Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/376

350 true-hearted fellow. In order to shorten the weary hours of the passage, he has explained to me all the mechanical part of aquarell, or painting in watercolours, an art which has been carried to a great height of perfection in Italy. He thoroughly understands the use of particular colours for effecting certain tones, to produce which, without knowing the secret, one might go on mixing for ever. I had, it is true, learned a good deal of it in Rome, but never before so systematically. The artists must have studied and perfected the art in a country like Italy or this. No words can express the hazy brilliancy which hung around the coasts, as on a most beautiful noon we neared Palermo. He who has once seen it will never forget it. Now, at last, I can understand Claude Lorraine, and can cherish a hope that hereafter, in the North, I shall be able to produce, from my soul, at least a faint idea of these glorious abodes. Oh, that only all littleness had departed from it as entirely as the little charm of thatched roofs has vanished from among my ideas of what a drawing should be! We shall see what this "Queen of Islands" can do.

No words can express the welcome—with its fresh green mulberry-trees, evergreen oleanders, and hedges of citron, etc. In the open gardens, you see large beds of ranunculuses and anemones. The air is mild, warm, and fragrant; the wind refreshing. The full moon, too, rose from behind a promontory, and shone upon the sea; and this joyous scene after being tossed about four days and nights on the waves!

Forgive me if, with the stump of a pen, and the India-ink my fellow traveller uses for his sketches, I scribble down these remarks. I send them to you as a faint lisping murmur; since I am preparing for all that love me another record of these, my happy hours. What it is to be I say not; and when you will receive it, that also it is out of my power to tell.