Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/233

Rh eye to the suppressing of fancy and sensibility, in order to gain for myself an unbiassed and distinct notion of the locality. By such means history fixes itself on our minds with a marvellous vividness, and the effect is utterly inconceivable to another. It is something of this sort that makes me feel so very great a desire to read Tacitus in Rome.

I must not, however, forget the weather. As I descended the Appennines from Bologna, the clouds gradually retired toward the north; afterward they changed their course, and moved toward Lake Trasimene. Here they continued to hang, though perhaps they may have moved a little farther southward. Instead, therefore, of the great plain of the Po, sending, as it does during the summer, all its clouds to the Tyrolese mountains, it now sends a part of them toward the Apennines: from thence, perhaps, comes the rainy season.

They are now beginning to gather the olives. It is done here with the hand: in other places they are beat down with sticks. If winter comes on before all are gathered, the rest are allowed to remain on the trees till spring. Yesterday I noticed in a very strong soil the largest and oldest trees I have ever yet seen.

The favour of the Muses, like that of the demons, is not always shown us in a suitable moment. Yesterday I felt inspired to undertake a work which at present would be ill-timed. Approaching nearer and nearer to the centre of Romanism, surrounded by Roman Catholics, boxed up with a priest in a sedan, and striving anxiously to observe and to study without prejudice true nature and noble art, I have arrived at a vivid conviction that all traces of original Christianity are extinct here. Indeed, while I tried to bring it before my mind in its purity, as we see it recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, I could not help shuddering to think of the shapeless, not to say