What I have seen and inferred of the personnel of the Court requires to be further tested, before I set it down. To-day the king is gone hunting the wolves: they hope to kill at least five.
Naples, March 17, 1787.
When I would write words, images only start before my eyes,—the beautiful land, the free sea; the hazy islands, the roaring mountain;—powers to delineate all this fail me.
Here in this country one at last understands how it ever came into the head of man to till the ground—here where it produces everything, and where one may look for as many as from three to five crops in the year.
I have seen much, and reflected still more. The world opens itself to me more and more—all even that I have long known is at last becoming my own. How quick to know, but how slow to put in practice, is the human creature!
The only pity is, that I cannot at each moment communicate to others my observations. But, both as man and artist, one is here driven backwards and forwards by a hundred ideas of his own, while his services are put in requisition by hundreds of persons. His situation is peculiar and strange; he cannot freely sympathize with another's being, because he finds his own exertions so put to the stretch.