Bayard Taylor

Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) was an American poet, travel writer and diplomat, born in Pennsylvania of Quaker stock. He walked through Europe on a few hundred dollars and wrote it up as Views Afoot, then traveled for the New York Tribune to California in the gold rush, to Egypt, Africa and Asia Minor, to India, China and Japan with Perry's expedition, and to Scandinavia and Lapland, producing a stream of popular travel books. He also published novels and several volumes of verse and made a translation of Goethe's Faust in the original meters that was long admired. He died in Berlin shortly after his appointment as United States minister to Germany.