The following passage in Winckelmann's letters to Franconia particularly pleased me. "We must look at all the objects in Rome with a certain degree of phlegm, or else one will be taken for a Frenchman. In Rome, I believe, is the high school for all the world, and I also have been purified and tried in it."
This remark applies directly to my mode of visiting the different objects here; and most certain is it, that out of Rome no one can have an idea how one is schooled in Rome. One must, so to speak, be new born, and one looks back on one's earlier notions, as a man does on the little shoes, which fitted him when a child. The most ordinary man learns something here, at least he gains one uncommon idea, even though it never should pass into his whole being.
This letter will reach you in the new year. All good wishes for the beginning; before the end of it we shall see one another again, and that will be no little gratification. The one that is passing away has been the most important of my life. I may now die, or I may tarry a little longer yet; in either case it will be alike well. And now a word or two more for the little ones.
To the children you may either read or tell what follows. Here there are no signs of winter. The gardens are planted with evergreens; the sun shines bright and warm; snow is nowhere to be seen, except on the most distant hills towards the north. The citron trees, which are planted against the garden walls, are now, one after another, covered with reeds, but the oranges are allowed to stand quite open. A hundred of the very finest fruit may be seen hanging on a single tree, which is not, as with us, dwarfed, and planted in a bucket, but stands in the earth free and joyous, amidst a long line of brothers. The oranges are even now very good, but it is thought they will be still finer.
We were lately at the sea, and had a haul of fish, and drew to the light fishes, crabs, and rare univalves of the most wonderful shapes conceivable; also the fish which gives an electric shock to all who touch it.
Rome, Dec. 20, 1786.
And yet, after all, it is more trouble and care than enjoyment. The Regenerator, which is changing me within and without, continues to work. I certainly thought that I had something really to learn here; but that I should have to take so low a place in the school, that I must forget so much that I had learnt, or rather absolutely unlearn so much,—that I had never the least idea of. Now, however, that I am once convinced of its necessity, I have devoted myself to the task; and the more I am obliged to renounce my former self, the more delighted I am. I am like an architect who has begun to build a tower, but finds he has laid a bad foundation: he becomes aware of the fact betimes, and willingly goes to work to pull down all that he has raised above the earth; having done so, he proceeds to enlarge his ground plan, and now rejoices to anticipate the undoubted stability of his future building. Heaven grant that, on my return, the moral consequences may be discernible of all that this living in a wider world has effected within me. For, in sooth, the moral sense as well as the artistic is undergoing a great change.
Rome—Dr. Münter.
Dr. Münter is here on his return from his tour in Sicily—an energetic, vehement man. What objects he may have, I cannot tell. He will reach you in May, and has much to tell you. He has been two years travelling in Italy. He is disgusted with the Italians, who have not paid due respect to the weighty letters of recommendation which were to have opened to him many an archive, many a private library; so that he is far from having accomplished his object in coming here.