Читать книгу The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor онлайн

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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.