The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard TaylorConwell, Russell H.
General
The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor
Conwell, Russell H.
Taylor, Bayard, 1825-1878
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 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 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.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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