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:—

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 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.