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. 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 C?sar, 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 fa?ades. 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.
 
THE ARENA OF THE COLISEUM.
 
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:—
“They do not act with a studied grace,
They d............