The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-12-28 00:00:00

THE LATE MR. BAYARD TAYLOR.

Mr Bayard Taylor, the United States Minister to Germany,
whose deat a took place on Thursday in last week, at Berlin,
was born in Kenntth-s4uare, Chesttr county, Pennsylvania,
on January 11, 1825. At 17 years of age he became an ap-
prsnlice in a printing-office in West Cnes ter, and at the saml
time a contributor of vertes to the periodical press 'the
greater part of his career, as is well known, was that of an
author and journalist—describing which, the Daily Telegrahp
gives the following interesting outline :-
- - ' • •

Of Mr. a TBayer, aylor, the American Minister in
'
Berlin, who expired there last Thursday, it may be
said to his great honour that, among the self-made
men who abound in his native land, none ever rose to
eooial or political eminence by fairer or more unexcep-
tionable means. Born in humble circumstances at a
little town in Pennsylvania more than fifty-three years
ago, Bayard Taylor passes away, leaving behind him,
as his compatriots would say, a thoroughly satisfac-
tory "record." There are, perhaps, no more restless
and enterprising travellers upon earth than Ameri-
cans, but also none who lavish so much money upon
their favourite enjoyment. In many European cities
wherein colonies of Americans have long been esta-
blished, the tariff of prises has gone up by reason of
the free-handed expenditure which makes citizens of
the Great Republir such welcome guests at Paris,
Dresden, Nice, Baden-Baden, Florence, and many
other pleasant places of resort which find special favour
in their eyes. But whsn we say that, in Transatlantic
phrase, Mr. Bayard Taylor was "the boss traveller
of the United States," we would not have it ima-
gined that it was his custom to scatter dollars
along the road with the prodigality so charac-
teristic of his fallow-countrymen. Dollars, in
truth, he had few to scatter until his life
was far spent. His first trip to Europe was made
between 1844 and 1846, in the former of which years
he was a boy of nineteen; yet he managed to see
England, France, Germany, and other countries
thoroughly, to pass two years in traversing them on
toot without anything beyond the most shadowy
acquaintance with foreign languages, and to spend
altogether' not more than one hundred pounds. Upon
returning to the United States he published his ex-
periences in a volume entitled "Views afoot- or,
Europe traversed with a Knapiraek," which soon
became so popular that it served to recommend him
to Horace Greeley,. the enterprising editor and
chief proprietor of the New York Tribune. In this
book he taught his countrymen that dinner might be
obtained at many European cook-shops or bouillons
for threepence or fourpence ; and shortly before start-
ing for Berlin in April last he told a friend that he
could never pars a shop in London with the advertise-
. ment in its window of "a hot sausage and bread for
twopence halfpenny" without longing to enter and
make his dinner there. It cannot be denied that in
picking him up Horace Greeley did a good day's work
for the journal with which he was so long connected.
At the close of 1848 tidings for the first time reached
New York that an American Eldorado had been dis-
covered on the Pacific slope, and on June 28, 1819,
Mr. Bayard Taylor sailed from the "Empire City"
for California as correspondent of the New York
Tribune. He was then but twenty-four years old,
but it is doubtful whether, among the long list of
books that he leaves behind him, there is one more sue-
cessful than his "Eldorado; or Adventures in the
Path of Empire." The volume, as he tell us in his
, preface, was only partially compounded out of the
' letters from his pen which were printed in the
New York Tribune, but it contains, perhaps, the
most striking exhibit of the marvellous country from
which at tiune reports of untold stores of treasure were
daily wafted to the Atlantic seaboard of the United
States. The first engraving in it reveals what San
Francisco was in 1848—an indentation sunk below a
horse-shoe of surrounding hills, and studded with per-
haps a dozen wooden shanties and two or three frame-
houses. Upon the spot where, according to the
testimony of many living Americans, there are now
half-a-dozefi of the most magnificent hotels in the
world, Mr. Bayard Taylor and his companion found
the greatest difficulty in obtaining shelter in a
tavern, where they took a room with two beds at
twenty-five dollars a week, with an additional charge
of twenty dollars a-piece per week for their meals.
"I asked the landlord," says Mr. Taylor, "whether
he could send a porter for our trunks." "There is
none belonging to the house," said he; "every man
is his own porter here." The New York papers
were being sold at a dollar a copy. "Hearing
this," says our author, "I bethought me of
about a dozen papers which I had used to fill up
crevices in packing my valise. There was a
newspaper merchant at the corner of any hotel, and to
him I proposed the sale of them, asking him to name
a price. • I shall want to make 'a good profit on the
retail price,' said he, • and can't give more than ten
dollars for the lot.' I was satisfied with the wholesale
price, which was a gain of just four thousand
per cent." It is interesting to read such details
in connection with that `• Golden City" which
has just sent a rich testimonial to
Beaconsfield, evidencing the; interest taken
New World in the fortunes Of that "little ens
isle," to which, let us hope, the affectiousof Americans
will never cease fondly to turn. In those days the
rivalry between the two nascent cities of the Pacific
Coast—San Francisco and Benicia—was hot and
angry, and it is to the credit of a young man, aged
but twenty-four years, that Mr. I aylor then wrote,
with remarkable foresight, "San Francisco is marked
by nature and fate for the great commercial mart of
the Pacific, and whatever advantages she may lack
will soon be amply provided for by her wealth and
enterprise." The overland emigration of 1849
has been celebrated by many pens, but no
one has told the marvellous tale more graphi-
cally than Mr. Taylor. He reveals that between the
August and December of that year at least thirty
thousand souls accomplished a journey of more than
two thousand miles through a savage and partially-ex-
plordd wilderness, crossing on their way two mouutain
chains equal to the Alps in altitude, to say nothing of
broad tracks of burning desert and of desolate plain,
'where there were but a few patches of stunted • shrubs
and brackish springs of water to minister to taeir
necessities. The wanoering tribes of Ind.ans—
Pawnees, Sioux, and Arapahoes—were bewildered
and daunted by the moving masses. The
chelera swept over them and laid a heavy toll
upon fireir numbers ; but still the living river
flowed on, until the western slope of the Sierra
Nevada had been reached, "when the great in-
terior Wilderness of the Plains resumed its ancient
silence and solitude until the next spring." Mr. Bayard
Taylor has given us his experience of European, Asiatic,
and African travel in many interesting books • but he
has written nothing so stirring as his pictures of his own
native land. His " Colorado ; a Summer Trip," written
nearly twenty years later than his sketch of California
at the height of her gold fever, was the first work that
taught Americans how unnecessary it is for them to visit
Chamounix in order to contemplate Mont Blanc, when
they have a Pike's Peak or a Long's Peak of their own,
situated in the midst of scenery far transcending that
of Switzerland in magnificence and beauty.
Mr. Bayard Taylor's second visit to the Old World
was made by him as correspondent of the journal with
which he had now become thoroughly identified, and
during the course of it he formed the acquaintance of
Alexander von HunTholdt, whose Life and Voyages "
he subsequently commemorated. The great German
traveller and naturalist had little sympathy with a
nameless Republican, being, as Prince Bismarck has
lately reported of him, never so haepy as when
breethirg the atmosphere of Courts. After
talking for a while with his American visitor,
he remarked of him that "he had never came
across a man who had seen so •much and who
knew so little." India, China, and Japan were next
visited by the indefatigable Amerkan and he has also
left us pictures of Palestine, Asia dinor, Sicily, and
Spain. . He made his way up the Nile to a point
which few adventurous spirits had reached before him,
and in his " Byeways of Europe" he gives us pleasing
sketches of its less-frequented countries' none of
which are more happily described by him than
Sweden and Norway, where the simplicity of
the inhabitants, and the extreme cheapness of
living, were thoroughly to his taste. Perhaps
the most ambitious of Bayard Taylor's printed
works were his ventures into the realm of poetry, for
which he had from his boyhood no inconsiderable
aptitude. His "Translation of Faust" was welcomed
with loud applause by his delighted fello w-country-
men, but it is doubtful whether their favourable
, judgment will be confirmed by the cooler verdict of
posterity. It is as a mighty traveller, who managed to
see more at a lees cost than any of his rivals, with,
perhaps, the exception of Ida Pfeiffer, had ever
incurred, that his memory will live ; and they who,
being animated with a similar passion, would fain
tread hereafter in his footsteps, will find scat-
tered through his books many hints of which
, they nutty profitably avail themselves. To his
self-imposed task Ire brousht an inexhaustible store of
freshness and an absence of ennui which are generally
characteristic of men who, like the late Sir Henry,
Holland, are never so happy as when they are travel-
ling. The death of Mr. 13ayard Taylor at Berlin, in
his fifty-fourth year, will *be regarded by Americans
with general regret, and especially by those enthusie
astic friends who testified to the respect in which he
was held by giving him a complimentary dinner at
New York previous to his assuming the diplomatic
office from which it was destined that he should never
return.

Writing from Berlin on the 22nd, the Correspondent of The
Times says :—" The mortal remains of Mr. Bayard Taylor
were t.-day deposited in the vault of the Jerusahm chur, h-
-3 ard, there to test tall carried across the Atlantic at no distant
date. At two o'clock this afternoon a simple but imposing
funeral service was held in the rooms of the United states'
Embassy, Behret strasse, 'there a large number of friends
and colleagues of the deceased gathered to honour his
memory. Nearly all the resident Ambassadors, with their
secretaries and military attaches, were present, and German
literature was represented by such names as Herren
Lepsius, Bunsen, schleiermacher, and Auerbach. Starichng
beside the bier, which was covered with wreaths and im
r cues, the Rev Dr. Thorusou, a resident American here-
delittered 'a funeral oration 94, Wi hie and .merits of,th,
de cea,ed, with an floquentei: end taste which could n
possibly be surpas-ed. 'ben Herr Berthold Aueroach, ut
the name of German litetature, feelingly lauded 010
departs d. The funeral procession was headed by three
Imperial carriages All theterman papers give a biograp iY
of Mr. Taylor and speak in the highest terms of him. Mr.
Everett will meanwhile conduct the business of the Ear
L basal."