Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/298

280 paradises of the world that the volcanic mountains manifest themselves so violently, for thousands of years alarming and confounding their inhabitants.

But I willingly drive out of my head the expectation of these much-prized scenes, in order that they may not lessen my enjoyment of the capital of the whole world before I leave it.

For the last fourteen days I have been moving about from morning to night. I am raking up everything I have not yet seen. I am also viewing, for a second or even for a third time, all the most important objects: and they are all arranging themselves in tolerable order within my mind; for while the chief objects are taking their right places, there is space and room between them for many a less important one. My enthusiasm is purifying itself, and becoming more decided; and now, at last, my mind can rise to the height of the greatest and purest creations of art with calm admiration.

In my situation one is tempted to envy the artist, who, by copies and imitations of some kind or other, can, as it were, come near to those great conceptions, and grasp them better than one who merely looks at and reflects upon them. In the end, however, every one feels he must do his best; and so I set all the sails of my intellect, in the hope of getting round this coast.

The stove is at present thoroughly warm, and piled up with excellent coals, which is seldom the case with us, as no one scarcely has time or inclination to attend to the fire two whole hours together. I will, therefore, avail myself of this agreeable temperature to rescue from my tablets a few notes which are almost obliterated.

On the 2d of February we attended the ceremony of blessing the tapers in the Sistine Chapel. I was in anything but a good humour, and shortly went off again with my friends: for I thought to myself, those are the very candles, which, for these three hundred years, have been dimming those noble paintings; and it is