Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/268

250 Here I am gradually recovering from my "salto mortale," and studying rather than enjoying. Rome is a world, and one must spend years before one can become at all acquainted with it. How happy do I consider those travellers who can take a look at it and go their way.

Yesterday many of Winckelmann's letters which he wrote from Italy fell into my hands. With what emotions I began to read them! About this same season, some one and thirty years ago, he came hither a still poorer simpleton than I; but then he had such thorough German enthusiasm for all that is sterling and genuine, either in antiquity or art. How bravely and diligently he worked his way through all difficulties; and what good it does me,—the remembrance of such a man in such a place!

After the objects of nature, who in all her parts is true to herself, and consistent, nothing speaks. so loudly as the remembrance of a good, intelligent man,—that genuine art which is no less consistent and harmonious than herself. Here in Rome we feel this right well, where so many an arbitrary caprice has had its day, where so many a folly has immortalised itself by its power and its gold.

The following passage in Winckelmann's letters to Franconia particularly pleased me: " We must look at all the objects in Rome with a certain degree of phlegm, or else one will be taken for a Frenchman. In Rome, I believe, is the high school for all the world; and I also have been purified and tried in it."

This remark applies directly to my mode of visiting the different objects here; and most certain it is, that out of Rome no one can have an idea how one is schooled in Rome. One must, so to speak, be new born; and one looks back on his earlier notions as a man does on the little shoes which fitted him when a child. The most ordinary man learns something