Page:Impressions of Theophrastus Such. Essays and leaves from a note-book.djvu/361

 was a favorite expedition with us and a few Weimar friends, for the road thither is a pleasant one, leading at first through open cultivated fields, dotted here and there with villages, and then through wooded hills—the outskirts of the Thuringian Forest. We used not to despise the fine plums which hung in tempting abundance by the road-side; but we afterward found that we had been deceived in supposing ourselves free to pluck them, as if it were the golden age, and that we were liable to a penalty of ten groschen for our depredations.

But I must not allow myself to be exhaustive on pleasures which seem monotonous when told, though in enjoying them one is as far from wishing them to be more various as from wishing for any change in the sweet sameness of successive summer days. I will only advise the reader who has yet to make excursions in Thuringia to visit Jena, less for its traditions than for its fine scenery, which makes it, as Goethe says, a delicious place, in spite of its dull, ugly streets; and exhort him, above all, to brave the discomforts of a Postwagen for the sake of getting to Ilmenau. Here he will find the grandest pine-clad hills, with endless walks under their solemn shades; beech-woods where every tree is a picture; an air that he will breathe with as conscious a pleasure as if he were taking iced water on a hot day; baths ad libitum, with a douche lofty and tremendous enough to invigorate the giant Cormoran; and, more than all, one of the most interesting relics of Goethe, who had a great love for Ilmenau. This is the small wooden house, on the height called the Kickelhahn, where he often lived in his long retirements here, and where you may see written by his own hand, near the window-frame, those wonderful lines—perhaps the finest expression yet given to the sense of resignation inspired by the sublime calm of Nature:—