale of the book; and once when he saw with unusual clearness the great difficulty of obtaining words in the English language which should not only express the meaning, but do so in acceptable rhyme.

But those discouraging facts were soon surmounted or forgotten in the great passion of his literary life and the study of the language, manners, and beliefs of the German people was not abandoned.

He found in the first volume many references to the superstitions of the German people, and he set about learning the history of witches, fairies, sprites, and the Devil, as known to German literature. This, in itself, is no small task. He then encountered what he thought was, perhaps, a kind of burlesque on the government and its laws, and to feel sure that it was so or was not so, he studied the history of the German principalities, especially of Weimar, where Goethe resided.

He found many illustrations from the landscapes of Italy, Switzerland, Greece and Germany, and it became necessary not only to visit those countries, but to look upon the landscapes mentioned in order to be sure of the exact meaning of the words of description as they were used by the great poet. Hence, in Spain, France, Italy, Egypt, Greece, and Germany, he sought the places mentioned by Goethe in his works, and noted the correctness or error of his reading.[312] The mountain scenes, more especially of the Hartz Mountains, and “The Brocken,” were peculiarly difficult passages in view of the possibly double meaning of many words when found in any connection, and in view of the peculiar use which Goethe so independently made of them. Hence, Mr. Taylor made frequent excursions in Europe during the last eighteen years, with the purpose in view of obtaining a more accurate knowledge of Goethe’s thoughts. Frequent references are made to customs now obsolete, to theological opinions now unknown, and words inserted long out of use or wholly made by the poet himself. All these required much study.

To know the poet necessitated a thorough insight into the history of his time, a knowledge of his companions and the circumstances under which the poem was planned and written. This led to the study of Schiller’s life, who was Goethe’s bosom friend, and to trips to the localities where Goethe resided. Thus the work opened wider and wider at each stage in his acquirements, until at last the poem he had thought to be able to read understandingly in a year, was as yet untranslated after a score of years.

He was probably assisted much by the previous translations, and had them to criticise and improve upon. But his work was higher than theirs, as he not only purposed to give the meaning and rhyme, but he intended, as far as possible, to retain the rhythmical arrangement, and secure to the English all the[313] charms of arrangement and sound of the German original.

In this work he was often interrupted by the calls of an editorial profession, and the cares of a correspondent. His greatest delays were occasioned, however, by the production of poems on other themes. He is said to have had the “Deukalion” in mind for more than fifteen years, and upon that last work of a notable character which he has completed he bestowed much careful thought. It is a poem which, like those of Shakespeare and Goethe, grows valuable in proportion to the study bestowed upon it.

He began this translation in 1850 in a vague, uncertain way, and has continued it through all those years and did not lost sight of it throughout all his various duties, cares, and diversions. Meantime, he had published the following works: “A Journey to Central Africa,” “The Lands of the Saracen,” and “Poems and Ballads,” in 1855. “Visit to India, China, and Japan,” “Poems of the Orient,” and “Poems of Home and Travel,” in 1855. “Cyclopedia of Modern Travel,” edited in 1856. “Northern Travel—Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Lapland,” 1857. “Travels in Greece and Russia,” “At Home and Abroad,” first series, in 1859. “At Home and Abroad,” second series, and “The Poet’s Journal,” in 1862. “Hannah Thurston,” a novel, in 1863. “John Godfrey’s Fortunes,” a novel, in 1864. “The Story of Kennett,” a novel, and “The Picture of Saint John,” a poem, in[314] 1866. “Colorado, a Summer Trip,” and edited a translation of the “Frithjof Saga,” from the Swedish, in 1867. “The Byways of Europe,” and the “Ballad of Abraham Lincoln,” and an edited edition of Auerbach’s “Villa on the Rhine,” in 1869. “Joseph and His Friends,” a novel, in 1870. Then appeared “Goethe’s Faust,” in 1871, followed by “The Masque of the Gods” (1872), and a collected and carefully edited edition of the “Illustrated Library of Travel, Exploration and Adventure,” and “Lars,” a poem, in 1873;—all of which were in his mind, more or less distinctly, previous to the publication of “Faust.” But “The History of Germany,” “The Boys of other Countries,” “Egypt and Iceland,” a volume of travel, “The Prophet,” and “Home Pastorals,” poems, as well as the recent poem of “Deukalion,” and “The Echo Club,” were subsequently conceived and written.

Thus, it will be seen, how full of interruptions the work of translation must have been when so many volumes, so many thousands miles of travel, so much editorial work, so many lectures, such need of money, and so much attention given to the construction of a home, all intervened to distract and discourage.

Yet, with a perseverance most laudable and remarkable, he kept ever before him Goethe and his works. Of the merits of his translation no final judgment can be given until the public have had more time to study the work, and until a greater number of scholars have compared it with the original. It has received great[315] commendation; but such a work requires age, and much thought. Its beauties lie deep, and are hidden from superficial minds, and it was Mr. Taylor’s plan to follow the translation with a companion edition of the lives of Goethe and Schiller, which would in a pleasant way serve to expound and make attractive that great poem.

That his translation is regarded by the most distinguished scholars as an excellent production and worthy of an exalted position in literature, is shown by the fact that he has been so often urged by them to go on with his purposed biography of that great poet. No sooner had Mr. Taylor allowed the fact to become known, that he was engaged on such a book, than he was the recipient of many letters from all parts of the world where English-speaking people live, expressing their satisfaction that he had undertaken it, and encouraging him in many ways. This fact, however, rather delayed than assisted the work, for the appearance of so many great writers awaiting with impatience the publication of the book, startled him and magnified the importance of his labors. He felt that the combined biography of Goethe and Schiller would be the crowning work of his life, and more than once expressed the thought that it might be his last. To supply the demand for present publications, perform the duties which devolved upon him in his high office, and keep steadily advancing with the greater work, required more strength than one frame could supply.[316] He felt the strain, and sometimes thought it best to leave everything in the line of labor, and rest. The need of such a course did not, however, seem imperative until he was too near his end to ward off the blow. Death came to him in the midst of his work, and in the most sudden manner. One day he is seen at his work; the next he is numbered among those that have lived—but are gone. His wife and daughter (Lillian), with most devoted nursing, had seen the invalid of the previous weeks reviving and gaining strength, until able again to attend to business, when, almost without warning, he sinks and dies within a few hours.

The book for reference, the packages of manuscript, the letters from admirers of Goethe and Schiller, the notes and extracts, slips and pictures, lay where he placed them, accessible to his hand; but the pen is unmoved, the author is dead, and the Lives of Goethe and Schiller are incomplete.

CHAPTER XXXII.

The news of Bayard Taylor’s death called forth universal expressions of regret. The press, secular and religious, mentioned his decease with extended editorial comment upon his useful and honorable life. Public meetings were held to pay tribute to his memory, and the Congress of the United States passed a bill making Mrs. Taylor a gift of seven thousand dollars, as a mark of the nation’s appreciation of Mr. Taylor’s services.

In Germany, memorial services were held, at which the greatest literary men of that empire made addresses, showing their appreciation of Mr. Taylor’s friendship and scholarship. But one of the most touching tributes which Germany has given to the[318] memory of the deceased poet, was uttered by the celebrated Berthold Auerbach, whose books are now found in the libraries of many different nations, and who was for many years the intimate companion of Mr. Taylor. In his address made at Mr. Taylor’s funeral in Berlin, where were gathered a large number of such men as Dr. Joseph P. Thompson, Prof. Lepsius, Paul Lindau, Julius Rodenberg, Prof. Gneist, Dr. Lowe, Count Lehndorff, and numerous government officials, he thus addressed the mourning friends:—

“Here, under flowers which have grown on German soil, rests the perishable encasing wherein for fifty-three years was enshrined the richly-endowed spirit which bore the name of Bayard Taylor. Coming races will name thee who never looked into thy kindly countenance, never grasped thy honest hand, never heard a word from thy mouth. And yet no, the breath of the lips fadeth away, but thy words, thy words of song, will endure. In exhortation to thy surviving dear ones, from the impulse of my heart as thine oldest friend in the Old World, as thou were wont to call me, and as representing German literature, I bid thee now a parting farewell. What thou hast become and art to remain in the empire of mind history will determine. To-day our hearts do quake with grief and sorrow, and yet they are exalted. Thou wert born in the fatherland of Benjamin Franklin, and like him, to thine honor, raised thyself from a state of manual labor to be an apostle of the spirit of purity and freedom, and to be a representative of thy people among an[319] alien nation. No, not in a land of strangers, for thou wert at home among us; thou hast died in the land of Goethe, to whose high spirit thou didst always with devotion turn; thou hast raised him up a monument before thine own people, and wouldst erect him yet another in presence of all men; but that design has disappeared with thee. But thou thyself hast been, and art still, one of them whose coming he announced—a disciple of the universal literature, in the free and boundless air of which the everlasting element in man, scorning the limits of nationality, mounts on bold, adventurous flights and ever on new poetic fancies sunwards soars. In thy very latest work thou didst show thou livedst in that religion which embraces in it all creeds, and in the name of no one separates one from another. Nature gifted thee with grace and strength, with a soul clear and full of chaste enjoyment, with melody and the tuneful voice to search and proclaim the workings of nature in the eternal and unexhausted region of being, as well as to sing the earthly and ever-new joys of married and filial love, of friendship, truth, and patriotism, and the ever higher ascending revelations of the history of man. Born in the New World, travelled in the Old, and oh, so soon torn from the tree of life, thou hast taught thy country the history of the German people, so that they know each other as brothers, and of this let us remain mindful. In tuneful words didst thou for thy people utter the jubilee acclaim of their anniversary. When it returns, and the husks of our souls do lie like this one here, then will the lips of millions yet unborn pronounce the name of Bayard Taylor. May thy memory be blessed.”

And how gratifying has it been to all of Mr. Taylor’s friends to hear of the memorial gathering held in his native Kennett, where young and old vied with each other to do their townsman honor. With a modesty and sincerity characteristic of the quiet community, they assembled and talked of the virtues and achievements of their deceased neighbor.

One townsman (Edwin Brosius) referred to Mr. Taylor’s life, and in his remarks spoke thus:—

“Locating in Kennett Square about the time he returned from his first visit to Europe, I remember him as a bright, blushing, diffident youth, just entering manhood; and with him I always associate that gentle and beautiful girl, with matchless eyes, who inspired many of his early lyrics, and whose death ‘filled the nest of love with snow.’ He was the pride of the community then, and as years passed on his course was silently watched with a quiet joy, like that a parent feels for a child that seems to follow instinctively the true path. His appointment as Minister to Germany created a feeling that could be silent no longer, and here in this hall we gave him the first ovation. No one thought that when we said ‘Kennett rejoices that the world acknowledges her son,’ that it would so soon be meet to say that Kennett mourns that her son is dead. Yes, mourns with a grief like that which he felt when he wrote ‘Moan, ye wild winds! around the pane.’

[321]

“The weariness that oppressed him while being fêted on every hand, which he thought was only temporary, proved to be the shadow of the coming change. A few more months and a few more warnings, and all was over.

“The strings are silent: who shall dare to wake them;

Though later deeds demand their living powers?

Silent in other lands, what hand shall make them

Leap as of old to shape the songs of ours?”

“Perhaps I have now said enough; but permit me to speak briefly of one, still mentally bright under the weight of fourscore years, the mother of Bayard Taylor, to whom we must be indebted for much of the honor her son has given us. The latent genius of the mother was more fully developed in the son, and guarded, strengthened, and encouraged by her watchful mind, he became all that she could desire. When here at school, I remember how bright I thought she was, and my admiration was not lessened when she called me one of her boys. The voices of two of her sons are now silent in the tomb. One taken when full of hope, in the bloom of youth, while defending his country’s flag. The other in the full fruitage of mature life, bearing many honors, and the pillar of the family, a loss to her which she cannot tell. We may speak or write our grief, but no human pen or tongue can express hers; words cannot tell how nearly the light of hope goes out when such treasures are taken from a mother’s sight and heart.”

Another friend (Wm. B. Preston) contributed a poem, in which two stanzas read as follows:—

“Though to the learned thy lofty works

Like mighty hosts appear;

The tale of her own neighborhood

Bids Kennett hold the dear.

And Cedarcroft! thy name will shine

Through ages long to come,

With Stratford and with Abbotsford,

The monarch minstrel’s home.”

Another neighbor (William W. Polk) gave an extended sketch of Mr. Taylor’s career, and another neighbor (Edward Swayne) contributed the second poem, opening with,—

“On the margin of the Spree

Rests his body, is it he?

Is it all? or only part?

Questions still my doubting heart.

Traveller! in what realm, elate,

Dost thou read the book of fate?

Poet! in what finer mood

Singest thou infinitude?

Dost thou know the path we tend?

The beginning and the end?

Backward through the twilight past

What evolved us from the vast?

Forward, to what things afar,

We shall mount from star to star?

Canst thou see beyond the brink

What we faintly dare to think?

Though our thoughts are wrung with pain

Yet we question but in vain.

Still no sound the silence breaks,

Not to us the dead awakes.”

Numerous friends addressed the gathering; there were hymns, quotations, and letters from others, and the whole people exhibited an interest in honoring his memory.

At Boston, Mass., there was held, shortly after Mr. Taylor’s death, one of the most notable gatherings ever seen in America, so spontaneous and universal was the desire to do honor to their deceased countryman. The gathering was in Tremont Temple, and was under the auspices of a literary association known as “The Boston Young Men’s Congress.” The young men studiously avoided any arrangement or announcement which would give the gathering any appearance of display or ceremony, and the friends of Mr. Taylor in that city came together in such numbers, that long before the hour appointed for the opening of the meeting, that great hall was crowded in every part, while immense crowds so choked the entrances that the police were obliged to close the gates and shut out the throng. The great majority of the audience consisted of literary persons and of officials of the State and nation. Russell H. Conwell presided, and opened the exercises by giving a brief sketch of Mr. Taylor’s early life, after which there followed other informal addresses by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes; Richard Frothingham, the historian; A. B. Alcott, the author; J. Boyle O’Reilly, the poet; Hon. J. B. D. Cogswell,[324] the president of the Massachusetts Senate; Curtis Guild, the author; Dr. William M. Cornell, and others. Letters were read from James T. Fields, George William Curtis, W. D. Howells, E. P. Whipple, John G. Whittier, T. B. Aldrich, and regrets for their inability to be present expressed by President Rutherford B. Hayes, Hon. Charles Devens, ex-Governor Henry Howard, of Rhode Island, General B. F. Butler, Richard H. Dana, Sr., W. A. Simmons, W. F. Warren, D. D., Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, Governor Thomas Talbot, of Massachusetts, and many other distinguished men.

The crowning feature of the evening’s exercises consisted in the reading of Longfellow’s poem, “Bayard Taylor,” by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. The audience, hushed into almost breathless silence, hung upon Dr. Holmes’s introductory remarks, with a fascination seldom seen, and when that sweet poem was reached, and its reading began, tears were seen in many eyes, so pathetic and solemn was the impression.

The grand chorus of the Boston Mendelssohn Choral Union, under the direction of Prof. Stephen A. Emery, of the New England Conservatory of Music, sang in a most artistic and impressive manner some of those charming old German chorals which Mr. Taylor loved so much, and pleased the audience much with its rendition of “Oh, for the wings of a Dove,” with Mr. Wilkie and Miss Fisher as soloists.

Nothing can show the regard in which Mr. Taylor was held, better than the contributions to that informal gathering, and we cannot do less than preserve some of them for the benefit of posterity, especially as it was that gathering which suggested this book.

“I can hardly ask your attention to the lines which Mr. Longfellow has written, and done me the honor of asking me to read, without a few words of introduction. The poem should have flowed from his own lips in those winning accents too rarely heard in any assembly, and never forgotten by those who have listened to him. But its tenderness and sweetness are such that no imperfection of utterance can quite spoil its harmonies. There are tones in the contralto of our beloved poet’s melodious song that were born with it, and must die with it when its music is silenced.

“A tribute from such a singer would honor the obsequies of the proudest sovereign, would add freshness to the laurels of the mightiest conqueror. But he who this evening has this tribute laid upon his hearse, wore no crown save that which the sisterhood of the Muses wove for him. His victories were all peaceful ones, and there has been no heartache after any of them. His life was a journey through many lands of men, through many realms of knowledge. He left his humble door in boyhood, poor, untrained, unknown, unheralded, unattended. He found himself, once at least, as I well remember his telling me, hungry and well-nigh penniless in the streets of an European city, feasting[326] his eyes at a baker’s window and tightening his girdle in place of a repast. Once more he left his native land, now in the strength of manhood, known and honored throughout the world of letters, the sovereignty of the nation investing him with its mantle of dignity, the laws of civilization surrounding him with the halo of their inviolable sanctity,—the boy who went forth to view the world afoot, now on equal footing with, the potentates and princes who, by right of birth or by the might of intellect, swayed the destinies of great empires.

“He returns to us no more as we remember him, but his career, his example, the truly American story of a grand, cheerful, active, self-developing, self-sustaining life, remains as an enduring inheritance for all coming generations.”

“Bayard Taylor.

“Dead he lay among his books!

The peace of God was in his looks.

As the statues [2] in the gloom,

Watch o’er Maximilian’s tomb,

So those volumes from their shelves

Watched him, silent as themselves.

Ah! his hand will never more

Turn their storied pages o’er;

Never more his lips repeat

Songs of theirs, however sweet.

[327]

Let the lifeless body rest!

He is gone who was its guest.

Gone as travellers haste to leave

An inn, nor tarry until eve.

Traveller! in what realms afar,

In what planet, in what star,

In what vast aerial space,

Shines the light upon thy face?

In what gardens of delight

Rest thy weary feet to-night?

Poet! thou whose latest verse

Was a garland on thy hearse,

Thou hast sung with organ tone

In Deukalion’s life thine own.

On the ruins of the Past

Blooms the perfect flower, at last.

Friend! but yesterday the bells

Rang for thee their loud farewells;

And to-day they toll for thee,

Lying dead beyond the sea;

Lying dead among thy books;

The peace of God in all thy looks.”

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

‘Mr. President:—As you have introduced me as ‘The Historian of Pennsylvania,’ or, ‘Penn’s Woods,’ as you know the term means, you will allow me to say something of that good old noble Commonwealth which gave birth to Bayard Taylor, whose recent and sudden demise has called us together. As he was a worthy son of that Quaker land, something about it may be expected of their historian. I know the Quakers have never had much love for Boston, and I do not think they are to blame for it either; for if you had treated me as they were treated in this vicinity, with all the grace given me I don’t think my love for you would superabound. But we will not revive, on this solemn occasion, the bigotry and illiberality of the past, especially as this vast audience, assembled in this old Pilgrim city to honor the memory of a gifted son of Quakerdom, looks very much like ‘bringing forth fruits meet for repentance’ of those deeds of yore.

“Grand old Pennsylvania! the keystone of the nation; for you all know the old proverb, ‘As goes Pennsylvania, so goes the Union,—I honor thy name! Thy sons are patriots! The Indian sachem said to the first ‘pale faces’ who came here (understand, I speak as a Pennsylvanian, in accordance with my introduction), ‘This is our ground. We came up right out of this ground, and it is our ground. You came up out of ground away beyond the big waters, and that’s your ground.’

“Bayard Taylor, the poet, the traveller, the biographer, the botanist, the patriot, the plenipotentiary, whom we so justly mourn, came up out of this land. He was a true son[329] of our soil, which has always produced patriots. Think you President Hayes did not know this when he appointed him Minister to that grand old nation, Germany,—the land of Emperor William, and Minister Bismarck,—the most learned in the world? The President did honor to himself by this appointment, and Bayard Taylor did honor to our nation, and is mourned by the whole world.”

“Dear Sir:—Will you have the kindness to express to the committee of arrangements my deep regret at not being able to attend the meeting at Tremont Temple in honor of Bayard Taylor’s memory. I sail from New York for Europe on the 8th instant. I also regret that the pressure of private matters will not allow me to prepare a tribute to my old friend. You will understand how nearly his death touches me, when I say that it breaks an unclouded intimacy of twenty-four years. If it should be in order, perhaps some one will read the poem which I printed in the New York ‘Tribune’ on Christmas morning. I enclose a copy.

“Yours, very respectfully,

“Thomas Bailey Aldrich.”

“In other years—lost youth’s enchanted years

Seen now and evermore, through blinding tears

And empty longing for what may not be

[330]—

The Desert gave him back to us; the Sea

Yielded him up; the icy Northland strand

Lured him not long, nor that soft German air

He loved could keep him. Ever his own land

Fettered his heart and brought him back again.

What sounds are those of farewell and despair

Blown by the winds across the wintry main?

What unknown way is this that he has gone,

Our Bayard, in such silence, and alone?

What new, strange guest has tempted him once more

To leave us? Vainly standing by the shore

We strain our eyes. But patience ... when the soft

Spring gales are blowing over Cedarcroft,

Whitening the hawthorn; when violets bloom

Among the Brandywine, and overhead

The sky is blue as Italy’s—he will come;

Ay, he will come. I cannot make him dead.”

“Dear Friend:—I am not able to attend the memorial meeting in Tremont Temple on the 10th instant, but my heart responds to any testimonial appreciative of the intellectual achievements and the noble and manly life of Bayard Taylor. More than thirty years have intervened between my first meeting him in the fresh bloom of his youth and hope and honorable ambition, and my last parting with him under the elms of Boston Common after our visit to Richard H. Dana, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of that honored father of American poetry, still living to lament the death of his younger disciple and friend. How much he has accomplished in these years! The most industrious of men, slowly, patiently, under many disadvantages, he built up his splendid reputation. Traveller, editor, novelist, translator,[331] diplomatist, and through all and above all poet, what he was he owed wholly to himself. His native honesty was satisfied with no half tasks. He finished as he went, and always said and did his best.

“It is perhaps too early to assign him his place in American literature. His picturesque books of travel, his Oriental lyrics, his Pennsylvanian idyls, his Centennial ode, the pastoral beauty and Christian sweetness of ‘Lars,’ and the high arguments and rhythmic marvel of ‘Deukalion,’ are sureties of the permanence of his reputation. But at this moment my thoughts dwell rather upon the man than author. The calamity of his death, felt in both hemispheres, is to me and to all who intimately knew and loved him, a heavy personal loss. Under the shadow of this bereavement, in the inner circle of mourning, we sorrow most of all that we shall see his face no more, and long for ‘the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still.’

“Thy friend,

“John G. Whittier.”

“Dear Sir:—I very much regret that I shall not be able to accept the invitation of the Young Men’s Congress for Friday evening of next week. At the same time I wish in heartiest sympathy to unite with them in honoring the memory of Bayard Taylor, whom I not only valued as a man of the highest intellectual qualities, but in whose loss I have to lament a dear friend. I beg you to convey to the committee of arrangements my deep sense of honor done me.

“Very truly yours,

“W. D. Howells.”

“My Dear Sir:—An illness which confines me to the house will prevent my being present at the meeting of the 19th instant. I regret the circumstance very deeply, as it pains me to be absent on any occasion in which the memory of Bayard Taylor is to be honored.

“Very sincerely yours,

“E. P. Whipple.”

“Gentlemen of the Committee of the Taylor Memorial:—An imperative duty calls me to a distant county of the State on the evening set apart for the meeting at Tremont Temple. But even if I were not obliged to be absent from our city on that night, I doubt if I should have the courage to be present and trust my voice with any words fitting to such an occasion. The departure of my dear Bayard Taylor is so recent, his loss so unexpected, that my lips could only falter out a few broken expressions of individual sorrow, and I should be wholly incapable of any adequate public tribute to his memory. So many years of exceptional and near relationship with him—a brotherly intercourse, unclouded from early manhood onward through his life—would incapacitate me from taking part before an audience assembled to honor his genius and his virtues, and I should probably be able only to stammer through tears an apology for my inability to speak his praises. These tender words by Halleck better convey my meaning:—

‘While memory bids me weep thee,

Nor thoughts nor words are free,

The grief is fixed too deeply

That mourns a man like thee.’

“James T. Fields.”

“Dear Sir:—I am very sorry that my engagements compel me to decline your invitation to attend the meeting in memory of Bayard Taylor. But no one will say any word of praise of his manly and generous character, or of gratitude for his noble example of faithful industry, to which my heart will not respond. I knew him well for nearly thirty years, and when I said good-by to him last May, as he departed, amid universal applause and satisfaction, upon a mission to Germany, he was as frank and simple and earnest as the youth whom I remember long ago. He died in the fulness of his activity and hope; but the death of a man so true and upright leaves us a sorrow wholly unmixed with the wish that his life might have been different, or with regret that it was only a promise. Like the knight-at-arms, whose name he bore, he was a gentle knight of letters, without fear and without reproach, and by those of us who personally knew him well he will be long and tenderly remembered.

“Truly yours,

“George William Curtis.”

“Dear Sir:—Nothing but an imperative engagement elsewhere could keep me from uniting with those friends of my friend—Bayard Taylor—who propose next Friday, in Boston, to commemorate his life and virtues. From our professional association, I could not but know him intimately, and he was one of the few men of distinction with whom every added year of intimacy continued to brighten, not merely your affection, but also your respect. The essential characteristic alike of his life, and his work, was its inherent honesty. He described what he saw; he wrote what he thought; he meant friendship if he gave you his[334] hand. I never knew him to shrink from expressing an opinion, merely because it was unpopular; and, I am sure, he never sought a man merely because the man was powerful. He had an honest pride in what he had done,—a pride that made him eager to share his good fame and fortune with his earliest and humblest friends. He had the genius of hard work. He did many things; he came to do most of them extremely well, and not a few of them easily; but he never undertook any task, however familiar, or however humble, without doing his best. Those who did not know him, have sometimes described him as more German than American; but if these be German qualities, we may well be eager to see them naturalized.

“Quick to the praise of his old Quaker friends, nothing touched him more than the praise of Boston; and to those that prize his memory, nothing now can be more grateful than the sympathetic appreciation of your meeting.

“I am, very respectfully,

“Whitelaw Reid.”

“My Dear Conwell:—I acknowledge the courtesy of your invitation to do myself the honor to take part in honoring my deceased friend,—the late Minister at Berlin.

“I am grieved beyond expression that the necessities of public duty require my leaving so early for Washington, that, in making my arrangements, it is impossible for me to be in town overnight.

“Independent of the public relations of duty, it is well to pause to do honor to one who has so faithfully and well served his country, and his kind. I have the deepest sensibilities[335] of remembrance of Bayard Taylor’s personal kindness to me on many occasions, and especially as his guest, to incite me to be present.

“I am glad that Massachusetts, in the meeting you assemble, will show her appreciation of his character and services, and regret, with more than ordinary emotion, that I am prevented from taking part in it.

“Please represent me as wishing to say and do all that I might in that behalf, and believe me,

“Yours truly,

“Benj. F. Butler.”

Mr. Taylor had been a great favorite at the Century Club, in New York, and a frequent visitor at the Lotus Club of the same city. He was usually accompanied by some one or two of his intimate friends, and at the time Mr. Taylor’s death was announced, several of them who had been known to be his close companions were requested to give to the “Tribune” letters of “reminiscences” for publication. Among these thus hastily collected tributes were several of those which follow. Mr. Richard H. Stoddard said:—

“I have known Mr. Bayard Taylor so long that I hardly know when our acquaintance began. It was at least thirty years ago, during his first year’s residence in New York, after his tour in Europe and the publication of his ‘Views Afoot.’ The occasion of our acquaintance was a magazine which had[336] lately been started here, and which was edited by Mrs. Caroline M. Kirkland, one of my earliest and best literary friends. I had contributed to this periodical, which was entitled ‘The Union Magazine,’ and on her departure for Europe she recommended me to call upon her young friend, Mr. Taylor, who was to take care of it for her during her absence. She was sure I would like him, for we were Arcades ambo. I called upon him, and liked him, as she had foreseen I would. I found him in the editorial room of the ‘Tribune,’ a dingy, dusty, comfortless den on the same floor with the composing-room, if I remember rightly. He was seated on the hither side of an old ink-stained desk, which was surrounded by a railing, over which newspapers were flung, and was writing rapidly. He looked up when I addressed him and stated my errand—a bright, joyous, handsome man of twenty-five, with a world of animation in his sparkling dark eyes. I have no recollection of what passed between us, except that the poem which was in his hands was accepted, and that we had taken a fancy to each other. I went away feeling happy, for I felt that I had made a friend, and one who could sympathize with me. There were two bonds between us—love of verse, and equality of years. He was the first man of letters who had treated me like one of the craft, and I was grateful to him, as I should have been, for I was weary of the intellectual snobbery I had undergone from others.

“It was not long before we were what Burns calls ‘bosom cronies.’ We used, I remember, to spend our Saturday evenings together, generally at his rooms, which were within[337] a stone’s throw of the ‘Tribune’ office, at a boardinghouse in Warren Street, not far from Broadway. He lived in a sky parlor, which is present before me now, as if I had seen it but an hour ago. I remember just where his table stood, and the little desk upon which he afterward wrote so many books, and upon which he was then writing so many charming poems. I took up the collected edition of his poetical works this afternoon in my library, and turning over the leaves sorrowfully, felt the weight of thirty years roll from me—not lightly, as it would have done a few weeks ago, but with a pain for which I have no words. They were all there, the poems which I remembered so well—‘Ariel in the Cloven Pine’ (which I read in MS. before it saw the light of print), ‘The Metempsychosis of the Pine,’ ‘Mon-da-min’ (which was written years before the ‘Song of Hiawatha’), ‘Kubleh,’and, saddest of all, the solemn dirge beginning ‘Moan, ye wild winds! around the pane.” As I read, I saw the eager face, the glowing eyes, the kindly smile of the enthusiastic young poet, whom the world preferred to consider as a traveller merely, and who knew so many things of which I was profoundly ignorant. My nature is not a reverent one, I fear, but I looked up to Bayard Taylor, and admired his beautiful genius. We read and criticised each other’s verse a good deal too lightly and generously, I have since thought, and talked of the poets whom we were studying. It was his fancy that there was something in his genius which was allied to that of Shelley, and I hoped that I might claim some relationship with Keats, enough at least to make me a ‘poor relation.’ We talked[338] long and late; we smoked mild cigars; and, once in a while when our exchequers were replenished, we indulged in the sweet luxury of stewed oysters, over which we had more talk, of present plans and future renown. I was, I believe, Bayard Taylor’s most intimate friend at this time, and the one with whom he most consorted, though he had, of course, a large literary acquaintance among the young writers of the period, whose name was Legion, and whose works are now forgotten. I have spent many happy nights with my dead friend, but none which were so happy as those. I looked forward to them as young men look forward to holidays which they have planned. I look back upon them as old men look back to their past delights, with pity and regret.

“The world, as I have said, considered Bayard Taylor as a traveller, and it was his pleasure, as well as his profit, during the first years of our friendship, to travel largely in California, in Egypt, in Japan, and elsewhere in the Old World. I read his letters of travel as they appeared in the ‘Tribune,’ and I read these letters again which he collected thus in books after his return. I saw that they were good of their kind; I felt that his prose was admirable for its simplicity and correctness; but, with a waywardness which I could not help, I slighted them for his poetry. I thought then, and think still, that his ‘California Ballads’ and ‘Poems of Travel’ are masterly examples of spirited, picturesque writing, and I am sure that his ‘Poems of the Orient’ are superior to anything of the kind in the English language. They have a local color which is absent from[339] ‘Lalla Rookh.’ The ‘Bedouin Song,’ for instance, is instinct with the fiery, passionate life of the East, and is a worthy companion-piece to Shelley’s ‘Lines to an Indian Air.’ The ‘Poems of the Orient’ were dedicated to me, I shall always be happy to remember, in a poetical ‘Epistle from Tmolus.’

“Bayard Taylor had a sunny nature, which delighted in simple pleasures, and he had the happy art of putting trouble away from him. One trouble, however, he could not put away, as those who are familiar with his life and poems are aware. I have spoken of one of his early poems (‘Moan, ye wild winds! around the pane’), which embodied the first great sorrow of his young manhood. It was written after the death of his first wife, whose memory it embalms, and whose tender presence haunted him later in ‘The Mystery’ and ‘The Phantom.’ Among the literary acquaintances of Bayard Taylor and myself, I must not forget to mention the late Fitz James O’Brien, whose promise was greater than his performance, and who, clever as he was in prose, was at his best a graceful poet. Taylor and O’Brien were in the habit of meeting in my rooms at night, about twenty-five years ago, and of fighting triangular poetical duels. We used to sit at the same table, with the names of poetical subjects on slips of paper, and drawing out one at random, see which of us would soonest write a poem upon it. This practice of ours, which is well enough as practice merely, was the origin of Bayard Taylor’s ‘Echo Club.’

“Always a charming companion, Bayard Taylor was[340] delightful in his own home at Cedarcroft. I remember visiting him there when he gave his ‘house-warming,’ and the merriment we had over a play which we wrote together, speech by speech, and scene by scene, and which we performed to the great delectation of his friends and neighbors. Many of the latter had never seen a theatrical performance before, and, I dare say, have never seen one since. Our play was a great success, and ought to have been, for there was not a word in it which had not done duty a thousand times before! We called it ‘Love in a Hotel.’ ‘Miller Redivivus’ would have answered just as well, if not better.

“The recollections of thirty years cannot be recalled at will, and seldom while those who shared them with us are overshadowed by death.” I remember merry days and nights without number, and I remember sorrows which are better forgotten. One of my sorrows was deeply felt by Bayard Taylor, who, fresh from the reading of the second part of ‘Faust,’ saw in my loss a vision of Goethe’s ‘Euphorion.’

“The last time, but one, when I saw my friend alone was three or four nights before his departure for Berlin. It was one night at my own house, at a little gathering to which I had invited our common friends, comrades of ten and twenty years’ standing, poets, artists, and good fellows of both sexes. It was notable on one account, for our great poet Bryant came thither to do honor to his younger brother, Bayard Taylor. I cannot say that it was a happy night, for it was to be followed by an absence which was close at hand,—an absence which was to endure forever. Before two months had passed, the Nestor of our poets was[341] gathered to his fathers in the fullness of his renown. His sons bewailed their father; my good friend Stedman, in a noble poem in the ‘Atlantic Monthly,’ and Bayard Taylor in a solemn ‘Epicedium’ in ‘Scribner’s Monthly.’ And now Bayard Taylor is gone!

“‘Insatiate archer, could not one suffice?’ The world of American letters has lost a poet in Bayard Taylor; but we who knew and loved him—have lost a friend.

“R. H. Stoddard.”

“New York, Dec. 19, 1878.”

Mr. Edmund C. Stedman, the poet, who enjoyed a very close intimacy with Mr. Taylor, spoke of him to the editor as follows:—

“The causes which led to his death at this time, date back several years. When he returned from Europe then, he found his real estate and personal property largely depreciated and encumbered, and though near the age of fifty, he again found himself forced to tolerable hard work to support his family and position. It was this hard work, coupled with his resolute purpose, however other work might engross him, to keep up his more serious contributions to permanent literature, that ultimately led to his death. He took great pride in his home and broad acres, at Kennett Square, Penn., his native place. He designed his own house, ‘Cedarcroft,’ and spent a great deal of money in its erection, and that, with the two hundred acres of land, which he owned and had greatly improved, was a source of expense rather than income to him. He had a handsome competence when[342] he went abroad, all of which he earned as a journalist, author, and lecturer, never having earned any money except by his pen. He decided to maintain his property in Kennett Square, and he set to work immediately to pay off the debt. During the last four years, he has accomplished this, his income amounting to from $12,000 to $18,000 a year; but he obtained it by very hard work. In fact, he had worked harder and accomplished more in that time than perhaps any other living literary man. He lectured each winter, in all sorts of weather, and in different parts of the country. He contributed largely to magazines and reviews, and never more brilliantly, besides doing a great amount of regular work for the ‘Tribune.’ He came from a long-lived family, and his strength was very great, but he undertook too much. He did the work of two able-bodied men every day, and his health gave way under the great strain on one or two occasions. He was compelled to go to the White Sulphur Springs, and other places for recuperation; but he forced himself to work again before he had fully recovered. During this time he wrote his last and most important poem, ‘Prince Deukalion.’ It was a source of great trial to himself, and of regret to his friends, that he was unable to go on with his ‘Life of Goethe,’ for which he had secured material during his last sojourn in Germany. The great trouble with him was his inability, owing to his excessive labors, to take sufficient social recreation. His enemies, very few in number, have falsely attempted to make a point against him on this account, charging him with excessive beer-drinking. It was his want of recreation and rest that killed him. He was forced to take some stimulus to support himself under exhausting labor; but he was not an excessive beer-drinker[343] as he has been charged, though what he did take may have helped to develop his disease.

“No man in the country could do so much journalistic work, and do it so well in a given time, as could Mr. Taylor. He was remarkable in brilliant off-hand feats of literary criticism. As an illustration, I might mention that about a year ago two large octavo volumes, containing poems by Victor Hugo, in the French, arrived by steamer, and were placed in Mr. Taylor’s hands on Thursday evening. For some reason it was desirable that the criticism should appear in the ‘Tribune’ of the following Saturday, and, of course, the copy had to be in the printers’ hands early on Friday night. Mr. Taylor’s health was bad at the time, and he also had in the meantime to deliver a lecture in Brooklyn, and another in New York. He finished his review in time on Friday night, and it appeared in the ‘Tribune’ the following morning, covering more than two-thirds of a page. It was equal to any of his literary criticisms, and surpassed any analysis of Hugo’s genius that I have ever seen. One remarkable feature of the review was over a column of translation into English poetry from the original, including several lyrics and idyls so beautifully done that they seemed like original poems in the English.

“Mr. Taylor was a man of wide and thorough learning, and was a much more exact scholar than would be supposed, considering that he was never at college, and spent a great deal of time in travel and observation. He had a smattering of all languages. He was familiar with Latin and Greek, spoke French well, and German like a native; he also conversed in Russian, Norse, Arabic, Italian, and knew something of modern Greek. His knowledge of[344] Greek was increased by his classical feeling, which, as with Keats, amounted almost to a passion. He was a good botanist, and somewhat of a geologist, and was an established authority on geographical questions. He was greatly interested in all scientific studies.

“As a man he was a peer among his fellows. He was the most simple, generous-hearted man of letters I ever knew. He was the first literary man I met in New York, my acquaintance dating from the time he came and took me by the hand in 1860, after the publication of one of my articles. He was never so happy as when surrounded by his friends in his own house. He had unbounded hospitality, and made his house the centre of literary life in the city. New York will greatly miss him, and just such a leader was needed to give encouragement to our literary life. He was accused sometimes of egotism; but he was not egotistical in the proper sense of the term. He was frank and out-spoken, and showed his feelings plainly, which gave rise to that charge. He always denounced shams and humbugs; but I do not believe he ever did a mean act, and he never grew angry except on account of the meanness of others.

“His private letters, of which I had a great number, were far more delightful than his published ones. He was very careful in his published letters not to say anything that might wound the feelings of distinguished persons from whom he received hospitality abroad. His private letters are full of the most interesting anecdotes and conversations with leading authors and magnates of other lands, and are charming in their clearness and esprit. His faults, and we all have them, were rather of a lovable nature. He cared most for his reputation as a poet, and his books on travel and novels were a secondary matter with him.

[345]

“Mr. Taylor did not seek the appointment as Minister to Germany, but other positions were tendered him which he declined, and this was offered rather in obedience to popular demand. Mr. Taylor, Mr. Boker, and Mr. Stoddard started together in literary life thirty years ago, and they have always worked together, and have been firm friends. It was a rather curious coincidence that Mr. Boker should follow as Minister Mr. Taylor as Charge d’Affairs in Russia, and that just as Boker returned from Russia, Mr. Taylor should be sent as Minister to Germany.”

“I first knew Mr. Taylor nearly twenty years ago, and my acquaintance with him has always been of the pleasantest kind. I shall never forget a visit that I made to his home at Kennett Square, in 1861, in company with a brother artist. Much of our conversation was on art subjects, and in the evening Mr. Taylor read to me with great gusto some poems written by an extravagant Southern writer. He read the poems in a manner that showed his keen appreciation of ’ the comic element, and kept us laughing at the passages which the author had intended to be most dramatic. Mr. Taylor was a most genial host, and knew how to keep a room full of persons in the happiest mood. His speeches and his manner at such times cannot be described.

“In art matters Mr. Taylor was thoroughly at home. He could not only write a good criticism of a painting, but he was also proficient in the use of brush and pencil. He began sketching when he was a boy, and he executed many[346] paintings in water-colors. He was made one of the members of the Water-Color Society soon after the society was started. Several of his works were shown at the annual exhibitions of the society, and were much admired. I met Mr. Taylor by appointment at Florence, Italy, in the spring of 1873, and visited with him for a short time in that city. We had talked of making a journey to Egypt together. I was to do some sketching there, while he was to glean materials for a book. Ill-health prevented me from making the proposed journey at that time, and I left him in Florence. He there occupied the rooms where Mrs. Browning had lived.

“In later years I had not seen so much of Mr. Taylor as I had wished. I remember the brilliant part he played in the Twelfth Night entertainment of the Century Club last winter, when he put on a high conical cap and marched about the room beating a large drum. As on many other occasions, his wit was displayed in comical speeches and retorts that kept his listeners laughing by the hour. I saw him for the last time at the house of a friend, when he spoke earnestly of the many happy associations he was about to leave. His heart was in this country, however much his interests might lie abroad.”

“Everybody in the office knew how high Mr. Taylor stood in the estimation of Mr. Greeley. A man who had[347] worked his way up; who, beginning as a printer, had come to be an admired writer, who was ambitious of excellence, and not afraid of toil to attain it, Mr. Greeley was naturally fond of. So, when the monument of the great journalist was to be dedicated, Mr. Taylor was properly selected to make one of the principal addresses on the occasion. How good that address was, how well conceived and arranged and delivered, need not be said to those who had the satisfaction of hearing it. It was indeed an impressive occasion when, standing above the tomb of his old master, surrounded by those to whom that noble man was dear, with the liberal sky stretched over the earnest speaker, and the great, busy city in the distance, Mr. Taylor, in manly words and sonorous voice, paid those glowing tributes to which all our hearts responded. Somebody now must speak for him; but his memory will lack no eulogist. There is enough to say of such a vigorous and wise career; something, too, there is, alas! which must be left unsaid. Of any of us who remain, had our fate been his, he would have spoken kind and generous words; nor should he go to his grave ‘without the meed of one melodious tear.’

“After many years had gone by, Mr. Taylor came back to do regular daily work in the ‘Tribune’ office, and this he continued until his departure for Germany. I was near him, and, if there were any need of it, I could speak again of his unflagging industry, and of his excellent qualities as a journalist. He had the faculty which every newspaper writer should possess, of writing fairly well upon any topic confided to him. Of course his special skill was displayed[348] in literary labor; but when he saw fit to write upon what may be called secular themes, he did so in an able and judicious way. He was thoroughly kind and obliging, and always willing to lend his help, or to give his advice when it was asked for, as it often was. Somehow, I cannot get away from the impression of his untiring assiduity. He seemed to have always a great variety of work in hand—work at home and in the office—as if he had caught something of the power of toiling from that great German upon whose biography he was then engaged. If he was somewhat proud of his accomplishments—thinking over the matter more, I see that he had a right to be—he had done much, and he had done it well, and he was entitled to the indulgence of some complacency.

“When the rumor came that Mr. Taylor was to be taken away from us for a time and advanced to high diplomatic honors, I think that we were all as proud of it as he was, and felt it to be a recognition, not perhaps made too soon, of the importance of journalism. It was something to send forth from among ourselves an Ambassador to the German Empire, and we were personally grateful to the powers at Washington, though we thought them also the obliged party. In our own way, and in our own place, and with a small token of our good-will, we bade Mr. Taylor farewell on that April afternoon, and spoke jestingly of the time when, his court-dress put off, we should welcome him back to his old desk. There came a statelier leave-taking afterward, when so many of the best and most distinguished of our citizens met to take leave of him in a more formal manner; but I[349] think that he prized our little demonstration quite as highly, and thought of it afterward on the sea and in foreign lands quite as often.

“A man must be judged by what is best in him, by what he has really done, and not by the accidents of his character. Few Americans have written more, and more variously, than Mr. Taylor, and few have written better. Those of us who know how he owed nothing to chance, how methodical and painstaking he was, how he conquered difficulties which would have dismayed a weaker man, are in a position to judge of his merits, and to accord to him words of praise, little as he needs them, which have a specific meaning.”

James T. Fields, in the tributes published in the “Tribune,” gave this sketch of the acquaintance and friendship existing between Mr. Taylor and himself:—

“The death of a man like Bayard Taylor, awakens universal sorrow. Throughout the land of his birth a tearful grief has overspread the nation, and he is mourned everywhere, far and wide, in America. There never lived a public man of greater bonhomie, or of a franker disposition. He had many honors to bear, but he bore them meekly, and like an unspoiled child. Cynicism and vulgar egotism were strangers to his truthful nature; there were no jarring chords either in his understanding or his heart, and so he became his country’s favorite, as well as her pride.

“Thirty-two years ago, on a bright spring morning, a[350] young man of twenty-three held out his hand to me, and introduced himself as Bayard Taylor. We had corresponded at intervals since his first little volume was published in 1844, but we had never met until then. He had come to Boston, rather unexpectedly, he said, to see Longfellow, and Holmes, and Whipple, and some others, who had expressed an interest in his ‘Views Afoot,’ then recently printed in book-form. No one could possibly look upon the manly young fellow at that time without loving him. He was tall and slight, with the bloom of youth mantling a face full of eager, joyous expectation. Health of that buoyant nature which betokens delight in existence, was visible in every feature of the youthful traveller.

‘The fresh air lodged within his cheek

As light within a cloud.’

“We all flocked about him like a swarm of brothers, heartily welcoming him to Boston. When we told him how charmed we all were with his travels, he blushed like a girl, and tears filled his sensitive eyes. ‘It is one of the most absorbingly interesting books I ever read!’ cried one of our number, heightening the remark with an expletive savoring more of strength that of early piety. Taylor looked up, full of happiness at the opinion so earnestly expressed, and asked, with that simple naivete which always belonged to his character, ‘Do you really think so? Well, I am so glad.’

“Then we began to lay out plans for a week’s holiday with him; to-morrow we would go to such a place down the harbor; next day to another point of interest; after that we[351] would all assemble at a supper party in his honor, at Parker’s (at that time a subterranean eating-house in Court Street), and following that festivity we would take him to see old Booth in Richard. We went on filling up the seven days with our designs upon him, when he protested, with an explosive shout of laughter, that he must be back again in New York the next day. Then we showered warm exhortations upon him to postpone his exit, but he assured us that go back he must, for he had promised to do so. Well, then, if that were the case, and we saw by his countenance that he meant what he said, we must adjourn at once to ‘Webster’s,’ a famous beefsteak house in those ancient days, and, as Whipple facetiously remarked, quoting the old ballad:

‘Put a steak in his inside

Where the four cross-roads did meet.’

“So thitherward we rollicked along into Washington Street, and performed that pleasant duty, Taylor all the while brimming over with radiant spirits, his young heart already illumined with the delight of recognition and praise.

“In the afternoon we handed him over to Longfellow, whom he was anxious to meet, and who gave him such a welcome as he never forgot. In one of the last conversations I had with Taylor, a few weeks before he sailed for the Embassy, he said, with deep feeling: ‘From the first, Longfellow has been to me the truest and most affectionate friend that ever man had. He always gives me courage to go on, and never fails to lift me forward into hopeful regions whenever I meet him. He is the dearest soul in the world, and my love for him is unbounded.’

[352]

“Whittier, Holmes, Emerson, Hawthorne, among many others in New England, always rejoiced to see Taylor’s welcome face returning to us. Whenever he came to lecture in Boston or Cambridge, it was the signal for happy dinners and merry meetings at each other’s houses. His fiftieth birthday occurring during one of these visits to Boston, was celebrated by an informal dinner in my own house, at which Longfellow proposed his health, and Holmes garlanded him with pleasurable words of friendship and praise.

“When Taylor came here to give his lectures on German literature, at the ‘Lowell Institute,’ the crowd was so great that hundreds were unable to gain admittance. Those masterly delineations of the genius and character of Goethe, Schiller, Klopstock, Lessing, and other famous men of Germany, will long be remembered here, and we were all looking forward to no remote period when we should again hear his voice on kindred topics in the same place. No discourses have ever been listened to in Boston with more enthusiasm, or have been oftener referred to with delight, since they were delivered. Bayard Taylor was not only honored and respected here for his genius,—he was everywhere beloved. His death saddens our city, and is the absorbing topic in every circle.”

Mr. Taylor’s body arrived in New York on the thirteenth day of March, about three months after his death, and was received with imposing ceremonies of respect. Committees from distinguished citizens and prominent associations received the remains at the steamship[353] wharf and a large procession followed the elegant funeral-car to the City Hall. The coffin was placed in the Governor’s room in the City Hall, where an address was delivered by the Hon. Algernon S. Sullivan. Delegations were present from the Grand Army of the Republic; from the Delta Kappa Epsilon societies; the German singing societies; from the State Legislature; the National Congress, and hundreds of men and women distinguished more or less in literary and official life. Salutes were fired from the fort, dirges were sung by German associations, flags were placed at half-mast, and the immense crowd of people seeking admittance to City Hall, showed the esteem in which the distinguished minister was held.

The body lay in state at the City Hall, with a guard from the Grand Army of the Republic, until noon of the 14th, when the body was removed, amid touching and imposing ceremonies, to the railway train which conveyed it to Kennett Square.

There have been but few incidents of American life more pathetic and remarkable than the spontaneous exhibition of love and admiration by the people of Mr. Taylor’s native town, when his body was taken there for burial. The silent and uncovered crowds, the tears, the regrets, the stories of his kindness, the honest acts of deference, the noble reception of any one who had been his friend, all served to make up a most unusual tribute to the memory of a great man. In many places the funeral of Mr. Taylor had not[354] attracted the attention which his friends have felt was due to his memory. But at his old home, among his own kin, in the circle of those who knew him best, old and young came forth to do him honor. Aged men and women, whose white hairs floated in the chilly breezes, and young children, whose hats and bonnets were held so modestly behind them, bowed their heads as the sombre procession passed them.

The services at Cedarcroft on the 15th were short and simple, being conducted by the Rev. W. H. Furness, D. D., after which Dr. Franklin Taylor made a brief address.

At the grave in Longwood Cemetery, about a mile and a half from Cedarcroft, there were gathered thousands of mourning acquaintances, who listened in solemn silence to the addresses which were there delivered by Dr. Furness, and by Mr. Edmund C. Stedman, and the reading of the burial service according to the rites of the Protestant Episcopal Church, by the Rev. H. N. Powers. The pall-bearers consisted of eight persons: George H. Boker, of Philadelphia; Richard H. Stoddard, of New York; Edmund C. Stedman, of New York; Whitelaw Reid, of New York; J. Taylor Gause, of Wilmington, Delaware; Jacob P. Cox, of Kennett; James M. Phillips, of Kennett; Marshall Swayne, of Kennett, and Edward Needles of West Chester, Pa. Governor Hoyt of Pennsylvania, a delegation from the Legislature of Pennsylvania, representatives of the Delta Kappa Epsilon Society, and[355] kindred associations were present, with a large number of friends from distant parts of the country.

It was an impressive scene. The aged father, the sisters, the brothers, the officials, and the throng of other friends around the open grave! From that neighborhood he went forth into life, a frail farmer-boy, less promising than many of his playmates. Now, after twoscore of years, in which he had made for himself friends in every clime, and a name in literature, oratory and diplomacy, his body is laid to rest amid universal grief, and bearing on its coffin-lid the floral tributes from the Empress, and from the greatest men of Germany, and from the most gifted men and women of his own land.

Beside the grave stood his intimate friend and loved companion, Edmund C. Stedman, who, perhaps, more than any other living man had enjoyed the deceased poet’s confidence. It was fitting that he should pay the closing tribute to his friend’s career. Then a choir of neighbors sang a burial ode, the words and music being written for the occasion, the former by Mrs. S. L. Oberholtzer, and the latter by John E. Sweney. Slowly and reverently amid sobs and tears,—a multitude weeping,—they laid him tenderly in his last resting-place, near the grave of his brave brother, and beside the remains of his first love.

Three months have gone since we heard from a distant land that the spirit of our comrade had departed. His life was eager, noble, wide-renowned. It lasted for more than half a century, yet ceased prematurely, and we say, “He should have died hereafter!” Here, to-day, at this very spot, the mould which held that spirit returns to the self-same earth which nurtured it. Here the mortal journeyings are forever ended. The seas, the deserts, the mountain-ranges, shall be crossed no more; the joyous eyes are veiled; the near, warm heart can throb no longer; the stalwart frame has fallen, and henceforth lies at rest. For us the record is closed; but is it ended without a continuance? This is the question, which here, at this moment, in this place, so strongly comes to each one of those who were his comrades, whom he loved with all his generous nature, to whom he was ever stanch and true, for whom he would at all times have given all he had, from whom only his dust now can receive the love, the tender utterance, the ceaseless remembrance which they seek to offer in return. Are the travels then in truth forever ended? Shall there be, for our brother, no more insatiable thirst for knowledge, no more high poetic speech, no more looking toward the stars? For one, I try to answer from his own lips, since they so often foretokened it. If ever a longing for eternal life, a resolve not to be deprived of action, a beautiful and absolute faith that the Power which governs all had decreed that these should not surcease—if these ever have given a mortal a hold on immortality, then our Bayard still is living, though above and beyond us. For however dimmed may be the vision wherewith some of us strive in vain, whatever our hopes, to look behind the veil, for him there was neither[357] doubt nor darkness. He could not, would not, tolerate the idea of one-sided individuality. I have never known a man whose trust in this one thing was so absolutely and always unshaken, or who had a more abiding, sustaining faith in the perfection of the universal plan and in the beneficence of its Designer.

Such was his religion, and I say that it was constant and most beautiful. Possibly it was something of the Quaker breed within him that made him so conscious of the Spirit, and so natural and unfailing a believer in direct inspiration. In this age of questionings and searchings, how few of those who profess the most have his perfect faith in that immortality whose promise animates the creeds! For this alone the most rigid may revere his religion, and even without this his spotless life of purity, philanthropy, heroic deeds, has been a model for those who seek to become the disciples of whom the Teacher said, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” This is the one statement which I desire to make. This much, at this final place and hour, I am moved to affirm. Joyous poet, loyal comrade, patient and generous brother in toil and song—Farewell! Farewell!

With two quotations from Bayard Taylor’s writings, one of prose and one of poetry, the writer will lay down his pen (weary with rapid writing), and with the feeling that the subject of this volume is too vast to be adequately or comprehensively treated so soon after his death; and hoping that a lack of completeness in this book, may not argue a lack of affection on the part of the writer. These are Bayard Taylor’s[358] words. How like a benediction they come to us as we close this book.

“These are the rules which I have always accepted: First, labor; nothing can be had for nothing; whatever a man achieves, he must pay for; and no favor of fortune can absolve him from his duty. Secondly, patience and forbearance, which is simply dependent on the slow justice of time. Thirdly, and most important, faith. Unless a man believe in something far higher than himself; something infinitely purer and grander than he can ever become—unless he has an instinct of an order beyond his dreams; of laws beyond his comprehension; of beauty and goodness and justice, beside which his own ideals are dark, he will fail in every loftier form of ambition, and ought to fail.”

FOOTNOTES

[1] As Bayard says of Osséo in his poem of Mon-da-Min:—

“He could guess

The knowledge other minds but slowly plucked

From out the heart of things: to him, as well

As to his Gods, all things were possible.”

[2] In the Hofkirche, at Innsbruck.

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CHAPTER I.
Mr. Taylor’s Career.—Difficulty and Importance of the Work.—The Romance of his Life.—Variable Experience.—His Success as Novelist, Orator, Traveller, and Poet,	13
CHAPTER II.
German Ancestry.—English Ancestry.—The Pennsylvania Germans.—The Quakers.—How his Forefathers came to America.—The Effect of Intermixture of Races.—The Hereditary Traits seen in his Books,	17
CHAPTER III.
Birth at Kennett Square.—Old Homestead.—The Quaker Church.—The Village.—His Father’s Store.—Life on the Farm.—Mischievous School-boy.—Inclination to write Poetry.—Practical Joker.—Studious Youth.—His Parents.—His Brothers and Sisters,	21
CHAPTER IV.
Unfitness for Farming.—Love for Books.—Goes to the Academy.—Appearance as a Student.—Love for Geography and History.—Enters a Printing-office.—Genius for Sketching.—Correspondence with Literary Men.—Their Advice.—Hon. Charles Miner.—Putnam’s Tourist Guide.—Determination to go to Europe.—Dismal Prospects,	29
CHAPTER V.
Visited by his Cousin.—Decides to go to Europe with his Cousin.—Correspondence with Travellers.—Lack of Money.—Unshaken Confidence.—Publication of Ximena,	33
CHAPTER VI.
The Contest with Enemies.—Departure from Philadelphia.—Friendship of N. P. Willis.—Discouraging Reception.—Interview with Horace Greeley.—Searching for a Vessel.—Steerage Passage for Liverpool.—Fellow Passengers.—The Voyage.—The Beauty of the Sea.—Lauding at Liverpool,	42
CHAPTER VII.
Departure from Liverpool.—Travels Second-Class.—Arrival at Port Rush.—The Giant’s Causeway.—Lost and in Danger.—Dunluce Castle.—Effect upon the Travellers.—Condition of the Irish.—Arrival at Dumbarton.—Scaling the Castle Walls.—Walk to Loch Lomond.—Ascent of Ben Lomond.—Loch Katrine.—Visit to Stirling,	50
[8]CHAPTER VIII.
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,	59
CHAPTER IX.
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,	67
CHAPTER X.
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,	77
CHAPTER XI.
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,	85
CHAPTER XII.
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,	95
CHAPTER XIII.
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,	106
CHAPTER XIV.
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,	115
[9]CHAPTER XV.
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,	120
CHAPTER XVI.
The Poet’s First Love.—Playmates.—Miss Mary S. Agnew.—His Fidelity.—Poems Inspired by Affection.—Her Failing Health.—Consumption.—His Return to Her.—The Marriage at the Death-bed.—Her Death.—The Poet’s Grief.—His Inner Life.—The Story in his own Rhyme,	133
CHAPTER XVII.
Grief and Despair.—Describes his Feelings.—Failing Health.—Severe Mental Labor.—Decides to go to Africa.—Visits Vienna.—Arrival at Alexandria.—Sails up the Nile.—Scenes in Cairo.—The Pyramids.—The Lovely Nile.—An Important and Pleasant Acquaintance.—A Lasting Friendship.—Learning the Language.—Assuming the Costume.—Sights by the Way,	151
CHAPTER XVIII.
Moslem. Worship.—Scenery of the Nile.—Fellowship with the People.—The Temple of Dendera.—Mr. Taylor’s Enthusiasm.—Luxor.—Karnak.—The Extent of Ancient Thebes.—The Tombs and Statues.—The Natives.—Arrives at Assouan.—The Island of Philæ.—Separation of the Friends.—Starts for the White Nile.—Trip through the Desert.—Again on The Nile.—Reception by the People and Officials.—Visits Ancient Meroe,	164
CHAPTER XIX.
From Meroe to Khartoum.—Twenty-seventh Birth-day.—Desire to Explore Central Africa.—Ascent of the White Nile.—Adventure with the Savage Shillooks.—Visits the Natives.—Return to Khartoum.—Crossing the Desert.—Parting with Friends.—Descent of the Nile.—Arrival at Cairo,	174
CHAPTER XX.
Departure from Egypt.—A Poet in Palestine.—Difference in Travellers.—Mr. Taylor’s Appreciation.—First View of Tyre.—Route to Jerusalem.—The Holy City.—Bath in the Dead Sea.—Appearance of Jerusalem.—Samaria.—Looking down upon Damascus.—Life in the eldest City.—The Bath.—Dose of Hashish.—Being a Turk among Turks,	182
[10]CHAPTER XXI.
Leaving Damascus.—Arrival at Beyrout.—Trip to Aleppo.—Enters Asia Minor.—The Scenery and People.—The Hills of Lebanon.—Beautiful Scenes about Brousa.—Enters Constantinople.—A Prophecy.—Return to Smyrna.—Again in Italy.—Visits his German Friend at Gotha.—The Home of his Second Love.—Goes to London.—Visits Gibraltar.—Cadiz.—Seville.—Spanish History,	194
CHAPTER XXII.
Leaves Gibraltar for Alexandria.—Egypt and Old Friends.—The Town of Suez.—Embarks for Bombay.—Mocha and its Coffee.—Aden.—Arrival in Bombay.—Reception by the People.—Trip to Elephanta.—Ride into the Interior.—Difficulties of the Journey.—Views of Agra.—Scenes about Delhi.—Starts for the Himalaya Mountains,	206
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Himalaya Mountains.—Returning Southward.—Lucknow and Calcutta.—Foretells the Great Rebellion.—Embarks for China.—Visit to the Mountains of Penang.—The Chinese at Singapore.—Arrival at Hong-Kong.—Joins the Staff of the U. S. Commissioner.—Scenes about Shanghai.—The Nanking Rebellion.—Life in Shanghai.—Enlists in the Navy.—Commodore Perry’s Expedition,	221
CHAPTER XXIV.
His Reception on the Man-of-war.—Commodore Perry’s Tribute.—Mr. Taylor’s Journals.—Visit to the Loo-Choo Islands.—Explorations.—Mr. Taylor becomes a Favorite.—His Description of the Country.—Cruise to Japan.—The Purpose of the Expedition.—Mr. Taylor’s Assistance.—Return to Hong-Kong.—Resigns his Commission.—Visits Canton.—Sails for America.—St. Helena.—Arrival in New York,	230
CHAPTER XXV.
Takes up the Editorial Pen.—Publication of His “Poems of the Orient.”—His Books of Travel.—Lecturing before Lyceums.—Friendship of Richard H. Stoddard.—Private Correspondence.—Love of Fun.—Resolves to Build a Home at Kennett.—Changes of Intemperance.—Preparations for a Third Trip to Europe.—Acquaintance with Thackeray,	242
CHAPTER XXVI.
Visit to Europe.—Reception in England.—Company in Charge.—Starts for Sweden.—Stockholm.—The Dangerous Ride.—The Severe Cold.—Arrival in Lapland.—First Experience with Canoes and Reindeers.—Becomes a Lapp.—The Extreme North.—The Days without a Sun.—“Yankee Doodle.”—The Return.—Study in Stockholm.—Return to Germany and London.—Embarks for Norway.—Meets his Friend at Christiania.—The Coast of Norway.—The Midnight Sun.—Trip across Norway and Sweden.—Return to Germany,	252
[11]CHAPTER XXVII.
His Marriage.—German Relatives.—Intention of Visiting Siberia.—Goes to Greece instead.—Dalmatia.—Spolato.—Arrival at Athens.—His first View of the Propylæa.—The Parthenon.—Excursion to Crete.—Earthquake at Corinth.—Mycenæ.—Sparta.—The Ruins of Olympia.—Visit to Thermopylæ.—Aulis.—Return to Athens.—His Acquirements,	265
CHAPTER XXVIII.
From Constantinople to Gotha.—Visit to Russia.—Moscow and St. Petersburg.—Return to Prussia.—Arrival in the United States.—Incessant Work.—Lecturing and Travels in California.—The Construction of Cedarcroft.—His Patriotic Addresses and Poems.—Visits Germany in 1861.—Anxiety for the Fate of His Nation.—Life at Cedarcroft,	276
CHAPTER XXIX.
Appointed as Secretary of Legation.—Life in St. Petersburg.—Literary Labors.—His Home at Kennett.—Publication of his Poems.—Visits Iceland.—His Poem at the Millennial Celebration.—Appointment as Minister to Berlin.—His Congratulations.—Reception at Berlin.—His Death,	287
CHAPTER XXX.
His Friends.—The Multitude of Mourners.—His London Acquaintances.—Tennyson, Cornwall, Browning, Carlyle.—German Popularity.—Auerbach.—Humboldt.—French Authors.—Early American Friends.—Stoddard, Willis, Kane, Bryant, Halleck, Powers, Greeley, Mrs. Kirkland, Whittier, Longfellow, Holmes, Emerson, Lowell, Dana, Alcott, Aldrich, Whipple, Curtis, Fields, Boker, Chandler.—Relatives,	296
CHAPTER XXXI.
Translations of “Faust.”—A Life-work.—Discouragements.—The Scenes in “Faust.”—The Difficulties.—Magnitude of the Work.—Perseverance.—The Lives of Goethe and Schiller.—Years in the Work.—The Estimate by Scholars.—Dies with the Work Unfinished,	308
CHAPTER XXXII.
Grief at his Death.—Homage of the Great Men of Germany.—Tribute from Auerbach.—Tributes from his Neighbors at Kennett Square.—Extracts from Addresses.—The Great Memorial Gathering at Boston.—The Great Assembly.—Speeches and Letters.—Address of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.—Henry W. Longfellow’s Poem.—Letters from John G. Whittier, George William Curtis, W. D. Howells, T. B. Aldrich, James T. Fields, Whitelaw Reid, E. P. Whipple.—Tributes from other friends.—Funeral Ceremonies.—Closing Quotations,	317

Bayard Taylor,	Frontispiece.
Tower of London,	Opposite page	68
The Danube at Lintz,	” ”	89
The Arena of the Coliseum,	” ”	107
Place de la Concorde,	” ”	111
Castle of Chapultepec,	” ”	131
Philæ Colonnade,	” ”	170
Scene in North Africa,	” ”	178
Native Cottages in the Tropics,	” ”	224
Pagan Temple in Japan,	” ”	236
Sledges,	” ”	255
Lazaretto Christiansand,	” ”	257
Cedarcroft, Kennett Square, Pa.,	” ”	285
Nicholas Bridge,	” ”	287