Palermo, Tuesday, April 3.
This letter must, as far as possible, impart to you, my dearest friends, a high treat; it is intended to convey to you a description of an unrivalled bay, embracing a vast mass of waters. Beginning from the east, where a flattish headland runs far out into the sea, it is dotted with many rugged, beautifully-shaped, wood-crowned rocks, until it reaches the fishing-huts of the suburbs; then the town itself, whose foremost houses (and among them our own hotel) all look towards the harbour and to the great gate by which we entered.
Then it stretches westwards, and passing the usual landing-place, where vessels of smaller burden can lie to, comes next to what is properly the harbour, near the Mole, which is the station of all larger vessels; and then, at the western point, to protect the shipping, rises Monte Pellegrino, with its beautiful contour, after leaving between it and the mainland a lovely fertile valley, which at its other end again reaches the sea.
Kniep sketched away. I took, with my mind's eye, the plan of the country—(ich schematisirte)—with great delight; and now, glad to have reached home again, we feel neither strength nor energy to tell a long story, and to go into particulars. Our endeavours must, therefore, be reserved for a future occasion; and this sheet must serve to convince you of our inability adequately to seize these objects, or rather of our presumption in thinking to grasp and master them in so short a time.
Palermo, Wednesday April 4, 1787.
In the afternoon we paid a visit to the fertile and delightful valley at the foot of the Southern Mountains, running by Palermo, and through which the Oreto meanders. Here, too, is a call for the painter's eye, and a practised hand to convey an idea of it. Kniep, however, hastily seized an excellent point of view at a spot where the pent-up water was dashing down from a half-broken weir, and was shaded by a lovely group of trees, behind which an uninterrupted prospect opened up the valley, affording a view of several farm buildings.
Beautiful spring weather, and a budding luxuriance, diffused over the whole valley a refreshing feeling of peace, which our stupid guide marred by his ill-timed erudition, telling us that in former days, Hannibal had fought a battle here, and circumstantially detailing all the dreadful feats of war which had been perpetrated on the spot. In no friendly mood I reproved him for thus fatally calling up again such departed spectres. It was bad enough, I said, that from time to time the crops should be trodden down, if not by elephants, yet by men and horses. At any rate, it was not right to scare away the peaceful dreams of imagination by reviving such tumults and horrors.
The guide was greatly surprised that I could, on such a spot, despise classical reminiscences; and I, too, could not make him understand how greatly such a mingling of the past with the present displeased me.
Still more singular did our guide deem me, when at all the shallow places, of which many were left quite dry by the stream, I searched for pebbles, and carried off with me specimens of each sort. I again found it difficult to make him understand that there was no readier way of forming an idea of a mountainous district like that before us, than by examining the nature of the stones which are washed down by the streams, and that in so doing, the purpose was to acquire a right notion of those eternally classic heights of the ancient world.