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

46 страница из 63

From London, the party proceeded to Dover, and from thence to Ostend and Bruges. They travelled in the cheapest manner, walking wherever practicable, and going from Bruges to Ghent in a canal-boat, thence by railroad across the border to Aix-la-Chapelle. Here was another treat. The description which he gave in his letters of his visit to the old Cathedral, where rest the remains of Charlemagne, was one of the most vivid recitals to be found in the annals of travel. For some reason, he so abridged it in his book, as to take away the finest and most original delineations. Every reader of his first narration, who may never have visited Aix-la-Chapelle, can in imagination see the old Cathedral, with its shrines, its antique windows, and the shadows of saints on the floor, and hear the sweet undulations of the organ’s solemn peal. While to the traveller who follows him through those aisles, and under those magnificent arches, his words give life and language to the pillars, altars, and luminous decorations. To the least poetic or sentimental of travellers, it is a solemn place; and if so to them, how deep and impressive must it have been to a soul so full of emotion as that of Bayard! There he wrote his well-known poem, “The Tomb of Charlemagne.”