Terni, Oct. 27, 1786.
Evening.
Again sitting in a "cave," which only a year before suffered from an earthquake. The little town lies in the midst of a rich country, (for taking a circuit round the city I explored it with pleasure,) at the beginning of a beautiful plain which lies between two ridges of lime-stone hills. Terni, like Bologna, is situated at the foot of the mountain range.
Terni.
Almost ever since the papal officer left me I have had a priest for my companion. The latter appears better contented with his profession than the soldier, and is ready to enlighten me, whom he very soon saw to be an heretic, by answering any question I might put to him concerning the ritual and other matters of his church. By thus mixing continually with new characters I thoroughly obtain my object. It is absolutely necessary to hear the people talking together, if you would form a true and lively image of the whole country. The Italians are in the strangest manner possible rivals and adversaries of each other; everyone is strongly enthusiastic in the praise of his own town and state; they cannot bear with one another, and even in the same city the different ranks nourish perpetual feuds, and all this with a profoundly vivacious and most obvious passionateness, so that while they expose one another's pretensions, they keep up an amusing comedy all day long; and yet they come to an understanding again together, and seem quite aware how impossible it is for a stranger to enter into their ways and thoughts.
I ascended to Spoleto and went along the aqueduct, which serves also for a bridge from one mountain to another. The ten brick arches which span the valley, have quietly stood there through centuries, and the water still flows into Spoleto, and reaches its remotest quarters. This is the third great work of the ancients that I have seen, and still the same grandeur of conception. A second nature made to work for social objects,—such was their architecture; and so arose the amphitheatre, the temple, and the aqueduct. Now at last I can understand the justice of my hatred for all arbitrary caprices, as, for instance, the winter casts on white stone—a nothing about nothing—a monstrous piece of confectionary ornament—and so also with a thousand other things. But all that is now dead; for whatever does not possess a true intrinsic vitality cannot live long, and can neither be nor ever become great.
What entertainment and instruction have I not had cause to be thankful for during these eight last weeks, but in fact it has also cost me some trouble. I kept my eyes continually open, and strove to stamp deep on my mind the images of all I saw; that was all-judge of them I could not, even if it had been in my power.
San Crocefisso, a singular chapel on the road side, did not look, to my mind, like the remains of a temple which had once stood on the same site; it was evident that columns, pillars, and pediments had been found, and incongruously put together, not stupidly but madly. It does not admit of description; however, there is somewhere or other an engraving of it.
And so it may seem strange to some that we should go on troubling ourselves to acquire an idea of antiquity, although we have nothing before us but ruins, out of which we must first painfully reconstruct the very thing we wish to form an idea of.
With what is called "classical ground" the case stands rather different. Here, if only we do not go to work fancifully, but take the ground really as it is, then we shall have the decisive arena which moulded more or less the greatest of events. Accordingly I have hitherto actively employed my geological and agricultural eye to the suppressing of fancy and sensibility, in order to gain for myself an unbiassed and distinct notion of the locality. By such means history fixes itself on our minds with a marvellous vividness, and the effect is utterly inconceivable by another. It is something of this sort that makes me feel so very great a desire to read Tacitus in Rome.
Road-side fantasies.