Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 4.djvu/23

Rh wandering through their gardens, taking care of their flowers, the children playing, parties of friends enjoying themselves, and could hear the bowls rolling and the ninepins dropping, it early excited within me a feeling of solitude, and a sense of vague longing resulting from it, which, conspiring with the seriousness and awe implanted in me by nature, exerted its influence at an early age, and showed itself more distinctly in after-years.

The old, many-cornered, and gloomy arrangement of the house was, moreover, adapted to awaken dread and terror in childish minds. Unfortunately, too, the principle of discipline, that young persons should be early deprived of all fear for the awful and invisible, and accustomed to the terrible, still prevailed. We children, therefore, were compelled to sleep alone; and when we found this impossible, and softly slipped from our beds, to seek the society of the servants and maids, our father, with his dressing-gown turned inside out, which disguised him sufficiently for the purpose, placed himself in the way, and frightened us back to our resting-places. The evil effect of this any one may imagine. How is he who is encompassed with a double terror to be emancipated from fear? My mother, always cheerful and gay, and willing to render others so, discovered a much better pedagogical expedient. She managed to gain her end by rewards. It was the season for peaches, the plentiful enjoyment of which she promised us every morning if we overcame our fears during the night. In this way she succeeded, and both parties were satisfied.

In the interior of the house my eyes were chiefly attracted by a series of Roman views, with which my father had ornamented an anteroom. They were engravings by some of the accomplished predecessors of Piranesi, who well understood perspective and architecture, and whose touches were clear and excellent.