Turning from the autographs to the books, we find still greater value and variety. The historical portion, especially where it referred to local subjects, was almost phenomenal. One precious lot comprised a complete set of the first daily newspaper of the United States, beginning with the "Pennsylvania Packet" in 1771, and continuing unbroken, through several changes of title and proprietorship, for one hundred and seven years. An amusing incident is related in connection with Mr. Mickley's purchase of the larger portion of this series,—"Poulson's Advertiser" from 1800 to 1840. When the wagon was driven to his door, loaded with the purchase, the housekeeper exclaimed, "What ever is to be done with all this truck?" Yet this "truck," a mine of wealth to the future historian, was sold after Mickley's death for eight hundred dollars. There were city directories of several editions for ninety-three years. The black-letter list was quite large, and there were more than thirty editions of the Bible, some of great rarity, and nearly all in a fine state of preservation.
From the time of the coin-robbery the older acquaintances of Mr. Mickley noticed a decided change in him. On the subject of coins, once so voluble, he grew very reticent. His business, which had for many years appeared rather a pastime than a task to him, grew irksome. After a period of uncertainty, he finally decided to close up his affairs and spend some years in foreign travel. In spite of advanced age, he was both physically and mentally well equipped for such a journey. His health had always been good. His temper seemed never to be ruffled. Of the French and German languages he was a master, and he had some knowledge of the Spanish, Italian, and Swedish. His previous extensive acquaintance with men of many nations and habits was kept fresh in mind by a remarkable memory. With all these advantages, the period of his travels was the most interesting of his life.
Mr. Mickley set sail on the 5th of June, 1869, being at that time a few months past his seventieth year. He remained abroad for three years, visiting every country in Europe, ascending the Nile to the first cataract, passing through the Suez Canal, and across a portion of Asia Minor and Palestine. He made two trips to Northern Sweden to behold the spectacle of the midnight sun. Being a week too late on the first season, he tried it again the following year. Passing through the entire length of the Gulf of Bothnia, and ascending the Tornea River, he entered Lapland, crossing the Arctic circle and penetrating the Arctic zone in a sledge-journey of seventy miles. The indomitable old traveller pushed on until he reached a small lumber-village named Pajala. On the night of June 23, 1871, crossing the river with a small party of Swedes and Finns, he ascended Mount Avasaxa, in Finland. At this altitude, he says, "the sky happened to be clear in the direction of the sun, and he shone in all his glory as the clock struck twelve."
During this prolonged absence he visited almost every considerable town in Germany, Holland, Italy, and England. The instant that he arrived at a town, he seemed to know the shortest cut to its museum. If there was an antiquarian in the place, he knew of it beforehand, and hastened either to make or renew an acquaintance. In the larger cities he was surrounded by these people, and he expressed unaffected surprise and pleasure at their attentions. He made visits of inspection to nearly every mint in Europe, having been commissioned by the Philadelphia Mint to make purchases of rare coins for its cabinet. Here the old passion appears to have blazed up again for a little while. It was an entire surprise to his family to discover among his possessions at his death the nucleus of a new collection, which was sold for about two thousand dollars.
Mr. Mickley made at this period some valued acquaintances. Among these was the Italian composer Mercadante. At the time of Mickley's visit, in April, 1870, the composer, who was also president of the Conservatoire in Naples, had been blind for eight years. "The old gentleman," says Mickley (who, by the way, was only two years his junior), "held out his hand and bade me welcome. I told him it would be a lasting pleasure to have shaken hands with so highly distinguished a man, whose name had long since been favorably known in America. At this his face brightened; he arose from the sofa, shook my hand cordially, wishing me health, happiness, and a safe voyage." Later, at Brussels, he called on M. Fétiss, the famous French musical critic and biographer. At that time, in his eighty-eighth year, Fétis was a fugitive from Paris, owing to the troubles of the Franco-Prussian war. Mr. Mickley's picture of the veteran littérateur and critic is an engaging one. He says, "Considering his great age, Mr. Fetis is very active. He climbed up the stepladder to get books and to show me such as he considered the most rare and interesting. He is not only active in body, but he retains all the faculties of his mind. He appears to have a very happy disposition. While I was with him a continual smile was on his face, and it seemed to give him great pleasure to show me his books. He has been engaged in collecting them for over fifty years, and they have cost him a sum equal to three hundred thousand dollars, exclusive of a great many presents. The first book on music was printed in 1480." At Trieste he spent some time with the United States consul there, Mr. Thayer, of Boston, best known to musical and literary people as the author of an exhaustive Life of Beethoven, which has been under way for nearly thirty years and is not yet finished. Mr. Thayer showed his visitor all the historic data and personal relics which he had collected for the book, of which at that date only one volume had been published. Since then Mercadante and F?s have been gathered to their fathers. Their genial guest is also gone. The industrious Mr. Thayer lives, with three volumes of the Life completed, and every American, either literary or musical, will wish him well on to the conclusion of his magnum opus.
Mr. Mickley's plain personal habits remained almost unchanged by the many unforeseen exigencies of foreign travel. Once, at Rouen, six months after leaving home, he says, "Tasted wine for the first time in Europe, as the water here did not agree with me." A little later, at Munich, he remarks, "Drank beer for the first time." His pockets remained as accessible as heretofore to the nimble-fingered gentry. Upon his first visit to Naples, he records very naïvely, "Three silk handkerchiefs have been stolen from me here,—which is one more than in London." At Jaffa, on his way from Egypt to Palestine, besides the robbery of coins alluded to some time back, he lost a choice autograph manuscript of Mozart which had cost him two hundred and fifty francs at Salzburg. If careless in these particulars, he was very watchful and jealous of opportunities to uphold America's position in the world. He took special pains to inform the mint-masters at various points concerning the superior appliances and machinery of the Philadelphia Mint. On the way back from Lapland, while steaming southward along the upper waters of the Gulf of Bothnia, he writes, under date of July 4, 1871, "This being our national holiday, I put up my flag on the door of my berth, but was obliged to explain the meaning of the holiday to nearly all the passengers." While in England, he met at Manchester a barrister who had formerly been his guest in Philadelphia. This gentleman proposed to introduce him to an American lawyer then practising there. "I asked the name. He said it was Judah P. Benjamin. I declined the invitation."
Wherever Mr. Mickley journeyed, so long as any fresh acquisition of knowledge was to be gained the old traveller appeared insensible to fatigue. When halfway up the Great Pyramid an English group who were in his company stopped and insisted upon going no farther. He resolutely continued, and they, unwilling to see so aged a man out-distance them, followed reluctantly, until all reached the summit and congratulated each other on the famous view. In St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other Russian cities, which he visited in the winter season, he was equally untiring and undaunted. As a specimen of his accuracy of observation, he writes during his first journey in Italy, "I counted forty-six tunnels between Pisa and Bologna." Several severe accidents fell to his lot. In Rome, while exploring a dark, arched passage, he fell into "Cicero's Well," receiving severe bruises. In a street in Constantinople, where there are no sidewalks, he was knocked down by a runaway horse and taken up for dead, remaining insensible for several hours. The former of these mishaps occupies three lines in his diary; the latter, twelve lines. On his third visit to Leipsic he was confined in his room for several weeks with an attack of smallpox. But in regard to none of these accidents, although an aged man, thousands of miles from home, and entirely alone, does he betray any symptoms of apprehension. He merely adds, on the date of his recovery from the attack at Leipsic, "This sickness has detained me much longer than I had expected to stay."
In one of Mickley's trips he made a not unimportant contribution to musical history. Almost every student of instrumental music is acquainted with the name of Jacob Steiner or Stainer, the most successful of violin-makers outside of the Cremonese school of workmen. Of Steiner's life but little is known, and no biography of him extant in either French, German, or English contains either the date or place of his death. The account commonly given is that he separated from his wife and died in a convent. Mr. Mickley, with his accustomed perseverance, started out to see if this matter might not be cleared up. At Innspruck he inquired in vain for information. As Fétis and Forster both fixed his birthplace at Absom, a small village some twelve miles from Innspruck, Mickley repaired thither. For some time his errand was fruitless. He stopped in at a little shop where an old woman sold photographs, etc. "I asked her, 'Did you never hear of Jacob Steiner, the violin-maker?' She replied, 'There is no Steiner nor violin-maker living in this town.' I then said that a celebrated violin-maker of that name, of whom I desired some information, had lived there two hundred years before. She replied, quite seriously, 'I am not two hundred years old.'" A few minutes later, in the course of his walk, his eye fell upon an old church, the outer wall of which contained a number of stone tablets with inscriptions. A search of five minutes revealed the desired information. On a plain tablet Steiner's name was found, together with the information, given in very old-fashioned German, that he had died there in 1683, "at the rising of the sun."
The closing field of Mr. Mickley's travels covered Southern France and Spain, Lisbon, where he passed the winter of 1871-72, and Madrid. The weather being very severe, he was detained two months at Lisbon, where he engaged a teacher and took daily lessons in Portuguese. He had done the same at Stockholm the previous winter with the Swedish language, which he mastered pretty thoroughly. At Madrid he examined what he emphatically pronounced the finest collection of coins in the world, numbering one hundred and fifty thousand specimens. He adds, "This is the only place in Europe where the subject is properly understood. Alfonzo V., King of Aragon, in the fifteenth century, was the first person known to have collected coins for study or amusement, and Augustin, Archbishop of Tarragona, was the first writer on the subject. The science of numismatics is, therefore, of Spanish origin."
Mr, Mickley left Madrid in March, crossing the Pyrenees and arriving in Paris on the 24th of that month, his seventy-third birthday. He "made the tour of three hundred and sixty-three miles in twelve hours, without being in the least fatigued." After a few weeks passed in Paris and in revisiting friends in England, he sailed for home, arriving in Philadelphia June 5, 1872, exactly three years from the date of his departure.