Rome, November 10, 1786.
Here I am now living with a calmness and tranquillity to which I have for a long while been a stranger. My practice to see and take all things as they are, my fidelity in letting the eye be my light, my perfect renunciation of all pretension, have again come to my aid, and make me calmly, but most intensely, happy. Every day has its fresh remarkable object,—every day its new grand unequalled paintings, and a whole which a man may long think of, and dream of, but which with all his power of imagination he can never reach.
Rome-The Grotto of Egeria, &c.
Yesterday I was at the Pyramid of Cestius, and in the evening on the Palatine, on the top of which are the ruins of the palace of the Cæsars, which stand there like walls of rock. Of all this, however, no idea can be conveyed! In truth, there is nothing little here; although, indeed, occasionally something to find fault with,—something more or less absurd in taste, and yet even this partakes of the universal grandeur of all around.
When, however, I return to myself, as every one so readily does on all occasions, I discover within a feeling which does not infinitely delight me—one, indeed, which I may even express. Whoever here looks around with earnestness, and has eyes to see, must become in a measure solid—he cannot but apprehend an idea of solidity with a vividness which is nowhere else possible.
The mind becomes, as it were, primed with capacity, with an earnestness without severity, and with a definiteness of character with joy. With me, at least, it seems as if I had never before so rightly estimated the things of the world as I do here; I rejoice when I think of the blessed effects of all this on the whole of my future being. And let me jumble together the things as I may, order will somehow come into them. I am not here to enjoy myself after my own fashion, but to busy myself with the great objects around, to learn, and to improve myself, ere I am forty years old.
Rome, Nov. 11, 1786.
Yesterday I visited the nymph Egeria, and then the Hippodrome of Caracalla, the ruined tombs along the Via Appia, and the tomb of Metella, which is the first to give one a true idea of what solid masonry really is. These men worked for eternity—all causes of decay were calculated, except the rage of the spoiler, which nothing can resist. Right heartily did I wish you had been there. The remains of the principal aqueduct are highly venerable. How beautiful and grand a design, to supply a whole people with water by so vast a structure! In the evening we came upon the Coliseum, when it was already twilight. When one looks at it, all else seems little; the edifice is so vast, that one cannot hold the image of it in one's soul—in memory we think it smaller, and then return to it again to find it every time greater than before.