From Milan the party walked to Genoa, going through the battle-fields of Hannibal and the Cæsars, along highways once the paved roads of the Roman Empire, and under the shadows of ancient castles whose walls once bristled with the shields of knights and spears of yeomen. It was a glorious, though tedious journey, and by thus travelling in the manner of pilgrims they met the inhabitants at their usual occupations, and learned much of the customs and feelings of the common people. Such information comes not through the windows of railroad carriages, nor enters by the portals of grand hotels.
Having visited the ducal palaces, cathedrals, and parks of Genoa, he went by boat to Leghorn, and thence to Pisa. There he saw, in the Cathedral, the swinging chandelier which led Galileo to investigate the laws of gravitation, and satisfied his curiosity by ascending the Leaning Tower, and left the city with those melodies of unearthly sweetness, which the echoes of the Baptistry give forth, still ringing in his ears. After riding all night in a rickety cart, and suffering horribly from the terrible storm and jolting conveyance, he entered the sacred precincts of that hallowed city, so beautiful, so dear to the heart of the poet and painter,—Florence.
In his poem, “The Picture of St. John,” Bayard thus speaks of that enchanted locality:—
“Ah, lovely Florence! never city wore So shining robes as I on thee bestowed: For all the rapture of my being flowed Around thy beauty, filling, flooding o’er The banks of Arno and the circling hills, With light no wind of sunset ever spills From out its saffron seas! Once, and no more, Life’s voyage touches the enchanted shore.”
During his stay in Florence, Bayard wrote a poem which so clearly expressed his affection for the maiden in Kennett, whom he afterwards married, that many have supposed the fictitious title, by which he addressed her, to be her real name. In that poem he thus referred to Florence:—
“Dear Lillian, all I wished is won! I sit beneath Italia’s sun, Where olive orchards gleam and quiver Along the banks of Arno’s river.
Rich is the soil with fancy’s gold; The stirring memories of old Rise thronging in my haunted vision, And wake my spirit’s young ambition.”