However, I don't pretend to say that these hasty impressions are correct. They may be the mere creations of a distempered fancy. At any rate, I am sure that German is the native tongue of all Wilky-isms, and that in Germany [Wilky] would be one of the first authors of the age for style. The mischief of it is that, instead of using these approximations as such, the people let them stand permanently, and as they can make them with so little trouble, there arises in literature and talk an entangled mass of crudity and barbarism that spoils everything. They get accustomed to such elephantine ways of saying things that they don't mind it at all, and I have had more amusement out of the newspaper than I ever derived from the text of "Punch." I wish I could remember some of the expressions. Yesterday, for instance, the paper said the Emperor of Austria's message was more atomistisch than dynamisch—this, in a peppery little political article, shows what scholastic expressions the people are accustomed to. The context gave no explanation. Then, a couple of days ago, in a review of some histories of German literature, the surprising depth of one author was praised, altho' it was granted "that here and there he had not succeeded in lighting up the ultimate life-spring (Lebensgrund) of the phenomena." Of another that "without entirely losing sight of what was human (menschlich) in the phenomena, he had accomplished a work of extraordinarily logical development and luminous procedure (Gang)." Imagine entirely leaving out the human in a history of literature!...
May 30.
The pleasant spinster from Hamburg I mentioned in my last letter as being so well read, has, I find, "drawn the line" of her information at geography and physical science. She comes out strong in Sanscrit and Greek literature (which she knows of course by translations), and in church history, but she drives me frantic by her endless talking about America, in the course of which she continually leaps without any warning from New York to Rio de Janeiro and thence to Valparaiso. She has friends in each of these localities, and it is apparently a fixed conviction of hers that they take tea together every evening. At first I tried to show her that these places were all far apart and that the ways of one were not those of the others, and from her apparent comprehension and submission I used to fancy I had succeeded; but it was only the elastic and transient bowing of the reed before the gale. A rather amusing incident occurred the other evening. I was speaking of the different classes of people that made up our population, and endeavoring to give a keen analysis of the Irish character, when she asked me to tell her something about a people we had with us called "Yankees," about whom she had heard such strange stories, and who seemed to be, if report were true, of all the peoples in the world the very worst (das allerschlimmste). What was their genesis and what were they? Imagine the feelings of the poor old lady, who had asked the question merely from a wish to please me by her intelligent interest in our affairs, when the truth was told her....
The other afternoon I fell into conversation with a tall and rather aristocratic-looking old gentleman with a gray moustache, who spoke very good French, at a beer garden, and found out afterwards that he was no less a person than the illustrious Kaulbach. Strangely enough, we quite accidentally got on the subject of the Gallery. He spoke of several of the pictures, but said nothing that was not commonplace. I have as yet only had a mere glimpse at the Gallery, but will do it thoroughly before I leave. I'd give anything if Harry could see some of the Venetian things there, and the Shepherds' Adoration of Correggio, which he probably knows, or rather méconnaît, by prints which give nought but the rather unpleasant and, unless you are let into the secret, motivelessly eccentric drawing. But it would take Victor Hugo to find the proper antithetic epithets to describe the combined gladness and solemnity of the painting, its innocence and its depth. I have always had, I don't know why, a prejudice against Correggio; but I never saw a painting before that breathed out so easily such a moral poetry. It seems to me to kill Rafael's celebrated Madonna right out. Although that too is a good "piece." I find myself in the Gallery much too disposed to exalt one thing at the expense of its neighbors, which is very unjust to them; but by taking it easily and letting the pictures do their own work I think it will all come right. Mr. Paul Veronese had eyes, anyhow. I am sure it would be the making of John La Farge to come abroad, alone, if no other way. Dis lui, Henry, que je lui écrirai tantôt à ce sujet.
I have been having a literary debauch to start in the language with, but am getting down again to medicine. The enthusiastic, oratorical and eloquent Schiller, the wise and exquisite Goethe, and the virile and human Lessing have in turn held me entranced by their Dramal. Je te recommande, Henry, "Emilia Galotti" comme étude. C'est serré comme du chêne, rapide comme l'avalanche, toute la retenue et la vigueur de Merimée, et au fond un gros cœur dont la tendresse comprimée n'échappe que par des phrases dont la sobriété même déchire, ou bien par du bitter irony. Lessing seems to have a religious feeling that people miss in Goethe, and seems to be a great deal deeper than Schiller, though, of course, he is a far more homespun character. I have been reading Goethe's "Italienische Reise." It is perfectly fascinating; but you can read very little of it at a time, it is so damnably tedious, and you can't bear to skip. Paradoxical as it may appear, there is a deal of naïveté in the old cuss. Attends donc un peu que mon grand article sur Goethe apparaisse dans "L'Américain du Nord!"
I expect T. S. Perry here in a fortnight on his way from Venice. You may imagine with what joy. I have just been interrupted by the supper, which takes place at nine P.M. and consists of beer, eggs, herrings, ham, and bread and butter, and is not displeasing to the carnal man. I have been writing a most infernally long letter, for which I apologize. It will be the last time. The fact is I have so few resources here that I am driven to write. Tell Alice that there are two Miss Twomblys from Boylston Street living here, one exceedingly pretty. She doubtless, by her feminine system of espionage, knows who they are, though I know none of their friends and they none of mine. I got mother's letter and the "Nation" with great joy soon after my arrival. I read Father's article, but with much the old result. I am desirous of reading his article in the N. A. R. and hope he will not delay to send it when it appears. Heaps of love all round.
To his Mother.
DRESDEN, June 12, 1867.
DEAREST MOTHER,—I have been reading a considerable deal of German, and in a very desultory way, as I want to get accustomed to a variety of styles, so as to be able to read any book at sight, skipping the useless; and I may say that I now begin to have that power whenever the book is writ in a style at all adapted to the requirements of the human, as distinguished from the German, mind. The profounder and more philosophical German requires, however, that you should bring all the resources of your nature, of every kind, to a focus, and hurl them again and again on the sentence, till at last you feel something give way, as it were, and the Idea begins to unravel itself. As for speaking, that is a very different matter and advances much more slowly....
Life is so monotonous in this place that unless I make some philosophical discoveries, or unless something happens, my letters will have to be both few and short. I get up and have breakfast, which means a big cup of cocoa and some bread and butter with an egg, if I want it, at eight. I read till half-past one, when dinner, which is generally quite a decent meal; after dinner a nap, more Germanorum and more read till the sun gets low enough to go out, when out I go—generally to the Grosser Garten, a lovely park outside the town where the sun slants over the greenest meadows and sends his shafts between the great trees in a most wholesome manner. There are some spots where the trees are close together, and in their classic gloom you find mossy statues, so that you feel as if you belonged to the last century. Often I go and sit on a terrace which overlooks the Elbe and, with my eyes bent upon the lordly cliffs far down the river on the other side, with strains of the sweetest music in my ear, and with pint after pint of beer successively finding their way into the fastnesses of my interior, I enjoy most delightful reveries, au nombre desquels those concerning my home and my sister are not the least frequent.