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[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 sta............