Starts for Switzerland and Italy.—First View of the
Alps.—The Falls of the Rhine.—Zurich.—A Poet’s Home.—Lake
Lucerne.—Goethe’s Cottage.—Scenes in the Life of William
Tell.—Ascent of the Alps at St. Gothard.—Descent into
Italy.—The Cathedral at Milan.—Bayard’s Characteristics.—Tramp
to Genoa.—Visits Leghorn and Pisa.—Lovely Florence.—Delightful
Visits.—The Home of Art.
August 1, 1845, Bayard again started from Frankfort on his pedestrian
wanderings, having made up his mind to visit Switzerland, Florence,
Venice, Rome, and perhaps Athens. On this trip his cousin Frank was
again his companion. With their knapsacks on their shoulders and staffs
in hand they began another pilgrimage, confident and strong. With but
a small supply of money, and with but shadowy probabilities of more,
they launched out into a world to them untried and unknown. With excited
imaginations and the keenest anticipations they rose above every
difficulty and faced boldly the probabilities of fatigue and want. They
made a short stay at Freiburg and entered the Black Forest, passing the
Titi Lake and the Feldberg peak. Bayard’s disposition for ascending
mountains, which inclined him to see the top of everything, led him to go
up the cragged side of the Feldberg, from 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 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 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 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 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 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:—
“Ah, lovely Florence! never city wore
So shining robes as I on thee bestowed:
For all the rapture of my being flowed
Around thy beauty, filling, flooding o’er
The banks of Arno and the circling hills,
With light no wind of sunset ever spills
From out its saffron seas! Once, and no more,
Life’s voyage touches the enchanted shore.”
During his stay in Florence, Bayard wrote a poem which so clearly
expressed his affection for the maiden in Kennett, whom he afterwards
married, that many have supposed the fictitious title, by which he
addressed her, to be her real name. In that poem he thus referred to
Florence:—
“Dear Lillian, all I wished is won!
I sit beneath Italia’s sun,
Where olive orchards gleam and quiver
Along the banks of Arno’s river.
Rich is the soil with fancy’s gold;
The stirring memories of old
Rise thronging in my haunted vision,
And wake my spirit’s young ambition.”
That Italian paradise, situated in the beautiful vale of that most
charming river, is perhaps the loveliest spot in all that land. Being the
home of such artists as Michael Angelo and Raphael, the abode of such
poets as Dante, and of such scientific men as Galileo, it possessed an
intense interest because of its association with them. Being also the
seat of the De Medici, of Machiavelli, of Pitti, and the resort of the
greatest American poets and sculptors, its themes for verse and prose
are almost numberless. There Bayard made a 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.