Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/232

218 that I have seen, and still the same grandeur of conception. A second nature made to work for social objects,—such was their architecture. And so arose the amphitheatre, the temple, and the aqueduct. Now at last I can understand the justice of my hatred for all arbitrary caprices, as for instance, the winter casts on white stone—a nothing about nothing—a monstrous piece of confectionery ornament; and so also with a thousand other things. But all that is now dead; for whatever does not possess a true intrinsic vitality cannot live long, and can neither be nor ever become great.

What entertainment and instruction have I not had cause to be thankful for during these eight last weeks! but in fact it has also cost me some trouble. I kept my eyes continually open, and strove to stamp deep on my mind the images of all I saw. That was all: judge of them I could not, even if it been in my power.

San Crocefisso, a singular chapel on the roadside, did not look, to my mind, like the remains of a temple which had once stood on the same site. It was evident that columns, pillars, and pediments had been found, and incongruously put together, not stupidly, but madly. It does not admit of description: however, there is somewhere or other an engraving of it.

And so it may seem strange to some that we should go on troubling ourselves to acquire an idea of antiquity, although we have nothing before us but ruins, out of which we must first painfully reconstruct the very thing we wish to form an idea of.

With what is called "classical ground" the case stands rather different. Here, if only we do not go to work fancifully, but take the ground really as it is, then we shall have the decisive arena which moulded more or less the greatest of events. Accordingly I have hitherto actively employed my geological and