He reached Venice October 13th. In the old city proudly called the Queen of the Adriatic, and for centuries a republic, until ground under the heel of Austrian despotism, Carleton arrived in time to see the people almost insane with joy. The Austrian garrison was marching out and the Italian troops were moving in. The red caps and shirts of the Garibaldians brightened the throng in the streets, and the old stones of Venice, bathed in salt water at their bases, were deluged with bunting, flags, and rainbow colors. When King Victor Emmanuel entered, the scenes of joy and gladness, the sounds of music, the gliding gondolas, the illuminated marble palaces and humble homes, the worshipping hosts of people in the churches, and the singing bands in the streets, taxed to the utmost even Carleton's descriptive powers. The burden of joy everywhere was "Italy is one from the Alps to the Adriatic, and Venice is free."
Turning his attention to Rome, where French bayonets were still supporting the Pope's temporal throne, Carleton discussed a question of world-wide interest,—the impending loss of papal power and its probable results. Within a fortnight after his letter on this subject, the last echoes of the French drum-beat and bugle-blast had died away. The red trousers of the Emperor's servants were numbered among Rome's mighty list of things vanished. In the Eternal City itself, Carleton attended mass at St. Peter's, and then re-read and retold the story of both the Roman and the Holy Roman Empire. Some of his happiest days were passed in the studios of American artists and sculptors. There he saw, in their beginning of outlines and color, on canvas or in clay, some of the triumphs of art which now adorn American homes and cities. Fascinated as he was in Pompeii and in Rome with the relics and revelations of ancient life, he was even more thrilled by the rapid strokes of destiny in the modern world. The separation of church and state was being accomplished while Italy was waking to new life. The Anabaptists were avenged and justified.
About the middle of February, Carleton was again in Paris, seeing the Exposition and the Emperor of the French and his family. Then crossing to England, he heard a great debate over the Reform measures, in which Disraeli, Lowe, Bright, and Gladstone spoke. The results were the humiliation of Disraeli, and the break-up of the British ministry. Re-crossing the channel to Paris, he spent eight weeks studying the Exposition and the country, writing many letters to the Journal. After examination of the great fortresses in the Duchy of Luxembourg, he went into Germany, tarrying at Heidelberg, Nuremberg, Munich, and Vienna. He then passed down "the beautiful blue Danube" to Buda-Pesth, where, having been given letters and commendations from J. L. Motley, the historian of the Netherlands and our minister at Vienna, he saw the glittering pageant which united the crowns of Austria and Hungary. This was performed in the parish church in Buda, an edifice built over six hundred years ago. It had been captured by the Turks and made into a mosque, where the muezzin supplanted the priest in calls of prayer. After the great victory won by John Sobieski, cross and altar were restored. Here, amid all the glittering and bewildering splendor of tapestry, banners, dynastic colors, national flags, jewels, and innumerable heraldic devices, "the iron crown of Charlemagne," granted by Pope Sylvester II. in the year 1000, and called "the holy and apostolic crown," was placed by Count Andrassy upon the head of the Emperor Francis Joseph. The ruler of Austria practically acknowledged the righteousness of the revolution of 1849, and his own mistake, when he accepted the crown from the once rebel militia-leader and then exiled Andrassy, having already given to the Hungarians the popular rights which they clamored for. Most gracious act of all, Francis Joseph contributed, with the Empress (whom Mrs. Coffin thought the handsomest woman in Europe), 100,000 ducats ($200,000) to the widows and children of those who were killed in 1849, while fighting against the empire. At this writing, December, 1896, we read of the unveiling, at Kormorn, of a monument to Klapka, the insurgent general of 1849.
In Berlin, Carleton saw a magnificent spectacle,—the review of the Prussian army in welcome to the Czar. He studied the battle-fields of Leipsig and Lutzen, and the ever continuing gamblers' war at Weisbaden. Then sailing down the Rhine, he revisited Paris to see the distribution of prizes at the Exposition, the array of Mohammedan and Christian princes, and the grand review of the French troops in honor of the Sultan. In England once more, he looked upon the great naval review of the British fleets of iron and wood. He studied the ritualistic movement. He attended the meeting of anti-ritualists at Salisbury, where, midway between matchless spire and preancient Cromlech, one can meditate on the evolution of religion. He was at the Methodist Conference of Great Britain in the city of Bristol, whence sailed the Cabots for the discovery of America, now four centuries ago. He read the modern lamentations of Thomas Carlyle, who, in his article, "Shooting the Niagara and After," foretold the death of good government and religion in the triumph of democracy.
At the British Scientific Association's gathering in Dundee, he heard Murchison, Baker, Lyell, Thomson, Tyndall, Lubbock, Rankine, Fairbairn, and young Professor Herschell. He was at the Social Science Congress held in Belfast, meeting Lord Dufferin, Dr. James McCosh, Goldwin Smith, and others. Two months more were given to study and observation in the countries Ireland, England and Scotland, Holland and Belgium. Of his frequent letters to the Journal a score or so were written especially to and for young people, though all of them interested every class of readers. He kept a keen watch upon movements in Italy and in Spain, where the Carlists' uprising had begun.
In this manner, nearly sixteen months slipped away in parts of Europe, and amid scenes so remote as to require hasty journeys and much travelling. Carleton received further directions to continue his journey around the world. He was to visit the Holy Land, Egypt, India, China, and Japan, to cross the Pacific, and to traverse the United States as far as possible on the Pacific railway, then in course of construction. This was indeed "A New Voyage Around the World," not exactly in the sense of Defoe; but was, as Carleton called it in the book describing it, which he afterwards wrote, "Our New Way Around the World." No one before his time, so far as known, had gone around the globe, starting eastward from America, crossing continents, and using steam as the motor of transportation on land and water all the way.
Making choice of three routes to the Orient, Carleton left Paris December 9th, 1867, for Marseilles. He found much of the country thitherward nearly as forbidding as the hardest regions of New Hampshire. The climate was indeed easier than in the Granite State, but from November to March the people suffered more from cold than the Yankees. They lived in stone houses and fuel was dear. At Marseilles the vessels were packed so closely in docks, that the masts and spars reminded him of the slopes of the White Mountains after fire had swept the foliage away. Although innumerable tons of grain were imported here, he saw no elevators or labor saving appliances like those at Buffalo, which can load or empty ships' holds in a few half hours. Many of the imports were labelled "Service Militaire," and were for the support of that army of eight hundred thousand men, which the impoverished French people, even with a decreasing population, were so heavily taxed to support. Carleton noticed that merchants of France were planning to lay their hands on the East and win its trade.[Back to Content]