Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/105

Rh Wilden,—a place of worship on the mountains, about three miles and a half from the city. About two o'clock, as my rolling carriage divided the gay, merry throng, every one was in holiday garb and promenade.

From Innspruck the road becomes even still more beautiful: no powers of description can equal it. The most frequented road, ascending a gorge which empties its waters into the Inn, offers to the eye innumerable varieties of scenery. While the road often runs close to the most rugged rocks, indeed is frequently cut right through them, one sees the other side above you slightly inclining, and cultivated with the most surprising skill. On the high and broad-ascending surface lie valleys, houses, cottages, and cabins, white-washed, glittering among the fields and hedges. Soon all changed: the land becomes available only for pasture, until it, too, terminates on the precipitous ascent. I have gained some ideas for my scheme of a creation; none, however, perfectly new and unexpected. I have also dreamed much of the model I have so long talked about, by which I am desirous to give a notion of all that is brooding in my own mind, and which in nature itself I cannot point out to every eye.

Now it grew darker and darker; individual objects were lost in the obscurity; the masses became constantly vaster and grander; at last, as the whole moved before me like some deeply mysterious figure, the moon suddenly illuminated the snow-capped summits; and now I am waiting till morning shall light up this rocky chasm in which I am shut up on the boundary-line of the north and south.

I must again add a few remarks on the weather, which, perhaps, favours me so highly in return for the great attention I pay to it. On the lowlands one has good or bad weather when it is already settled for either: on the mountains one is present with the beginning of the change. I have so often experienced this