Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/131

Rh people, who advanced them enough to support life in the bad seasons, and in winter took their wine at a low price. However, it is the same thing everywhere.

My opinion concerning the food is confirmed by the fact that the women who inhabit the towns appear better and better. They have pretty, plump, girlish faces. The body is somewhat too short, in proportion to the stoutness and the size of the head; but sometimes the countenances have a most agreeable expression. The men we already know through the wandering Tyrolese. In the country their appearance is less fresh than that of the women, perhaps because the latter have more bodily labour, and are more in motion; while the former sit at home as traders and workmen. By the Garda Lake I found the people very brown, without the slightest tinge of red in their cheeks: however, they did not look unhealthy, but quite fresh and comfortable. Probably the burning sunbeams to which they are exposed at the foot of their mountains are the cause of their complexion.  

, Sept. 16.

, then, the Amphitheatre is the first important monument of the old times that I have seen; and how well it is preserved! When I entered, and still more when I walked around the edge of it at the top, it seemed strange to me that I saw something great, and yet, properly speaking, saw nothing. Besides, I do not like to see it empty. I should like to see it full of people, just as, in modern times, it was filled up in honour of Joseph I. and Pius VI. The emperor, although his eye was accustomed to human masses, must have been astonished. But it was only in the earliest times that it produced its full effect, when the people 